Right Time, Right Thought, Right Speech

  All the way back to camp I can feel my brother’s pain. I can also feel his humiliation, the fact that I am able to stay on my horse while he cannot, that this is yet one more instance of Mun being in need of rescue. I want to say something to comfort him, but nothing comes to mind. Right time, right thought, right speech.

  Do not speak—unless it improves upon silence!

  As we bump and jounce over every rock, every ridge, I can feel the nerves in his wrist on fire.

  We ride the rest of the way in silence—Saran on one side of Mun, Little Bat on the other to keep him from falling. Chala rides beside me. There is an air of determination about her, a quality of fixed resolve, as if childhood burns away, a decision reached. Something about the encounter with the lynx precipitates this. Sometimes there are moments in a life where a path is presented, where one must decide which road to take. Chala is not the same girl as earlier this morning. She looks at me and smiles.

  When we get to camp, Uncle helps Mun dismount. Inside the house we find the grandmother, who then takes my brother’s wrist in her hands and turns it this way and that for the better part of an hour. Words are spoken, water steeped with herbs and the pink rhodiola that grows on the mountain. And so it is healed. She is a bonesetter. She is the first I am to ever encounter. They are a kind of shaman. Generally the skill runs in a family and is never revealed to outsiders. Somehow, the bonesetter can simply touch a person, turning the injury in their hands, and in time all is healed, the spot perhaps bruised and swollen, but healed absolutely. Mun’s wrist is good as new before the rest of the family even returns.

  All during my childhood my father would say that an injury is not a break if it can be healed so easily, but I know what I feel in my brother’s body, the pain like a million suns throbbing under the skin. Afterward, Mun heads to our car to find a bottle of vodka to gift this old woman. It is the least he can do.

  Chala’s mind is on other things. When we ride into camp, she dismounts and walks straight into the house, leaving her bird outside on its perch. When she comes back, she is carrying a knife, the kind small but deadly sharp and used in the killing of animals. Please help me, she says. I nod though I have no idea what she intends.

  Together we walk up the path toward where the sheep and goats are kept in a small enclosure. Chala walks among them, eyeing each. I think of the little girl near Yatuu Gol with her ash-blackened face, how she knows which animal to select.

  Chala picks one and steers it out of the group. It is an older female though something about the animal is still plump, still worthy. Quickly she ties the animal up and together we throw it over the back of her horse. There is nothing for me to do but follow, which I am doing all my life.

  There Are a Myriad of Ways to Exist in This World

  We ride for more than an hour. We are headed to what seems to be the highest point in the area. I can feel the temperature drop. It is well after seven o’clock. Though it is summer, we are high up, the ridgeline thin like walking along the edge of a blade. I wish for a second jacket, but such is life as it is.

  Chala pulls up and I stop beside her. I help her lay the sheep on the ground. The thing bleats weakly, a thin stream of urine wetting the dirt. Chala flips the animal on its back and unties its front legs. The animal kicks and kicks, but she straddles it. I move forward and help to pin back its limbs. How many years is it since I usher a being out of this life? From its perch on the horse the eagle sits watching us, its yellow eyes all-seeing.

  Chala takes the knife and begins to thin the hair on the sheep’s chest. When she finishes clearing a spot, she makes an incision, the cut just big enough for her to slip her hand inside. She reaches in as if putting on a glove. I know what she is doing. She is searching for the vein, the artery that one must pinch in order to give the animal a painless death. She finds it and eventually the animal stops kicking though its eyes stay open.

  May you find refuge in the Dharma, I intone.

  There is blood all the way up to Chala’s elbow as if she dips her arm in a river of blood. I wonder if this is the first animal she kills, as it is usually a job delegated to men. The efficiency with which she makes the incision and how quickly she finds the artery make me think she aids her father countless times. The sheep gives one last shudder. A final tension drains from its body. Together we carry the carcass over to a spot on the ridge. The wind whips around us, the smell of blood on everything.

  We ride back down the ridge, only stopping a half hour away from camp. The temperature changes. The mountain where the body of the sheep lies is long behind us. I cannot see it anymore. I am not sure what is going on until Chala stops and lifts the great bird. Slowly she begins to untie the tethers from its feet.

