Maratika Paper

This is a paper I wrote for my class. There is a normal blog post below this one.

*sorry it took six months to get rid of the puke green background*

Divinity Within: A Trip to Maratika

By Jerry Walsh

I embarked to the Maratika caves of southeastern Nepal, 185 km away from Mount Everest, a pilgrimage site for both Buddhists and Hindus believed to have been the former stomping grounds of Guru Rinpoche—the man commonly referred to as the second Buddha. Guru Rinpoche (also referred to as Padmasambhava) is thought to have lived in South Asia around the 8^th century and it is at the Maratika caves he is said to have achieved immortality. I sought out the remote Maratika caves in hopes of alleviating my inherent skepticism of “holy places” and to see why I should subscribe more meaning to one hole in the ground over any other.

My rickety plane of fewer than twenty passengers landed with an abrupt thud onto a dirt runway surrounded by Himalayan foothills speckled with impoverished villages atop ribbed, dried out rice paddies. I stepped aboard a rundown bus with a cracked windshield after unenthusiastically consuming a meal of daal bhat—the Nepalese national dish of rice and lentils. The only thing in worse shape than the bus was the road, which violently descended up the foothills without a guardrail to prevent a four thousand foot fall if the suspect driver lost his train of thought.

The bus stopped a few hours and near death experiences later, allowing myself and several dedicated pilgrims the opportunity to climb a small hill and see the location where Guru Rinpoche had supposedly left an imprint of his foot in solid stone. I skeptically stared with a smirk into a single oval shaped cut out of stone about six inches deep, as a pilgrim informed me that Guru Rinpoche took one step here and then flew to Tibet. I attempted to place my foot in the imprint to compare shoes sizes with Padmasambhava, only to be scolded by a pilgrim who looked at me with shock (the soles of feet are considered impure in South Asian culture). I noticed that Padmasambhava must have been sporting close to size fifteen sneakers. This confused me because I had visited a different Guru Rinpoche cave in a town called Pharping outside of Kathmandu, Nepal not more than a few days ago and the footprints left by him there were quite smaller. Either Guru Rinpoche had the power to change foot size or someone was pulling my chain.

We arrived in Maratika soon after and the following morning I descended into the long life cave where Guru Rinpoche conquered human mortality. I climbed down a set of zigzagging stairs that led to a massive chamber opening up from the hollowed Earth. I ventured into the gaping mouth of the cave expecting a wave of intense spiritual power left over from Guru Rinpoche’s meditational achievements to overcome my egotistical experience of reality. I took a deep breath, let go of my mental chatter and felt—unfortunately quite the same as I always do. I assume this was either due to my soul being too morally corrupted or the overbearing noises that came from the Hindu’s conducting a pooja near some painted stalagmites. I believe that the perpetual rain of pigeon feces may have also played a factor in my secular experience of the cave.

I then followed in the path of several pilgrims who successfully climbed through four narrow passages ways that seemed impossible to maneuver through. The pilgrims informed me that a successful squeeze through the passage ways symbolized “white” or good karma, then a painless re-birth while going through the bardos (the transitional stage after death and before birth in Tibetan Buddhism), then redemption for the pain one caused their mother during birth and finally liberation from past sins, including disobeying one’s teacher (a deeply serious sin in Tibetan culture). I made it through the spiritual obstacle course but I could not help but think that this method of moral purification some how discriminates against those on the hefty side and this left me unconvinced of it’s validity.

I visited several more holy caves in Maratika over the next three days and felt frustratingly quite the same as I did before I arrived in the town. Granted, I had quite a bit of fun trekking to each of the caves but that overwhelming spiritual presence I had heard others glorify as being a quality of holy places continued to escape me. My most spiritual experience at this point was walking through the town and observing the radical contrast between the Nepali village life and the atmosphere of my hometown back in America. The last cave I visited in Maratika was called the “Peaceful Cave & Lake” but it turned out to be dry, full of trash, and smelled like a clogged up toilet.

I spent my final night in the near by village of Haleshi. I dwelled over my experiences and whether or not holy places actually exist until my plane landed back in Kathmandu. The epiphany of self I had desired to occur in the caves of Maratika suddenly hit me square in the face once I got back into the city. The reverse culture shock that occurred from living in a village setting for five days and returning to a chaotic, polluted, congested South Asian city overwhelmed my experience and created the sensation that my head had been split open, leaving me feeling vulnerable, amazed, clearheaded and bewildered all at the same time. I felt almost as if I had stepped onto another planet as the everyday social normality people take for granted stood out to me with stunning intensity.

It seems that the concept of a “holy place” may be nothing more than skillful means for encouraging people to break out of their static routines, allowing them to return to everyday life with an expanded conscious perspective. The subjective belief system of an individual is the only thing that makes one place more holy than another. Expectations, past knowledge, and rational framework allow a person to label one place as holy and another as a dumpster. The “holiness” of the place seems to be entirely an internal projection that holds no objective bearing.

I think it should be noted that the first Buddha was arguably one of the first ever iconoclasts as he rejected the social norms, religious rituals, and traditions of his time. The Buddha was never a follower and his suggestion for pilgrims to “follow in his footsteps” appears to me as a clever method to entice others to tear away from stagnant psychological patterns, allowing them to uncover the true nature of self. I do not believe the Buddha’s intentions were for followers to visit places of holy nature but rather for them to realize the holy nature that lies inside. I believe that both the Buddha and Guru Rinpoche encouraged followers to go on pilgrimages to places such as the Maratika caves so that we may see that only one holy place exists and that is inside the human heart and mind. The real pilgrimage is within.