Beyond The Sky And The Earth Part 13

"I know," he says automatically.

He is still close enough to kiss, and for a second, I think we will. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a couple watching us curiously. "Tshew.a.n.g, people are looking at us."

"I don't care."

"Then you have no more sense than a-a goose," I say helplessly.

He laughs. I don't know if I am thrilled or alarmed by his audacity.

"Let's go find Dini," I say, standing up. He walks with me across the floor to where Dini is sitting on a crate, trying to convince the DJ to change the music. "Thanks, Tshew.a.n.g," I say again. I dare not look at him.

"No, thank you, you, miss." miss."

The next day, I walk the nineteen kilometers into Tas.h.i.+gang, praying fervently that Lorna or Leon will be in for the weekend. I have to talk to them about this. It has gone too far, I know that, and yet my strongest regret is that I didn't let it go farther. Tas.h.i.+gang is humid, and the sky is clotted with heavy grey cloud; the guest house smells of damp and insecticide, and there is no water. I have to haul buckets from the tap across the street for a bath and then I drink beer in the Puen Soom. Karma, the proprietor, stands at the door, watching the rain fall. "Today your friends not coming," he says. "Too much rain maybe."

The next morning I shoot out of bed, woken by a sound that I quickly identify as screaming. Leaping to the window, I see a wall of water and mud come roaring down the mountain, swallowing the bridge, uprooting trees, was.h.i.+ng away latrines along the riverbank. Shopkeepers are fleeing up the hillside with their children and wooden cash boxes under their arms. I rush out, but the flood is already subsiding into a thick brown torrent. On the steps of a shop overlooking the river, a tearful mother is alternately scolding and kissing her drenched children. It is still raining, and I walk through mud and debris to the riverbank to watch the water churning mud and roots and leaves. Four students from the junior high school join me, pointing out the place where the barbershop used to be, now a wet muddy patch.

"Lucky the barber was out having tea," one says. They tell me that this is the second of three floods predicted by a lama. The first flood happened before they were born, in the 1950s, and wiped out the lower bazaar. After that, a different lama came and performed a puja to protect the town. "See, miss, that picture?" They point to the eaves of a shop roof, under which a painting of Guru Rimpoche has been placed so that it faces the river. "The lama was putting that picture and there was no flood. But last year that lama died, and now just see, the flood again has come."

"This time no one was lost," one of them adds. "But next time will be very bad, the lama was telling like that."

I return to Kanglung, determined to end this thing with Tshew.a.n.g. The more I think about it, the more disturbed I am. I realize I am actually angry, and on the long, sweaty walk uphill to the college, I try to figure out why. He took me by surprise, for one thing, speaking my secret thoughts when I had just decided he hadn't a clue what they were. I am angry at myself for misjudging him, for thinking him naive. I am also afraid. He has brought the thing between us into the open, moving it from the realm of hopeful fantasy into the real world of decisions and consequences. All along I have been longing to know his feelings and now, when he has made them perfectly clear, I want to grab him and shake him and tell him, "It is not up to me!" I do not want it to be up to me. Yes: there is a powerful attraction and an understanding between us. But: he is a student, I am a lecturer. Real lecturers do not etc., etc. I have already made one mistake, although it seems insignificant in comparison to this. With the anonymous encounter at the beginning of the year, I put my reputation at risk, but my heart was not even remotely involved. With this relations.h.i.+p, I have no idea where my heart would take me.

Belief

At Pala's one morning for breakfast, I watch Amala throw buckets of water at the pack of snarling dogs that has made its home outside her kitchen. "What to do with them," she says. "Always fighting and all night barking."

Dogs are a problem all over Bhutan, especially in towns, wherever there are inst.i.tutions with kitchens-schools and hospitals and army camps. The packs belong to no one and to everyone. It would be a sin in Buddhism to round them all up and kill them, since all sentient beings are considered sacred, even these horrid, diseased, deformed dogs.

"Now I will do something," Amala says grimly.