  Why now, I ask.

  Chala doesn’t look at me. Lubya saves the life of your brother. Now she deserves her freedom, she says. I consider this. Chala holds the tethers in her left hand, the bird on her right. She buries her face one last time in its feathers. There are a myriad of ways to exist in this world. I rub my wrist. It no longer aches. Later, as we are driving back toward the center of Mongolia to see the third and final candidate, I ask Uncle if this visit proves fruitful, if he sees what he needs to see.

  One sees, he says. One is always seeing.

  But here on this rock face, Chala throws her arm up into the air.

  Who are you, I think. She has to throw her arm up three times before the bird takes flight.

  In the Shadow of the Volcano

  Oracles Are Consulted

  The first week of March and my brother is still crying intermittently. It is six months since the Rinpoche sits him down in the brisk October air of Yatuu Gol’s courtyard and takes a straight razor to his head. Although half a year passes since our arrival in the monastery, tears still cloud my twin’s eyes for no earthly reason the sangha can discern. His ordination as the 5th Incarnation of the Paljor Jamgon, the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness, is to be held in April, the dignitaries traveling from as far away as India.

  And so when Mun through tears asks his personal cook Namrut to make him boodog, this labor-intense Mongolian dish, Namrut does not say no right away. Instead, Namrut asks the Rinpoche. In turn, the Rinpoche asks me.

  I am eight years old.

  It is a new millennium. The world is still intact. Two months ago we celebrate Tsagaan Sar, the lunar New Year. In the Chinese zodiac it is the year of the Golden Dragon, a year of power, prosperity, good fortune. In October when we enter the monastery, I too feel the burn of the Rinpoche’s razor on my scalp. But at Yatuu Gol, my brother and I are entering into a slow reversal. With each hair that falls to the ground, I feel myself paring down to my essence, like a tree readying itself for winter. For Mun, the shaving of his head is the beginning of losing his identity, his inner fire slowly cooling. As he cannot hold still and submit to the blade, his scalp gets nicked in a hundred places, the skin beading with blood. For the first few weeks this patchwork of scabs is the only thing distinguishing him from the rest of the sangha.

  Oracles are consulted. The surfaces of lakes read for signs. The Rinpoche says spring is the auspicious time for Mun to take his official title. These past six months the elder monks teaching him the rudiments of what he needs to perform at his ordination. Everywhere people clamoring for his blessing, prostrating themselves on the ground. He must not allow himself to be spooked like a startled horse by the commotion, the people thronging just to touch him, just to brush the sleeve of the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness after all these years deprived of the faith. He must remain stoic, impassive yet loving, and perform his duty, taking each of the thousand or more sky-blue khadag he is offered from well-wishers in both hands before lifting the scarf to his face and touching it with his forehead, then wrapping the khadag around the person’s neck as they bow before him.

  I feel an uneasiness for my brother. Mornings he sits on a golden pillow at the head of the assembly. He is learning when to take the bell and the dorje in his fists, how to ring the bell in a manner that is both sonorous yet grave, twisting his wrists hypnotically like a dancer as he recites the words only he can say, leading us, his fellow monks, as we pray for the salvation of all sentient creatures in this and all universes.

  After two hours of chants there is always a break. The novices on kitchen duty scamper about filling each monk’s bowl with milk. As it is March, we still eat the traditional New Year cakes, each ul boov filled with cream and sugar and shaped like the sole of a shoe. Some mornings we drink from juice boxes. I can sense how my brother likes to unwrap the tiny straw and stab it through the hole. How he likes to keep sucking on this straw even after the box is empty so that he can watch the sides of the box move in and out like a set of bellows. Ever since I can remember, mornings my brother and I would ride out with the herds. On the steppe there are no walls, the grasslands stretching before us all the way to Hungary and the Volga River. On our horses we are as fast as the wind. We are Mongolian. Nothing can contain us. In our life before Yatuu Gol, the eternal blue sky like a mantle protecting us.

