As we approach, the butte begins to take on the color of dried blood. It is a color I recognize as a type of igneous rock, its minerals fired deep in the earth. The same kind of rock is found a few hundred kilometers northwest of here near Khövsgöl Nuur where the first candidate lives among the Reindeer People in their tents sewn from hides. If all goes well, we should arrive there tomorrow.

  I can feel the Machine make the slow turn toward the ridge. On the roof the jugs of water and gasoline slosh past level. Saran sits between Mun and me, her body a wall separating us from each other. She is the only woman in our group, which besides myself and Mun includes Venerable Uncle and Little Bat. Saran’s head comes to rest on my shoulder, a dragonfly wafting out of the eternal blue to cease for a moment before traveling on. Once again she is awake before any of us, rising in the dark to start the fire and heat the milk tea, prepare the rice with raisins and sugar. Despite Little Bat’s strong protests that he should serve as steward, the Abbot at Gandan Tegchenling insists Saran accompany us on our journey as we need someone to cook and look after us. Consequently, I do not begrudge her this small moment of fatigue. Her head is light and still smells of the wildflowers she laces in her hair at the start of our trip which is amazing after two full days in the Machine.

  I cannot help but wonder why, of all the nuns and laypeople at Gandan Tegchenling Monastery, the Abbot picks her to accompany us on this mission. Her name, Sarangerel, moonlight, fits the dreaminess she exudes, her expression as if her heart is born aloft on a cloud. If I had to guess I would say that she is a few years younger than Mun and me, that maybe she is nineteen or twenty. Technically Saran is not a nun, though like us she speaks both Mongolian and Tibetan. Her Tibetan is more fluid than ours, which we learn through studying ancient texts. I wonder if, like us, she learns it in a monastery, or if there is a family connection. For the most part I am now used to sitting beside her, our legs brushing against each other intermittently. Still, there are moments when I feel an unwelcome heat spread through my body at her touch. Each time I must work to tamp it down. When Mun stares at Saran, he stares openly, the blood-heat apparent in his look. In my mind, I send him a sharp rebuke, a slap to the back of the head. I wonder if desire is something he picks up from westerners. As the first two of the Four Noble Truths state, in life there is suffering; the cause of suffering is desire. I add it to my twin’s long list of shortcomings.

  The Machine sails along through the early morning light, everywhere the colors crisp as if rinsed in milk, Saran’s sleeping head on my shoulder. From the driver’s seat Mun looks over at me and leers. Fire only knows fire. I see myself reflected in his sunglasses, one of me in each glossy lens, both of me looking vexed. It is only two days since leaving Ulaanbaatar. From what I am told by the Rinpoche at Yatuu Gol, it is urgent we find this reincarnation. Already a search is conducted in Tibet that lasts two years, the monks working secretly with the help of the local people, but something goes awry and now the monks are missing. If the child is not found soon, it could be difficult for him to acclimate to his new life. There is much hope surrounding this reincarnation. The child must learn to speak English. He must be well versed in western ways if he is to one day become the face of Tibetan Buddhism. There is a growing fear that the Chinese might anoint a reincarnation once the Dalai Lama passes, thus installing a puppet as the leader of the Tibetan people. Should His Holiness’s reincarnation be politicized following His death, our faith requires a new leader, one the Chinese do not anticipate. This is why we are searching for a reincarnation from an undistinguished lineage, relatively speaking. In the past, this being serves His Holiness admirably throughout the ages, but in this current incarnation, this being is needed to serve at the highest level.

  From the back seat Little Bat taps Saran on the shoulder. She wakes and turns, her thick black braid coming to rest on my arm as they converse. To my ears the sound of Tibetan is jagged yet watery, a language not all that different from Mongolian in that it too is filled with the music of the natural world—weather and hardship, long nights of dreams and the eternal blue sky.

  Sometimes when he shifts, I can feel one of Little Bat’s massive knees gouging my back. Really he should be sitting where I am in the passenger’s seat which affords one the most space, but he prefers to sit next to Uncle, the two men mastering the discomfort of the body years ago.