Three days later, I look up from my lunch to see her talking earnestly to a truck driver. He nods and begins rounding up the dogs, using jute sacks to pick them up and toss them, yelping and howling, into the back of his truck. When all the dogs are in, Amala hands him two hundred ngultrum, and he drives off.

"Where's he taking them?" I ask.

"Wamrong," she says.

"Why Wamrong?"

"Too far for them to walk back." She smiles into her tea.

But the next day, the truck returns. The driver leaps out and unlatches the back door. The dogs pour out, still yelping and howling, and settle themselves in front of Amala's kitchen. The driver is smiling broadly; he can hardly believe his luck. The good merchants of Wamrong gave him another two hundred rupees to take all the dogs back.

I am spending more time with Amala, who is a fountain of stories and local histories. She tells me about pows, pows, people who can go visit your relatives in the afterlife, and oracles who speak through a chosen person. Amala tells me about her sister, Sonam, who returned home after many years in the West, bringing with her an anthropologist who wanted to see an oracle in action. They went to the family temple in Sakteng, where the man who could summon the oracle was called. He slumped to the floor in a trance and rose as the oracle took possession, speaking in a stern and unearthly voice. The oracle would not answer the anthropologist's questions because she was of a different faith, but had a few things to say to Sonam, accusing her of staying away from home too long and neglecting her father's temple. The oracle picked up a sword and swung it around wildly, and Sonam was terrified. Finally, it told her to throw a ceremonial white scarf around the central statue at the altar. The way the scarf fell would determine her fate. Sonam threw the scarf, which landed properly, and the oracle was placated. people who can go visit your relatives in the afterlife, and oracles who speak through a chosen person. Amala tells me about her sister, Sonam, who returned home after many years in the West, bringing with her an anthropologist who wanted to see an oracle in action. They went to the family temple in Sakteng, where the man who could summon the oracle was called. He slumped to the floor in a trance and rose as the oracle took possession, speaking in a stern and unearthly voice. The oracle would not answer the anthropologist's questions because she was of a different faith, but had a few things to say to Sonam, accusing her of staying away from home too long and neglecting her father's temple. The oracle picked up a sword and swung it around wildly, and Sonam was terrified. Finally, it told her to throw a ceremonial white scarf around the central statue at the altar. The way the scarf fell would determine her fate. Sonam threw the scarf, which landed properly, and the oracle was placated.

Amala is surprised that I believe in the oracle. "Foreign peoples is only believing if they see with their own eyes," she says. "Not seeing, then not believing."

"But Amala, lots of people in the West believe in things they can't see," I say. "People believe in G.o.d, and ghosts, and theories that no one can prove."

"But not in Bhutanese things," she says. "They are only believing in their own things they can't see."

I think of the European woman I met having lunch here some time ago. She had been in Bhutan for three months with an international aid agency. "The Bhutanese are so superst.i.tious, don't you find?" she had asked me. "Everything happens because of ghosts or demons."

"But Christianity has the Holy Ghost," I argued. "And the Devil."

"That's different," she said. She didn't explain how. "I really feel sorry for them. So much of their faith is based on fear."

"At least in Buddhism, h.e.l.l is not forever," I countered. "I can't think of anything more frightening than the idea of eternal h.e.l.l after only one lifetime." The woman ended the conversation by paying for her lunch and leaving. I hadn't meant to insult her faith. I wanted only to point out what Amala has just put so succinctly. Being in Bhutan has shown me how strong this tendency is, to think that what we believe is real and valid and what everyone else believes is fearful nonsense and superst.i.tion.

I have finished most of the Buddhist books from the library, moving from basic texts to esoteric writings such as The Tibetan Book of Great Liberation The Tibetan Book of Great Liberation and back again. The first sermon of the Buddha still stuns me with its clarity; I read it and feel the world grow still and quiet around me. I read teachings on meditation and wisdom, keeping in mind Nima's summation that belief without practice is useless. Buddhist practice offers systematic tools for anyone to work out their own salvation. Here, the Buddha said, you've got your mind, the source of all your problems, but also the source of your liberation. Use it. Look at your life. Figure it out. and back again. The first sermon of the Buddha still stuns me with its clarity; I read it and feel the world grow still and quiet around me. I read teachings on meditation and wisdom, keeping in mind Nima's summation that belief without practice is useless. Buddhist practice offers systematic tools for anyone to work out their own salvation. Here, the Buddha said, you've got your mind, the source of all your problems, but also the source of your liberation. Use it. Look at your life. Figure it out.