  Tell Me: Is Boodog a Good Idea?

  The Rinpoche comes to find me in calligraphy class where we are learning to write Old Mongolian, the traditional Mongolian script from hundreds of years ago during the time of Chinggis Khaan. Our people’s oldest surviving history, The Secret History of the Mongols, is originally spoken in Old Mongolian, then transcribed phonetically into the Uighur script before being transcribed a second time into Chinese. The only remaining copies of the ancient originals still exist in Chinese characters.

  Old Mongol is one of only a handful of languages written vertically from left to right. I love learning the twenty-nine characters that comprise the alphabet. On the page the letters like the tracks of some fantastic bird. My favorite letters are the sound for du, which looks like a woman’s earring, and the sound for ja, which looks like a man walking with one overly long leg. Old Mongol is still used in places like Inner Mongolia. During the Stalinist purges, Old Mongol is all but abandoned here in Mongolia in favor of Cyrillic, but in places like Gandan Tegchenling Monastery in Ulaanbaatar, there are always monks who can read it even during the dark times.

  The Rinpoche stands by my bench and takes off his glasses. Because I am the brother of the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness, the Rinpoche often consults with me. As this is the case, I am always trying to humble myself and to give whatever aid is needed; I don’t abuse the distinction granted me. I can sense that the others don’t mind the special treatment I receive. I suspect that many of them feel sorry for me, that I must live in the shadow of my brother. Some use an old idiom to describe Mun, saying he is a bad dog who can’t stomach ghee butter, meaning he is unworthy of the privileges heaped upon him—the separate living quarters, the private cook, the tutors, the gifts, the golden pillow elevated above all others in the temple.

  Little Brother, says the Rinpoche. All these months after he rides up to our homestead and sometimes I still do not think of him as a Precious One. When Mun and I are alone, my brother still calls him Bazar. Bazar, like Mun, is a tulku. I remember the way he butchers my grandfather, the focus with which he handles the blade. Your brother asks that Namrut prepare boodog for him, he says. I know the others in class are listening intently though they keep their eyes on their work. The Rinpoche pauses and studies the script I write. I wonder if it is legible, if this passage from the Jangar still holds meaning hundreds of years later. The Rinpoche doesn’t comment on my efforts. Instead he asks: what do you think might be the result of this?

  As he and I often converse like this ever since Mun and I ride out of the grasslands, I know what he is truly asking. Do I think the meal may make Mun more homesick and recalcitrant, or do I think it can help?

  Though I try not to show it, I am growing weary of answering for my brother. When he is named the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness, I am to be given the honorary title of the Servant to the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness. It is decided that because we are twins, we are not to be separated. It never occurs to me that I might stay behind with my father out on the grasslands and carry on with the life of a herder, that I would not come to Yatuu Gol and do what I can to help my brother while also working on achieving Buddhahood for myself.

  One month after Bazar discovers Mun, our father brings us to the monastery gate. Though he is invited in for tea, Aav comes no further, saying the driver he hires to drive the herds south should arrive shortly. Our father doesn’t smile or cry as we walk away with the Rinpoche. I try to ask him one last question about the red colt born earlier that fall, but there isn’t time. Aav is heading south with his brother. At night I hear talk of a woman, a widow with small children. The next time I see Aav I expect him to be remarried. A baby might be on the way. Our father never lives in a world with religion. In his eyes life at Yatuu Gol is like life on a faraway planet. I can sense his bewilderment, that the idea of losing two sons to the monastery is unimaginable to him, but he knows it is what the spirit of Övöö counsels. In places like Tibet or Nepal or Bhutan, there is an unbroken history of Precious Ones, of children being taken from their families and the tremendous honor such a parting bestows. But here in Mongolia that tradition is long dead. My father suffers in this new world filled with ancient ways. Consequently, he requests that Mun not be sent all the way to India, as most tulku are trained in one of the three great monasteries in that country. Instead, we are to remain right here in the shadow of the volcano.

  Little Brother, repeats the Rinpoche. Tell me: is boodog a good idea?

