Dreaming Of Danzan Ravjaa

Perfection of Genderosity

Well, I’ll be dipped and deep-fried. The Encyclopedia Brownie troop among the DODR readers regarded the splayed photos of Floki in the previous post, whipped out their magnifying glasses, and declared in the comments that this is not a boy dog ‘tall, as I’ve been claiming all along, but distinctly 100%, Grade A female. They cited as their evidence the lack of a weewee.

“Balderdash!” I thundered, thinking I was defending Floki against a pernicious tide of emasculation. “Why, just look. He has a…protrusion. I mean, nothing that’s gonna get him into Playdog, but his whole hind end is underdeveloped. You leave my boy alone!”

“Silly monk,” they countered, patting my knee in a most matronizing way, “we know weewees and that ain’t no weewee. Plus that li’l girlie twig’s got no berries.”

I sputtered and blustered but secretly called Floki over and plopped him/her upside down on my lap for a mid-morning inspection.

Um…hmm. Ruh-roh.

I’m just gobsmacked, and as I said in the comments, I think I have to concede the point pending vet confirmation at the end of this week. Floki may very well be a Flokina! (Vedran – is “Floki” gender-specific in Croatian? If so, what’s the feminine?)

I hereby proclaim Norma, Phyllis, Sarah, et al, to be honorary members of the Canine Gender Identification Reclamation League (C-GIRL). Now my main worry is whether I’ll be liable for subsidizing future doggie therapist bills, since thus far Floki’s toilet training has consisted of me shouting, “Good boy! What a good boy!” upon each successful elimination on the newspaper.

Update: Cuzzin Ryan leaps onto the dogpile with the following email: "Need I say I wouldn't put too much in his...er...her being a 100% St. Bernard now? Personally, I think she's a black lab. Or a shar pei. There is also a possibility that she's not even a dog, in which case I vote for gerbil. Or maybe cockatoo. Oh, no definitely NOT a cockatoo (snicker). Maybe a cheetah? Or an elephant? All bets are off now."

Har de har har. Maybe I'll just cut my comedian relatives out of my estate! Um, wait, that's not really much of a threat from a Buddhist monk, is it? Hang on, give me a second...

Uptight and Outta Sight!

I need some help. Can anyone tell me how to get Floki to relax and feel more at home?

Little dude is chasing his tail, eating like a hyena, tackling The Mooj, pooping like a champ (95% on the newspaper!) and, frequently, flopping on his back for a big ol' snooze. Late this week we'll get x-rays to confirm Floki's healed hind legs and get him the shots he needs, but I can tell you already that he's just about completed the transformation from half-dead dishrag to thriving, happy poopy.

The Eel Complained, It Complained to a Monk

A few days ago I heard the familiar beep-beep, beep-beep from my cell phone, indicating a text message had come in. This is not uncommon here in UB; it's the cheapest way to communicate. But what was uncommon was the message itself: "Do you want a free trip to Beijing?" I almost junked it as spam until I saw who it was from. A coupla clarifying clickety-clicks back and forth -- like "Seriously?" and "Why?" -- and I thought, "Hmm. Maybe I'm going to Beijing next month."

Can't reveal details just yet, but let's just say that ain't the only thing going -- February is going to be a busy and exciting month. But I can talk about my sense that I've been provided with a welcome opportunity.

As I've said a number of times, I harbor a deep antipathy about modern China, stemming mostly from its ongoing, brutal occupation of Tibet. But this has always sounded a clashing note for me, as my practice is supposed to be about cultivating a compassionate view towards others, free of prejudice. So where could I turn to reconcile these feelings?

Well, where I've always turned: literature.

The local FPMT center has a cafe, in which they offer a small lending library of books in English. For some time I'd been dancing around a substantial volume, and now I plucked it off the shelf: Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain. Man, am I glad I did.

The year 2000 was extremely turbulent for me, and as a result it didn't register that Mr. Xingjian was awarded that year's Nobel Prize for Literature. They chose wisely. I'm about 100 pages in and absorbed in a way that can only come from encountering consummate mastery. I've joined him on a gorgeous and profound linguistic excursion that can also be wickedly funny. He got me on the hook on page 18, when the narrator recalls this ditty from his childhood:

"In moonlight thick as soup
I ride out to burn incense
For Luo Dajie who burnt to death
For Dou Sanniang who died in a rage
Sanniang picked beans
But the pods were empty
She married Master Ji
But Master Ji was short
So she married a crab
The crab crossed a ditch
Trod on an eel
The eel complained
It complained to a monk
The monk said a prayer
A prayer to Guanyin
So Guanyin pissed
The piss hit my son
His belly hurt
So I got an exorcist to dance
The dance didn't work
But still cost heaps of money"

Now I want to learn Chinese just so I can sing this song. Why didn't I have such hilariously surreal things to sing as a child?

Anyway, my instinct was right. The best way to approach a new land is through its artists. I'm beginning to look forward to my first taste of China. Now excuse me while I make some tea, curl up with my critters, and read.

