All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World (12 page)

Rather despondently – since this answer was becoming somewhat familiar – I contented myself with reading about the oracles in such dusty tomes as
Oracles and Demons of Tibet
by one René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz. This Austrian ethnologist, who died in 1959 at the age of only thirty-six, spent many years in the Himalayan region, prior to and during the Chinese invasion of Lhasa. According to Wojkowitz, Tibetan Buddhists believe in the existence of a special group of deities called
chos skyong
, believed to protect them against adversaries. These wrathful and generally ferocious beings, who can be enlisted for good or sometimes evil purposes, are ritually called upon by the use of skull drums, thigh bone trumpets, or sometimes a libation of blood or bile. Many of those deities, Wojkowitz goes on, take possession of certain men and women who act as their mouthpieces: these are the oracles – who generally enter their first trance around the time of puberty.

Time passed. After several weeks without success, during which I’d seemingly visited every scholar in the district, I decided to temporarily abandon my quest and spend some days exploring. Real life was passing me by while I sat in libraries and offices, talking to people who, invariably, seemed to shake their heads dolefully and tell me I was wasting my time. Outside it was high summer and all about me trekkers were coming and going en route for Zanskar and Lamayru, places I’d long dreamed of visiting. If life had taught me anything thus far, it was that I should take the opportunity of seeing these things now, for who knew if I would come this way again.

So I turned my attention instead to the monasteries of the interior. Few dwellings on earth feel so remote or suggestive of spiritual aspiration as these tiny
gompas
, set amidst jagged peaks and hills of steep scree, cut off for months of the year by the weather. In winter, everything turns white and the ground sets like iron. The days fall dark early, and the wind, coming down from Siberia, can be one of the coldest on earth.

In summer, however, this lonely stillness vanishes before an equally formidable adversary: the armies of camera-wielding tourists. Rarely have I felt so ashamed as when I walked into ancient Hemis monastery one Monday morning, to see an Italian woman ordering one of the monks to break from his conversation and move so that she could take a photograph. When the monk looked up at her in amused bewilderment, she began to gesticulate wildly, shouting aggressively at him that he was spoiling the shot. The scene was inexcusable and yet hardly surprising. It is little wonder that modern tourists, transplanted from their own culture with a speed and ease resembling magic, fail to exhibit the sensitivity that former generations, moving on foot or by public transport, may have learned by observation. Perhaps, too, a cultural arrogance remains as we move from the developed to the developing world. Do we think that by dint of our wealth and technological superiority, it is we who are civilised and others who are ‘primitive’? In this – as perhaps with our rationalism – we may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Later that day, as I was sitting on the parapet of Hemis monastery, I spotted the American girl who had been so ill in my guesthouse. She looked healthier now, with some colour in her cheeks, and was inspecting a copper-gilt statue of Lord Buddha. We soon got talking and discovered a common interest in the mystical. Zoe was a yoga teacher from Ohio, and had come to India, somewhat like myself, on a spiritual pilgrimage. She was travelling alone, visiting only places of spiritual interest.

‘I just felt a bit ridiculous, you know, teaching these kids yoga when I hadn’t been to India,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to be one of those Westerners who think they’re like gurus or something just because they can do a back bend.’

Zoe seemed to frown continually as she spoke. She was a young woman, barely twenty-five, with an angular, earnest face and blonde, shoulder-length hair. ‘My Mom thinks I’m nuts: going to India on my own, practising Hinduism, which, to her, is like this foreign cult or something. She’s a Baptist and takes Jesus kinda seriously.’

We went for lunch together in the small teahouse at the entrance to the monastery, ordering
thukpa
(Tibetan noodle broth) in dented aluminium bowls. It was the kind of café that did a brisk business because of its location, thereby absolving its proprietors from even the most cursory effort. Two chickens confronted each other on the concrete floor. Tables glistened with congealed food. We sipped the soup warily.