  Since arriving in Yatuu Gol six months ago I learn that the best way to help Mun is to win the other novices to his side. I try to do this in whatever way I can. Like having Mun ask for a soccer ball, or establishing one night a week for foreign movies so that together we can improve our English.

  My brother likes eating boodog, I say. I don’t lie to the Rinpoche. He is a Precious One. I never lie to him. But sometimes the truth can be stretched, and sometimes it is best to do so. He likes it even more when shared with others, I say, the way we eat it with our neighbors and friends out on the steppe.

  The Rinpoche nods. Hope sparkles in his eyes. Once in the late hours of the night when I step outside to wash a sheet which one of the younger novices wets, the novice too embarrassed to do it himself, I hear the Disciplinarian speaking frankly with the Rinpoche. At most monasteries, the Disciplinarian is an older monk who is second in charge after the Principal. That night, the Disciplinarian, an aged monk from China via India, says that perhaps a mistake is made, that maybe I am the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness and that Mun is my servant. Quickly I scurry away to wash the sheet outside at the well. Outdoors in the moonlight I do not hear the Rinpoche’s response. I cannot let such thoughts enter into my heart as they make my path more difficult.

  The Volcano Always Stays in Sight

  And so, because of my small conversation with the Rinpoche, in two days’ time my brother and I go out on horseback along with a handful of other novices chosen by the Disciplinarian as being in need of “open space.” Mun is told not to ride too fast or too recklessly, which only makes him ride like the wind created by a maddened horse. Together our small band thunders forth from the monastery. We ride so far away that we can no longer see its walls despite the flatness of the landscape, though the volcano always stays in sight as a reminder of who we are and what we strive to be. When one in our group finds a string of holes that look inhabited, my brother dismounts and dons the hat that has the ears of an actual fox, the marmot’s natural enemy, and by making a series of calls through his cupped fists, he lures the marmot into poking its head aboveground to find out where the danger lurks. Then together we flush it, and Namrut shoots it with the monastery’s one gun, an old relic from Soviet times, as only he is allowed to kill the meat we eat.

  In this way we pass an afternoon out on the grasslands, a group of Mongolian youths, Namrut the oldest at twenty-two. We take the three marmots we are blessed with back to Yatuu Gol where Namrut guts them and pulls out their innards for cleaning, after which he carefully stuffs everything back inside the animals’ stomachs. Then he crams several hot rocks, which heat for hours in an open fire, inside the bodies before sewing them closed with wire. We watch the final step in the process as he takes a blowtorch and burns off the animals’ fur. The corpses are then allowed to sit. When the meat is ready, we come together, the sangha of Yatuu Gol, the young and the old, Mongolian and foreign. The Rinpoche says an offering, and Namrut takes a knife he sharpens on a rock and makes the first cut. Steam comes shooting out as one by one the carcasses deflate. He takes out the viscera and cuts up the meat, and we eat of our fellow sentient creatures. And that night and into the next day there are no tears, no stamping of the feet of the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness. True, there is also not the same carefree happiness among us as there is when we go hunting for these marmots out on the grasslands, all of us riding hard like the Mongol horde of yore, an ancient brotherhood sworn in blood and capable of taking over the world.

  The Snows in Lhasa

  April and the most sumptuous day of my life arrives.

  Just last year the 9th Jetsun Dampa, the head of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia, is enthroned in Ulaanbaatar after a lifetime of living in hiding. But because there is no ordination of a tulku in this part of the country in almost eighty years, the celebration starts a full week before the ceremony. People travel from all over the region to the nearby outpost of Bor-Urt. A small ger city begins to sprout. All week the faithful trek up the rocky slopes of Yatuu Gol to make an offering to the ovoo. All week, Mun is fitted and poked, measured, rehearsed, quizzed, bribed when necessary, reminded that he is an ancient light in our new country in a new millennium of hope. Each day I feel him grow more resigned, more listless, the fire in his heart slowly dying until all that is left is an orange glow in his eyes, the rage of Hayagrīva, the horse-necked deity whose energy he is learning to generate within himself, a deep burning, a resentment that is never extinguished.