The teachings on compa.s.sion are particularly important to daily practice. Compa.s.sion grows out of the recognition that all sentient beings-friends, enemies, complete strangers-want the same thing. We all want to be happy, and yet again and again, we act in ways which bring suffering to ourselves, and to others, and through others back to ourselves. Seeing through the superficial differences to this core of sameness is the great equalizer, stripping away the mask of unique personal ident.i.ty and revealing us one and all as simple, wanting, fearful, hopeful, bewildered beings. It is an enormous daily mental challenge to see Mr. Matthew not as my enemy but simply as my neighbor, wanting exactly what I want, and being mistaken, just like me, about how to get it.

According to Buddhism, if someone insults or hurts you, you should see their behavior as an opportunity to learn about the nature of your pride and attachment. Buddhism demands that you not only love your enemy, but see him or her as your greatest teacher. Instead of despising Mr. Matthew, I could be using each encounter with him to examine my ego and break down my own arrogance.

Buddhism requires that I take on the terrifying responsibility for myself; I am the author of my own suffering, and my own deliverance. And yet it also requires very little-only that I open my eyes right here, where I am standing, that I simply pay attention.

I ask Amala how one becomes a Buddhist, is there a ceremony, what are the requirements. She tells me to go to a lama. I feel almost ready.

Tshew.a.n.g returns One Hundred Years of Solitude One Hundred Years of Solitude through a friend, with "thanks" scribbled on a sc.r.a.p of paper inside. We have not spoken since the dance. I think this is his way of telling me he realizes that we have to stop. The unadorned note strengthens my resolve to break the spell between us. I debate the idea of discussing it with him, I write letters to him in my head. through a friend, with "thanks" scribbled on a sc.r.a.p of paper inside. We have not spoken since the dance. I think this is his way of telling me he realizes that we have to stop. The unadorned note strengthens my resolve to break the spell between us. I debate the idea of discussing it with him, I write letters to him in my head. Dear Tshew.a.n.g, I am writing so Dear Tshew.a.n.g, I am writing so that we can close what we have opened by mistake between us, and I want you to know how sorry I am that ... that we can close what we have opened by mistake between us, and I want you to know how sorry I am that ... that what? That I did not kiss you the night of the dance? That I said we can't when actually I meant we can? That's what I'm really sorry about. No, it is better to leave it entirely alone. We need a complete cessation. that what? That I did not kiss you the night of the dance? That I said we can't when actually I meant we can? That's what I'm really sorry about. No, it is better to leave it entirely alone. We need a complete cessation.

But I miss our disorderly discussions and wild debates, I miss that s.e.xual charge between us, I miss the way his eyes curl up when he laughs. Without these encounters to hope for, my days are steadier and more productive, and entirely without joy.