Nyingmapa Kalachakra

I just received the wonderful news that the head lama of my tradition, His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, will be bestowing the Kalachakra Initiation from June 24-July 1 of this year at his retreat center in McDonough, NY. This ceremony for world peace will commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the center's founding. I believe this is only the second time he has performed this initiation in North America. I attended the previous one, which was held in Halifax, NS in 1995. A site for this year's event has been created here. I urge you to attend.

Regular readers of DODR will recognize the resonance with our activity in the Gobi Desert. The Kalachakra Tantra is said to have been written down and propagated by one King Suchandra in his rarefied domain called Shambhala. He had received it from Shakyamuni Buddha, who taught it in the form of the Kalachakra deity at the Dhanyakataka Stupa in India. The tantra was disseminated in this world from Shambhala and has become one of the major higher tantras practiced particularly within the Tibetan Gelugpa tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism. Since this tradition became the dominant spiritual force in Mongolia beginning in the 16th c., the Kalachakra has been a major facet in this land's religious history. The Dalai Lama is well-known for conducting this rite almost annually, but it's fairly unusual for it to be conducted by a Nyingmapa lama.

In 1853, Danzan Ravjaa, who embraced both traditions, had a sacred site constructed near Khamriin Khiid in the eastern Gobi, with 108 stupas symbolically representing the landscape of Shambhala. He offered instructions as to how to use the site to form the causes to be reborn in his retinue in Shambhala, since he had a premonition of his impending assassination. For those who are interested, I wrote an extensive article about this that's posted at the Tibetan Museum Society site. Brother Don has also provided a wide-ranging Shambhala site here.

The Gobi Shambhala mandala was completely destroyed by Stalinist forces in 1938, and not rebuilt until September of last year. I offered picture-rich posts about the process of building and filling the stupas here and here, and the consecration ceremonies here and here.

Mind Your P's

The Mooj, as you might imagine, has been a bit miffed at being nuzzled out of the DODR limelight by, Lord help us, a dawg. Fortunately, I noticed Moojie sitting just so today in the pale afternoon light and snapped this portrait. He really has filled out to become a gorgeous beast, no? I love this stupid cat.

But let’s face it, the Flokster has a bit more drama driving his story. I’m tickled to tell you that the state of his legs has improved at such an amazing rate that he is now chasing the cat around and giving him fits. Actually, Mooj is secretly thrilled to have a playmate and surprisingly indulgent when certain canines do unspeakable things like gnaw on his tail or skootch up next to him with his slobbery tongue when we’re all snuggled together in bed. He does summon that hilarious feline look of outrage, but he doesn't move away. He might bop Floki, claws retracted, but that's it. What a good boy.

More than that, though, Floki recently became the focal point for an incredible moment of true cultural exchange.

I don’t know how many of you have tried to learn another language as an adult. It’s bafflingly difficult, a primal exercise in our eternal struggle to just be understood. But as you grapple with foreign concepts, inscrutable grammar, and pronunciation that seems beyond the capacity of your clumsy tongue and teeth, there sometimes shine through moments of sheer clarity when you know real communication has been achieved.

A perfect example occurred the other day when my Mongolian teacher Oyunaa came over for one of our thrice-weekly lessons. Tea was served, we settled in, made with some small talk, and then Oyunaa leaned in with this little scowl that creases her face sometimes, indicating a serious question. “Gonchig,” she asked, “how is the health of your poopy?”

Now I was a bit taken aback. Our conversations aren’t usually so personal. But I retained my composure and replied, “Well, Oyunaa, my, um, poopy has been good this time in Mongolia. No problems, really. Quite healthy, in fact. Thanks, um, thanks for asking. And...how’s yours?”

Oyunaa squinted at me like I was a specimen on a lab slide. “Gonchig, what you mean? How is your poopy?” she asked again, shooting her glance at Floki then back at me. “Your poopy!”

It took a beat for me to recognize the mistake but then I burst out laughing. “Oh, my puppy! Floki! My puppy. Oh, he’s just fine. Getting better all the time. Except for some problems, you know, with his poopy.” At which point my inner 12-year old took over and I had a whale of a time suppressing my giggles.

Once I did, though, I explained to Oyunaa the linguistic complexities of our exchange, complete with elaborate pantomime. She took it all in gravely, turning the elements over in her mind and I witnessed the very moment when she regarded the many little doots littering the newspaper around us and her mental flood lights switched on.

“Oh! I see! He’s a poopy puppy, isn’t he?” At which point her inner 12-year old joined the party and she couldn’t stop laughing.

Well, of course, I couldn’t let such an educational moment go to waste, so I proceeded to explain to her the term “peepee.” In the midst of our laughter, we agreed that Floki would be known to us as the Poopy Peepee Puppy. Shoulda named him Popeye.

And yes, our next solemn duty {snicker} was to translate that into Mongolian. In this country, Floki is the Баастай Шээстэй Гöлöг – Baastai Sheestei Gölög. Doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?

That Music's Rubbish!

