Kathmandu

It was time to retrieve my luggage with its promise of eternal burden. I met a French Lama who revealed to me the secret history of the Kagyu war. The entire war revolved around the tricky question of what was a Tulku? "Well, a Tulku can be many things you know," the French Lama said. "Tulkus don't need a lineage, but can start them with the right blessings; and Tulkus can be recognized, but not necessarily enthroned. Some have even been enthroned without being recognized! And don't forget that Tulkus can take on various aspects of a great saint, but not necessarily be the saint himself." I scratched my head. "Are you confused?" the French Lama asked. "Just a little," I retorted. The French Lama continued: "After the Rebellious Regent's treachery, hundreds of years ago, his red hat was buried under the ground and his lineage was terminated. But the Regent just kept coming back. He was never recognized and shuffled into a lonely corner. With the exile, the Regent was recognized once more, officially. But the curse, the curse ...." The French Lama trailed off. "The curse was under-estimated. Now, we have a war." We both sat in silence. It was cold outside. Fog covered the hills surrounding the monastery. All was gloom. I could see a prayer flag fluttering silently in the wind. It seemed to whisper to me, to warn me about many unknowns that were coming to a head.

The French Lama aided me in talking to the Tibetans; and I was soon on my way back to Salugara loaded with luggage. I found a bus going to Siliguri and it left me off at the crossroads, just outside town. Maxim had sent two letters to me, both were identical. He was pissed off. My stepmother had told him I wasn't coming back for his wedding. "The Buddha can kiss my ass," he defiantly announced. I just sighed. The insanity of the family was now reaching India. I thought about the bodhisattvahs and how they could branch out their attributes into different people. I had abandoned my Jewish protectors by embracing Buddhism and could expect no help from the family. The great Jewish bodhisattvahs had helped me enormously in Central Europe and Israel, however. Now they were saying to me, "You're on different turf, RELY ON THE LOCALS!"
In Siliguri, I was forced to argue in the dark with the rickshaw drivers. The old ploy of under-bidding was used by the most astute one and I had to pay him off later, far away from any sign of civilization. But I got to Salugara. NEPAL was now on the horizon. Lama was back and he gave me some extra money. "You may need it," he knowingly said. Lama also asked me about Situ. "How's he holding up?" he curiously inquired. "Oh, he's OK," I answered. Lama then said. "It's a mess, I know. The Regent has broken his vows and we have underestimated the curse. But in his heart of hearts, he knows that he's wrong." There were now rumors that a rival boy would soon recognized in New Delhi. The whole thing was getting terribly complicated.
I let Lama read Maxim's letter. "Well, you know he's just demanding attention. You Americans .... Lama shook his head and laughed. "You Americans are taught to be completely self-reliant from birth. You don't know how to compromise." Lama was smiling. "And you know, your brother shouldn't curse the Buddha, he'll lose merit." I asked Lama about harnessing the subtle energies for long life and psychic power. Lama rubbed his chin and softly spoke, "What's the point of all this, if there's no bodhicitta?" Lama paused, but only for a second. "What's the point in trying to get ahead of the other guy in some kind of silly spiritual Olympics if you're not going to help him later on?" There was dead silence in the room. "That's not dharma." Lama finally uttered. I realized he was right.

It was time to cross the border, but my final moments in India were just more slapstick comedy. I crossed the border without getting my passport stamped. The Nepalis sent me back, but let me keep my luggage at the passport control office. The Indians seemed annoyed that I was bothering them at all and took their time filling out all the necessary forms. A young Nepali hustler helped me change money and guided me to the bus for Kathmandu, but I refused to board it. I wanted my luggage inside the bus with me. The Nepali demanded I pay double. I stood my ground and the Nepali gave in. The young hustler got no commission and stalked off in a huff. I was in Kakarbhitta, a dusty and ugly border town heaped with scattered energies swirling under a brown halo of careless abandon. Nepal was different. Nothing seemed to matter here much. A young English kid sat next to me and became totally absorbed by my dharma babble. As we talked, our bus zoomed past the flat open space of the Terai plains. The road was horrible, and the ride soon became a feat of unhappy endurance. Day surrendered to night, and the bus stopped to let all the passengers have a piss break. We were in the middle of nowhere. It was magnificent. The pitch black darkness swallowed up everything for miles. High up in the cold night sky, the stars twinkled and wept. I had a bad feeling in my gut. We arrived in Kathmandu the next morning.