Enter Macduff

We have finished reading Macbeth Macbeth in the Zoo, and the students want to perform it. They have divided themselves up into groups and a.s.signed themselves scenes, and in the evenings, I watch them rehea.r.s.e on stage. They start off earnestly, standing stiffly and declaiming, but by the end they are doubled over in laughter. They are at ease with one another, shouting encouragement and insults and advice, and I think that if there are times when they forget who is north and who south, this is one of them. After rehearsal, we sometimes sit outside the auditorium, talking quietly before the bell at eight o'clock calls them back to their hostels. Night falls softly, and it is easier to talk in the dark. They remember their best and worst teachers, summer and winter holidays; they remember the first time they saw a vehicle, the first time they saw a video, the first time they met each other at boarding schools in Samtse or Khaling or Thimphu; they remember who could make even the strictest teacher laugh aloud, remember that time we got caught stealing maize from the lopen's garden, and I cannot imagine then that they actually dislike and mistrust each other. They have grown up together, and can speak each other's languages and sing each other's songs. They have a shared personal history, and perhaps this will in the end count for more than the historical divisions and facts and allegations. in the Zoo, and the students want to perform it. They have divided themselves up into groups and a.s.signed themselves scenes, and in the evenings, I watch them rehea.r.s.e on stage. They start off earnestly, standing stiffly and declaiming, but by the end they are doubled over in laughter. They are at ease with one another, shouting encouragement and insults and advice, and I think that if there are times when they forget who is north and who south, this is one of them. After rehearsal, we sometimes sit outside the auditorium, talking quietly before the bell at eight o'clock calls them back to their hostels. Night falls softly, and it is easier to talk in the dark. They remember their best and worst teachers, summer and winter holidays; they remember the first time they saw a vehicle, the first time they saw a video, the first time they met each other at boarding schools in Samtse or Khaling or Thimphu; they remember who could make even the strictest teacher laugh aloud, remember that time we got caught stealing maize from the lopen's garden, and I cannot imagine then that they actually dislike and mistrust each other. They have grown up together, and can speak each other's languages and sing each other's songs. They have a shared personal history, and perhaps this will in the end count for more than the historical divisions and facts and allegations.

On the political front, there has been no news for several weeks. Nothing in the Kuensel, Kuensel, which doesn't mean anything, but also nothing from the students. I start to believe that the crisis is over. Perhaps there is dialogue now, perhaps there will be accommodation and understanding on both sides. which doesn't mean anything, but also nothing from the students. I start to believe that the crisis is over. Perhaps there is dialogue now, perhaps there will be accommodation and understanding on both sides.

The students are ready for their final performances. They have gone to great effort with costumes and makeup and special effects, and it is a travesty. "Is this a dagger which I see before me?" Macbeth asks the plank of wood hanging from the stage curtains, and the alarm from a digital watch is set off to give the impression of urgency, but the persistent beepbeep fl.u.s.ters Macbeth who tries to wrest the watch away from the special effects team and there is a scuffle with Lady Macbeth who owns the watch; Great Birnam Wood misses its cue and there are leaves and branches everywhere; enter Macduff with Macbeth's head, a wig of black yak hair, and I laugh until I cry.

In the library the next morning, a crowd of students is pressed up against the front desk, trying to read a single copy of the Kuensel. Kuensel. I ask what's going on, and the I ask what's going on, and the Kuensel Kuensel is pa.s.sed silently over to me. On June 2, the anniversary of the King's coronation, in the industrial town of Gomtu in southern Bhutan, a jute sack was found near a petrol pump, containing the severed heads of two southern Bhutanese men. A letter in the sack accused the men of cooperating with the Royal Government and betraying their own people. is pa.s.sed silently over to me. On June 2, the anniversary of the King's coronation, in the industrial town of Gomtu in southern Bhutan, a jute sack was found near a petrol pump, containing the severed heads of two southern Bhutanese men. A letter in the sack accused the men of cooperating with the Royal Government and betraying their own people.

Ranjana, a cla.s.s XII student, is led out of the library in tears. "One of them was her uncle," someone tells me.

I pa.s.s the newspaper back and leave the library. I feel sick. I stand on the balcony outside the staff room. In the fields below the college, women are weeding the rice paddies. I try to think about this labor that will feed the family, these works and days of hands, the feeling of mud between the toes, water up to the ankles, the sun on the back of the neck-it is useless, the image will not allow me entrance, and I am sent back to the mental picture of two heads in a jute sack. It seems impossible, something I have read somewhere else ("enter Macduff with Macbeth's head"), it cannot be happening here.

I force myself to read the rest of the Kuensel Kuensel article. For the first time, the arrests of last year are mentioned. Between October and December 1989, forty-two people were arrested for anti-national activities. Thirty-nine were later released, and a general amnesty of two months was announced to enable those who had fled the country to return. A group calling itself the People's Forum for Human Rights announced that it wants to divide southern Bhutan into a separate political ent.i.ty. article. For the first time, the arrests of last year are mentioned. Between October and December 1989, forty-two people were arrested for anti-national activities. Thirty-nine were later released, and a general amnesty of two months was announced to enable those who had fled the country to return. A group calling itself the People's Forum for Human Rights announced that it wants to divide southern Bhutan into a separate political ent.i.ty.