Several times a week, I and my critters cock our ears toward the courtyard windows, arrested by the sudden swell of recorded music billowing through them. It’s always the same – a rich female soprano lilting in Mongolian along a gorgeous popular melody. Even if you don’t understand the words of the song, its tone evokes the fertile scent of the early summer steppe, and perhaps fresh, new love blooming thereon. Your own sweet memories shimmer in the crystalline notes. You’re compelled to discover its source and lean on the window ledge, scanning the yard. You figure it’s probably a soulful young man with his eyes closed, leaning back in his car, obsessed with whatever feelings the music sends coursing through him as he increases the volume, needing to share it with whoever will listen. Maybe like the motorcycle courier in Diva.

But you see no such man, nor his car. All the windows along the apartment buildings are shut against the biting cold. There are few people to be seen, just one or two well-bundled individuals hustling toward the next warm doorway. To the left you notice the muffled clatter of work, in the same direction from which the music seems to emanate. You focus on the activity over there and…it can’t be. But it is. But it can’t be. But it is, and once you accept the fact, laughter shakes deep in your belly as you once again wonder at the inscrutability of Mongolia.

The lovely music is wafting from a garbage truck! Why?

Then you remember occurrences from earlier last year. Again, several times a week, you would hear a short, tinny melody droning on and on, over and over, clearly coming from a moving vehicle. The result then was that you had to subdue the Pavlovian response to shout, á la the old Eddie Murphy bit, “ICE CREAM MAAAAAN!!” Good thing you got a grip on yourself, too, as you would have been baffled and bitterly disappointed had you skipped out clutching a fistful of tugrigs, your head aswim with images of creamsicles, only to encounter…the garbage truck.

Again, why? Why in the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed world* does Ulaanbaatar host a fleet of musical garbage trucks?

This morning – in the middle of my prayers, of course – the answer dawned on me. UB doesn’t exactly have the world’s most sophisticated trash collection system. My building, for instance, has neither outside containers nor a trash chute. I, like all the other residents, put my bags on a concrete stairway landing and unknown hands later schlep it out next to the tiny guard’s house. The garbage truck loads it from there. There used to be a dumpster on the far side of the courtyard, but that was dispensed with. I suspect this is because of the unfortunate numbers of UB poor who eke out a living combing through the trash for glass and plastic bottles to sell for recycling. They tend to leave a fairly impressive mess strewn in their wake.

In any case, it occurred to me that the music is simply a pleasant way to signal the neighborhood that now is the time to bring out last minute items for the trash, maybe bigger things you couldn’t bag up. Not sure how the singer feels about her music being permanently associated thus in people’s minds, but nonetheless, I felt like Encyclopedia Brown this morning. Case closed.

Update: Ah ha! Oh, my sleuthing is the sleuthiest! That, and I really need to find more ways to occupy my time. Recently I read that Japan, with great magnanimity, bestowed 20 new garbage trucks on Mongolia. I even remember goofing on Luke about the powerful copy that MonInfo was generating. I should have known that Japan was the ultimate source for musical garbage trucks, as this page makes clear (they also touch on the ice cream man thing). Surprised they're not emblazoned with a Hello Kitty! logo.

* This expression, like many others that color my family’s banter, arrives courtesy of Pogo Comics.

Ink

A coupla times recently I’ve met people who ask me with a wagging finger, “Saaay…aren’t you that guy? In that newspaper?” At which I study the dirt I’m pushing around with my boot and mumble, “Garsh, I dunno. Maybe.”

Then I provide an autograph for a very reasonable 5000TG.

Cuz, see, I’m a Cover Boy for this month’s Ариусахуй Бясалгахуй, i.e. “Purification & Meditation” (got it backwards last time). And I gots da proof. This is really gonna give Brother Don a chuckle, as it’s probably the only time I’ll ever be featured in a sequence with his beloved Helena Petrovna ("Madame") Blavatsky:

Inside they offer a transcription of the interview we did under the title Говийн Бясалгаач (“Goviin Byasalgaach”), which means “Charlatan ‘Monk’ in the Gobi.” OK, it really means “Gobi Meditator.” This is such a joke, and I said so during the interview. Five days is a kindergarten retreat, and they must have been desperate for page filler to bother to include it. But we did manage to range over a bunch of topics during the interview, so hopefully some good came out of it. And best of all, they published Jetsunma’s image, a blessing to counteract having to look at my dopey mug:

In other publishing news, Vesna Wallace writes in to tell me that Michael Kohn’s new book, Dateline Mongolia: An American Journalist in Nomad’s Land (can’t believe I didn’t think of that pun first), has been boxed and shipped. Astute readers will recall that Kohn authored the first book in English about Danzan Ravjaa, Lama of the Gobi, rare copies of which you may still obtain by sponsoring two volumes for our Nyingma Text Project! Looks like Michael’s got a blog now, too, Dateline: World, where he provides a calendar of upcoming slide show/lecture dates for the Mongolia book (mostly in the Bay Area of California) and some earlier posts with very interesting reporting from Afghanistan.

