I open my hand and let the winds take my doubt, the letter flying off into the storm. If I could open my eyes, I would see the world blown red as blood. This is not our first existence. If I listen hard enough, the gusting wind sounds like the distant heart that first powers the two of us into this world.

  How the Great Cobra Shelters Him

  Who can say how we find them? If we find them or they find us? Our hands tell us it is them. One with a robe pulled over his head. This is Uncle. The smaller form swaddled in cloth. Tömör. I sink down beside Uncle. Mun across from me. Together the four of us form a circle, our backs to the raging world. Let all be well. And just like that, all is well.

  The first camel arrives, walking out of the flying sand, and lies down at our backs. I can feel the heat of the animal through my robe. Another arrives and positions herself perpendicular to the first. Then a third, then a fourth, and our shelter is complete, the animals like a pen around us. Is it my brother’s ferocious deity Hayagrīva, the Horse-Necked One, that summons these animals to us from out of the roaring sands? At this moment are the pupils of Mun’s eyes ablaze, each one ringed with a burning corona?

  I think of the story of the Buddha and the Naga, how the great cobra shelters Him with her hood when it begins to rain, spreading it over Him as He waits for enlightenment to come. In such a moment there is time to think. The four of us in the lotus position. Every grain of sand, every drop of blood, every second on the earth and beyond. All contained in this one instant.

  And so the great fires are extinguished in my brother. The one he has continually banked against me all these years. What I see is both dark and light. All his hopes, his fears, his dreams. His loneliness at Yatuu Gol. Sitting on his golden cushion at the head of the assembly. Ringing the bells. Chanting the prayers. Touching strangers with his forehead. Bestowing grace upon them. And the afternoon more than a year ago when my twin disrobes. The herder and his wife in the Rinpoche’s office, their heads bowed, their daughter beside them. In Mongolia, an unexpected pregnancy is not looked down on if the man agrees to marriage. Because of the vastness of the grasslands, often there is not time for traditional courtship. If a girl falls pregnant after the chance meeting of a stranger, then the man is summoned and welcomed into the family, even if the man is a monk. Here among the burning sands my heart fills as I relive my brother’s emotions one year ago when he disrobes after a brief encounter with a local girl. I watch as one week after disrobing, my twin leaves for the capital on the eve of his wedding when he learns it is a false alarm.

  Then a great secret comes unmoored. Memories whipping about in the sand. In my brother’s wayward life, there is only ever this girl and no other. The daughter of a poor herder living in the shadow of the volcano. I see my brother entering the home during an afternoon of gurem, I hear him murmur a prayer for the family, see them offer him what little they have. It’s only now I realize the truth of it: he loves her. Theirs is not some sordid encounter. He loves her ever since walking through the door with his head bowed, the girl offering him a bowl of milk tea, their fingers touching, then the secret exchange of letters, their one and only meeting out on a hilltop at night among the grasslands—the human softness, the heat, the heartache when it is all a false alarm, and the resolve to go to the capital, to make a life, to establish himself, and, when he does, to bring her to be with him, her name Sarangerel, moonlight, not our Saran but another who lights up the earth, how I know now when he looks at our Saran he sees this other, nothing more, and I finally understand the great sacrifice he makes in giving up his job to come with us in our search as this journey significantly delays his plans for their reunion.

  In turn my brother sees into me more deeply than ever before. The moment like standing naked on the surface of the sun. My reservations at taking my final vows. My sadness at never knowing the full pleasures of my body. My jealousy at his forging his own path forward.

  Then out of the sand, a voice says: brother monks! Shed passion and aversion, as jasmine would its withered flowers. There is a door in every mountain, a secret drawer in every chest. Open it and enter into the place of emptiness.

