Inviting the Lama
Khema’s own village doctors returned several days after the ritualists with news that many with the naga illness from the next village had recovered well, although a few lives were lost. A well known lama is passing through the region, he stopped in that village to perform purifications using khrus (sacred water) for the families of the deceased. Khrus is used ceremoniously as a funerary rite to purify pollutants. Considering the naga spirit’s rage at the pollution of the well, it was felt that this purification method was most necessary. It is very lucky that the lama had been nearby and had arrived just on time for the funerals. After the devastation of the storm and the naga illness, the lama’s very presence there and purifying ceremony performed by him is very auspicious. The deceased are sure to pass into a happy reincarnation.
Khema’s village is now abuzz with talk of the lama potentially visiting them as well. The village’s most adept scholars have bee recruited to draft a formal invitation for the lama. Such an invitation must be precisely scripted in traditional, poetic language in order for it to be accepted. It is also desirable for the invitation to be handwritten using beautiful calligraphy, so the committee must hire the scholar with the most developed hand for that task. The whole village needs to come together to arrange for other offerings as well. There are initiatives to pool gold, food and items like prayer scarves as offerings for this lama’s visit. As monastics do not possess many belongings, Khema does not have much to offer the drive. She would love for the town to be blessed with a visit from the lama though, so she and the other nuns have harvested as much food as possible from the nunnery garden and are planning to add their alms from this morning’s alms-route. The nuns’ donation will be meager, but if everyone in the town pulls together then there should be more than enough for ceremonies and for celebrations of the lama’s visit. The nuns have all agreed that going hungry for a couple of days is a small sacrifice to make for having such merit bestowed upon the entire village.
If the lama accepts the invitation, he will be hosted at the monastery. Khema plans to head there after the nuns’ alms-route with the donations from the other nuns and then to help start the preparations that are sure to be already underway. There will be a couple of monks preparing a mandala of coloured sand and chalk, Khema will help to collect the materials needed from the various donors around town. The chalk needs to be filed down to a fine powder through a funnel onto a tray which will contain the finished mandala. All of these items will be donated by some of the local artists. Khema will be given their names and visit their homes, then bring the items back to the monks and the monastery. There will also most likely be a fire assembled outside in the monastery courtyard in which torma (figures made of a flour and butter mixture, dyed or painted) will be ritually burned in a blessing ceremony. Khema will also retreive the flour and butter from residents, and the paints and dyes from artists to deliver to the monks who will build the torma at the monastery. After that Khema will have to collect the wood for the fire, but it will be the job of one of the monks to build the fire.
Khema and many of the other monastics have interpreted the hailstorm as a result of bad karma from the population in the entire region. For the healers to visit the next village and treat the naga illness was not only in an effort to keep the illness from spreading to their own town, but also a gesture of goodwill to their neighbours in the hopes of also remedying some of the bad karma. Many believe that it is not enough, they must do more to reverse their karma. It is certain that a visit from this lama and receiving the blessings he can bestow will set the village on the correct karmic path. Those who witnessed the force of the naga illness know that that is just a small glimpse of what beings experience in the hell realms. They want nothing more than to gain the proper merit to avoid such bad karma to be reincarnated in such a realm. This human life is a rare opportunity to make progress in samsara (the cycle of birth, death and rebirth) toward nirvana (the cessation of samsara).
Buddha nature is said to be present in all sentient beings. The Buddha himself is accomplished to the highest degree and because of that he is a symbol to all Buddhists of how they should practice the dharma (teachings on how to deal with the reality human suffering). Those who aspire to learn and practice the dharma should find a teacher or spiritual friend to guide them. A skilled teacher will understand the student’s circumstances and therefore know how to teach to that student individually in a way that will be clear to him or her. The students job is to trust the teacher to reveal the true teachings of the Buddha and to follow him or her, always with the effort of imitating their actions and words in order for those actions and words to become his or her own. No practice is seen as belonging to any one individual. All actions that reflect the teachings of the Buddha are considered to be public domain and accessible to all. An authentic teacher will subdue the mind of the disci0ple and illuminate them with the dharma. That is what Khema Samavati and the other monastics and villagers hope to gain from the lama’s visit if he accepts the invitation.