  Little Bat shifts again. I rearrange myself accordingly. I wonder if time and space mean anything at all to Uncle, the honored one with whom we travel, or if these material concepts slide off him like water off a lotus leaf. Then Mun jams on the brakes and the emptiness of the universe comes crashing in on us.

  A Man’s Got to Know His Limitations

  Considering the seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in, Uncle seems light of heart, amused, like a young boy traveling into town to watch an evening of wrestling, his steps quick and eager despite his age. I walk at the back of our small procession, my hands folded at chest level. Little Bat walks in the lead, Uncle in between us, Little Bat’s baby face as placid as Uncle’s is jovial. In his hands Little Bat works an ancient set of ivory prayer beads carved from the teeth of a walrus. To my eye Little Bat looks even more tranquil now than he does an hour ago as we crawl one by one out of the Machine. His face remains serene though the world seemingly comes to an end, Little Bat a man who accepts whatever the universe parses out. A man who asks nothing of anything. His detachment attained after many lifetimes of practice. Though he shows no agitation, Little Bat believes we should not be going in search of help, that there is no help to be found, and that we ought to stay by the Machine and use what resources we have to help ourselves.

  I focus on what Little Bat is saying, as I often have trouble understanding him. When he speaks, it is obvious that something terrible is in his past. His voice as if he once swallows a river of burning sand, his vocal cords damaged to the extreme, his voice the voice of a hundred-year-old man but somehow planted in the body of a forty-something baby-faced giant. The very first time I hear him speak at Gandan Tegchenling Monastery, I wince. It is painful to listen to him produce each word. At the sound of his voice, Mun remembers a man he sees in Ulaanbaatar, the man with a hole punched at the base of his throat and the sound gurgling up from the puckered skin. Besides his voice and his immensity, Little Bat appears unremarkable in every other aspect. I do not know what resources he is referring to, but when Little Bat suggests this course of action, Uncle vehemently shakes his head. No, Uncle insists, first we look.

  When we hit the sinkhole, only Mun, who makes his living driving tourists across the vastness of Mongolia, is not wearing a seatbelt. Surprisingly, the Machine looks undamaged, its hood sunk up to the windshield in the ground like an animal burrowing into the earth. My eyes still sting from the smell of gas, the plastic jugs that are strapped to the roof having rocketed into the dirt, one of them cracking on impact, the leaked gasoline making the air go wavy. Standing there beside the Machine I notice a small bruise already marbling Mun’s forehead, the thing pale blue like the spring egg of a bird.

  I gotta go with you, Mun says, as we three monks set out to look for aid. My brother is sincere in his desire to help, but when he stands he wobbles drunkenly, a newborn foal finding its legs.

  Uncle laughs. For the first time since we make his acquaintance at Gandan Tegchenling he speaks to us in English. A famous American cowboy says a man’s got to know his limitations, Uncle explains. The twinkle deepens in his eyes. He taps his own forehead in the same spot where Mun’s bruise lies shining. My young friend, he says, switching back to Tibetan, your third eye is opening nicely. Pray that it may continue to light your path.

  Mun sinks back down in the shadow of the Machine, defeated, the bruise like pale blue dough rising on his forehead. Now would be a good time for him to practice the Buddhist reflection on death, the fact that we are of a nature to die, that as humans we do not evolve beyond dying, but already he is popping in his earbuds, he is tuning the world out. I know the reason why, despite his injury, he struggles to stand and come along with us to find help. It is because he resents that I am able to go in search of aid while he must stay behind. This is not the first time I step forward to make things right, our childhood filled with other instances, other places where I am the one to sweep up the broken glass, glue the world back together in the wake of his actions. The one time as children when I fire a gun at him, it is to save him from himself.

  As I prepare to head out with Uncle and Little Bat, I feel the anger welling inside my twin as he once again finds himself dependent on me. Chuluun who is both doctor and medicine, Mun thinks, the sarcasm coloring his thoughts. Chuluun who nurses all the sick beings in the world until each is healed.

