Animal Sacrifice and Guru Rinpoche

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything because—well—I haven’t done anything. I go to school five days a week at 8:30 to anywhere from 4-6 p.m….sweet jesus its longer than high school. Not to mention I don’t have internet—or electricity when I return home—at 7:30 p.m—and by the time the clock hits 8:30, I’m so fucking tired from attempting to learn the enigma that is the Tibetan language I go to bed. I’ve had two beers in total since I’ve arrived here. Talk about a crazy college life…oh one interesting thing, I did interview a Khampa fighter who fought against the Chinese (and took quite a few out I might add) during the Tibetan invasion but either due to the poor translators or his reluctance to dive into detail, the most fascinating thing he informed me of was that he wants to return to Tibet because he doesn’t like Daal Bhaat—the national food of Nepal…A noble cause indeed.

HOWEVER! All that changed Saturday as I embarked on an epic quest to witness the animal sacrificial pits of Dakshinkali—yes, you read correctly—live, ritualistic animal sacrifice. Excellent, my blood thirst levels were sort of on the down low and I needed a boost of animal entrails and beheadings.

Dakshinkali is a Hindu temple complex that lies at the bottom of a gorge at the meeting of two rivers. The site is like two hours outside of K’mandu by bus and since no one wanted to take the bus ride (not sure why) or they just didn’t want to watch animals being murdered for religious purposes (either way I still don’t know why) I went alone. Kali is a Hindu goddess who slays demons and what not, so in return for her services she demands live animal sacrifices. Every Tuesday and Saturday mornings Hindus arrive with chickens, goats, and pigs, which are lead down the gorge and then have their throats slit and blood sprayed all over the statues of Kali. Only men of a special caste are allowed to slaughter the animals and Brahmin priests overlook the ceremony. The bodies of the recently deceased are then handed back over to the people for lunch—so its not completely senseless. Think of it as an alternative form of lunch preparation. I went on the day after a full moon—the largest gathering of all. Hundreds of people bringing babies, smiling faces, and unsuspecting furry animals for the bloodbath. Excellent.

I arrive and head down the gorge passing a beggar or two with leprosy…hands, feet, and nose all completely eroded away or almost to that point. Makes me shudder. Sadhus with dreadlocks and face paint, priests in decorative ceremonial drab and everyone is decked out in their finest afternoon beheading wear. I feel underdressed for the occasion—well not really. There looks to be a line of five hundred people some walking goats down the steps to the gorge, others holding static chickens upside down by their legs, and some just wielding small coconuts to be smashed open and baskets full of offerings consisting of beads, flowers, and sweats. Some lady on a microphone is yelling Nepali, which comes blasting over several loudspeakers. Some people are wearing these yellow tapestry, blanket kind of things over their clothes and are dancing around a fire waving their hands in the air while tons of smoke from the incense and small pooja fires flood the air.

I walk up close to the sacrificial grounds and watch for a while as four or five guys go through chicken after chicken after goat after chicken after goat after goat…Someone shatters a coconut, people are yelling, little kids look emotionally traumatized from watching their furry, formerly friendly pet billy goat turn into a headless, mutilated, spazzing corpse spewing blood all over the floor from its severed neck. I’m just standing their confused as to who made all this wacky shit up.

I also can’t help but notice that no one has any shoes on as they walk into the temple/sacrificial grounds and so everyone is just standing in this thick pool of fresh blood barefoot. I have waterproof trekking shoes on and I’m happy about this. I’m not standing in the pool of blood but people are walking with their beheaded animal corpses where I am and blood is definitely dripping down from the severed neck. Quite lovely. But like I said, few people are wearing shoes…

Reminds me of the rat temple where I was the only one wearing socks…Do these people know something I don’t? Or could it be the other way around…

Like put this into perspective—the idea of not wearing shoes into a temple is because it tracks impure filth into a holy and pure place—but if the floor of your holy and pure place is filled with rat shit, dead rats, severed heads, and a two inch pool of blood—does it really fucking matter if you track a little bit of dirt onto the floor? Religion—the pinnacle of sensibility.