And, completing our ink tour, I paid a visit to my tattoo artist Tulgaa today. Tried to find Lisa Fink to take along, whose tat of the Mayan solar eclipse symbol I admire, but she was in deep poetic seclusion somewhere. In any case, it seems Tulgaa and his partners have parted ways and the studio’s all his now. It was a much more subdued atmosphere, and that’s fine with me. This was a preliminary visit, to get him started on the artwork. I finally decided what to do. More accurately, I knew what I wanted – the mantra of Amitabha Buddha, Om Ami Dewa Hrih – but I couldn’t find the right image. I had an idea to get it in Sanskrit, but it proved impossible to either locate or have someone create original calligraphy for me. But in my searches I happened upon this fascinating site, Visible Mantra. Here you find various mantras rendered in a script called “siddham.” This short history traces this script as a crucial component of the early promulgation of the Dharma in Central Asia generally, and forms of the Vajrayana in particular. It also has a calligraphic flow that I find unusual and gorgeous. Here are all the mantras, and here is the Amitabha one in particular. My intention is to get it on my left forearm this coming Sunday. That’s the tenth day of the waxing moon, a day sacred to Padmasambhava, who is known to have been an emanation from the heart of Amitabha into this world.

Kid Gloves

Late last year I wrote about participating in the distribution of warm clothing and medical supplies brought to Mongolia by the Flagstaff Int’l Relief Effort (F.I.R.E.). I became connected to them after my Cuzzin Ryan and I cooked up the Dulaan Project, a means to harness the astounding energy and heart of the vast online knitting community to create warm clothing for impoverished Mongolians. Through Ryan’s boundlessly enthusiastic cheerleading, and the naturally infectious nature of a good compassionate idea inspiring others, the project has been, let’s be honest, a smash hit.

Meredith Potts, F.I.R.E.’s able director and overall energizer bunny, also happens to be an accomplished photographer. She took a zillion and one shots when she was here and has just now managed to cull through them and pick out some of the most evocative. Meredith kindly made them available to Ryan so she could post them for all of us over at her blog, Mossy Cottage Knits. They’re so poignant. Please go spend some time with them.

I did, and as I perused her readers’ comments, one stuck with me like a tiny burr. It’s a perfectly understandable sentiment, but I think it needs just a little counter-comment. Ryan’s reader reacted to the photos in this way:

“Makes me thank my lucky stars that I was fortunate enough to land on this continent and have the opportunities I've had, when I was born.”

Last night I was delighted to be a guest at a party celebrating the first birthday of Erka and Sharavdorj’s adorable little Gerelchimeg, or Gerlee (pron. Ger-lay) for short. Three families had also been invited and the apartment quickly filled with children ranging from age three to maybe 15. At one point I remarked to Erka’s daughter Mandokhai, “These children are so well-behaved. It’s amazing.”

“Yes,” she replied, “it’s the same all over Asia. The parents are very strict.”

Now, how many of you reading in the West heard that as something negative? These children of strict parents, though, were not well-behaved because they were cowed into submission. The strictness creates respect for adults and the safe feeling of well-defined boundaries, but it’s administered with great love. So they were happy, engaged, polite, self-controlled, played without fighting, and never once became fussy or whiny, none of them, not even the three-year old. And this is not an isolated observation for me. This is something I’ve seen in children all over Mongolia. Plus remarkable self-assurance and independence. Here are five of them (the three-year old is in the background of the second closeup -- she just had her first traditional haircut that's performed sometime in a Mongolian child's third or fourth year), each of whom I found uniquely charming:

I mention this, of course, because I see these children’s qualities contrasting sharply with those of many American children. It may be that we grow up with certain material advantages. But our consumer culture also produces a restless hankering, competition at the expense of cooperation, prolonged adolescence, disrespect for parents and unbelievable rudeness generally, a disconnect from our extended families, and a host of other pressures and anxieties rarely encountered in Mongolia. I’d love for those of you from the West who have traveled and lived in Asia to share your impressions of the children.

Anyway, the last photo in Ryan’s post of all the little salchichas napping (except the one!) is so adorable that I wanted to respond with a pic of my own little boy down and (almost) out. Those floppy ears!

Floki took another trip to the vet yesterday, this time getting examined by the head honchess, Dr. Karen. To Floki’s great alarm and distress, she performed a rectal exam and confirmed the theory, which had been greeted by heaps of email derision by one of our nuns, that his pelvis is, in fact, unusually narrow and underdeveloped, creating an uncomfortably constricted passageway for his elimination. Kinda like squeezing out cake decoration. Kinda.

But I’m so happy to report that Floki’s evolved, in just two miraculous weeks, from a half-dead invalid, into a perfectly normal puppy. He’s able to trot after the cat, play-bite with daddy’s fingers, yip in excitement and, once, even chase his silly little tail.

Yesterday I met with my friend Baasansuren, the young head lama at Erdene Zuu, and broached the idea of Floki eventually ending up there. I really like the idea of him being around monks, stupas, etc. He didn’t say no, so we’ll see what happens.