  As Jasmine Would Its Withered Flowers

  We Should Look Upon All This as a Bubble

  Now Saran sits in the back with Uncle. Her hair no longer finds its way into my mouth. The great mystery is solved, the reason why Saran floats above the earth, a dreamy smile playing across her face. Saran is in love! She is in love with neither me nor my twin. The man is a novice back at Gandan Tegchenling Monastery. Like Little Bat, he is also from Amdo Province in Tibet. This man is the reason Saran speaks Tibetan. The Abbot of Gandan Tegchenling sends her with us in the hopes of breaking up the happy couple. But after a few hours of sitting next to Uncle in the back seat, Saran confesses her secret. The old monk pats her hand kindly and tells her all is well. My favorite poet claims a lover has four streams inside, Uncle says, of water, wine, honey, and milk. Find them in yourself and pay no attention to so-and-so about such-and-such. There is so much kindness in his voice. Even in this moment of darkest dark.

  Outside the landscape depresses. All day we are driving in Ikh Khorig, the Great Taboo. All day among the things the Russian army casts off decades ago. Shells of rusted-out trucks. Piles of empty crates, furniture, antiquated electronics. What from a distance looks like an ovoo is only a heap of boots. The earth is ugly, scarred, the trees cleared, the land as if mined for minerals, blasted by the artillery ranges we see every few minutes.

  A hundred kilometers back we pass a herd of takhi, also known as Przewalski’s horses. Twenty years ago takhi are all but extinct in the wild and found only in zoos and animal reserves, but recently scientists are reintroducing them to Mongolia. In other countries there are herds of horses that roam free, like the mustang in the American West, but such herds are feral horses that escape from domesticated stock. The takhi is the last true wild horse in existence—it is never domesticated.

  The animals are short-legged and stout, most with brown heads and backs that gradually taper to a soft gray color on their underbellies the way color slowly changes on a fish. Their manes are short and bristly, like shorn grass. As we drive past, one raises its head from where it is feeding to stare at us. To descend from a lineage of pure freedom, to never know the bit in the mouth, the saddle. The image of this small herd stays with me even when it is well behind us. Perhaps someday a thousand years from now these horses may once again claim the land. A colt nuzzles its mother’s belly. I think of the red horse that is born during the first zud of my youth. The Buddha says we should look upon all this as a bubble, that the visible world is only a dream. Species thrive and wither, thrive again. Universes are born and fall dead. We drive on.

  Now a White Cord Stretches Between Us

  We are driving to Burkhan Khaldun. Last year God Mountain is declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Soviets establish the Forbidden Zone when they come to power through the puppet leader Choibalsan, but even before the Russians, there is a centuries-long prohibition banning Mongolians from this area, what Mongolians call the Great Taboo. Chinggis Khaan dies in 1227 presumably in his sixties. Historians claim he is surrounded by family and loved ones, that he has an easy passing. Conversely, the people he conquers tell vastly different tales of his demise. That he is poisoned. That he is stabbed. That a Tangut queen somehow hides a blade inside her body, and that when he copulates with her, his privates are shredded, leaving him to die in utter anguish, rendered completely manless.

  In Mongolia, our first god is the Eternal Blue Sky. We never celebrate the dead the way other cultures do. Traditionally our leaders don’t build mausoleums, pyramids, erecting great stones to remind the world that they exist. In the Mongolia of old, when a person dies, the body is either burned or left exposed for the animals. There is no other way. Our long winters mean that the earth is frozen solid for a third of the year. But in the Mongolia of today most bodies are buried, a few cremated in hospitals or modern funeral homes. Despite modern technology, nobody knows where the body of Chinggis Khaan is laid to rest except that it is somewhere here on God Mountain in the rolling green hills of Khentii aimag, the very place where he is born and what is subsequently named the Great Taboo, and which is off-limits for centuries.

  It is said that when Chinggis Khaan is a young man, he passes a night on God Mountain and has a vision of his life to come. He declares that he wants to be buried here along with his descendants. Stories come down through the generations that a funeral cortege of more than a thousand warriors accompany the Khaan’s body to its final resting place. Allegedly four hundred workers are used to cover the tracks made by this great host. In turn, these four hundred workers are killed in order to maintain the secret of where the Khaan is laid to rest. Legend has it that the killers of these four hundred are then themselves killed, and so on, ad nauseam, killers killing killers killing killers. An elite group of warriors named the Darkhad are charged with guarding the sacred site. Upon pain of death, only holy men or those burying a direct descendent of Chinggis Khaan are allowed to enter the Great Taboo.

