I must confess I was so pampered I didn’t wash my own clothing until I went off to college. Since then, I’ve never opened my washes to discover all my clothes have been turned orange or pink or neon green. That is, until last week.
Last week it rained every day without fault, the days were abysmally cold and my enthusiasm for doing laundry –none to begin with– turned into dread. Nevertheless, we were heading to Bir for the weekend, and wearing something that didn’t reek became pressing. So I left my clothing soaking overnight, and woke up at 5:30 on Thursday morning to scrub at my clothes in water so cold I lost feeling of all my digits. While scrubbing and soaking I discovered that a pair of fluffy navy blue pants I bought in India had turned all my bra’s and whites into interesting shades of violet. Oh well. So it goes.
I took my experiments with blue dye to be an auspicious sign of this week’s trip. It did turn out to be a mind-blowing two days. Bir is another Tibetan exile settlement in Himachal Pradesh. It’s about two hours from Mcleod, but has an entirely different feel. Bir is known for housing “New Arrivals,” or Tibetans who’ve escaped Tibet in the last two decades –as opposed to Mcleod, center of Tibetans in exile since the Dalai Lama escaped in 1959. Additionally, most of the New Arrivals have escaped from Amdo, the north eastern region of Tibet, while the bulk of earlier refugees came from Utsang, or central Tibet. Though claims are commonly made that Tibetans have a unified culture and language, Amdo dialect is incomprehensible to most Tibetans in exile who learn Lhasa dialect at the Tibetan schools in exile. The new arrivals go to specific schools the Tibetan Exile government has created for them, and we had the occasion to visit one on our fieldtrip.
Moreover, because Bir is a newer settlement, the monasteries built in the surrounding area were built with more funding than the first monasteries constructed in exile. What this translates into are breathtaking halls with marble floors and twenty foot Buddha statues. These monasteries are built in the scale of the greatest monasteries in Tibet, and even though they’re built of cement instead of stone, great use is made of traditional tanka painting and Nepali metalwork. The two days were filled with the most beautiful monasteries we’ve had the opportunity to visit. Even now, thinking back to the trip it’s hard for me to believe that most of these structures were built in the last two decades.
Oh, and did I mention we got to see some dead guy in a glass case and our first reincarnated lama? Thogten are monks in the Kagyu school famous for their unconventional methods; they let their hair grow long, unlike other monks, and generally meditate in isolation. They are reminiscent of Indian Sadhus. When Kamtrul Rimponche escaped Tibet, he brought eleven thogtens with him, and when his teacher died, special rites were performed to preserve his body. Though the mind has left the body, it’s believed that because this person was such a great practitioner, some of the karmic imprints may still emanate from the body and benefit other human beings. Sometimes, the salts that are used to preserve the body are handed to devotees to eat. Though it’s supposed to be very auspicious, I’m squeamish about the prospect. Nevertheless, it was an honor both to meet Kamtrul Rinpoche and to visit the preserved body of one of his teachers. Overall, the trip was no less breathtaking than the one to Amritsar, though interesting in a different sense because the most beautiful monuments we saw in Bir were all built within the past fifty years.
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