"Hidden-Ox-Rock": A Transformative Hike to Beylangdra Monastery

Beylangdra Monastery, Wangdi Phodrang

Like Takstang in its apparent ability to defy gravity, Beylangdra Monastery is not otherwise visually impressive: recently completely rebuilt, it does not convey the stalwart enduring quality that Takstang does, nor does it reveal its considerable history. However, the handful of monks in residence there, some of whom recently completed their twelve year retreats, awaken in the receptive visitor a sense of belonging, light-heartedness, and mystery unique--in my experience--to Buddhist monasteries. Granted, I had a distinct advantage: I visited Beylangdra with my friend and colleague, Thubten Senge, a Nyingma monk who had previously visited and who was returning to participate in the Descending Day puja (Descending Day, or Lhabab Duechen commemorates the day in the Buddhist calendar that Lord Buddha's emanation returned to earth from so-called Tusita 'Heaven' where he had gone to preach to his deceased mother and the gods).

Beylangdra lies at the end of a stunning valley, 22 kilometers from the turn-off at Chuzzom in Wangdi. Those are 22 rough, rocky, bone-shattering kilometers, but when one tumbles out of the car, it is only an hour's hike up to the temple. If one wishes, one may first stop at the small lakhang that looks, observed Senge-la, like a cereal box: it is simple and square, and serves a small community of young monks who attend the lobdra (school) associated with it. 

Lakhang below Beylangdra

Behind the lakhang and up a short path is one of the retreat "huts" where a monk might spend three or twelve or even twenty years in silent meditation. There are more, smaller huts next to the monastery as well. Marking the half-way point is a shed housing butter lamps and another with prayer wheels both inside and out. The very devout stop here to increase their merit by sending prayers into the karmic soup by spinning the wheels and lighting lamps as they recite their mantras ('Om mane padma hung' being the most commonly heard, but there are countless others).

Prayer wheels

Butter lamps

According to one of the resident monks, Beylangdra was founded in the 8th century and is yet another of the many sacred spots where Guru Rinpoche is said to have meditated in a cave. Around this cave the temple and retreat center have been built, clinging to the cliff face. There is a newly constructed wooden building overhanging the valley where one can leave one's backpacks or sit and rest or reflect, and below that are the monks' kitchen and toilet. The altar room is in a separate building--the one whose back wall is actually the cliff.

This wall is the key to the "hidden" reference in the monastery's name ('bey'). Concealed by the altar, the black cliff face (dra means rock, as in Bey-lang-dra) has a round impression at about knee level that is believed to be a sealed chamber in which are sacred terma--treasures hidden by Guru Rinpoche that can only be revealed by the preordained terton, or 'discoverer of terma.' The Tertons are reincarnations of Guru Rinpoche's original 25 disciples, some of whom are alive today. The terma themselves are of two kinds: some are actual texts or ritual implements or images; others are in the mindstreams of the reincarnate tertons. There are terma hidden all over Tibet and Bhutan, some of which have been discovered and shared with the world, but many of which are yet to be released from their hiding places. The statues in the altar room disguising the portal to the terma are of Pema Lingpa (himself a terton), Dorji Lingpa, an intriguing wrathful representation of Guru Rinpoche as he subdues the demon lang (ox) and, at the center, Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion, in what is called the 'yab-yum' pose, representing the unity of male compassion and female wisdom (I had never before seen a yab-yum statue on an altar in Bhutan).

Chenrezig (Avalokiteshvara), the Bodhisattva of Compassion
in the yab-yum pose

When we arrived, we left our packs in the wooden 'welcoming' building, took off our shoes, and climbed a short staircase to a typically steep ladder, emerging into the altar room. The monks were performing the days' puja, reciting prayers as offerings, accompanied by the inimitable honking, crashing and thrumming that serves as the score to Buddhist prayer. Bhutanese from all over central and western Bhutan arrived with bags of dalda (the oil used in the butter lamps), incense, Wai-Wai and Maggi noodles, red and green and yellow packets of biscuits, chocolates, apples, guavas, and, of course, money. All this was heaped in a pile in front of the head lama and attended to by a young monk who kept the pile from spilling into the area reserved for prostrations.