For the record: I’m not saying Hinduism is retarded compared to other religions—all religious practices are retarded. Buddhism for instance—doing literally 100,000 prostrations around a stupa won’t get you enlightened and not to mention if you are a seventy-year-old manual labor worker it probably just isn’t a good idea to begin with. I support exercise and such but doing things like spinning a prayer wheel or praying to a stupa doesn’t facilitate a higher state of consciousness—its just ritualistic pointless conditioning and it makes me facepalm myself.

Another side note: When I was walking back from the pubic cremation grounds of Pashnupati I saw a women old enough to be my grandmother (she was probably pushing seventy) working as a brick layer. She had to walk over to this massive pile of bricks about 15 feet high with several other grandmother aged women and toss them into a basket strapped to her back so she could walk them over to the spot to be laid. The weight on the basket was so heavy that she toppled over onto her back, falling onto a pile of bricks, spilling the bricks everywhere. She got up and started loading the bricks back into the basket…I say to myself: “If I can take this moment to say, Jee what a wonderful world we live in. I’d like to say “FUCK YOU” with the greatest intensity possible to everyone who is a part of this planet for allowing things like this to happen, especially to myself.”

I mean imagine if you came home one day and your grandmother (who was not in physically good shape) was carrying fifty pounds of bricks on her back in order to lay the foundation of a house and she still had another 15 by 8 foot stack to go. How would you feel? Like I’m laughing right now because its so fucked up its comical, its too surreal to even think about. You ever see Happy Gillmor where Ben Stiller’s character forces people at the retirement home to do landscaping duty—its funny and everyone laughs at how ridiculous it is—but here, its FUCKIN Real! GAAHHHH

People in America, complaining about high taxes and other benign shit they think is the end of the world like having to wait two more months for some economic balance to own a third car like their neighbors while old women in Nepal lay bricks for three dollars a day…. Granted, all suffering is relative, rich people suffer too, its just a matter of perspective but sometimes you just wanna be like, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! YOUR PROBLEMS DONT FUCKING MATTER IN COMPARISON…But, no matter who you are, I don’t think being human is easy and I do actually stand by that perspective as a core value. I seriously mean that too.

I’m still laughing about the disparity between people though because either I’m just emotionally fucked up or its just too painful to think about—considering I went on a two hour bus ride solely to go watch animals get their heads chopped off its probably both…Hey, at least I’m honest. I shrug and sort of frown then smile…

That is the story of the Buddha though. So Siddhartha (name before he becomes the Buddha) lives in a palace for the first 29 years of his life getting nothing but women, booze, and entertainment as his father didn’t want him to experience the suffering of the outside world because if he did—sages foretold that he would become a ascetic instead of king like his father wanted. Siddhartha eventually gets curious after 29 years of sensory indulgence and ventures into the world and he sees: a sick man, an old man about to die, a corpse, and a holy man who is totally at peace with all of this. Now, never having seen any kind of suffering what so ever—to see those first three sights would greatly disturb you to the core, and for Siddhartha it did. However, when Siddhartha saw the holy man he wanted to know, “how the fuck can anyone be at peace with themselves and the world when there is so much suffering?”

So Siddhartha renounces palace life, abandons his wife and child and becomes an ascetic. After 6 years of literally torturing himself through physical austerities in attempts to liberate his mind from the body he nearly dies and realizes that isn’t working out so well. He eats some food, sits down under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, almost instantly realizes the true nature of mind, becomes the Buddha and achieves enlightenment—insight into why there is suffering in the world, eternal liberation from Samsara (cycle of birth and death).

The answer to why there is suffering? The entire world is a dream. It’s an illusion—a psychological construction of the mind that you have become too attached to and are convinced is real. The Buddha not once claims to have found god or to be chosen by god or even says god is important. He merely said: “I am awake.”