A northern student tells me he is leaving school to join the militia. "To fight the aunties," he says.

"The aunties?" I repeat, bewildered, and then realize he is talking about the anti-nationals. "These southerners," he explains.

"Not all southerners are anti-nationals," I say quietly.

"You don't know, miss. You don't know what they are."

Two schools in southern Bhutan are attacked and set aflame. A group of armed men attack a truck and force the driver to take off his gho. Previously, southern Bhutanese found out of national dress were fined by the Dzongkhag authorities. Now, southern Bhutanese found wearing national dress are stripped by "anti-nationals."

The time for talking and listening has disappeared, the opportunity growing smaller and smaller until it snapped shut altogether. There will only be rhetoric now, posturing and lying and violence. I want to step out sideways. I do not want to be a witness to the inevitable.

I am cleaning the bookshelf one evening in an attempt to avoid the pile of marking that awaits me. I open One Hundred Years of Solitude One Hundred Years of Solitude and Tshew.a.n.g's thank-you note flutters out. On the other side is written LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA. I see the word "love" and I think: maybe this was the message I was supposed to respond to. Maybe this termination has been all my doing. The hand that has been holding my heart unclenches, and I can breathe deeply and it doesn't hurt. Then I crush the paper up. It is a t.i.tle, not a message. What next? I wonder. Messages through a frequency device implanted in my head? I will put this desire into a stone. I will seal it up. I will make the right effort. and Tshew.a.n.g's thank-you note flutters out. On the other side is written LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA. I see the word "love" and I think: maybe this was the message I was supposed to respond to. Maybe this termination has been all my doing. The hand that has been holding my heart unclenches, and I can breathe deeply and it doesn't hurt. Then I crush the paper up. It is a t.i.tle, not a message. What next? I wonder. Messages through a frequency device implanted in my head? I will put this desire into a stone. I will seal it up. I will make the right effort.

I make the right effort and it makes me miserable. It rains every night, and every morning the sun breaks hot and relentless through the dissipating mist. "Good for the farmers," Mr. Fantome tells me when I visit him in his garden, "good for all green growing things." Everything swells wildly, and the forests glow eerily with gigantic ferns and luminous underbrush. In the midst of the rainy season, In the midst of the rainy season, I write in my journal, I write in my journal, I have driven myself into this dry scorched flat place. Desire has led me to this place where there is nothing to drink or I have driven myself into this dry scorched flat place. Desire has led me to this place where there is nothing to drink or eat. eat. I do not know how to lead myself out. I have never been so unhappy. I do not know how to lead myself out. I have never been so unhappy.

Zurung

Leon invites me to his new posting in Yurung, a village in the Pema Gatshel valley. I stop at Pema Gatshel Junior High School on the way, but the kids have all gone home for the summer break. I leave a packet of letters and crayons for my former students and walk down to Gypsum, where I cross the river twice, thrice and begin to ascend to Yurung, except somehow, in the hot sun at the bottom of the valley, I have got turned around and I am actually walking back up the mountain to Pema Gatshel. A farmer sets me straight. Yurung, when I finally reach it, is the prettiest village I have seen yet. The houses are cl.u.s.tered close together, separated by low stone walls and bramble fences and kitchen gardens, and willow and cypress line the stream that rushes through the middle. I am relieved to be in a village again, I am relieved to be away from my articulate and unreasonable students. I am relieved to be away from the possibility of meeting Tshew.a.n.g and the necessity of avoiding him, the laborious battle against my heart's desire, but I cannot bring myself to tell this to Leon. I suspect that I do not want to be talked out of it for good. Somewhere in me, hope is hiding. "I don't want to think about the Situation," I say. "I just want to sit here on your front steps and watch the cows and chickens and the children. Don't ask me anything, I don't want to talk about it."