  More than seven hundred years after his death, the Soviets are still afraid of the Khaan and his lasting influence on his people. When they come to power, they take over the Great Taboo and rename it the Forbidden Zone. And so in 1937, at the height of Stalinist repression in Mongolia, the spirit of Chinggis Khaan goes missing, his spirit embodied in his sulde, the talisman a warrior-herder would erect each night outside his ger. A sulde is made by gathering hair from the tails of his swiftest horses and then tying them to a spear. Over time as it ages outside under the eternal blue sky, the sulde becomes saturated with the spirit of the elements, elements that are eventually channeled into the very spirit of the warrior himself. When he dies, it is said the warrior’s spirit lives on in the sulde. For centuries the sulde of Chinggis Khaan is kept in a monastery along the River of the Moon. But in 1937, the Soviets destroy the monastery, and the sulde goes missing.

  I remember one day out on the grasslands finding Mun plucking hairs from the tail of his horse. My twin tells me he is making his own sulde. I watch as he ties the hairs to an old radio antenna he’s scavenged. The hairs hang limp. There are just a few strands, ten at most; most sulde are built over time and so become lush and full.

  That is the first time I sense the fire in Mun, his ability to shut me out, though it is a skill he has yet to perfect. I follow him as he plants his sulde outside our ger. I cannot fathom the reason why he needs a sulde. When I try to access his thoughts, all I feel is a burning like holding my hand too long over a match.

  Now my brother sits beside me in a world without fire or ice. As we drive along, we are connected by more than the caul that covers our face at birth. Now a white cord stretches between us, one earbud in my brother’s ear, the other in mine. Earlier this morning as we break camp, I find my brother’s MP3 player lying on a tarp. When I pick it up, it turns on. Something is amiss. I scroll through the screen. The only western album I find is one by the Beatles. Instead, packed on the little device are hundreds, thousands, of Buddhist chants in all languages. I press play, and Om tare tuttare ture svaha fills my ears. This is the mantra of the Green Tara, the Mother of Buddhas.

  May this mantra take root in my heart. May my mind, body, and speech be free of delusions and the eight fears. May I be liberated from duality. May I know ease.

  I don’t know if my twin might ever come back to the faith. I know of stories of monks living monastic lives in the west, beings who are at once mindful and yet also completely of the world. Perhaps my brother is to be the one to fully bridge these two existences. As this journey teaches me, it is not my place to hope for an outcome. We must drop the world’s bait. My brother is who he is. After the sandstorm as the four of us rise from the desert floor, my brother prostrates himself before Uncle. He remains a long time lying in the sand, his arms outstretched above his head, until Uncle finally pulls him up onto his feet.

  May This Come to Pass

  Even now Uncle is serene. As always, a calm light radiates from his face despite the plain white urn that sits between him and Saran.

  During the terrible storm, Stevie and Jess wait out the sand in one of the trucks. They do not know that Tömör goes looking for them. They do not know what follows. When the sand stops, the landscape is different. Suddenly there are dunes where there are not dunes before. And the dunes that once exist are completely erased.

  When Uncle goes out in search of Tömör, Little Bat follows. Somehow he never makes his way into our circle, the camels shielding us with their bodies. It takes several hours to find Little Bat. As is fitting, in the end, it is Uncle who finds him. Little Bat is his heart’s disciple. The big monk is no more than a few meters from the tent’s opening. We pull Little Bat’s body from a five-meter mountain of sand.

  Happily, he looks peaceful. There is no indication of pain, of the sand burning his lungs as he breathes it in. In his hands, he clutches a battered photograph, the figure in it barely visible, the photo more than thirty years old. You can only tell it is a picture of His Holiness by the way the figure is seated and His yellow-crested lama hat. I can still see Little Bat at break of day each morning praying for all sentient beings. The deep place he enters within minutes. May he find that as the sands are burying him. May he once again look upon his mother and his father and his brothers and baby Pema. May his spirit be a light to all those who wish to cross the mountains.

