Only in Mongolia

One thing I love about Mongolians is the unselfconscious way in which they can blend the sacred and profane.

Yesterday, I arrived as usual at the Mandal Tov for my weekly teaching. Darisuren said we couldn't get the larger room, so she led us down the Gandan Monastery road to her small house. We're chit-chatting along the way, and she mentions that there's a Tibetan lama in town who will be giving a White Tara initiation the following Sunday.

"Oh, that's nice," I reply. Love me some White Tara. "What are the details?"

"Well, it will be in a big hall," she tells me, "and there's a ticket cost."

This is a little unusual so I glance at her and detect a little humor dancing around her eyes.

"But there is a way around that."

"Oh yeah?" I ask. "What's that?"

"Well, the event is being sponsored partly by those top wrestlers, one of whom also owns JEM International." This is one of the city's major distillers and beverage distributors. "The ads are saying if you buy certain kinds of their vodka, you get a free ticket to the empowerment!"

I look to see if she's kidding me. She's not, and I start laughing so hard I double over and have to stop walking. A vodka promotion to get connected to White Tara! Only in Mongolia.

I've called several friends today to try to verify this, but to no avail. Gunjiimaa, however, pointed out that vodka is considered something pure and often used as an offering in Vajrayana Buddhist rituals in Mongolia. Furthermore, we're sneaking up on Tsagaan Sar, the "White Month" marking the start of the traditional Mongolian New Year. Each family will buy vodka anyway to have as part of their festival table. It's actually taboo to get drunk during this holiday and the vodka is used sparingly.

I take this information in with genuine respect, but still think it's very funny to promote your vodka with a White Tara incentive.

Speaking of Tsagaan Sar, I've been invited to spend it down at Khamriin Khiid with the whole Danzan Ravjaa gang, so I'm going to go, maybe on the 16th or 17th. There will be much more of a religious flavor to the marking of this time there, and I'll use it as a semi-retreat. I've been told that the fourth day of that lunar month is particularly sacred to Danzan Ravjaa. So Erka and Sharavdorj plan to come down a few days after and together we are going to make a ceremonial offering of the newly printed Nyingmapa texts. All 262 volumes won't be ready, but what we'll do is bring the first volume of each of the six sets and offer them in the Temple of the Statue of 10,000 Knives. The rest will be offered at a later auspicious date. Naturally I'll take a zillion pictures and share all the stories with you here. To get a sense of the traditional way Tsagaan Sar is celebrated, especially in the countryside, this site and this site are really quite interesting.

And it looks like the trip to Bejing will be deeper into March. When my hosts said "after Tsagaan Sar," they meant really after. It's also Chinese New Year, of course, and apparently little is open in Beijing for the first month of that year. I secretly consider this good news, as my friend Axel has connected me with all kinds of fanatic birders who are filling my head with visions of possible lifers which I'll be able to see with Carol's incredible gift of new binocs, and the closer to spring, the better it'll be. First one is like to be either Azure-winged Magpie or Large-billed Crow.

Axel also tipped me off to birds he saw recently in the surrounding mountains of UB, including Grey-headed Woodpecker and White-winged Crossbill (never saw this in North America). With this incentive, plus the freakishly warm (for Mongolia) weather, Don and I are scheming to get a hike in soon.

Comments

[Carol]

Hmm, I'm going to a white tara initiation here on Sunday as well. I'll have to peel the label off of the bottle of Chingiz Khan vodka I brought back (it proudly sits, unopened, on my bookshelf)and bring it with me to see if I can get in for free!
Our meditation group is going to add white tara to our practice. Someone mentioned that we'd be using a translation published by Alan Wallace. Have you heard of it? It seems to be totally out of publication and not very findable, though our leader seems to have a copy.
Oh, and one dharma question. I got a copy from Ebay of a mongolian manuscript of green tara. The title is the green tara 'sutra' but I have also heard of it referred to as a sadhana and as a puja. What's the difference, or are they all the same?
Let me know when your package arrives!

[Konchog]

Hi Carol -- Try to get me a couple more details, like the name of the White Tara practice and the lineage. I can then email Alan, or I might just know.

Here in Mongolia, it seems they use the word "sutra" much more liberally than I'm used to. This usually only refers to the direct speech of the Buddha or his close disciples, and is carefully differentiated from the texts called "tantras." But here it's applied to any Buddhist text. If it's Green Tara, it's almost certainly a practice liturgy, in which case the terms "sadhana" and "puja" both properly apply, as that's what they both mean.

[Carol]

I'm a slow reader, but the text I have is the 21 praises to Tara. I figured it out because it has the phrase 'morgumui' (I bow down) 21 times. I'm working back from an english translation to try to puzzle out the mongolian, but the text I have is hard to read. I'll get some professional help with it after I'm done trying to puzzle it out on my own. I didn't think it was really 'sutra' in the classical definition.
The book by Alan is 'A Sadhana of White Tara, Cintamani Cakra'.

[xiaolongnu]

As a birder who used to live in Beijing, I recommend spending some time on the campus of Peking University in the northwest of the city, and in the Old Summer Palace (now ruined) which is about a block away from the campus. Both are former garden houses belonging to Qing officials, and both have bodies of water and lots of trees, which means they attract LOTS of birds. You will see an azure-winged magpie without any trouble, that's for sure. Paradise flycatcher is also quite common in the suburbs of Beijing but less likely to see in town. Get someone to take you to the Jietaisi Buddhist temple in the suburbs, and you are likely to see some. Bonus: the temple is 1400 years old and has some really fabulous trees. Let me know if you want other Beijing temple recommendations, at least from an art and archaeology point of view -- I am not a Buddhist but a professor of Chinese Buddhist art history, so I'm not sure I'd know what to recommend for a dharma tour. Have fun on your trip!

[Sarabaite]

Xiao -- I think it's wonderful that there's a course so specific as "Chinese Buddhist Art History"! Where do you teach? Is it a post-grad class? Does your curriculumn ever include a sidenote about the "Three Kingdoms" classic? I ask because I've been slowly reading through the four volumes of the Moss Roberts translation over the last couple of years. The epic is lovely, but I often have to check the internet to research the background information.

The Peking University and the Old Summer Palace sound stunning. I hope I can visit a place like that someday. In my limited trips outside the US, the one site that held the most historical importance and made the most impact on me was visiting an area with Mayan pyramids in the Yucatan. It's not the most famous one, but another site that's been left more intact in its original state. (less "Disneyland-ation," so to speak) There were several pyramids in one location, but the one we were allowed to climb had a small temple on the top. The view of the Yucatan jungle from there was amazing. Down on the ground, however, is where it really hit me that I was walking on a road built centuries ago around a "basketball court," at military lookout tower, a religious center, a business market, etc. You just don't get that kind of history in So Cal.

Enough disjointed rambling -- I do love this site for both the posters here and for Konchong's journal. I don't post every time I stop by, but I do learn something each time.