Aloka the Peace Dog, recovering well from surgery to repair an old injury from when he was a stray in India, was able to join his pack today for awhile before returning to rehab. I was grateful to see video of this joyful, tail-wagging, tearful reunion this morning, and also grateful to see that the Walk for Peace is finally showing up here and there on national newscasts.
Speaking of monks, let me tell you the story of the “awful little monks.” This happened about twenty-six and a half years ago. There’s a wealthy man here who sponsors semi-regular visits by a group of Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling monastery. Every few years since I moved here they come to the valley and offer teachings, home blessings, the occasional butter sculpture demonstration, or a sand mandala ritual for the wellbeing of the community.
Each year there are different monks in the touring group, who travel the country as cultural and spiritual ambassadors, similar to the Walk for Peace monks though not on foot. In each town they are fed and housed by community members and offer teachings and blessings. So the monks in this series of photographs are not the “awful little monks,” a judgy nickname I gave a different group, and maybe you’ll forgive me after you hear the story.
The sand mandala ritual takes days or even weeks to complete. I’ve had the good fortune to attend a few over the years, and dug up some photos today from one ritual where I attended the opening ceremony and initial laying out of the table, then came again a few days later, and also made it to the closing ceremony.
On the year in question the monks did something a little different. They offered personal consultations with either a Tibetan medicine group, or a Tibetan astrology group. Ever since my early twenties I’ve longed for the opportunity to consult with a Tibetan medical practitioner, after a friend told his tale of the little yellow pills that saved his life. Right before leaving Nepal he felt ill, and a Tibetan doctor gave him a packet of little yellow pills. Take one three times a day and you will be fine. He was pretty sure he could make it home and see a real doctor, so he tucked them in a pocket and didn’t take any. By the time he arrived in London he was delirious, was taken off the plane to hospital, and diagnosed with yellow fever. He heard them say it was touch and go. Somehow he managed to find the yellow pills in his clothes and he started taking them. He improved immediately. “You’ve made a miracle recovery,” the doctors said.
I wanted some medical magic like that. But on an impulse I regret to this day, I chose to meet the astrology group. I don’t recall exactly what means they used, but after getting my birth date and perhaps location, and consulting something somehow, they placidly announced in broken English, “Lifespan twenty-seven.”
“WHAT?!” I screeched. “Twenty-seven years to live?!”
“Present lifestyle,” they calmly replied. I instantly wished I could leave the table and go upstairs where the Tibetan medicine group was, but I was too polite, or too shocked, to move. After that they told me a bunch of other things, including that Tuesday was my auspicious day for spiritual practice, but I didn’t retain much more.
As I walked to my car I met Liz who was glowing from her reading. I just couldn’t. “They told me I have twenty-seven years left to live!” I whined. “Oh they told me that too!” she said cheerfully. “Yeah, but you’re already, what, sixty-four?” I was forty. Liz celebrated her ninetieth birthday last year. I’ll be watching her…
So today I celebrated sixty-seven. It’s true that I’ve turned my lifestyle around about a hundred and eighty degrees, and that a Ute shaman had told me years before the monks’ prognostication that I will live to be eighty-eight, so I’m not terribly worried. But for the past twenty-seven years the words of those awful little monks have wormed their way into my psyche like a brain-eating parasite.
A few years ago, I finally mentioned this nagging anxiety to someone involved in facilitating that visit. She was tremendously reassuring. “Oh they said that to everyone!” she laughed. “A lot of people have complained about that.”
So what was their point? Were they just messing with us for fun? Or were they trying to scare us into a healthy transformation? Or… did they tell everyone that because this is the year that the End Times truly come, through divine intervention, collective karma, or the tantrums of a madman, and we’ll all be dead by January 15, 2027? That’s feeling more and more possible. Any which way, I don’t like it, I don’t feel it was appropriate, and it’s haunted me for nearly a third of my life. Yes, I am highly sensitive and tragically susceptible. Oh well. I share this story with you so that if I survive until my sixty-eighth birthday you’ll better understand my glee, and if I do not live through this year you may rethink your world view and your lifestyle.
The sand mandala is an exquisite and ephemeral art form. The images vary according to the particular intention of the blessing or lesson it invokes, but the process is always this meditative creation of a potent symbol from vibrantly colored sand, meticulously laid down a few grains at a time. The act of its creation is sacred. The necessary concentration and cooperation cultivate a meditative focus. It is absolutely mesmerizing to watch. Its overarching lesson is Impermanence.
On the Buddhist path, we are invited to learn something from everything that happens in our life. (Yes, Marion, everything always IS a lesson.) Because everything contains the opportunity to learn, we are encouraged to be grateful for everything that happens, so that we may grow in understanding and progress in our journey to awakening. I’ve learned the lesson of Impermanence over and over and over again, and no matter how many times I learn it in lessons big and small, it can still catch me off guard. It’s possible that I’m just now comprehending the gift those awful little monks gave me with their shocking pronouncement, just this minute finding gratitude for their influence in turning my life around, just this second letting go of that regret.
On the final day of the ceremony, the sand mandala is reverently swept to the center of the circle. Some of the sand is gathered in tiny plastic envelopes and given to anyone there who wants one. The rest of the sand is returned to the earth. At this particular ceremony, the sand was carried in a small urn by the monks, followed in procession by many of us from the Creamery Arts Center several blocks through town to the bank of the North Fork River, where it was gently poured into the river.
All things arise, exist for a time, and cease to exist. This is the truth of Impermanence. Death is certain, time of death uncertain. If I should cease to exist in this my sixty-eighth turn around the sun, I will pass on with a grateful heart for all the gifts and all the lessons that filled this life, as light and vibrant as colored sand slipping back into the flow.