What Are You?

Coupla days ago, I did a brave thing. I climbed out my new friend Dennis’ massive, fully-loaded Dodge Ram pickup (hoping this’d give me a little street cred), hitched up my monk’s robes, and boldly strode into a Tulsa Wal-Mart.

I was poking around, waiting for a prescription, when Dennis saunters over and says, “You’re easy to find. Just hadda ask the pharmacy folks if they’d seen someone in Buddhist monk robes. ‘Oh,’ they said, ‘is that what he is? We was wondering.’ ”

That’s the gist of the overriding question for a Buddhist monk here in Oklahoma, not “Who are you?” but “What are you?” And the struggle seems to be between confrontation – it’s a deeply conservative place where Charismatic Christianity pervades all aspects of life – and the local tradition of courtesy. Big ol’ Bubba in the Standard Uniform – boots, jeans, big belt under paunch, plaid shirt, Stetson – came up to me in one of the waiting rooms, indicated my robes and asked, “Now what’s all this about?” I told him I was a Buddhist monk and smiled. Pause, processing. “Buddhist, huh?” Beat. Beat. “Well, welcome.” Whew.

Tulsa’s a place where the churches rival the Wal-Marts in size, and subjects and verbs are rarely in agreement: “Me and Jimmy come up from Wichita Falls yesterday”; “Them little buggers is cold, ain’t they?”

Yeshe and I are total anomalies here, virtually extraterrestrial. It’s hard to express how palpable the influence of the pentacostal church is. So many folks involuntarily stiffen and give us one of those tight, nervous smiles when we approach. But Yeshe and I both have senses of humor, and are trying to be good ambassadors. I think his monkey slippers have helped. The other night a lady from the RHEMA Bible College came to our dinner table to remind everyone that they were having a Healing Bible Class that evening. I asked her if Buddhist monks were allowed. She said, “Oh sure,” then added, “My husband used to be a Buddhist.” Well, I didn’t take that bait and offer sympathy for his backsliding (relax, kidding.) She didn’t know I’d just been taken to their massive complex to see their legendary Xmas light display (already taken down) and out of curiosity googled them. I’d taken a look at their “Tenets of Faith”, right up to this last one:

HELL AND ETERNAL RETRIBUTION - The one who physically dies in his sins without accepting Christ is hopelessly and eternally lost in the lake of fire and, therefore, has no further opportunity of hearing the Gospel or repenting. The lake of fire is literal. The terms "eternal" and "everlasting," used in describing the duration of the punishment of the damned in the lake of fire, carry the same thought and meaning of endless existence as used in denoting the duration of joy and ecstasy of saints in the Presence of God (Heb. 9:27; Rev. 19:20).

Part of me wanted to ask her if she really felt this would be how someone like, say, the Dalai Lama ended up, but I knew what a food fight that’d end up in, so I took Shantideva’s advice and made like a log on the forest floor.

Only one person has skipped the “What are you?” question and asked, rather, what is it that Buddhists believe. That’s Cyndie Browning, a local birder who took me out for a chunk of the day Sunday to scout out the prairie specialties. If Yeshe would be OK on his own, I had a few target birds in mind: Smith’s Longspur, Greater Prairie-chicken, Short-eared Owl, and several sparrows: LeConte’s, Clay-colored, Henslow’s.

Forget the sparrows, Cyndie said, they’re all down at the Texas border this time of year, and the owl’ll only show up at dusk. But let's see about your longspur and chicken.

Yeshe was in pretty good shape with nothing but mantras on his agenda, so after a hearty breakfast, off we went. Destination: the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, located about an hour’s drive northwest of Tulsa. The drive there, through Barnsdall and Pawhuska, took us through habitat I didn’t expect – dense forests of stunted oaks. Cyndie explained to me that we were seeing the remnants of the “cross timbers” that Washington Irving traveled through in 1831 and described as “forests of cast iron.”

These cross timbers used to nestle in a bed of 142 million acres of tallgrass prairie. Through relentless conversion to farmland over the past couple of centuries, there is only about 10% of this original, unplowed prairie left, in parts of Oklahoma and Kansas. The tract in Oklahoma, now covering 38,700 acres, is owned by The Nature Conservancy and maintained as a preserve you can visit.