I don’t want to get into the philosophy of this since words aren’t really important. The only thing that’s important here is experience. Everything else is a prelude to that since words and thought actually prevent this type of experience (really). To say one thing on the matter though: I would say that each person’s ego is just a tiny mind bubble they think is real but if they were to let go of it (and there are a million different ways to do this if you look for them) they would find they are part of a much bigger mind bubble of which everything is included in and the tiny part they once believe was them was never even real to begin with. There is no self. “I am that, that I am”, its boundless.

When you experientially figure this out you will no longer experience suffering of any kind because suffering needs an ego to attach itself to. I’m talking to myself here but maybe someone else wants to read it too so I’m leaving it.

Now, the funny thing as Socrates points out in The Allegory of the Cave is that when you start telling people that the world is an illusion created by the mind they get all pissed off and want to kill you. Ego doesn’t want to let go of ego. I sure like mine which is why I keep writing with a self-importance that would lead you to believe I actually understand the bullshit that comes out of my mouth. I think that’s why Socrates said, “the only thing I know is that I know nothing.” I personally have never been more confused as to what the hell is going on in life than ever before. I just hope the Buddhist framework pays off in the end (excluding prostrations and prayer wheels).

Rivers of trash, leprosy, and elderly manual labor workers without health insurance or proper work conditions. Why is their suffering? That’s the only question in life worth asking.

Back to the animal bloodshed…

I take plenty of pictures of the whole fiasco at Dakshinkali and film a little bit of it too. I decide I’ve seen enough ritualistic sacrificing for the day—I think I’ll catch a bus to Pharping, a Tibetan Buddhist town with several monasteries and the cave where the extremely famous Guru Rinpoche achieved enlightenment. I passed our teacher assistant, Jeremy, on the way to the bus when I was in Kathmandu and he told me if I’m heading to Dakshinkali I should check out Rinpoche’s cave in Pharping, had he not told me I never would have known. I have good luck it would seem that I crossed paths with him by chance.

I visit several monasteries, one of which has like 20 giant, 8 foot prayer wheels to spin in a circle and so I step inside and spin them all a few times with a Tibetan nun. I know I just hated on spinning prayer wheels but I only do it for the childish amusement that comes from moving a large cylinder that rings a bell when you do so. They have smaller versions of these things in playgrounds in America, they just don’t have Sanskrit and dharma all over them…The wheels ring this delicate-sounding bell every time you spin them all the way around and the town surrounding is dead quiet so it makes for a cool atmosphere.

I make my ascent to Rinpoche’s cave up this Tibetan monastery on the side of a large hill. I enter this cave and it would have been more peaceful if there wasn’t a Nepalese Hindu pressuring me to give him money to light a butter lamp. I head up further and come to another cave—I’m confused. I ask this British guy with a jazz hat and tiny sunglasses what this cave is. He speaks with an accent that makes me think he would be a good villain in a movie—kind of creepy. But we start talking about Buddhism and he knows it inside and out. He tells me this is the actual cave where Rinpoche achieved either the third or second level of realization out of the four stages of enlightenment. Now, my guidebook just says this is the cave where Rinpoche was enlightened but this guy was telling me this so who really knows?

He tells the first level is bodhichitta which is the desire to free all conscious beings from suffering by staying in Samsara until you have achieved the goal (Rinpoche made this pact this at Bodh Gaya) and one of the two other important places are the caves at Maratika, the british guy tells me. I interject and go, “hey I’m going there on Monday with my class!” He sort of leans back and goes, “ohh Rinpoche must love you then.” I tell him its funny because I keep ending up in all these holy places that I know jack shit about until I get to them and then its like, well that’s interesting I just wound up here. He told me how some people go to these places intentionally and others do it naturally, saying that sure anyone can come to these places but how many actually do out of the billions of people? It means something that you’re here he told me, especially at this age.