The neighborhood women show up the next morning with bottles of arra to welcome me. The arra has been cooked with b.u.t.ter and fried eggs, which does little to make it more palatable. We sit on the kitchen floor, drinking, but I have forgotten too much Sharchhop to partic.i.p.ate in the conversation. After several mornings and evenings with them, however, the language returns, and they attribute my increasing fluency to the potency of their brew.

I spend a good part of each day wandering through the village, up to the temple, down to the school, across to a ridge where I sit under the prayer flags, drinking in the green of the valley below, the flowing clean s.p.a.ces around me, and I thank whatever force or G.o.d or karmic link has brought me here. Name same kadin chhe, Name same kadin chhe, thanks beyond the sky and the earth. This is the Bhutan that I love. It seems impossible here that heads can be cut off and left in jute sacks. And yet, I know it is wrong, dishonest to separate the two things, the splendor of rural Bhutan and the political situation. Bhutan is a real place, with a real history, in which real conflicts lead to real upheaval, the real suffering of real people. As much as I would like it to be, it is not a hidden valley. thanks beyond the sky and the earth. This is the Bhutan that I love. It seems impossible here that heads can be cut off and left in jute sacks. And yet, I know it is wrong, dishonest to separate the two things, the splendor of rural Bhutan and the political situation. Bhutan is a real place, with a real history, in which real conflicts lead to real upheaval, the real suffering of real people. As much as I would like it to be, it is not a hidden valley.

I meet the teachers at Leon's school, a mix of southern, eastern and northern Bhutanese, and Leon invites them back to his house for "Canadian drinks" one evening. In the flickering light of one candle stub, we mix up gla.s.ses of lemon squash and rum and hand them out. The teachers sip their drinks reluctantly, and adamantly refuse our offer of seconds. I think they are being polite until Leon lights more candles, and we see that we've given them mustard oil instead of rum.

We walk over to Tsebar, up to the ridge and along a mountaintop in the warm sunlight and down along a wooded slope. A thick mist squeezes its way through the trees, and the forest becomes eerie, all silent fog and shadow and hanging tangled dripping green. We are in Leech Forest. At first we stop to pull them off, but they drop from the trees and somersault off rocks, and for every one we remove, three more find their way on board, and finally we just run, clawing at branches and vines and gasping, until we are out again in a sunny meadow, where we sit and pluck them off and mop up blood with handkerchiefs. "They're clever little b.u.g.g.e.rs," Leon says. "They release an anesthetic and an anti-coagulant when they latch on. You don't even know they're there." In Tsebar, we have arra and bangchang with Jangchuk and Pema, and I try to imagine Jane waking up somewhere in England, knowing that Bhutan is impossibly far away. I try to imagine myself waking up in Canada, knowing that Bhutan is closed, finished, over, and the dark line of the mountains against the dawn, the million billion trillion stars in the bowl of the sky, the faces of my students, now a memory and a grief. Leaving will be like waking from a dream, I think, the most intense and wonderful dream, knowing you'll never be able to dream it again.

The only way to avoid waking is to avoid leaving. I will not leave here until I have lived here thoroughly, until it seeps into me, into blood, bone, cell, until I am full of it and changed by it, and maybe not even then.

I tell this to Leon. He has just finished Kiss of the Spider Woman, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and now he reads me the last line. "This dream is short but this dream is happy." and now he reads me the last line. "This dream is short but this dream is happy."

But I want it to be more.

Boils

I am marking homework in the staff room one morning when Mr. Bose sits down beside me, clears his throat, and informs me that one of my trial-exam questions is "wrong." am marking homework in the staff room one morning when Mr. Bose sits down beside me, clears his throat, and informs me that one of my trial-exam questions is "wrong."

"What do you mean 'wrong'?"

"That business about write the letter Lady Macbeth writes in the sleepwalking scene."

"What's wrong with it?"

"What's wrong with it!" He looks dangerously close to a stroke. "I'll tell you what's wrong with it! It's not the kind of question they'll get asked on their final exam! You are not preparing them for their final exam!"