Offerings

Everyone who comes to a lakhang or other Buddhist devotional site does prostrations, regardless of age or encumbrance. 

Little girl prostrating

Mother with baby in kabney, prostrating

In Bhutan, we first prostrate three times in the direction of the head lama's seat to acknowledge his power, and then make at least three prostrations to the figure at the center of the altar which is simply a physical representation of our own inherent Buddha nature. After Senge and I completed our prostrations, one of the monks performing the puja whom Senge had previously met called him over and gestured for him to sit with them; another monk found me a seat at the end of the line of monks so that, had I been dressed differently and shorn of my hair, I could have been mistaken for one of them (except that I can't sit in a lotus pose).

The altar.  The objects in pink, blue and yellow next to the statue are
made out of sculpted butter.

I welcomed this opportunity to try to meditate, but I am not yet adept enough to prevent myself from being distracted by the people coming and going, the monks chanting, the slinyen crashing, the dungchen blurting, and the incessant pounding of the nga. Nevertheless, I tried hard to focus on my breath until the old monk next to me elbowed me in the ribs and chin-pointed towards Senge. He was grinning at me, raising his eyebrows to ask, "You ok?" Indeed, I was better than ok.

Monks performing puja; Senge is beating the nga.
Note the kangling, the two horns on the floor
traditionally made out of human thighbones.

And here he is blowing on the conch

Despite the din and the controlled chaos of the devout bowing and circumambulating and handing out cash to the monks, I felt a sort of giddiness--a sense of simple, unaccountable happiness. This feeling was not at all like the profound emotion I had at Takstang; there, I had been overcome with an awareness of the power of the place. Here, it was just me in a beautiful place with people who radiated a contagious playfulness and calm affection and true wisdom.

Playing the dungchen

After a few minutes, the music stopped and the monks all rose and began to leave the altar room. "We've been asked to lunch," Senge said, and so we joined the monks in their 'dining room' for suja, red rice and ezzay.

In a line, we walked back down the inhumanely steep ladder (nearly every traditional building in Bhutan has these--it is a mystery why they have to be so steep except that the steepness preserves living space) and the stairs and then down another short flight of stone steps, past the reeking toilet, through the 'kitchen' which had four enormous curry cookers in it, to a narrow, dank and soot-blackened cement room with a cement counter on which were three large battered aluminum pots. One was full of red rice, one of mushroom datse, and one with green beans. A bowl of simple ezzay--just green chiles, datse and onions--sat nearby. One plastic chair was placed by the window which provided the room's only light. It offered a particularly vertiginous perspective on the green and gold valley below. On the plastic chair sat a gray haired man in a stinking gho who was cutting chiles. He graciously vacated the chair for me as lunch was served, and a delicious lunch it was. 

 As we ate, Senge and Lama Tandin, a youngish monk with a lame leg (which is what got him into a monastery in the first place--his parents sent him because they were concerned he'd be ostracized at a public school) joked about the challenges of learning English during a twelve year retreat. He wore his long, shiny black hair in a pony tail, the length of which indicated how many year he had spent in retreat. A few of the other monks also had long hair tied back, and a few had added a surprisingly stylish twist to his monk attire: Lama Tandin was wearing a white Chinese "silk" Mao shirt under his robe with red and gold trim. Standing quietly nearby was Lama Kunzang, a tsampa chenpo (someone who has completed a twelve year retreat), observing. A very old monk with stringy, long gray hair, a large furry mole and a crooked yellow fang stood at the back of the room rolling two handfuls of rice mixed with butter in his hands. I was later told that this was because I had unknowingly commandeered his plate, but in the monasteries when monks have their lunch, it is often while they are in the lakhang in seated prayer. They place a white cloth on their laps and open their hands to receive their rice from a monk who carries a large bucket of it and ladles it out; when the rice is rolled into a ball, it is easier to eat. So he was used to it.

