Two Shaved Heads

The day begins on an off note. We rise too late and I am grumbling because Karen won't get up.  I bathe and dress the children, order coffee, swallow my grouchiness, take a cup in to Karen and write a little in my journal.  I have a head cold that is causing me further discomfort and am becoming edgy and irritable with everyone.  Finally it is mutually agreed that I go off by myself for a little walk.

I head towards the Gelugpa Tibetan Temple, the one we visited the other day and it is still locked!  As I am turning away, I see Karen and the girls coming toward me in a bicycle rickshaw.  Both our moods have improved and Karen suggests that I wait with the girls while she checks around the back to see if anyone is there. Soon she is waving from the front gate, for me to go around the back and as I start around the side of the temple I am met by a monk who explains in fairly good English that the temple is closed because the maintenance staff are on strike! 

We all walk up to the road together and it becomes clear that he is not a Buddhist, but a monk of the Ramakrishna Order in Calcutta and I immediately suggest he come to meet our hotel manager who belongs to the Ramakrishna Mission.  However, there is some confusion in our schedules, we part company and the proposed meeting never happens.  I am disappointed because when I described the monk to the manager he became very excited and asked "Is Swamiji coming for lunch?", explaining to us that the man we met was a very senior monk in the order, whose lecture he had attended in Gaya only yesterday.

I muse on the fact of these many encounters we have had, so real at the moment and then evaporating like smoke or like the clouds in the thangka paintings we see later on at the Kagyupta Temple where the Australian nun has invited us. Robin is her name, and she is just leaving out the front gate as we arrive, going to check her mail.  She tells us to go ahead inside the main temple which is in a state of semi-completion with scaffolding and bare cement walls on all sides.

The first thing we notice is the traditional sumptuous and ornate decor on the ceilings with its heavy, scrolled, golden laminations and spinning energy wheels. Then, covering one entire wall and part of another behind us we see a mural, not traditional at all but very modern and gorgeous. It depicts scenes from the life of Buddha, beginning with the elephant that appears in his mother's dream, the infant boy in a halo of light and so on. The figures are all life size, the colors rich, plentiful and light-suffused so unlike the darker traditional Tibetan colors.

Finally, up on a scaffold in the corner, we see the artist herself working.  She's a Danish girl from Copenhagen, Marianne Rydvall.  She is a mother and the mother's energy is very evident in her work. In fact the first figure in the mural is the Buddha's mother, reclining on a bed of clouds and lotus, dreaming of a wonderful elephant, while the buddhas in the sky look on. The colors are pastel, vivid and light and there is a clarity and simplicity to the detail that gives one a sense of a marvelous balance and rhythm unfolding. I tell her this of course and hope that I am not "gushing" too much but she seems pleased by my interest and compliments.

Yesterday at the Barabar Caves Karen and I came up with a plan to do a recording there.  The hotel manager had encouraged this idea and said that he might even be able to get us government sponsorship for the project. Now the idea occurs to me that Marianne's artwork could appear on the cover and I suggest this to her.  She seems interested and invites us upstairs to meet her baby son Sky and her husband David, who we have already seen, doing "taking-refuge-in-the-Buddha-Dharma" prostrations outside the Mahabodhi Temple.

Robin, the nun, has hot lemon tea brought in for us all and we have a short conversation on the subject of travel to Katmandu.  Then Robin takes us to see the puja room, replete with 1000 bronze buddhas waiting to be  moved to their traditional showcase in the main temple.

She shows us a picture of Karmapa, the recently deceased head of the Kagyu lineage and another of her teacher, a disciple of Karmapa and also a tulku, named Benu Chentse Rinpoche, whose address in Katmandu she has already given us.

We both like Robin and find her very clear and non-egocentric, freely letting us into her thoughts and lifestyle and thus opening up a line of inquiry into the Kagyu lineage for us. Karen and she relate beautifully to one another. 

Karen is describing a very painful past experience which she had while in meditation and begins to weep.  I watch Robin for a reaction. There is none.  Karen leaves for a moment to recover from the weeping and the conversation continues smoothly between us.  When Karen returns, there is no mention and no blame. Nothing happened but we all feel better! 