"But the questions they get on their final exams are ridiculous. 'Summarize Act I of the play.' I don't care if they can recite Act I from memory, I want them to have their own thoughts about the play."

"Never mind their own thoughts about the play! Can they answer the final exam questions? That's what you should be concerned about," Mr. Bose says, wagging a finger. "I'm going to have to monitor your work."

"Mr. Bose," I say furiously, "never tell me how to teach my cla.s.s again." In a second, my anger destroys all the calm I have built up through a week of progressive meditation exercises. It breaks over me, and I indulge in it, can you believe the nerve of him, who does he think he is, etc., etc., until I feel thoroughly poisoned by it.

The sky weeps and wipes its face on the mountains. My legs break out in blisters and boils. The students tell me boils are caused by "impure blood," and if you get one, you will get nine. I have had three so far. One of my students, k.u.mar, develops a strange skin condition and is hospitalized in Tas.h.i.+gang. His bed is in an open ward, and two of his cla.s.smates stay with him, sleeping on the floor beside the bed at night, bringing his meals and arguing with the doctor over his treatment. "These college students," the doctor tells me wearily. "They think they know everything."

k.u.mar's face is thin and peaked. The rash makes his skin look like sandpaper. He says the hospital is not so bad, "except at night, miss, it is impossible to sleep. Everyone is groaning and praying."

On the way out, I pa.s.s by a man sitting on the stairs. A large chunk of his leg is missing, and I can see the glimmer of bone at the base of the wound. He sits quietly, waiting for someone to come and tend to him. I had meant to ask a doctor about my boils, but they seem silly now.

Everyone has them. Another student, Tas.h.i.+, holds a clean handkerchief over the large angry boil on his cheek throughout cla.s.s. When I pa.s.s him in the hallway the next day, I do not recognize him. "It's me, miss," he says. "Tas.h.i.+." His face is swollen beyond recognition, and he has trouble speaking.

Early the next morning, the college peon knocks on my door with a notice. One of the students has died in the night, and all cla.s.ses are canceled. I see a group of his cla.s.smates climbing up the embankment toward my house, and I know it was Tas.h.i.+. They tell me the infection went to his brain; they took him to the hospital in Tas.h.i.+gang but it was too late. They wait while I put on a kira, and I follow them to the temple where Tas.h.i.+'s body, covered in white scarves, is laid out beneath a white canvas canopy. The Dzongkha lopens are leading the prayers, a recitation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Tibetan Book of the Dead, and two students sit by Tas.h.i.+'s side. A plate of food has been placed beside him. His cla.s.smates will take turns sitting with him until his family arrives for the cremation. I sit with the students, the prayers rising and falling around me, and try to pray but I cry instead. "You should try not cry, ma'am," Chhoden tells me, squeezing my hand. "We say that it makes it harder for the spirit to leave, if people cry." and two students sit by Tas.h.i.+'s side. A plate of food has been placed beside him. His cla.s.smates will take turns sitting with him until his family arrives for the cremation. I sit with the students, the prayers rising and falling around me, and try to pray but I cry instead. "You should try not cry, ma'am," Chhoden tells me, squeezing my hand. "We say that it makes it harder for the spirit to leave, if people cry."

It takes Tas.h.i.+'s family three days to make the journey from their village. For three days, his cla.s.smates continue their vigil in s.h.i.+fts, never leaving the body alone. Two of Tas.h.i.+'s friends have to prepare the body for the cremation. This includes was.h.i.+ng the body and breaking the bones to force it into a fetal position. The body is laid upon the pyre and covered with scarves and Tas.h.i.+'s best gho. After a long prayer and many offerings to the corpse, the wood is lit. But the body does not burn properly, and the lama heading the ceremony says it is because of the spirit's attachment to this world. Tas.h.i.+'s cla.s.smates bring his flute and his paints from his room and cast them onto the fire, admonis.h.i.+ng his spirit. "You're dead now. See, all your things are gone. We don't want you here. Go now."

"How awful," I say to Chhoden.

