Om ah hum benza! Om pema siddhi hum!

22 January, 2013

Takstang Hermitage (The Tiger’s Nest)

Paro, Bhutan

We wake at 6:00 am to scrambled eggs and dry white toast and porridge and black tea in the cold dining room barely heated by a welcoming fire kindled with dry yellow pine. The table is the length of the dining room and we meet there in the dark, icy morning in our thick socks and hiking boots. Karma Tshering has come to get us in his gho, black polypro long johns with white crew socks and his Vasque hiking boots.  Thubten Senge, the ballet dancer from Norfolk, England who was ordained as a Nyingma monk in Nepal seven months ago is dumping tablespoons full of sugar into his porridge.  Jonathan from New Hampshire who has been teaching writing for the past ten years in a Benedictine school in London cajoles us and smiles as his eyes crinkle shut; Kyle, formerly of Aramco in Oman, looks haggard; Lee has suddenly lost his voice here at the Dechen Hotel in Paro so he sits quietly sipping his sweet tea--he is also from Maine but has his Masters in Early Chinese Archaeology and has taught English in Saudi Arabia and China; Sharon is my roommate and is from Singapore, a biology teacher who has studied at the University of Michigan and at Columbia and who is a little shy, but very observant; and there are Matt and Lucy, the Aussies from Canberra and Perth, he a music and English teacher and she, his red-headed wife, who just completed her PhD in Cultural Studies and is hoping to teach at the college level here and continue her research in education and community development--this is only half of the group: the others are jet-lagged and still in bed or have not yet arrived.  

Fortified by breakfast, we take the 30 minute drive to Taktsang in our white tourist bus that has been lent to us for the week.  The sun crests over the forested mountains tipped in snow, melting the frost on the bus windows.  At this altitude (2280 meters) and in this dry air the sun delivers welcome and intense heat even though when we left the Dechen Hotel I could see my breath.  

Taktsang is perhaps the most sacred site in Bhutan: the current hermitage, monastery and meditation huts were built in the 16th century by the Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel (the man who first unified Bhutan), but the more remote history of this pilgrimage destination is profound.

Thus have I heard: In the 8th century, the Guru Padmasambhava, considered by Tibetans and Bhutanese to be the second Buddha, brought Tantric Buddhism to the Himalayas from what is now the Swat Valley in Afghanistan (then known as Oddiyana). He flew to Bhutan on the back of his dakini consort, Yeshe Tsogyal, who had manifested as a flying tigress (dakini = the female principle in Tantric Buddhism that is necessary, not subordinated, for enlightenment: it is wisdom, where the male principle is compassion, and the two properly united bring the practitioner to enlightenment). Here, he (and she) subdued the demons that had terrorized Bhutan and had proved impediments to Buddhism taking root.  Taktsang, which means ‘Tiger’s Lair’, was one of many tiger’s lairs that Padmasambhava chose for meditation, and subsequently countless great Buddhist masters used these caves for their meditation retreats (including the remarkable Milarepa--more on him later).

Built over these caves in the classical Bhutanese architectural style are the 16th century meditation huts still in use for the three year, three month, three week, three day and three hour retreats that are required of lamas and nuns in the Tantric tradition.  At the very top of Taktsang is the monastery where over 100 monks and nuns are currently in residence.  Our destination on this crystal day was the hermitage, the only section of the compound open to the public. 

We are lead up the trail by a series of jaunty wild dogs, tails wagging, some with the characteristically square black and brown faces and folded ears of Tibetan mastiffs; others like dingos, yellow and pointy-snouted, tails curled over their backs, a white V of fur at their bums.  

Flocks of iridescent green and brown birds with long tails and white eye rings--perhaps Black-faced Laughingthrushes--clamor in the treetops, sending showers of snow onto the trail.  Halfway up is a way station where one may stop for a cup of tea, but we hike on breathlessly, peeling off layers of clothes.

The hermitage appears miraculously and pendulously attached to sheer rock walls on one side of a 900 meter chasm.  To apprehend this building from below is to suspend disbelief: it is not a physical possibility for it, and the meditation huts nearby, to hang there, let alone to have been built there by humans with rudimentary tools and only natural materials. 

It becomes even less believable as one approaches it on foot, having hiked two hours up, and then suddenly and perilously down where the sun has not yet shone into the treacherously frozen chasm, past a thundering waterfall, immediately beyond which appears a vertical stone staircase which leads to a wooden ladder leaning on a closed door to a hut built over the cave in which Yeshe Tsogyal meditated and where a nun currently ‘lives.'  Thubten Senge runs up those steps two at a time to receive the power of the place:

Thubten Senge runs up to Yeshe Tsogyal's hut to pray

And then there are thick wooden doors.  A sleepy young monk in sandals and simple maroon robes unlocks them and they swing open with a rusty metal clang.

I can’t explain what happens then.  After passing through those doors and relinquishing my shoes, I stand on the cold stones in my stocking feet, looking out on the valley below, see mist rising from the oddly shaped grey and brown fields.  Suddenly, I feel split open; tears run down my cheeks.  The stones hold me there as I weep, disarmed and unabashed.  

I hear Karma speaking in Dzongkha to the monk; then hear him encouraging me and a few of the other hikers--Matt? Jonathan?--to follow him up a narrow flight of steps to the low door of a shrine room. Hiding my face, wiping my cheeks, I enter.  A gold statue of Guru Rinpoche stands on the back of a fierce tiger, decorated in vibrant blues, reds and yellows fills one wall of the small room, illuminated by sunlight from one window with a view of the valley.  Monks and visitors have left offerings of bowls of water, incense, burning oil lamps, silver containers of rice, prayer flags, three-foot tall butter statues, boxes of Choco-Pies and bags of potato chips.  One gives what one can.

Uncomprehending, I kneel and prostrate three times, honoring this place, this spontaneous explosion of deep emotion.  I remain with my forehead touching the stone floor, my hands extended, palms down, in front of me.  I can’t move.

My nose is running, my chest tight with whatever these feelings are--joy? grief?  It doesn’t matter.

After some minutes, I manage to stand again and join the others in a second and then a third shrine room, each larger than the last, and each honoring the power of the unity of compassion and wisdom that Tantra teaches.  The smell of incense penetrates the air.  A large group of Japanese tourists arrives.  Our leave-taking is reluctant, businesslike.  “Kadinche-la!” we say, thanking a smiling monk standing by the doors petting a thick-coated tailless cat, and begin the climb down, down to what, we don’t know.

                  Om ah hum benza! Om pema siddhi hum!