KATHMANDU. There was a soft and slow stress to this place. Dusty haze clung to the city; there were wide boulevards filled with touts and beggars. A dirty modernizing look reminded me of Mexico here, and India too. But the psychic dislocation seemed worse here than in India. Nepali culture was rapidly going down the tubes. WHITE STRESS on the surface hid a subtle tension simmering just below. It was like walking around the rim of a volcano. The English kid guided me to the Thamel tourist ghetto, where we checked into rooms in one of the millions of empty hotels that had sprouted over the years to satisfy the hordes of foreign invaders flooding the country. Now the demand had dropped. Red tape and high visa fees and bribes had dampened enthusiasm for travel in the Third Vortex; and a vortex Nepal was. A very dangerous one. Nepal lay sausaged between China and India, the giants of Asia. Nepal was more expensive than these giants, but also more convenient. Thamel had everything for a price. I was at the crossroads now. I walked to Swyambu. I was in a bad mood. The psychic overload was sneaking up on me. I had only fifty dollars in my pocket. Outside the gilded Thamel ghetto tons of garbage floated insecurely in the nearby river. Animals rummaged in the filth; everybody looked miserable and poor in this high poverty zone. What was going to happen here? What was going to happen to me? Kathmandu stunk and seemed on the verge of revolution. The Black Demons of Gurkha land had their echoes here. The demon gangs were in the streets jostling for power, for the best BLACK SOLUTION.

Up on Swyambu hill, I surveyed the scene and it was a SCENE. I was in the middle of another vortex. This was HINBULAND. Nepal was a weird flux and mix of everything. It was a true testing ground for pilgrims of all stripes and colors. There was black magic in the air, and a scattered feeling seemed to persist inside me and in all the people around me. We were all leading tragic lives.

Galaxy Clusters as seen from Kathmandu:
Scanning the hierarchy of size in the Universe, from planet to solar system to galaxy, one keeps expecting to encounter some object LARGE ENOUGH to dominate all external influences, a cosmic individual in complete control of its fate, but not even our galaxy is independent and self-sufficient. There are about two dozen galaxies associated with the Milky Way in a small galaxy cluster called the "The Local Group." The only one larger than the Milky Way, Andromeda, with its three-hundred billion stars, travels on the other side of the cluster, about a million light years away. Andromeda and the Milky Way make up seventy percent of the local group's mass; the other members of this group are small fish by comparison. But a great many galaxies exist in even LARGER CLUSTERS and these societies of galaxies affect each other quite intimately as they fuse into larger and larger clusters. Super galaxies and super clusters surely must be the cosmic individuals mentioned earlier. But a thickening has been detected, a great circle that looks like an equator of a gravitational field that operates on the level of associations of the super clusters, clusters of clusters of clusters .... like a raving maniac hurling around houses and dodging posts.

Inside the raving maniac:
"I'm sorry, Mr. Finberg, but your stepmother refuses to talk to you on the phone." The embassy official looked at me with a mixture of sympathy and motherly confusion. "Mr. Finberg, are you all right?" I stood listlessly; my blood had turned into ice water. "She said she doesn't have any money. Would you like the State Department to try calling her .... we can ...." I was in a daze. My stepmother had finally gone insane. She had stabbed me in the back and I was stranded in a hell-hole with forty dollars. Tibet was lost, IT WAS LOST! My mind was screaming. "Mr. Finberg, the call was six dollars and forty-five cents." I looked at the embassy official; she was a tall dark Indian woman with an American accent. "Uh, can we defer payment?" I moaned weakly. "Yes, you may .... Mr. Finberg, please remember that Nepali visa regulations are very strict; if you don't have money for an extension you may go to jail." I was no longer listening; I was furious. The goddamn wedding had something to do with this. Maxim was behind this. My stepmother's lunacy no longer was curbed by Maxim's emergency brake. It was THIS GODDAMN WEDDING! My "Summer in India" fantasy was now coming back to haunt me and it was impossible to call anybody collect in Nepal. I had no address book. THE SCREENPLAY WAS IN DANGER. The yo-yos now were knocking down bricks in San Diego.

