Blog 8 — After Mustang
After staying at Mustang for a long time I’m finally back home. We had a lot of time to intricately look through the caves. Our dear friend Shelby got terribly hurt when she fell off of the cliff and broke her back; we had to wait for her to heal to go back. We were very lucky to have a very talented medicine man with us, without Chogyam this process of healing would have been much harder and longer. Since I didn’t climb to the caves, I went back into the forest where Becky took over the smoke offering that was kept lit at all times to purify the way of our climbers. On my trips to the forest I gathered the herbs that the medicine factory had asked for and also re-upped Chogyam’s stash (since it was being used). When Shelby got better we packed the yaks up with the scriptures that were found in the caves so that the more heavy-duty carrying could be done easier; I was happy I brought my yaks along. It was a longer journey home than it was going to Mustang because of the things we needed to carry back, as well as trying to accommodate our friend Shelby.
When we got back we handed the scriptures we found in the cave to the scholars to translate in order for the rest of the village to have access to these pieces of information. I was very excited to find out what these scriptures were about. Before I left for Mustang I had a growing hunger for information and had been going to the monastery and going through books and learning ritual practices and trying to understand better the beliefs and worldview of Buddhism. I am a person interested in Moksha, from Samsara, however I never felt as though I had the knowledge to go the path of liberation. After I acquire more knowledge on how to walk on the path of enlightenment, it is essentially what I intend to practice. As days pass, I realize that the importance I put on worldly experiences has deteriorated. Instead, I put greater importance in ritual than I do to my craft, building.
Finally word came from the scholars that the texts we had brought back were deciphered. We had found very valuable scriptures that consisted of many different things. This collection of new information consisted of historical records of our village, a travelogue describing pilgrimage to a sacred site, and detailed texts on some practices and rituals.
One of the most valuable pieces of information that we found was the history of our village; we learned that there is a cairn of the village that is in ruins and the local deity was disrespected by our not taking good care of our own sacred place. A cairn is used to localize the material presence of the metaphysical of the enlightened one’s spirit or ideas. It is a product of the buddha or the bodhisattva who occupies the material world and the cairn becomes, for all intents and purposes, the personification of the deity. According to the text the cairn was dedicated to the deity Amitayus, deity of good fortune, light and longevity. It all fit like puzzle pieces in my mind; that’s why there were terrible misfortunes happening to our peaceful village like the hailstorm, and the newly built hospital being thought to be haunted. It was like the bad karma that was left to us from our descendants was catching up to and affecting us because we weren’t doing anything as a village to activate the sacred space that our former generation had left in ruins. Lucky for us some of the texts that were discovered would be very beneficial and effective for the activation of the cairn, like the Smoke purification and Wind-Horse rituals that were described in detail.
I had felt very guilty about what had happened to Shelby, and so I read through the rituals of purification that were discovered, thinking that I didn’t do it in the correct way and that was the reason for her disastrous accident. I did notice while reading, however, that I had made mistakes during the smoke purification ritual that I performed. I was lacking the intense concentration needed for it to effectively work. This brought my spirits down; I was partially responsible for what happened to poor Shelby.
| had to get more spiritually evolved and knowledgeable in ritual practice. I had the information for the rituals that I needed to perfect, all there was left for me to do is to practice with mindfulness. One of the other texts that were discovered caught my attention, it was named The Hidden Valley of Sikkim’ . It was some sort of guide book, travelogue about finding one of Padmasambhava’s hidden valleys, Sbal Yul ‘Bras Mo Ljongs. It explains that Padmasambhava because of his concern about the noble teachings of the Buddha would fade away and that lawless, disruptive and evil ways will take over, he blesses four lands in the four directions of Tibet. If one is lucky enough to get there, the holy energy within the land affects them and leaves imprints spiritually.
After I came back from the cave expedition, I saw things differently. I didn’t want to be a builder that worked at a cost, living the same repetitive, redundant life. I realized that most of the things in my house were unnecessary, not necessity. I had lived off necessity on the expedition and I was more at peace then I ever was in my own home. The home built and designed to accommodate my comfort, it was not right, I wanted all those STUFF thats why I had them. Why did they look so strange to me now?
I wanted answers, I went to one of the Nuns when I was dropping the text back off at the new library, she gave me the advice of taking another journey to discover more about myself and internal spirituality. Just as i was leaving the library, I see my neighbor Becky, she was there because she was memorizing and practicing the new texts found on ritual for going on another expedition to Sbal Yul ‘Bras Mo Ljongs. What I had just read about! This couldn’t be a coincidence. However she told me that the group was leaving in a few days, there was no way I was going to be ready. Yes, the “guide”-Hidden Valleys of Sikkim, explained; various ways and skills to overcome obstacles that might come up along the way, how to settle once you’ve arrived, the practices that have to be upheld in this sacred space and most importantly how to make offerings to the deities and guardian spirits of the land.
There was much to learn before I would embark on a journey to sacred lands.
Im going to do my research, try to perfect my ritual abilities and most importantly disconnect myself from materialist desires of comfort and pleasure. Time came for the second expedition to launch and head out to find this land that is described as extremely beautiful and amazingly profound. While watching the group fellow villagers walking away together, it suddenly clicked! I was not going to go on a journey, rather a pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is significantly prevalent in Tibetan Buddhism. People take pilgrimages for a number of reasons like, praying for something specific, to accumulate merit, cleansing yourself from prior negative karma and it involves spiritual connection with the dweller deities and landscape itself. Through the profoundness of the connection ones internal spirituality can develop. I wanted to experience this alone, free from surrounding influence. This was what I needed to do to figure more about myself, to answer my questions about this worldly experiences and their importance. Everything that used to be important are blurry to me now, like it was an illusion that is slowly evaporating, at the same time I have never seen things ever so clearer. This life is not for me, I do not want anymore material possessions to worry about that don’t need to begin with and desires to make things different then what they really are. My cravings have become what holds me down and makes me suffer. Its time for change!