If My Walls Had Ears

If you were my neighbor here in what Luke once declared to be the “Ulaanbaatar ghetto,” you would have heard me whoop it up twice in the past several days. Of course, you’d be Mongolian, so it’d sound to you like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons. But let’s say you were a squeaky-clean American Mormon lad bent on illuminating Mongol minds with the spiritual notions of the Angel Moroni (a most unfortunate nomenclature, let’s face it). If so, then one day you would have cocked a puzzled eyebrow as this penetrated the separating wall: “Hey! A semi-normal poop! Floki! Good dog!”

This would have been a short-lived exultation, alas, as we are dealing with a remarkably stubborn bout of canine constipation. One current theory is that an effect of his skeletal underdevelopment is a too-narrow pelvis that will hopefully normalize as he grows with his improved diet. I dunno. I’m just frustrated that it’s such a complicated process to ease his suffering. Floki’s much improved, to be sure, but we might have to venture back to the V-E-T today or tomorrow.

On another day, as you were tucking your white shirt into your black slacks, straightening your name tag, and checking your buzzcut in the mirror, you might have wondered what odd spiritual practices went on behind the monk’s closed doors. Is he worshipping potassium-rich, large-pitted fruits? You would have sworn you just heard him shout, “Holy guacamole!” (Did you know that the word “avocado” derives from the Aztec word “ahuacatl”? I didn’t ‘til just now. I love the internet.)

What you wouldn’t have discerned is that this exclamation was prompted by an email from a longtime acquaintance and fellow Buddhist. He emailed to inform me of his decision to sponsor another entire collection of the Nyingma scriptures for Mongolia! Beyond amazing. After praising said fruit, since no one but the critters were around, I also indulged in a brief but spirited tarantella.

The overall collection of 262 volumes consists of six sets of texts: the Nyingma Kama, which preserves almost all of the tantras translated during the time of Padmasambhava (8th c.); the Nyingma Gyud Bum, which preserves the most profound Nyingmapa teachings, extracted from the Kama in order to better preserve their purity and secrecy; the Rinchen Terdzod, which preserves all of the hidden teachings of Padmasambhava known as terma that have been revealed over the past millennium; the Seven Treasuries of the incomparable 14th c. master Longchenpa which elucidate the highest Nyingmapa teachings; the collected works of Mipham Rinpoche (19th c.) which clarify all of the essential points of Buddhist sutra and tantra; and the Nam Chö revelations of Tertön Migyur Dorje which, even though part of the Rinchen Terdzod, are offered separately as they for the main underpinning of practice at our Palyul monastery. (Exhaustive overview of Nyingma literature here.)

At this point, these texts exist only in tiny fragments in Mongolia. Such generosity wonderfully enhances the reinvigoration of Mongolian Buddhism. I want to reiterate that it’s possible for anyone to be a part of printing these texts. We have created a web page dedicated to this aspect of the MBRP here. It offers a bit more context and explanation of the effort, and the opportunity to sponsor individual volumes.

We have also organized this project to benefit the Mongolians economically. With the scanned texts on CD, we have opted to print them here in UB (by happy coincidence, two Danzan Ravjaa devotees run an excellent printing house). Further, we have engaged FPMT’s Buddhist Women’s Sewing Group – a collective designed to train women in a skill to alleviate their poverty – to sew the cloth covers for each volume.

Thanks for considering supporting this text printing effort. It really is the aspect of my work that’s closest to my heart.

Loving-Kindness

"The monk who abides in universal love and is deeply devoted to the Teaching of the Buddha attains the peace of Nibbana, the bliss of the cessation of all conditioned things."
-- Shakyamuni Buddha, Dhammapada

"Of all sentient beings there is not a single one who has not been your own father or mother. So as a way of repaying the kindness of all sentient beings, set out to work for their well-being.

"Cultivate loving-kindness and compassion for all sentient beings. Constantly train yourself in bodhicitta. Train yourself to benefit sentient beings through all your actions. Train yourself in cherishing others as more important than yourself."
-- Padmasambhava, Dakini Teachings

"All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.

"Is there need for lengthy explanation?
Childish beings look out for themselves,
While Buddhas labor for the good of others.
See the difference that divides them!"
-- Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva

Textual Healing

There’ll be a Floki update at the end of this post, with surprises, but believe it or not I am here in Mongolia for reasons other than managing a menagerie, and I have big news that I’ve been sitting on for a while.

In the promotional material for our Mongolian Buddhism Revival Project (MBRP) we use this descriptive line: “Cooperating in the Renaissance of Mongolia’s Buddhist Culture.” This was our intention, and much of last year’s activity consisted of a bit of detective work to discover from the Mongolians how this might best be accomplished together.

Based on reports we sent back to my teacher, Jetsunma, she quickly identified two areas that should be given top priority: facilitating the travel and livelihood of promising young Mongolians who wish to train in the Tibetan monasteries in India, and the translation and printing of our tradition’s important books.