This guy was kind of out there but I’m sure the same can be said of me so our conversation got kind of odd. He told me Rinpoche has a plan for me, I was sent here by him, and that he can sense I’m “being watched over”…he said that one a few times actually. He said he can tell I’ve lived many lives and that he could sense the essence of Christianity from me—he looked at all religions as saying the same things just masking the truth in different ways. He told me my karma is the reason I’m coming to all these places and although I might not understand why now, I will in a few years. He said its like a puzzle and each experience is a piece and eventually you will have put the whole thing together and when you do you realize you were enlightened the whole time and all of it had been happening at the same time—death, birth, this moment, that moment ect and the picture will be whole. He then told me I will realize the true state of mind in my life but I’m not going to be a monk, I’ll live life but see through the illusion of it all as I do.

I told you it was an odd conversation.

I skeptically enjoyed his prophetic and esoteric thoughts on my personal condition, naturally, but I must also make point that he was extremely knowledgeable on the history and academic side of Buddhism—he was like a dictionary on the subject and he had a good grasp of the concept of emptiness which he explained decently clearly (and that’s really hard). He told me he was there because he had been directly communicating with Rinpoche who was his personal guru. He also said, “you might be Guru Rinpoche talking to me right now...” I told him I didn’t think I was quite at that point yet unfortunately.

I went and meditated in the cave. There were two other people in there and it was small, confined, and quiet besides the flickering of candles. I silently farted and it smelled terrible. I had to go to the clinic for diarrhea the other day because I’ve had it for a month straight so I have a good excuse though. They told me its probably gardia, which is a fun little parasite that lives inside your intestinal tract. Hurray!

I said goodbye to the British man who went by the name of Padmapa, and when I did I realized it was the first time I had seen his eyes since he had been wearing glasses during the half-hour long conversation between us. He shook my hand, said goodbye, and then gave me an intense bulging eyeball look and yelled, GURU RINPOCHEEEE!!!! I laughed but it freaked me out a little to be honest.

I was starving at this point and wanted food and was thinking over it intensely. However, there was one more monastery and I figured, I’m here, I’m probably not coming back ever again, I can wait. I head to the monastery and I hear this crazy Tibetan monk music which is pretty dark sounding actually—they use long horns of like 7 feet, giant conch shells, and other instruments to play. I step inside and sit down and see they are being served bag lunches—I’m like, man I want that. Two minutes later a monk comes by and hands me a full bag lunch. It all works out.

They were reading over dharma scriptures in Tibetan so I didn’t get to eat with them and instead I just meditated and then after a while I thanked the head monk and decided to just give the food to the homeless lady outside the temple since I could just buy some food in town in a few minutes. I crossed paths with Padmapa again as I headed out of the town and he yelled guru Rinpoche at me and said goodbye and such once more.

Now for the best part of my day…Riding up to Dakshinkali I noticed that people were riding on the roofs of the buses like in India. I want to do that…I think it over for a while and figure I will just ask the guy if I can get on the roof even if there’s room inside (for my bus back to Kathmandu). The bus back to the city rolls up to the stop in Pharping and ticket collector tells me to get on the roof before I can even say anything. Hell yes! I climb up the ladder and sit atop the rack designed to hold luggage in preparation for my hour and a half journey back into the city with one other dude. We drove probably around 20 mph the whole time and never went past 40 mph so it wasn’t too intense but it was still fun as hell. I played Steppenwolf and Jimi Hendrix through my ipod, naturally. After an hour the rack was filled with over ten of us—me and Nepalese people riding on the roof of a bus through the hills of the Kathmandu valley passing cows, monasteries, and village life=awesome times.

When we got to the city we had to climb down and squish to get inside because they don’t allow you to ride on the roof in the city itself I guess. We drove past a homeless old man with a large beard who had lit a seven-foot bonfire of hay, half on the street, half on the sidewalk. There were two police officers about fifty yards down the street and one was blankly looking at traffic and the other was picking his fingernails. I think if they even noticed they probably wouldn’t care…The benefits of being in a country that currently has no government…