She shakes her head. "No, madam. We have to tell like that. If we show how much we loved him, his spirit won't want to leave and then it will be stuck here. It has to know it's dead." She says some people know immediately that they are dead, but others just wander around, sitting down with their family to eat, wondering why no one will speak to them. "That's why we leave food out near the body, so that the person will not feel so bad."

More wood is added to the fire and the cloth covering the body shrivels up. Tas.h.i.+'s brother walks around the pyre with a bottle, pouring water into the dust. "The water is offered to the dead person, for the terrible thirst the fire causes," Chhoden says. Everyone stands and watches the flames, and what I thought would be unbearably gruesome is merely a sad fact: the flesh melts away and the bones turn grey and crumble, falling into the cinders at the bottom of the pyre. Someday that will be me, I think.

There is none of the sanitized grief that I a.s.sociate with death in my own culture. Tears are hidden not for the sake of appearances-there is no need to hold up well in the eyes of the community-but for the sake of the dead, so that they will be able to leave behind this lifetime. Grief is everywhere, in the stunned expressions of Tas.h.i.+'s friends, in his mother's collapsed face, but there is also a stoic acceptance.

"Everyone dies," Nima tells me after the cremation. "This is what the Buddha taught." And he relates the story of the mustard seed: a woman, deranged with grief at the death of her small child, goes to the Buddha and begs him to restore her child to life. He tells her that he will, if she can bring him a handful of mustard seeds from a house in the village where no one has ever died. The woman goes from door to door, and although everyone is willing to give her a handful of mustard seeds, she can find no household that has not known death. Realizing the universality of death, she brings her son to the cremation ground, and returns to become a disciple of the Buddha.

"But the fact that everyone has to die does not make it any less sad," I tell Nima. "Because each person is unique, their personality and relations.h.i.+ps and life."

But Nima says, "Not so unique, miss. Everyone is born, everyone grows up, everyone wants the same thing-to be happy, and everyone avoids the same things-pain and unhappiness, and in the end, everyone dies, isn't it?"

"Yes, but within those parameters, every individual's life is unique and precious, what they think and how they react."

"But see, miss. If I think how many countless times I have been reborn in this world, we say millions of times, then how many times have I been happy already? How many times have I married and had children and fulfilled all my goals, and how many times have I suffered and died? Then I think I must have experienced everything by now, but I am still here, so I have not learned anything. Then I feel tired, miss. I feel tired of this life and I think I should become a monk and go to a cave and find a way out of all this coming and going in circles."

Later, in meditation, these words come back to me. It is like something opening in my head, too fast for words. Imusthave experienced everything by now, but I am still here, so I have not learned anything. Imusthave experienced everything by now, but I am still here, so I have not learned anything. In a moment, I grasp it. Not the Buddhist theory of the self, how there is no essential Jamie Zeppa, how she is only a collection of changing conditions, attributes and desires common to all sentient beings, but the experience of that fact. Everything falls away. It is the experience of pure freedom, a momentary glimpse of how it would be-to be in the world and not be attached to it, to move through it, experiencing it and letting it go. It is impossible to put the feeling, the certainty, into words, but later, I know that this is the moment I became a Buddhist. In a moment, I grasp it. Not the Buddhist theory of the self, how there is no essential Jamie Zeppa, how she is only a collection of changing conditions, attributes and desires common to all sentient beings, but the experience of that fact. Everything falls away. It is the experience of pure freedom, a momentary glimpse of how it would be-to be in the world and not be attached to it, to move through it, experiencing it and letting it go. It is impossible to put the feeling, the certainty, into words, but later, I know that this is the moment I became a Buddhist.

I come out of the meditation and the feeling dissipates slowly, dissolving into the common objects about me, straw mat, wax candle, tin cup. I am left with only the sh.e.l.l of the experience, the words. It was like this, like that, it was like things falling away. I feel forlorn, inconsolable-I want the feeling itself back, and then it occurs to me that I have only identified the goal. Attaining it will be a lifelong task. Not all my questions about Buddhism have been answered, but I am ready now to make a commitment to this path.