Regarding the former, I’m happy to announce that eight boys – six from Eastern Gobi and two from Ulaanbaatar, but all connected to Danzan Ravjaa’s Khamar Monastery – boarded a plane for Delhi on Sunday and by now should have arrived at HH Penor Rinpoche’s Namdroling Monastery in Bylakuppe. They’ll join the three Mongolians already there for multi-year training in the philosophy, practice and ritual techniques of the Nyingma tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism, carrying that rich knowledge back to Mongolia one day.

It’s in the arena of book printing, though, where I can share the biggest news.

Among the many atrocities committed in Mongolia by the Stalinist zealots of the 1930’s was the wholesale sacking and destruction of Mongolia’s incomparable Buddhist libraries. Considering that the National Library still houses about a million texts, it’s safe to say that untold millions of scriptures were lost during that time. This cultural tragedy is almost inconceivable in its scope.

Our primary task here is to assist with the revival of the traditions of Padmasambhava, and during last year’s investigations we had our antennae up to see if any of the basic collections of that tradition’s scriptures had been preserved. After two years of searching, we have not been able to find them anywhere, so Jetsunma said, “OK, let’s print them and offer them anew. As many as we can.”

Working out the details of this has occupied a lot of my time this go-round, and of course one of the details is how to pay for it. One full collection runs to 262 volumes, each averaging about 675 pages. With the printing, creating custom-stamped hard covers, and having cloth wraps sewn by an FPMT-sponsored poor women’s collective, each collection costs about $7000 to produce.

Well, I’m thrilled to announce that a Mongolian family has come forward with an offer to sponsor the entire first collection. All of it! With funds already provided, we have set everything in motion and are on track to offer this set of texts, as is the sponsor’s wish, to Khamar Monastery in the early spring.

It would be impossible to overemphasize how crucial the step of printing texts is to reviving this tradition. The idea of living a Buddhist life is to move from ignorance and suffering to enlightenment and true freedom. These books contain the explanations and practical instructions on how to do just that unusually quickly, perhaps in this very lifetime. They also provide the guidelines for qualified lamas to perform the essential Vajrayana transmission ceremonies that we call empowerments. They’re the necessary prerequisite for lama tours of Mongolia that we are planning for the near future. We want to print several of these collections and distribute them across the country.

And you can participate! The figure of $7000 might be a little daunting and beyond most people’s means (if it’s not, please do send me an email!), but when you break it down, individual texts can be sponsored for just $25. Brother Palzang has been hard at work in his garret updating and expanding the MBRP web pages (check it out). One is devoted to this Nyingma Text Project. It gives more details about exactly what we’re printing and has cool incentives like, for example, if you sponsor two texts, we’ll send you a free copy of Michael Kohn’s book about Danzan Ravjaa, Lama of the Gobi (while they last!). And, of course, the eternal gratitude of your humble author.

Oh, I should mention that we are receiving crucial assistance in this project from the Tibetan Buddhism Resource Center and the Bodhi Foundation.

Floki Update

Had it not been for Vedran’s impassioned plea, I might have named the little guy Augie. You remember the cartoon Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy? I am so totally Doggie Daddy. Feeding every 3-4 hours, daily baths, responding to whimpering at 2AM, pill dosing, trips to the doc, schlepping out when it’s 10 below to get milk…I have renewed respect and awe for parents. Thought I got off easy being Unka Monk but apparently my karmic debts are not yet paid in full.

Li’l Floki encouraged me by eating like a wolf after his first vet visit, but then he didn’t poop for a day and a half. When he finally did it was the same ickiness as before, so back to the vet we went. Now here’s where I got some new information (my Mongol vet’s English is limited, and you know the state of my Mongolian, so…). Turns our Floki’s leg breaks are not the result of trauma, but this does not mean that his former owner is not still a jackass. He’s got rickets! Yeah, I had to look it up too. Sounds so 19th century! It’s weak bone growth due to calcium and Vitamin D deficiency. Thus, he developed hairline fractures in both hind legs. Not much pain, really, but right now almost useless. The good news is that with enforced rest (literally keeping him in a box), calcium supplements relative to his weight, and hearty chow, he should be a new dog in about a month.

Vedran has saved me from my own peculiar sense of humor. It just popped into my head that I could have also named him Martin, as in Rickety Martin. Or Ricardo.

The vet also confirmed for me that Floki is 100% purebred St. Bernard. Can you imagine? Some day I envision him roaming the Altai Mountains in winter, a cask of fermented mare’s milk strapped to his neck. This is really going to be some adventure.

As a funny aside, my vet clinic is part of the Christian Veterinary Mission. If you can picture it, I was sitting in my robes in their clinic waiting room yesterday, flipping through back issues of Christian Veterinarian Magazine. But to tell you the truth, I don’t care where kindness to animals comes from, and these guys run the best clinic in town.