Handful of rice

Though neither Senge nor I speak Dzongkha, Senge can speak Chokyi (classical Tibetan) which many monks understand, so he was able to communicate with relative ease. He chatted with Lama Kunzang about the difference between his own mind and the mind of someone who has meditated for twelve years.  "I see everything clearly and you don't," said Lama Kunzang.  For him, there is no real distinction between the subject and the object: he sees what is called Mind in all its luminous clarity (this is how Senge explained it to me later, but I am not certain I have it right). 

Before embarking on this adventure, I had asked Senge if he'd be willing to translate for me so that I could have a few questions answered about rebirth and the bardo, so halfway through our enormous portions of rice, he asked my first question: Why is it important for a Buddhist to believe in rebirth? Though Senge succeeded in asking the question, translating the answers was another thing, so Senge went up to the lakhang and recruited three reluctant Bhutanese to be our translators. The sophistication of the vocabulary and concepts needed for this discussion was understandably beyond their language ability, and so after they provided their own answers ("You have to believe in it in order to have a better rebirth!") we released them.

I did not get an answer to my question (yet). However, Senge then asked if Lama Tandin or Lama Kunzang could offer me any pointers for a beginning meditation practice. Both demurred.  In the Nyingma tradition, one of the four central vows is that one will not lie about his religious accomplishments. The result of this vow is that most monks will not admit that they know anything about Buddhism. Lama Kunzang's reply was, "She should ask her teacher." As if I have one. But Senge pressed on, and by the end of our lunch, Lama Kunzang and I agreed that he would be my teacher and would provide instructions on meditation techniques. He will provide them, he said, on the next auspicious day in the Buddhist calendar (like the Tibetan and Chinese calendars, it is lunar) in English, via mail.

Lama Kunzang

Some of the monks of Beylangdra with Senge. Lama Tandin is on Senge's left.

After lunch the puja continued.  During this period of prayer, Lama Kunzang tied a red thread around my neck--a sign of blessing and protection that all Buddhists wear.  I have had many of these tied around my neck and not one has lasted longer than a few days.  I was hopeful that this one would last.*  He then showed us the hidden rock where Guru Rinpoche hid the terma and explained that it was on the site of this monastery that he had subdued the demon in the valley that took the form of an ox (lang); hence the wrathful expression and posture of the statue in the altar room, and hence the name of the monastery: hidden-ox-rock.  At about 2:30 the monks took a break, and Senge and I joined them for one more cup of suja (butter tea). We were invited to stay the night so that we could continue our discussions, but we had left our taxi driver waiting at the lakhang below.  We expressed our gratitude for the monks' generosity and said our reluctant goodbyes.

A Wrathful Guru Rinpoche

In my decades of exploring Buddhism I have met many teachers, some western and others from Tibet, India and Nepal. But there was something different about Lama Kunzang and the other Beylangdra monks. The monks at Beylangdra were remarkably warm and unpretentious, and it was clear that they were eager to be helpful to both Senge and me in our respective practices.  Perhaps I have been transformed: maybe Bhutan has made me ready to receive whatever teachings Lama Kunzang can provide. Or maybe it was Senge's artful facilitation. Or, as my Buddhist friends and students would assert, it was just my karma to finally find a teacher on the Day of Lord Buddha's Descent from Tusita Heaven in a remote monastery at the end of a pristine valley, just past the 150 foot, 1200-year-old cypress tree that arose from Guru Rinpoche's walking stick, a tree that symbolizes the enduring power of the Dharma in Bhutan.

Guru Rinpoche's Cypress below Beylangdra

* My red thread fell off as I was making dinner the day after we had visited Beylangdra.