Dear Guardian Angel:
Well, the fools in San Diego finally did it. I have been sacrificed on the altar of family politics. I AM STRANDED HERE IN KATHMANDU. What's this place like? Oh, it's a weird and wonderful landscape. Just an hour ago I finished exploring the Durbar. It's a square filled with mythical kinda statues. It's wrathful here, but there's also magic in the air. Walt Disney would have liked this place. It's not always easy to orient yourself in this funny Malla Coca-Cola kingdom. I see masks, and I see puppets, and I see knives, big curved ones, and I see jewelry, all kinds, and I see pottery and paintings. I'm staying in this tourist ghetto hotel. It's owned by Muslim Tibetans. All kinds of strange foreigners trip around in the lobby. The reception desk is manned by two gorgeous daughters of the hotel owner. MTV is always blaring in the lobby. An English guy named Paul brought me here. He's a nice quiet guy who's into sports and wants to be a writer. He gave me some Walkman earphones. I needed them and I'm almost broke. I'm a mapper as you know, so I gave Paul a lot of maps and map-making tools. There's this American guy trying to smuggle out dogs with his French wife who speaks very good English, I mean she doesn't even have an accent. She's something of a spiritual air-head, but she's a nice person. Her name is Val and her husband, who used to play professional tennis, is named Quinn and they're trying to get into Tibet and smuggle dogs outta there, but they don't have any money, these little vortex innocents! I gave a dharma talk to an Israeli and he seemed receptive to the concept of EMPTINESS. There's so much color and complexity here in KAT. The bookstores are good, but nothing's cheap here. All kinds of restaurants are offering every kind of food imaginable, but there's this depressed feel to life here. The skies are always overcast and unfriendly. Nepali buses are no fun; they are small and over-crowded, and uncomfortable. Long journeys are a pain here. Just the other day, I went to Bodnath, the Tibetan capital of Nepal. There was this stupa there, but I was tired and in a down mood all day. I'm running out of money and I need to find a monastery quick. I have to write my screenplay. So much depends on it. I'm trying to see as much as possible before the crunch really hits. I guess you could say I'm waiting for deliverance, looking for a way out of this noise and zoo-like atmosphere. I'm not going to let the cement-heads in San Diego stop me from exploring Nepali culture. I mean this is a NEW and POWERFUL energy field. You can feel all the dark and complex energies and just soar! This is the land of the cosmic Buddhas, the discoverers of SUCHNESS, you know, that elusive, transcendent reality in all things. The cosmic kids have investigated scientifically even their finger-tips to the utmost degree and have seen that everything just dissolves under microscopic analysis: into molecules and atoms and empty spaces, and finally into quarks or other strange possibilities. A Buddha has done the inner scientific investigation, even beyond the outer investigations of so called WESTERN scientists. A Buddha has "GONE BEYOND" all worldly appearance — even worldly nothingness. From this immovable ground of transcendence, Buddhas emerge in purified forms to reach out to beings; and to bring them in contact with their own realities. Here in KAT there's a hill called Swyambu. Five colored Buddhas live there. One is blue and is called Akshobya; this cosmic kid transmutes hate into wisdom, then there's Vairochana, he's yellow; he transmutes delusion into mirror wisdom, and there's Ratnasambhava, who transmutes pride and greed into equality wisdom; Amitabah is the red Buddha who transmutes lust into discriminating wisdom; and finally there's green Amoghasiddhi who transmutes envy into all-accomplishing wisdom. There's also the Medicine Buddha who can express himself as a healing medicine for ailing beings. He's my favorite and I puja with him a lot. I actually made a vow to him to puja, puja, puja every day because someone I really cared about was sick. You know I'm learning so much here in my panicky despair. It's important to keep the holy centers spinning in synch and at a moderate pace. Chakra clampdown generates aging and illness. Chakra spaceout generates madness and anxiety. Most people have too much or not enough spin. BLACK and WHITE CHAKRA STRESS! It's a drag. You have to transform the sexual energy into something less draining and more powerful, but you need to dedicate this power to something higher, a higher purpose, or SUBTLE STRESS will zap you, poke you, and KILL you. The gods live in our subtle centers .... it is our subtleness which allows us to become potential fields of realizational awareness. Tapping this becomes a process that eventually moves us all outwardly so we can encompass all sentient beings. This subtle union of the channels and centers inside us is called Shambala. The consort is the inner yoga that blends the wrathful and peaceful deities through the central channel. Tantra is a high stress weave. You see this UNION portrayed in all the hairy frescos found in all the remote low-stress zones. It's a fusion of wrathful vertical flux and "peaceful" horizontal flux of BLACK and WHITE STRESS. It's just two sides of the same coin that are simultaneously embraced. It's so sad what I see, all these spiritual seekers aspiring to vertical, while striving for horizontal and getting caught in between. There's a lot of PRESSURE and EXPANSION, and you need an insurance policy, like a GOOD TEACHER to explain all this. Everybody's pressuring for something, the energy's always turning and fortunes are always reversing .... the Greeks understood this very well. NO SYSTEM WORKS, yet the existence of this dilemma signals that SOMETHING IS AT WORK. We have a choice. What do you want to have happen? How much STRESS do you want? Look what's behind each thought and the STRESS coming out of it. This is how BLISS AWARENESS begins; seeing the STRESS and its ANTIDOTE. This is INNER RELEASE. Outer release never lasts and creates tricky karma. Work for the liberation of beings! Make a symbolic feast. Offer it up .... and listen to the angels. I'm waiting for word from the State Department. I have this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach .... the energy in San Diego is so DENSE. It's like cement.

