ÍNDIA

Himachal Pradesh - Odder - Demchog

A fome e sede, os perigos das torrentes velozes e das gélidas tempestades de neve, a dor de contorcer-se debaixo de pesados fardos, a ansiedade de deambular por regiões selvagens sem caminhos, a exaustão e as lacerações, todos os problemas e sofrimentos que eu mesmo agora atravessei, pareceram poeira que foi arrastada ao lavar e purificada pelas águas espirituais do lago; e assim atingi o plano espiritual do Não-Ego, juntamente com este cenário que mostrava a sua Realidade Própria.

Ekai Kawaguchi, circa 1900, in “A mountain in Tibet” by Charles Allen

From time to time God causes men to be born – and thou art one of them – who have a lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news – today it may be of a far-off thing, tomorrow of some hidden mountain...

Rudyard Kipling in “Kim”

Depois do vento parar, vejo uma flor cair. Por causa do pássaro que canta, encontrei a calma da montanha.

Poema Zen in “Zen Mind, Beginner´s Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki

A noite nunca foi tão escura, a chuva tão pesada nos nossos ombros e o medo tão fortemente perturbador. Assim, a escuridão cobre a nossa lucidez, os nossos passos desviam-se do caminho, podemos rezar pelas nossas almas perante a omnipotência da Natureza e a magnificência de Deus, nunca nos sentímos tão fracos nesta noite negra. Quando a luz do dia desvanecia, demónios podiam ser vistos no pátio, fitando-nos, demónios budistas coloridos como nas pinturas tibetanas. Milhares de fantasmas assombram a nossa vista, com um olho maléfico e dentes compridos e afiados, assustando a nossa frágil racionalidade.

Vi Demchog caminhar de mão dada com a loucura humana.



Tenzin impressionava-se com esta imagem e costumava olhar para mim com uma curiosa cara espantada, ela também estava a assustar-se.

A tempestade, ou mais exactamente a sucessão de tempestades, durou a semana toda, com chuvas pesadas e ventos fortes, a luz ia abaixo constantemente, durante longos períodos de tempo intermináveis. Durante estas alturas, estávamos completamente à mercê da natureza. Senti que quase nada nos podia proteger contra as forças da natureza. Imagino viagens de barco nos tempos antigos, imagino viver na escuridão total. As monjas tinham um armazém de velas que elas distribuíam em tais ocasiões.

Ao fim da tarde, podíamos ouvir estranhos gritos de animais, que se assemelhavam a risos humanos e que me lembravam hienas ou cães loucos. A princípio, estava impressionado com estes gritos estranhos, soavam como gritos humanos que vinham dos campos vizinhos, mas não conseguia localizar donde exactamente. Eram tão humanos que estava a dar-lhes bastante atenção. Em realidade, falaram-me mais tarde, de cães selvagem ou uma espécie de raposa como aquelas que eu avistei no pátio, assustadas comigo, os olhos brilhantes, reflectindo o projector que tinham instalado no piso de cima, dando a impressão de uma má imagem, de muito má qualidade.

Uma semana de chuvas pesadas e temporais, a luz foi cortada uma infinidade de vezes, acaba-se por viver no escuro, à luz da vela. Uma noite, a noite em que foi visto na escuridão, Demchog, a divindade irada de cor preta com muitos braços, e um colar de crânios humanos à volta do pescoço, isso depois de uma das minhas aulas, uma das minhas mais novas alunas ter desmaiado, de ter desfalecido no chão e daí num profundo coma, rasgado por uma espécie de crises epilépticas ou histéricas, possuída pelos seus próprios demónios. Inconsciente durante vários dias, ela esteve acordada apenas umas horas, o coma perturbado pelas estranhas convulsões, erguendo o tronco na cama. Gritava pela mãe, amarrava o estômago e sofria terríveis dores tanto físicas como espirituais.

No hospital de Dharamshala, disseram às Chomos de que ela sofria do coração, depois de longamente examinada. Penso que não encontraram explicação nenhuma para o sofrimento dela.



Como ela agarrava o estômago ou mais precisamente o espaço debaixo do esterno, onde a caixa torácica começa, isto com ambas as mãos, podia-se pensar que um dos chacras estava desequilibrado. Algo relacionado com um trauma passado. Viria a ser verdade, visto que me disseram mais tarde que viu a mãe morrer em criança.

