At the main entrance of the temple, two idols seated in meditation postures flank a large stone Buddha. According to the guidebook, the idols are Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, of whom the Dalai Lama is considered to be the current emanation, and Padmasambhava, the Indian yogi who introduced Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century. The Buddha is Shakyamuni, the true Buddha, the Awakened Buddha.
Early in the young prince’s life, he was profoundly troubled by the inherent human suffering he witnessed. As soon as he was able, he renounced his princely status and set off on a spiritual quest with a single purpose: to determine how such suffering might be overcome. He tried all manner of ascetic disciplines, but nothing, including self-mortification, had the ability to emancipate his mind and soul. He continued on his way, until he reached the city of Gaya. There, exhausted from his journey, he sat down under a Bodhi tree and began his usual meditation. But something was different this time. The nature of his meditation grew deeper, and deeper still. And then, suddenly, he attained what he had been seeking for so long: an awakening, an enlightenment, an understanding about the true nature of life and all things. From that day forth, he traveled throughout the Indian subcontinent, sharing what he had learned, tirelessly teaching people how to unravel themselves from the suffering that life always brings, how to unleash the great potential they carried within.
Joan would welcome an awakening, an enlightenment, the unleashing of her own great potential here in Dharamshala.
*
She enters the temple. The first room is lit by small lamps, smells of lamp oil and smoke. Writings and pictures cover the walls. The guidebook says these are the sacred hymns and mantras of Buddhism and pictorial representations of its teachings. Did Eric read up on the history of Dharamshala, this temple, its adherents, the monks and nuns who are in abundance, its pilgrims, before he arrived?
“Aren’t you going to complete a kora?” a thin older woman says to Joan in a crisp British accent. Her full-throated voice is jarring in the silence where people are meditating and contemplating.
“Akora?”
“No, dear, not akora, but a kora. I’ve been watching you. Before you take all of this in, it’s best if you go back outside, down the path, past the monks’ quarters, which is the Namgyal Monastery, all the way to the start of the trailhead. Then you circumambulate clockwise and turn all the prayer wheels clockwise to send prayers out in all directions.”
“Does it matter that I’m not a Buddhist, that I don’t believe?” Joan asks.
“Everyone believes, even if they don’t know it,” the woman says. “Do you believe in goodness?”
“Yes,” Joan says.
“Do you believe in evil?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe we can make our way past our own suffering while we are in this world?”
Joan isn’t sure about that, but isn’t this why she’s here?
“I hope that’s true,” Joan says.
“So make your first kora,” the woman says.
There must be a question in Joan’s eyes because the Englishwoman takes her hand, the way Fancy used to do with the boys, and leads Joan out of the anteroom, through the entrance, beneath the tent, down the path, past the monastery, to the very start of the trailhead.
Joan sees red and gold prayer wheels evenly fanned out all the way back up the path.
“That’s the first one,” the Englishwoman says. “Go over and turn it clockwise, only clockwise. It is literally an exercise in faith.”
The prayer wheels are heavy. They do not turn easily. They require force of body and purpose of will, and after Joan turns the first prayer wheel clockwise, she and the Englishwoman walk to the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that, and on and on, and when they finish circumambulating around the entire temple complex, turning every one of the prayer wheels, Joan’s arms ache and she is sweating. But the devastation, the desolation, the heartache, whatever she might call it, has shifted. The burden inside is still weighty, but there has been the slightest of movements.
At the temple entrance, the Englishwoman says, “I am Camille Nagy. You don’t know anything, do you dear?”
“I don’t,” Joan says. “I’ve only been here since yesterday.”
“Did you not study up?”
Joan shakes her head. “I had no time. But I will.”
“I certainly hope so. There is much you can gain from being in this place, but you must know what you’re doing.”
Camille Nagy pats her neat flinty bun at her neck, flattens out the nonexistent wrinkles in her practical brown tweed skirt. She must be hot in those clothes, Joan thinks.
“If you plan on staying, perhaps we’ll see one another again. I take Ela’s meditation class every afternoon at two, right out in the Tsug Lakhang courtyard, on the mountain side of the complex. It would be good for you to join in.”
The older woman takes a few steps. “Wait,” she says, though Joan has not moved from her spot.
“What is your name?”
It was easier to identify herself with Kartar, but with this woman it feels more like a declaration.
“Ashby,” Joan eventually says. “Ashby.”
Camille Nagy studies Joan with her coal black eyes, as beaded as a bird’s.
“The first thing you need to figure out is exactly who you are, only then can you become who you want to be,” and then Camille Nagy walks briskly away, in the manner of the spry and purposeful Englishwoman that she is.
Camille Nagy is right, Joan thinks, she does need to figure out exactly who she is, and then she is walking back into the monastery and climbing the temple staircase. At the top, a guard stops her.
“Before you enter this room, know that if you plan to circumambulate, you must do so in a clockwise direction.”
Does everyone in India refer to walking as circumambulation, or does circumambulation mean the kind of walking one does only in places like this? Joan would like to know the answer to that, but at least she knows what she is to do.
The room is dim, years of layered paint peeling from the walls. Fifty or more monks are fluttering around, their red habits piped in blue. Their heads bald, their faces tranquil and composed, their mouths ascetic, even as they engage in animated debate. Not animated debate, Joan realizes, but animated prayer, their voices mingling and melding into a solid sound. She lets the voices wash over her, locates a single one, follows its elevation, its dips, until it disappears and is replaced by another.
An hour later, she is in the temple courtyard. People are sitting in a circle on red pillows, with their eyes closed, chanting away. This must be where the meditation class Camille Nagy attends is held, and there is Camille Nagy on a stack of red pillows, her body perfectly still, her stern mouth no longer stern, her lips turned up in a smile as she chants along with the others.