Oh, and like any dopey new daddy, I’ve been taking lots of pictures. Helps when your subject is so photogenic or, as my little Cuzzin Nicky just wrote me, "...about the most adorable thing on earth":

Back in Whack

There’s no better cure for brooding over the premature death of one sentient being than actively preventing the same for another. Just when you think the universe is hopelessly out-of-whack, just whack! It whacks right back.

Based on an IM conversation I had with my friend Anne earlier today, I was fretting that little Floki had had his back broken and his hind legs were paralyzed. I was determined I’d care for him no matter what, but had no real idea how. Luke told me that there were contraptions for such dogs where you strap their rear into some kind of wheeled gizmo and they can run with their front legs. I was already working out how to get one shipped over.

Thankfully, there’s no need. I showed up at the vet on the dot at five and they had good news. There was no paralysis, his back was fine, and in fact there was no internal bleeding. X-rays did show that both of his hind legs were broken at the femurs, but neither break had separated the bone, and no surgery or setting was required. If I just kept him still and quiet for the next 6-8 weeks, and fed him extra calcium in his food, the bones should knit well and he should fully recover. I got down into Floki’s face to tell him how ecstatic I was to hear that, he licked my nose, and I was in love.

But. “Li’l” Floki is a very temporary designation. It turns out my new buddy is mostly, if not 100%, St. Bernard. They estimated he was about three months old now, but when fully grown he’d likely top out at 70 kilos, or 165 lbs. As one guy at Erka’s office remarked, “like a small horse.” So I can’t keep him. No way. I’ll nurse him back to health, of course, but all the while I’ll be looking for a countryside home where he can range freely and be happy. It’s going to be a major trial, though, not to get attached to this little face:

I have to say that Floki is a pretty lucky guy. I’m going to have to dig very, very deep to sincerely pray for the jackass who abandoned him on a night when the temperature plunged to -25F. He almost certainly would have suffered a slow, agonizing death before morning, while for the price of a little patience, TLC, and 25 bucks at the vet, he’s now sleeping contentedly at my side.

If the plight of animals moves you, and you feel their rescue from horrible situations is worthwhile, I urge you to consider supporting my temple’s non-profit project Tara’s Babies, which is dedicated to just that.

Thank you all for your concern and prayers. It’s nice when we win one, isn’t it?

Dog Days of Winter

Update: Nice job with the good vibes, y'all! As promised, I took li'l Floki (I'm really looking forward to the day when someone asks, "Oh, how'd he get that name?" and I can reply "Well, as you might have guessed, it's the name of the legendary Norseman who discovered Iceland and was suggested by an e-friend from Croatia), very much alive, to the vet at 10am sharp. I was pretty happy that I could convey most of the story in Mongolian, and understand and respond to the questions. He pooped a little when he was getting his temperature taken and the vet and I agreed that it seemed there was blood in his stool. Also his back legs weren't right. Then it struck me -- to my untrained eye, I'd wager a car ran over his rear end. This would account for both his inability to really use his hind legs and the blood from inside. The good news (I hope) is that he didn't really yelp when the vet was manipulating those legs, so maybe there's no serious fracture. The internal bleeding, though...Anyway, they'll keep him all day. I'll get him at 5pm and update again. He really is adorable, and I also am not much of a dog lover. Keep those vibes a-flowin'!

So as I'm getting ready to head over to Brother Luke's to feast on homemade khushuur and retrieve the goods he has kindly schlepped over for me from America, I hear a dog persistently whining, seemingly in my courtyard. This is not unusual; several stray dogs about. But as I head to my bathroom near the front door, the whining and yelping have taken on a desperate urgency and they're clearly coming from my apartment building's hallway.

I go out to investigate, and on the landing below I find a little, fuzzy puppy lying in his own diarrhoea on the freezing concrete, crying piteously and barely able to move. Poor baby! I sprint back to get a towel and lift him gingerly into my bathtub where I give him a good warm hosing down. Sternly warning Mooj away, I dry him off and make him another towel nest under the radiator in my bedroom where there's also still some afternoon sun streaming in. He weakly tries to wag his tiny tail, but won't even take the water I offer him.

Of course it's Sunday. No vet is open and the one I use doesn't answer either of the two numbers on my brochure. I make sure he's comfy, close Mooj off in the other room, and head to Luke's.

We have a very nice time, and when I get back, the puppy is toasty warm, has stopped whining, and can lift his head to shoot me a grateful glance. Frankly, I'm thrilled he's not dead. Now he's sleeping soundly and I just want the collective DODR Good Energy Machine to direct itself at him and keep him alive for twelve more hours. After that, I'll be right on the vet's doorstep, and I feel if we get that far, he'll be OK. I'll be his nurse, which will be no hardship whatsoever because, well, look:

Even Mooj has made peace with idea of this creature in his domain, though not before a thorough inspection was conducted (and a bit of a talking to from Pop):

OK? Twelve hours? We can do this and I'll report on his progress tomorrow.