Just before we got to the preserve proper, we stopped at a promising expanse of shorter grass favored by longspurs. Sure enough, likely candidates twittered in overflight, headed for the other side of the road. I walked over and saw a cattle tank in the distance. I figured that with water being scarce in the intense drought Oklahoma’s currently experiencing, that’s where they’d be heading, so I hopped the barbed wire (trespassing barriers like that feels like a minor offense when potential lifers are involved, unless there’s a threat of getting shot at) and tromped on out. More and more longspurs, simply invisible with their camouflage, burst out of the grass to wheel and chatter overhead. I caught flashes of white on the wings that seemed promising, and settled down at the tank to wait. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before a few dropped in for a drink. Got the white wing slashes, warm buffy bellies, a bit of the face patterns. Put together with the flight call, there was no question: Smith’s Longspur, a bird I never thought I’d even have a shot at. The rest of the day would just be gravy.

The other highly sought-after bird in these parts is the Greater Prairie-chicken (yes, there’s a Lesser, just as sought-after, but further west.) Another local birder had suggested we look for it along the Bison Loop within the preserve. Now, I thought this was just a colorful road name. Nope, it’s literal.

In 1993, a herd of 300 bison were introduced to the habitat and it’s now grown to about 2000 animals. I have to admit, there was a real thrill produced in my East Coast American heart by seeing real bison on a real prairie and I made Cyndie stop a bunch of times so I could make woodgy-woodgy noises at them and snap photos. See if these don’t get you singing a verse or two of “This Land is Your Land”:

Alas, however, we looked and looked and, though I enjoyed the Rough-legged Hawks and Harris’ Sparrows, we were destined to leave chicken-less. They’re secretive by nature, unless it’s spring and the males are strutting on their leks, puffing out their colorful neck patches, and “booming” for females across the grassland.

Well, we almost went chicken-less. We did park ourselves at the Blue Stem Café in Pawhuska for a late Sunday lunch special of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, beans, candied apples, a warm roll, lemon cake and coffee. This fueled us up just right to head back to Tulsa via a slightly different route. We drove through Wynona, Hominy and Skiatook and one of them, can’t remember which, had a most remarkable, official-looking sign up as you entered town. It read:

A Town of Character
SELF-CONTROL
Rejecting Impulsive Actions

I wondered if they’d reject the impulse to ask a bald man in red robes, “What are you?” but I decided to drive on through and not test it out.

Comments

[ca]

go, Kongchog! from Mongolia to Oklahoma...I'll resist the bad puns. thanks for the bison and most especially for your prior post. It's truly a miracle how life is arranged, yes?
all the best,
caroline

[Konchog]

Mongohoma? Oklagolia?

[Anne]

What do you think is the best swimwear for the lake of fire?

[Konchog]

Oh, I suspect anything that'd get Paris Hilton to coo, "That's hot."

Now, I wasn't born a monk, and early on I was a big fan of a band called the Meat Puppets. All of this brought to mind their song "Lake of Fire", which some of you might know from the (excellent) Nirvana cover:

"Where do bad folks go when they die?
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly.
They go to the lake of fire and fry.
Won't see 'em again until the Fourth of July."

[Sister Mary Marmot]

"Woodgy-woodgy?" Oh, Cuzzin, how you made me snort!

The whole entry was great. Loved every word.

[Judy]

Well, you can look at it this way, you're broadening their narrow little minds...and if they are behaving politely, they are subject to being broadened, I hope. The nice little lady probably never read the whole "lake of fire" thing with a questioning spirit, and maybe now she will!

I really enjoy your posts, whether from MongoLEEa or OklaHOma!!

[Carrie, a Catholic in recovery]

Love it. Woodgy-woodgy noises. LOVE.IT. Sr. Mary Marmot sent me here to see about that phrase. (I once told a waiter I couldn't eat bison-burgers because bison were too cute. He told me I was nuts. He wasn't the first, or the last.)
But I gotta question with regards to them fried chicken bits... Aren't Buddhist monks supposed to be vegetarians?
WRT the lake of fire... Ever read Job:A Comedy of Errors, by Robert Heinlein? Quite funny, I think, and a new take on the lake of fire...

[vedran]

Fascinating site! Keep up the good work. Best of luck and greetings from Croatia!

[PainterWoman]

Yeah, I came because of the Mossy Cottage gal... You'd get strange looks here in Big D, too. (we have scissor tailed flycatchers and plovers... haven't seen greater or lesser prairie chickens... OR BISON!!
Oh, and if you head this way through ATOKA, be warned: It is a speed trap extraordinaire. My dear husband got ticketed twice.