  I am waiting, Brother, I silently respond. I am waiting for the day when things reverse, when you come and rescue me.

  I consider reminding him that the tögrög wrapped in my robe is paying for this journey. Out here, I’m the boss. He is merely the driver hired to take our small party across the country on our journey in search of an ancient light. But for the time being, I let it go. Honestly, I am not sure if our relationship can ever be anything other than what it is. Me praying for the peace of all sentient beings. My twin looking out only for himself.

  Still, I should be thankful he is with us. In two weeks’ time when we return to Ulaanbaatar, most likely he no longer has a job. On our way out of the city in the old Soviet 66 owned by his boss, Mun calls Ganzorig, asks him to explain to Tuul that something’s come up, that he is needed on this private tour. Though I do not know him, I suspect that Ganzorig is pleased not to have to drive to the ends of Mongolia and beyond. As for me, this is what life brings: two weeks on the road with my twin. It is more than a year since he disrobes.

  Then Uncle claps his hands together four times, each clap offered in a different cardinal direction. When he finishes, he pulls a pair of stylish sunglasses out of the folds in his robe and puts them on. Sometimes I see young monks adorn themselves in the trappings of the modern world, mostly items such as headphones and sneakers, their demeanors changing as they robe themselves in such things. But Uncle? With or without sunglasses he is the same man who greets us just days before in the Abbot’s study, instructing us to call him Uncle and leaving it at that though his full epithet is the Lotus of the Deep. Like my brother, he is a tulku, a reincarnation of a spiritual teacher, a light who walks the earth many times before and on and on eternally.

  Shall we, he says. Because I cannot see his eyes behind his sunglasses it takes me a moment to realize he is talking to me.

  If it please you, I say, bowing, and then the three of us set off, Little Bat in the lead. Each time Uncle addresses me, I have to fight the urge not to touch the ground at his feet with my forehead.

  Then a Door Opens

  From the air I imagine we look like a trio of red ants. At the front Little Bat drifts contentedly along like a man without a future or past. Uncle seems to float over the ground, a leaf in the summer breeze. Everywhere the landscape is barren, the dirt possibly volcanic, the top layer oxidized and darker than what lies beneath. With each step we disturb the surface, leaving a trail of pale footprints in our wake.

  We walk without speaking. For the moment there is nothing but the present moment—no past, no future, no desire. At times it feels as if you might drown in the vast blueness overhead, the way the clouds ripple like waves on the ocean. According to Övöö, in Mongolia the summer sky is so blue because the winters are so long and so dark. Övöö who lives through the destruction of the monasteries only to die just as we are coming through on the other side of history.

  After twenty minutes there is only half a kilometer more to go until we reach the butte. The air is clean and does not smell of livestock. There are no dried patties lying coiled on the ground, no animal bones bleached white as snow. We are astronauts, explorers in an endless wasteland. How quickly the earth can change, and all because of a lack of water.

  Suddenly Little Bat stops and turns. Perhaps the vast emptiness surrounding us is all the answer he needs about the prospect of finding help. He looks questioningly at Uncle. Uncle stops walking and the two men stand wordlessly facing each other in the desolateness. Something is being decided. Watching this, I have the feeling that they stand this way an innumerable number of times throughout the ages, a regent and his councillor. The first time I meet them I recognize what they are to each other. Little Bat is what we call Uncle’s heart’s disciple. The big monk appears to be decades younger than Uncle. From the short time I know him I can tell he is as resolute as a yak and beyond loyal. When the day comes and Uncle’s essence leaves his body, it is already understood that Little Bat is the one who is to search for it.

  The sun darts behind a cloud. The men’s shadows waver on the stony ground. Then a door opens. Uncle relents. Go, he says, prepare yourself. The resignation in his voice like something giving way to nature. Little Bat bows his head and turns back to where the others wait. He wears the same look of stillness on his face that he sets out with, his face as though nothing changes. Uncle and I watch him go, his shadow twice the size of ours.

  The path is steep, Uncle says, turning once again toward the ridge.