Ela mantinha-se deitada na cama, rodeada pelas outras monjas, elas recitavam preces enquanto as amigas mais próximas, seguravam nela e tentavam acalmá-la quando erguia a parte superior do corpo. Isto durou uns tempos até se tornar “usual”, quero dizer, levá-la ao hospital durante as piores crises e trazê-la de volta para o instituto quando a medicina não conseguia encontrar algum remédio. Elas estavam a pensar trazer um lama de alto nível, um destes eruditos em ciência tibetana ou magia, como eles são todos depois de uma certa idade, mas não o fizeram, não sei porque razão.

Thubten veio às minhas aulas hoje, pela primeira vez desde os seus ataques. Ela parecia pálida e terrivelmente mal mas está a recuperar.

INDIA

Himachal Pradesh - Odder - Demchog

The hunger and thirst, the perils of dashing streams and freezing blizzard, the pain of writhing under heavy burdens, the anxiety of wandering over trackless wilds, the exhaustion and the lacerations, all the troubles and sufferings I had just come through, seemed like dust which was washed away and purified by the spiritual waters of the lake; and thus I attained to the spiritual plane of Non-Ego, together with this scenery showing its Own-Reality.

Ekai Kawaguchi, circa 1900, in “A mountain in Tibet” by Charles Allen

From time to time God causes men to be born – and thou art one of them – who have a lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news – today it may be of a far-off thing, tomorrow of some hidden mountain...

Rudyard Kipling in “Kim”

After the wind stops I see a flower falling. Because of the singing bird I found mountain calmness.

Zen Poem in “Zen Mind, Beginner´s Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki

Night has never been so dark, rain so heavy on our shoulders and fear so strongly troubling. Thus darkness covers our lucidity, our footsteps loose astray, we may pray for our souls before nature´s omnipotence and God´s magnificence, we have never felt so weak in this black night. When daylight vanished demons could seen walking in the yard, staring at us, Buddhist demons coloured as in Tibetan paintings. Thousands of ghosts haunting our sight with their evil eye and sharp long teeth frightening our fragile racionality.

May us be strong as we await for the dawn´s rising sun.

I saw Demchog walking hand-in-hand with human madness.



Tenzin was impressed by this image and used to look at me with an astonished curious face, she also was getting scared.

The storm or more exactly the succession of storms lasted an entire week, with heavy showers and strong winds; the light was going off continuously, during endlessly long periods of time. During those times, we were completely surrendered to nature. I felt that not much could protect us against wilderness. I wonder about ship journeys in old times, about living in total darkness. The nuns had a stock of candles for such occasions that they distributed.

We could ear strange howlings at the end of the afternoon like human laughs, something that reminded me hienas or mad dogs. At the begining I was impressed by those weird screams, they sounded like human screams coming from the nearby fields but I could not picture exactly where from. They were so human that I was giving them a lot of attention. In fact I was told later of wild dogs or some sort of fox like the ones I saw in the yard scared at me, they eyes shinning, reflecting the spotlight giving the impression of a really bad picture.

One week of heavy shower rain and storms, the light was cut off a lot of times. One night, the night Demchog was seen in the dark, after one my class one of the youngest nuns fainted, fell on the floor and then into a deep coma shaken by some kind of unconscious epileptic or hysteric crises, possessed by her own demons. Inconscious for four days, she has been awake for only a few hours, her coma shaked by those strange convulsions, rising her trunk on the bed, screaming for her mother and grapping her stomach suffering terrible physical and spiritual pains.



At the Indian hospital in Dharamshala the Chomos were told that she was suffering from the heart, after a long examination. I think they hadn´t found any explanation for her trouble.

As she grapped her stomach or more exactly the space below the sternum were the rib cage goes down, that with both hands, I could think it was one of the chakras that was out of order. Something related with a past trauma. It came to be true, they told me later that she saw her mother dying as a child.

She was lying in bed surrounded by other nuns, they were recitating prayers while her most closed mates were holding her, trying to calm her when she was arising the upperbody. This continued for a while until it became "usual", I mean taking her to the hospital in her worse crises and bringing her back to the Institute when Medecine couldn´t find any remedy. They were thinking of bringing a high Lama to see her, one of those scholars in Tibetan science or magic as they all are after a certain age, but they did not, I know not the reason.

Thubten went to my classes today for the first time since her attacks. She looked pale and rather terrible, but she is recovering.

INDIA

Odder - Ornithology

I arrived at dawn at Dharamshala after traveling all night from New Delhy, there was an Indian saddhu sat on a bench with a few women in colored saris nearby. He nodded his head, up and down, looking at me with a candid smile as if he was waiting for me, as if he always knew me. I bowed slightly my head as an answer to his greeting. A lot of birds were fooling around making a hell of a noise in the station in this unreal and hazy ambience of that new misty dawn. I still cherish the strong taste of that something very new. I suppose he knew me from a past incarnation.