Yours,
Exasperated Determination

Bhaktapur. It was here in the eastern valley that the synchronicities exploded. Prague was generating an eerie twist here. I waited and got relief in Bhaktapur. There was no traffic in the city center and a timeless quality jumped out from every corner. The durbar was filled with street-wise urchins begging for rupees. I gave them bread and it disappeared into endless pockets. They wanted MORE. The little imps were on the make in Pottersville. The past was less diluted here. The WHITE NOISE was soft and luscious. I was breathing a living gem. The stone elephants laughed. A great big ghostly head stared at me. There were many here. They playfully fucked around, picking butts off the streets. I was in Bhaktapur now, only in another life and in another body. And I was happy.

I caught a bus to Nagarkot and clambered onto its roof. There I met Pia. She was a young and wholesome dakini from the Southwest of England. A lively bundle of energy with a quick mind. Pia had a traveling companion inside the bus suffering from vertigo. We were alone up on the roof with all the scrambling Nepalis clinging to anything that provided support. The bus sat for an hour and finally roared to life. Pia was Summer's mysterious double, a doppleganger sent by the Guides to comfort me. Both Summer and Pia were of the same age, born in the same month, and both had half-Swedish ancestry. Both were witches. Indeed, here was the white witch Pia tempting me like the black witch in Prague. Both had occult power. Both were totally priceless and precious. It was a weird and absorbing symmetry.