Samsara in my Crosshairs

Was gearing up to offer some funny, but I've been brooding over the news that yet another friend my age has suddenly died. He was the main publisher of Buddhist books here in Ulaanbaatar. He fell sick in the fall and was radically misdiagnosed by his Mongol doctors. I saw him in that period and he looked OK except for what seemed like persistent laryngitis. After that I tried to get a meeting with him about some publishing questions, but kept getting put off because he was getting worse.

Checked in about him last week, and was told he had gone to Beijing for treatment. Next thing I know, two different people on Thursday tell me he died. I call our mutual friend, and he says, yeah, what the Mongol docs somehow missed was a virulent lung cancer. By the time they caught it in Beijing, it was far, far too late. Leaves a wife and ten-year old daughter. In related news, Mongolia's Health Minister was just sacked, to the upset of precious few.

So no, I'm not feeling even a little bit funny today.

The only thing that lifted my spirits was finally being able to download photos sent to me by Suzanne, the PT who volunteered on the F.I.R.E. visit. Here I am at the Old Folks Home in Sainshand this fall with the resident kitty and then with some of the resident duffers:

Please, James Brown, Take Rebirth in Mongolia

Saturday night I was invited to a snazzy New Year’s party at the Mongolian Cultural Palace as the guest of Erka’s company, and I pondered the evolution of my karma. For ten years I was in VIP catering in DC and I would ordinarily be working a party like this. Holidays, for me, only meant extra labor (it literally meant that for my sister the OB doc -- she delivered two babies yesterday!). I mentioned this to Erka and she said with a laugh, “Everyone around me, their lives improve.” I replied, “Yup, a rising tide lifts every boat,” and immediately regretted it as I spent the next fifteen minutes explaining the saying to people who live in a country with no ocean coasts. Once we sort of got what a “tide” was, then it was like, “OK, so, am I the tide? Or the boats?” Luckily, I was able to cut it off just before it reached the level of agony with a bright, “Hey look! The buffet’s open!”

Dinner was wonderful, provided by several of UB’s top restaurants. Entertainment followed, and I heard a song playing that I’d seen the video for in a local café. Since there was closed circuit TV, I realized that it was being performed live by Mongolia’s sassy pop star Ariunaa. Because I care so much about the cultural education of y’all, I waded through the crowd, the only honky in sight and wrapped in monk’s robes to boot, to snap this pic from the balcony:

This was also the first time I got to see Mongolians dancing to Western-style music and…let’s just say that I uttered a few prayers that James Brown might have some compassion and reincarnate here. Once the dancing starts and the likker’s flowing, though, that’s my cue to make a graceful exit, which I did, but not before being corralled to take about a hundred photos of every possible permutation of Erka’s family and guests. Happy to do it after all she’s done for me.

The next day, the actual New Year’s Eve, I was on to teach my little group at 11. I arrived at the Mandal Tov and, with no one showing up, I figured everyone was busy with family or party preparations, or bored with me, or whatever. But then Darisuren escorted me and my translator back into the neighborhoods to her home. To my surprise and delight, quite a number of people had gathered, and they knew it was my birthday. We started with the teaching, continuing on the subject of karma. Afterward, there were so many lovely gifts from people, along with copious writing of names once they found out I could email prayer requests back to my American temple.

My most cherished moment, though, was when the oldest woman came up to me. She had come in just to visit Darisuren – didn’t know there was a teaching, but happily stayed. She went into an effusive thanks for the teaching, to the point where tears started flowing. I was so moved. You could see the relief and gratitude after her faith had had to be kept secret for so long. She’s in front of Darisuren in this group photo, wearing the greenish traditional deel:

We all had a wonderful time together and then I met Oyunaa for a Mongolian lesson. She brought me a cake from her family’s bakery. I left it intact last night, but sampled it for breakfast! Yum. She got a big laugh from the pig-themed card my mother had sent me (the handwritten part begins: "My very dear Pig..." -- oh, and she wrote to remind me that the pig designation was not just due to my eating habits as an infant, but also to the perpetual condition of my room (the "pigpen") and the sorry state of my clothes, hands, and face after playing with the other boys in the neighborhood), and, with help from her, I told her the whole tale of the Three Little Pigs – in Mongolian, thank you very much. As she left I was also able to unload the two bottles of sparkling wine that had been given me!

Then it was just me ‘n’ Mooj. I shifted to what my community always does on New Year’s Eve – extensive prayers for this bruised and troubled world, culminating in the renewal of vows just at midnight. It was not hard to visualize the parts of this world fraught with warfare – Mongols love them some fireworks on the last night of the year. Anyway, I entered 2007 with a mind more like this, wishing that all others might have the same, an image of the Buddha in our Stupa Park taken by Brother Palzang after the first snowfall in Sedona:

My love to you all, and may your 2007 and beyond be filled with kindness, humor, health and wisdom. Here's what my Ma sent me as the quote for December 31 from her Daily Dalai Lama desk calendar:

"When we talk about getting the perfect wisdom of a Buddha, we should not think that we need to create qualities in ourselves that are not there already, and acquire them from somewhere outside of us. Rather we should see perfect Buddha wisdom as a potenial that is being realized."