Lower Dharamsala is mainly a single road spreading across a few miles at 2000m high in a quite unordered and scattered manner, typical of these Asian mountain settlements. Contrary to the upper part of the town, known as MacLeod Ganj, where lie the seat of the Dalay Lama and the Tibetan government in exile, Little Lassa as they call it, it is not as "vivid" as the Tibetan community and its freaky western followers and admirers.



At Lower Dharamshala, the local community is more normal, that is Indian and Hindu, and tens of Kashmiri coolies, big bearded tough Muslim fellows from the high places of North India, dressed up in thick brown tunics and with ropes around the chest, looking like middle age knights doing slave work, carrying heavy goods on their backs through the streets.

There live local Indian Hindus with red bindus between their eyes and all those gods above, endlessly watching us with all their eyes, faces and arms, though they are mainly Shivaists like most in the region. On the way out of the town to Mac Leod, there is a tiny Kali-Matai temple with paintings of a black goddess on the rocks amazingly withstanding from the other gods. The Baba or Lord of the place showed me the interior of the shrine with a lot of careful recommendations in the local dialect as no word in English could be spoken. I nonetheless, understood that no foreigners were allowed to walk these kind of premises, but they always end up letting you take a look, in such a way that the forbidden thing only worsen to your curious thirst. I usually don't insist in such cases, that's probably why they always open the doors.

Where the Indian plain dies to give birth to the Himalayas, the Buddhist Institute stands at the foot of the 4000m high Dauladhaur, a huge wall of rock just rising behind small hills. From Dharamshala, it lies down the Kangra valley, and at Garoh the way turns left to catch later the main road to Kangra.
Odder is just a tiny village lost in the foothills, with two or three very basic shops and a tea stall along the road. It’s not on Indian maps, not on western maps, not on any map at all. Just somewhere between Dharamshala and Kangra, hiding in some black Kangra tea garden.



At the time I got there, I witnessed a fight; two men were holding another one in what I thought to be a robbery case.
Despite this unusual situation I’ve found the "Tibeti Mandir" after asking to one of the men, and underneath banana trees and other big trees, a small mahogany community was watching time like they’ve always done and will always do.

After a few days I was given my own room with views from the back to the nearby fields, woods and the Dhauladhaur Mountains, and to the front to a unique farm owned by an Indian family. By the way, they used to boost up their miserable stereo at 4, 5 in the morning with massala Indian disco, making what I supposed were wild parties before going to work in the fields. The nuns used to love that, it happened to cheer up they early morning prayers.

They were having their annual philosophy exams which lasted for a few weeks and would postpone the start of my classes. I was suddenly and brutally confronted with a new concept for me, the important law of non-acting, not to undervalue in such Buddhists circles; it’s the key of all logical understanding. So patience is recommended.



Subdued by all the natural beauty of the scenery and the mahogany red robes, I stood three days in a kind of limbo, "beatus" under the Bo tree before I started to think again, then I began to assimilate the regular day life style of the place.

So because of the exams, I was given some spare time I began to occupy with what would become one of my favorite things, sitting sessions on the verandah. Nothing really important just smoking Indian beedees and admiring all the wild life I was offered. Hordes of hundreds green parrots were seen flying around in a restless and frantic way above us and the fields shouting like young kids in the school yard, over our heads and in the trees, restless colors of moving feathers in the sun setting sky. Another bird species I couldn't identify could be seen fooling around also in huge numbers, heavier in its flight and with a yellow circle around the eyes. I came to see a few months later what I think to be a bird of Paradise above the tea stall, with a fancy 50 cm long white feathered tale.

The Tibetan Philosophy teacher was living in the room next to mine. He was a fifty, sixty years old monk exiled from Tibet, with a rather nice look. The man turned to have a quite powerful way of communicating to me in strange mental manifestations since he couldn’t hold a single word of English. He was to become what I ironically called "my conscience" as his words occupied my thoughts. He and Sonam would be powerful talking minds, these two persons where to be powerful magicians like the Tibetan tradition is full of, in the shamanic central asian way where it is branched from.

"This is your life force you´re staring at and it´s a good one".

A bird came into my room through the open morning door and stood hanging above it for a while fixing me with his funny face and he told me: "this is your life force" when I was looking at the trees and the green parrots. He also said "this is your happiness" when I was dazzled by the beauty of such scenery. He sang to me his mocking tune while hanging on the door, I looked at him and he was a Tibetan monk.