"Oh, I'm such a selfish cow," laughed Pia. "I treat Nick so badly. He's taken a fancy to me and he knows I have a boyfriend." Pia was on a break, teaching English for three months in Kathmandu. She would soon be off to Scotland for her new university life. Pia was not like Summer in one important sense. She had led a normal life. Years of boarding school discipline made this dark brunette serious and frugal in her ways. And Pia did have her ways. She was a rebel. "Oh, I just get so depressed when I'm stuck in some hole with nothing to do. Take Nick for example, he's so pathetic. He'll just sit and stare at the walls until I tell him to stop. It's only when he plays his music that he seems to come alive. Maybe that's why we're still friends. I told him to come here to Nepal with me. I didn't want to be here alone. Those Indians are bloody rude. I was in transit in New Delhi and they simply stared at me. They just stared and stared. It was dreadful." Pia adjusted her long blue skirt. I could see white ivory flesh through a slit. "Oh, and I miss Tim so much," Pia lamented. "I wish he would get here soon." This non-stop chatter went on and on. The bus slowly lifted itself up through the scenic hills. We arrived in Nagarkot in the late afternoon.

It was stupendous. The Himalayas were closer than ever. I snapped and snapped not only the god mountains, but Pia. Nick was in no mood for further trekking, but Pia bullied him into coming to Sankhu with me the next morning. We trekked through some of the best scenery in the world. Rice terraces, fragrant green, guided us on our journey through the roof of the world. The snow-capped mountains were magnificent. Pia skipped ahead of us; she was lost in her private world. "Don't you find her a bit much?" I asked Nick. "I put up with it," Nick murmured, in typically silent English desperation. "You know PIA means 'impermanence' in Pali, the ancient language of the Buddha," I revealed to Nick, in an effort to cheer him up. "Does it now?" Nick retorted. "We should tell her that."

We could see Sankhu off in the Zen mist, the sun was breaking out of the clouds. Pia and I left Nick at a cafe and began the ascent up the mountain to the Vajrayogini temple. "Do you have a girlfriend?" Pia cautiously probed. "Not exactly," I answered. "Is she beautiful?" Pia next inquired. I took out a photo of Summer and gave it to her. Pia began to gaze at it with deep absorption. "Oh, she looks so angry," Pia grimly reported. I looked at the snap. Summer was sitting on a chair, bare feet propped on a table, clasping her hands and smiling. "She looks happy," I announced. "No, she's not. I can feel her. She's a prisoner of her own beauty and she hates it." Pia was firm. "This dreadful culture we live in ...." Pia trailed off. "We have this image of what beauty should be and it's so hopelessly abstract." Pia was working up to something. "This 'thin' kind of beauty .... it's just not fair. You know, my sister didn't want to grow boobs! It's just so BAD!" Silence hit the air. I could hear Vajrayogini laughing. She was mocking Pia, tempting me. Villagers hurriedly passed us by, seemingly preoccupied with things sinister. Black magic was everywhere, soaking everything in its path. It all felt very familiar. Pia and I were halfway up the mountain, but we were also at a crossroads. It was here at the Vajrayogini temple that Sankhu became Konopiste.

Vajrayogini was waiting for us at the top of the mountain in the form of a wild sadhu who greeted us and invited us into his room. The sadhu had long matted hair and his skin was covered with white ash. He wore all kinds of beads and jewelry. But I sensed another hustler trying to score. And this hustler was a dangerous one. He showed us his ceremonial skull-cap and mixed his special powders in it. "Our new friend" was a Tantric of the Wrathful school. I could see this from all the junk he stored near his bed. Monkey skulls and candles adorned his altar. Before Pia and I could leave, the sadhu anointed our foreheads with red powder. Pia was bursting with enthusiasm. "Oh, I should bring my boyfriend here, it's so CAPITAL!" she exclaimed. While she got her headrush, I slipped out and walked over to the temple. The priest was not too friendly, but I saw my chance and peeked through the door. I sensed something sinister. There she was! VAJRAYOGINI in all her splendor. Her statue glistened in the sunlight, SUDDENLY the priest swung the door shut. I made an offering, but the priest would not take it. The energies were getting heavy and I returned to the wild sadhu's room to fetch Pia. The wild sadhu wanted money. I gave him ten rupees. "I HAVE TO EAT!" the sadhu complained. "That's all I can give you," I said. "We have to go now," I added.
It was too late. Even as Pia and I rushed down the stairs, it came like a blast. I began feeling a migraine coming on. An un-nameable spidery heaviness began to press on my body. I struggled towards the ledge near a clump of trees and lay on my back. Pia followed me, somewhat puzzled by my behavior. I drew in deep breaths and recited a mantra for protection. Pia sat next to me. "Are you all right?" she cautiously asked. "Yeah," I hissed, teeth clenched. "Can't you feel it?" I heaved. "Feel what?" Pia asked, "IT?"
"Yes, IT!"
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"IT! IT!" I pressed my forehead against Pia's. I realized we were under psychic attack and began to act by instinct alone. Pia had the power. Her brown eyes began to glow like hot coals. Vajrayogini had been next to me all this time! I got up and Pia followed. Monkeys scattered as we hurried down the mountain.