Robin explains how the new Karmapa will be the 16th or 17th in his lineage and how, before the old lama dies, he leaves a letter for the senior lamas to be opened only after his death, which names the location of his "new" birth and the names of his parents. They then go in search of the new tulku who they usually locate quite young, looking for signs in him of recognition of his previous life.

About her teacher she doesn't say much, except  that he will be happy to see us because it is his form of compassion that he has incarnated as a lama to help others toward liberation.  I don't get such a glowing recommendation of this teacher's compassion from Marianne, however, who relates to me the story of how she was commissioned to do this mural in the temple but has not received any money, as she was promised, nor materials nor even plane fare and that the Rinpoche, when it comes to matters of money, is far from fair-minded. 

Apparently a Moslem named Mohammad has put up the money for this Tibetan temple to be built! He also sent along an extra $100,000. for art materials for Marianne.  So far she hasn't seen a dime.  The Rinpoche had not told her anything about it and was meanwhile trying to whittle down their original agreement to "bed and breakfast", threatening her to bring in another artist to finish the job she started if she didn't agree.  She is only staying on because she is committed to the work itself and is hoping things will somehow right themselves.

We are also introduced to Tara, another Westerner staying at the temple, who suggests a trekking plan for the Katmandu area but tells us all manner of unpleasant things that might happen to us, enough to change our minds if we didn't already have visas. She also informs us that Lama Govinda has recently died in California and I am disappointed to learn that now I will never get to meet the illustrious Master whose words on art and religion have moved me so deeply through the years.

Back at the Lodge, Karen and I come to a decision.  Perhaps it's the influence of all these monks but we mutually agree that the time has come to have our heads shaven!  So, on our behalf, the manager summons a local barber and the staff gather around to watch the crazy foreigners have their heads shaved in the courtyard. 

The young barber upon his arrival wastes no time. After first consulting us to make sure that we want our heads completely shaved and perhaps slightly non-plussed at this request, he produces a straight razor and whetting it a bit, proceeds directly to his task. Great clumps of stripped hair cascade to the ground and in a matter of minutes Karen and I are completely bald.

How strange to see myself in a mirror.  I seem to recognize my face as belonging to some else but can't place who.  I suddenly feel very "Buddhist".  There is something of the feeling of a "spiritual confirmation" in this for both of us. 

The staff do not know quite what to say and one of them bursts out in an uncomfortable laugh at the sight of Karen being shaved.  The kids have their hair cropped close but not shaved and think the whole experience "neat" before forgetting it completely.  We then all set out for the Mahabodhi Temple to do our walking puja and are greeted with friendly smiles of delight by all the monks who meet us.

I pause to read the inscription on a mani stone which I think is the HUM symbol which I had seen in Lama Govinda's books.  Karen is standing alongside of me and suddenly exclaims that there is a hurt bird lying at my feet.  I look down and the bird begins fluttering along the ground, while another bird standing on a nearby railing, begins chirping loudly, as if in alarm.  Karen quickly picks up the bird and the same thought comes to both of us at once, of the stories I have told her of the several unusual experiences I have had, discovering a hurt or "dead" bird, picking it up and having it "come to life" in my hands and fly away healed. So she hands me the bird!

I see immediately that the whole tail-feather section is "on crooked", probably broken.  I cradle the bird in my palms until we reach a fairly secluded patch of green lawn and flowers, among the stupas and there lay the bird down with a silent prayer that God will help it.  I can't imagine trying to "doctor" the bird and feel suddenly quite helpless and unequal to this experience. The "magical" power to help the bird is nowhere in evidence now and a silent prayer on its behalf is clearly no help. 

As we walk away I am left with my conflicting emotions over this incident. I feel brought down to earth by it and yanked right out of the realm of my imagination and fantasy world of how things might be.  I spend the rest of the day wondering about this incident and about its significance to me.

If I have suddenly become more "Buddhist" by shaving my head and saying my prayers, this has not eased my responsibility in the material world in any visible sense.  I think of the Zen poem "I do nothing, yet the leaves fall and blossoms come into bloom" and my heart lifts slightly.