  I feel the weight of the moment on my shoulders. If something happens to this man, a light in the tree of peace would be dimmed right when we need him most. After the search party goes missing in Tibet, the signs for discovery shift here to Mongolia. Now, based on what Little Bat tells us of his dreams, of whole worlds saturated in every shade of blue—blue ice, blue gems, the deep-blue sky over the ocean at night—there is the distinct possibility that we could be out here for weeks, heading as far south as the Gobi depending on what Little Bat can remember of his dreams and the ways of the nomads. Though this journey should only last fourteen days, already it feels like a lifetime. And it must not last longer than fourteen days. We must be back in Ulaanbaatar in two weeks as Uncle, who is among the Dalai Lama’s most trusted advisers, is needed at the side of His Holiness, who is scheduled to deliver the rare Kalachakra teaching in Dharamshala at the end of the month, a teaching He offers only every few years. As He is getting on in age, this Kalachakra is rumored to be His last. We can only hope for the smoothest of travels across a land already proving that one must travel here anticipating absolutely anything to arise.

  Yes, I agree, the path is steep. Truthfully I am not sure if by the path Uncle is referring to the stony outcrop that lies before us or if he is speaking metaphorically.

  The rest of the way I concentrate on the beating of my heart, my pulse like a clock, like an icicle dripping from the branch of a tree. From time to time I scan the sky searching for scavengers circling on the winds. Scavengers are to the grasslands what the albatross is to the mariner lost at sea, namely, a harbinger of land; only in Mongolia the sight of vultures spiraling upward in the deep blue means that death lurks somewhere in the tall grass. Where there is death, there is life, a cycle at the very heart of Buddhism.

  When we reach our goal it is not as hopeless as I expect. The ridge stands a few hundred meters above the plain. A few thin shrubs cling to its sides. About halfway around on the least-punishing slope we find a small path that clearly leads somewhere. Now that it is just the two of us, I am filled with an intense calm, a flower petal floating on the surface of a lake after the waters thaw. Uncle is younger than His Holiness by almost a decade, which would put him somewhere in his early seventies. From what I am told at Yatuu Gol, Uncle’s lineage is one of the oldest. There are incarnations of the Lotus of the Deep serving at the side of the Lion Throne in one form or another since the line begins back in the mists of time. I know for him to be here now in Mongolia it must be a matter of the greatest importance.

  I try not to let my heart race at the thought that I am in the presence of such an ancient humility, a grace that cycles through the world in the service of the Ocean of Wisdom since the fifteenth century, but every time Uncle looks at me I feel such unfettered happiness, a feeling a follower of the Triple Gem should not allow himself to enjoy for fear it clouds the mind.

  I take a deep breath and fill my lungs with emptiness. The sunlight glittering all around us as if reflecting on water.

  We Vow Not to Watch an Army Leave for Combat

  Judging from the numerous spots where brush obscures the path, it is a long time since anyone walks this trail. Quickly Uncle moves forward. Somehow he intuits which rock can bear his weight, which rolls at the slightest touch. I pull my shawl up over my head. Considering I come from a line of nomads, I am now quite pale from hours spent poring over ancient prayer books in the monastery library, some of them so old they are handwritten on the smooth shoulder bones of sheep. It is difficult to believe that this very fall, when summer is over, I am to take my final vows, pledging myself to the Dharma forever. Among the additional vows monks pledge beyond the ones we initially take as novitiates, we vow not to watch an army leave for combat. We vow not to leave a mattress or a chair outside without arranging it suitably. Many of our vows are mundane promises that simply give order to everyday life. And after I am ordained, I intend to begin to study for my doctorate, a degree different from the one awarded in the west and which confers on the recipient the title of geshe, virtuous friend. In the Gelug tradition, the course of study to become a geshe can take anywhere from twelve to forty years.

  Though a student like the rest of us at Yatuu Gol, at the age of eight, Mun goes through the ceremony formally naming him the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness. Instantly he becomes an ordained monk. Because we believe Precious Ones are reincarnations, there is no need for them to live as novices.