Not The Comfy Chair!

While my time in Mongolia has afforded me some truly exquisite moments, a large dollop of the pleasure comes from the privilege of sharing them with all of you. Thus, I’ve been savoring my time last week with the 104-year old yogini Amaa on her home turf in Khentii Province, editing the many photos, thinking slowly how best to present the experience.

Thing is, we almost didn’t get there at all.

In typical Mongol fashion last Wednesday evening, delays and dawdling pushed back our launch time for the 5-hour drive to about 8pm. I was already feeling strangely exhausted. Almost as soon as we were on the road, I was dozing off while the other three – my friend Sara, her friend Batbaatar, and Amaa’s student Enkhtsetseg (“Enkhee”) – chit-chatted away. It was odd; the more I drifted off, the more raucous their conversation seemed to become. I was dimly aware of their volume hitting a kind of uncomfortable crescendo, when it was suddenly cut off in a collective yelp, squealing tires, and an ugly whomp. I jolted awake to see Batbaatar wrestling the car to the roadside, craning to see around a web of crushed glass where his view through the windshield used to be.

Once I saw that the end of this life was not going to occur on a remote patch of road in eastern Mongolia, my next sickening thought was that we had hit a person, and that that person was unlikely to have survived such an impact. But thankfully, at least, people are few in the Mongolian countryside, but the animals are many. When the other passengers’ shock eased a little, they told me what we had actually hit was an incautious horse. I jumped out, thinking I would be on call to perform the Buddhist version of last rites, but the horse was nowhere to be seen. Somewhat scathed it may have been, but not taken down. No wonder these tough beasts were the vehicles for Chinghis Khan’s unstoppable imperial forces.

Fortunately for us, though the car sustained pretty significant cosmetic damage...

... it was perfectly drivable. So off we went, with Batbaatar having to maintain a constant 45-degree lean to view the road. I imagine his chiropractor got a jingle Monday morning.

Around 1AM, we rolled into Underkhaan, Khentii’s capital, where we perceived a growing possibility of having to bed down in a manger; in what should have been a time of doldrums for the hospitality industry, just about all the hotel rooms were full due to looming local elections. What was left was what you’d expect – expensive and substandard. Nonetheless, I slept deeply and woke to a fresh, sunny morning and breakfast that included a pile of the unusually delicious regional bread. Fortified, we went to seek out Amaa’s compound.

I hesitate to use the word “compound” because, in the States anyway, I know we think of Koresh & Co. in Waco, or Mormon polygamists or something. But in the post-1990 privatization of collectively held lands in Mongolia’s towns, each family has had the opportunity to apply for a free spread, somewhere under a hectare, on which to erect gers or build something a bit more permanent. The pieces are all delineated by rough wooden slat fences. Inside you’ll find some kind of living quarters, some storage space, an outhouse, the inevitable dawg or two, other critters penned up perhaps, maybe a small windmill. You know, a compound.

So we located Amaa’s, entered, and beheld the reason for our journey.

Now, Amaa’s quite well-known, especially in her home province, and has been for, well, almost a century. While we were there, folks came by non-stop to see her and ask for advice, prayers and blessings. Seemed it was like that every day. Nonetheless, up ‘til now, she has had no sacred space of her own; all of her activity was just conducted amongst the bustle of family life in the ger. On auspicious days, she and her students would chant in a nearby temple.

While I was in the States this summer, Sara fixed that. She went to see her good buddy Batbaatar, who’s a director for a successful UB company (the holdings of which include, luckily, a chain of car repair shops!) and a man of some means. She knew him to be a faithful Buddhist, and once she explained Amaa’s situation, he didn’t hesitate to offer the funds to provide her with a new chanting ger. Amazingly, he had never even met Amaa; this trip was to meet her and see her in action in the ger he had sponsored. And once we were in the gate, there it was:

Adorable, no? We had purposely arrived for the 10^th day of the lunar month, sacred to Padmasambhava. This and the 25^th day are the main ceremonial days for followers of Padmsambhava’s tradition, known as the Nyingmapa.

We had a quick bowl of welcoming tea in the family ger, at which time everyone was introduced to Amaa and I was able to make an offering I had prepared earlier. At the Palyul Retreat this summer, HH Karma Kuchen Rinpoche conferred a Padmasambhava initiation. Each participant was given a lovely postcard-size image with Padmasambhava flanked by the Dharma king Trisong Deutsen and the great Khenpo Shantarakshita, both of whom were instrumental in supporting and augmenting Padmasambhava’s establishment of Buddhist practice in Tibet. I had it nicely framed in UB and gave it to Amaa as a blessed object for her new ger. She was very happy to receive it and immediately had it placed on the altar.

We then shifted to the chanting ger. Inside was a simple altar with Padmasambhava as the main figure, a comfy armchair, a long seating cushion, and a low table. Once inside, I was gestured toward the armchair. “Yeah, right,” I chuckled, and went to sit on the floor. But they wouldn’t hear of it and were more insistent I sit on the chair. A comic dispute in several languages erupted as I envisioned my teacher smiting me into dust for sitting on a more honored seat than a 104-year old yogini. It was firmly put that no matter what, in Mongolian culture, the monk took the best seat. I acceded under strong protest once I saw that Amaa would be provided a decent seat of her own.

As I went to sit, I saw a glint in Batbaatar’s eye. He had a reputation as a bit of a joker. Sometime on the trip out, I had explained through Sara my first Mongolian language joke. In Mongolian, the word for mother is “eej,” pronounced the same as “age” in English. So one time when I was visiting my mother, who now knows this word, we both arrived at a door at the same time. I gestured elaborately and said, “Oh, eej before beauty,” feeling enormously pleased with myself, and earning an equally enormous eye-roll from minii eej. So I saw Batbaatar, who knows a little English, conferring with Sara. Once he was satisfied, he turned to me, sitting self-consciously on the comfy chair, and declared, “Sex before age!” It brought down the house.

As we settled in and waited for some others to show up, Batbaatar took out his laptop and played for Amaa the other gift I had brought her, a CD of Jetsunma’s sung "Prayer to be Reborn in Dewachen" (get yours for free here). I watched with fascination as Amaa kept leaning closer and closer to the sound, really listening. Finally, she smiled and said, “This is definitely Buddhist music.”

I asked her if the American lama’s pronunciation of the Tibetan words was difficult to understand.

“No,” she replied, “it’s fine. And anyway, it doesn’t really matter. I was at the conference of Buddhist women in July and met people from all over the world. I saw that Buddhism was being practiced in so many languages. The language isn’t so important, it’s the meaning, and the meaning is definitely here.”

Here is the marvelous woman who spoke those words.

We’ll continue Wednesday with a photo essay on the ceremonies themselves.

FWIW, this was DODR's 500th post. What a motormouth!

Title reference.

Comments

[Arwen]

Wow, really 500 posts? I haven't been reading for quite that long, but I wanted to say that you're bringing to life a very different part of the world for me, and I'm very much enjoying it. Thank you!

Good luck, and better experiences, for the next 500 and onwards.

[Northmoon]

Congradulations on your 500th post. I've only discovered your blog recently and I'm really enjoying it, especially when you mention the animals in your life.

Amaa looks like an amazing, beautiful woman. So nice that she now has a chanting ger from the generosity of someone who never met her before.

Thank you for sharing your life on-line.

[Phil from Trike]

Glad you're ok! Amaa seems like an amazing woman.