  We are driving here to scatter a third of his ashes on God Mountain, in the place where the Great Khaan also lies and where even now only holy beings are allowed entrance. Another third of his ashes are to be scattered on a Bodhi tree back at the monastery in Dharamshala where the Dalai Lama presides over the Tibetan government-in-exile. And one day, perhaps in a life to come, Uncle might carry the remaining third to the mountain hermitage in Amdo province where Little Bat remembers playing as a boy in the land where he is born. May this come to pass in a world in which the Chinese no longer do such things as disappear a small child as they do to the Panchen Lama, the second-highest-ranking lama in Tibetan Buddhism who many years ago is disappeared along with His family and is not heard from since.

  Listen Without Distraction

  And what of the one whom we are seeking among the Reindeer People, the eagle hunters of the Altai Mountains, and the killing sands of the Gobi? Uncle does not say which is his old friend the One for Whom the Sky Never Darkens. First he must consult with His Holiness. Of the three children he only says when asked that all three are old friends—the boy shaman, the girl hunter, the ghostly dinosaur seer. Like mind, body, and speech, he says. It is then my brother silently reminds me that it is possible for a holy man to reincarnate his energy in several beings at once. It’s true. In Sikkim there are two reincarnations of the one named the Benevolent Jewel. One is the reincarnation of actions, the other of compassion.

  Then a thought bubbles up simultaneously in both our minds as if my twin and I are crafting the idea together. The Dharma is perfect, but men are the instrument through which it turns. Men are fallible in ways the Dharma is not. In the turning of the wheel, mistakes can be made. Perhaps it is why up until now my brother and I are in conflict all these years. Our true self knows no division. If one of us is the 5th Incarnation of the Paljor Jamgon lineage, the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness, then we both are. If one of us is not the 5th Incarnation of the Paljor Jamgon lineage, then neither are. We are both servant and redeemer. There is no contradiction, only peace.

  From the back seat Uncle taps me on the shoulder. For you, is the reincarnation the only objective of this journey, he asks. When I don’t answer, he laughs, this man with one hand on the ashes of his heart’s disciple. It is a weak faith that depends on the existence of a single being, he says.

  And with that briefest of Dharma talks, my understanding is perfected, the wheel complete. Everywhere the world is raining flowers. Before me the way is paved with the yellow dung of good fortune. A woman lies down to sleep, and in the night a white elephant enters her womb holding a lotus blossom in its trunk. Twenty-five hundred years later, an interviewer asks the Dalai Lama: China is destroying your land, your people, your culture—how do you remain so joyful? His Holiness responds: I cannot let them destroy my happiness.

  In this eon, a thousand Buddhas are said to rise and fall. Siddhartha Gautama, the Shakyamuni Buddha, is the fourth Buddha of our age. The next Buddha is named Maitreya. All sentient beings contain Buddhahood. Before this universe ends, every single being is to attain it.

  Let me die tomorrow and never be reborn. I am ready to take my vows to renounce the world. My doubts remain, but now I recognize that they are part of the path. I must let my doubts enter me the way one might welcome a stranger into a hut on the edge of a forest. When the stranger arrives, one does not ask the guest why they exist, what their purpose is. One simply sits and listens without judgment or striving. I seek nothing. I am nothing. There is only refuge in the Buddha, in the Dharma, in the sangha. There is only refuge in wisdom, compassion, and goodness. There is only refuge in the way things are.

  In all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism, there is the practice of reincarnation. Whole books are written on the mysteries of death. As we drive toward God Mountain, I ponder this. How long does it take the self to dissipate? How does one hold on to the heart’s essence, the pure white light that shines in the center of the body after everything else is burned away? And do we come back to this earth in the same vessel, or is everything changed? Do we go back into the cosmic wellspring where each night is four billion years long, and at the end of it all, does the universe collapse on itself only to cycle into existence again? Or is it only metaphorical? Am I reborn each moment with each breath? Is each second of my life a choice? Does each instance take me down a different path? Does what I do from one minute to the next determine who I am and what energy I draw to myself? From my karma am I born and reborn thousands of times a day?