At the bottom, we passed a small brown man who looked like a retired magician. I saw streams of gold pouring through the sky, and right above the head of this new stranger it poured right through my eyeballs and indeed right inside them; it was everywhere. I began to tingle wild all over and smell the rank, hot, and rotten energy of the wild sadhu from hair and face to feet and toes. I could hear a snoring. I opened my mouth and drew in deep breaths of sacred atmosphere. It was not air, never air, but the palpable and living emanation of Vajrayogini. Annika walked slowly next to me. "I feel so somber," she quietly intoned. Then she began to choke and weep. She began to gasp desperately and hold her hands to her throat. She sat down and began to heave in a panic. I kneeled in front of her and recited furiously more mantra, then it was over. Pia wiped the red mark off her forehead with a violent brush of the hand. "That man wasn't blessing me, he was cursing me! I can feel his breath streaming down the mountain." I was exhausted; and was lying on the grass. "You're a little too cavalier about all this," I confessed. "I'm certainly not now!" Pia defended herself. "I have a healthy respect for these people, they're dangerous."
The sun was beginning to set and I was anxious to find Nick and get away to Bodnath. "Oh, flip!" Pia cried. "Where are my sunglasses? They belong to my mother, they're special!" We scrounged around in the dry grass and found them. Vajrayogini was playing one last trick so that Pia could soon start growing up. We found Nick waiting patiently for us in the same cafe we left him in. There was something timeless about him; in contrast to Pia, Nick seemed like an accomplished yogi. We all hitched a ride in the back of a truck, which kept stopping for additional passengers along the way. In Nepal truck drivers are always looking for ways to earn extra money. Pia sat next to me and sighed, "You know I'm such a bad person, when I wish people ill, they actually become sick." It was a strange feeling to be with another little fallen angel. Summer's energy was at its weakest here. Interference from somewhere had blocked her signal; and suddenly now, Pia had shown up. I could hear Vajrayogini laughing. Her work was never done.

It was Losar, the Tibetan new year. In Bodnath, I gave Annika and Nick a tour of the great stupa. Countless pilgrims were pinwheeling around the stupa's many levels in a mad traffic of confused celebration. "Oh, it's so much better here," Pia commented, with a tinge of relief. "These people are very nice." We boarded the bus to Kathmandu. Pia kept talking non-stop like an endlessly running motor. Pia's enthusiasm never seemed to flag, but Nick looked exhausted. "She's not very deep," he volunteered. When we hopped out, an unknown Nepali attempted to lift Nick's wallet, but Nick's ever-present vigilance prevented a minor tragedy. I could sense Vajrayogini watching us. Someone stepped on Pia's skirt, ripping it as she attempted to get off the bus. Her long white legs were now exposed to the cold night air. I kissed Pia good-bye. "You know, I saw little skulls in your eyes up there," Pia confided in me. She kissed me on the lips and disappeared into the unfriendly streets. I felt totally relieved.