Zoe was a New Ager, in the best sense of the phrase: her spirituality was a personalised miscellany of Native American, Wicca and Hinduism. She’d read F. Max Müller’s translation of the Upanishads, had spent time in South America studying shamanism. Like me, she felt there must be something at the end of a journey like this: if nothing else, the fact of having shattered habitual ways of seeing. But more than that, she confessed, she really was searching for transcendence. Many travellers I met professed an interest in the Eastern religions, but she was the first to openly profess the desire for enlightenment. ‘Once you begin to recognise how the structure of the ego manipulates our every interaction,’ she said gently, ‘I don’t see how you have any choice but to try and get to grips with it. It’s become the central purpose of my life.’

‘And how does one do that?’ I asked. ‘That’s the crux of it. So many methods. Easy to go wrong.’

‘I guess I’m figuring that out as I go. But all these traditions, I think, offer methods that work. If we practise hard enough, there’s a way through all the difficulties of the human condition. If we conquer the ego, we can become free.’

I would think upon these words a lot over the months to come.

After lunch Zoe and I followed an old monk into the
interior of the monastery. Clutching a medieval fob of keys, he unlocked a six-inch door, then led us into murk and smells of yak butter and incense, the former faintly rancid, the latter pleasantly astringent. Inside the prayer hall, our eyes drew focus on an almost unbelievable array of
thangkas
– the exquisite geometric scroll paintings of Tibetan Buddhism. From every wall, a cosmology of Buddhas and demons stared down at us, laid out on a systematic grid of angles and intersecting lines. Up close, the detail seemed too precise for any human hand. Despite the gloom, the colours – made from pounded minerals and rocks – seemed to glow with a phosphorescence, giving the scenes a supernatural radiance. The Buddhas were impassive or smiling faintly. And the angry demons were hellish forms that even Dante might have baulked at.

Hemis, the monk told us, owns the world’s largest
thangka
. At sixty-two feet in length, it is unveiled only once every twelve years, at the monastery’s summer festival. Elsewhere in the
gompa
, he added in hushed tones, the hands of the monk who painted it are preserved as a sacred relic.

‘Aside from
thangka
, summer festival is very important,’ added the lama, his grey-green eyes twinkling under tufted eyebrows. ‘It is written in the
Padma Kathang
, the prophecy of Guru Padmasambhava, that on this day the most faithful and sincere devotees are blessed by a vision of Guru Padmasambhava himself.’

Zoe asked who Padmasambhava had been.

‘Guru Rinpoche,’ explained the monk, ‘was a very great Buddha. Sometimes called “Second Buddha”. He brought Vajrayana Buddhism to Tibet, and destroyed many demons there. A powerful
siddha
yogi.’

‘And have
you
seen him,’ I enquired, ‘at this summer festival?’

The monk smiled, so that his whole wrinkled face lit up with delight, jangled his keys musically and strode away. Like many encounters in Ladakh, a smile seemed the only answer I could hope for.

It was the following morning when the breakthrough came. On my way to the German bakery in Leh, I took a short cut down a narrow street. And it was here – through good fortune, sheer coincidence or a glimmer of magic – that I noticed a small handwritten sign propped up outside a particularly shabby-looking travel agent’s. ‘We take visits to oracle,’ it said.

In this dusty back street of Leh, before an open sewer, a new direction had finally opened up. I almost glanced up at the heavens in gratitude.

Inside, a young man of about thirty sat wreathed in blue cigarette smoke, reading the morning newspaper. This was Norbu, dressed in North Face and Patagonia, but with the high Mongolian cheekbones of the Ladakhi people. His eyebrows arched in thick parentheses. The radio was playing Bryan Adams, with whom Norbu was humming softly under his breath.

Over sweet tea, we sat in the dim light and talked of oracles. Norbu seemed little surprised at my questions; I may as well have been asking him to lead me trekking. It was his sister who was the local oracle, he explained. He took people to see her not for money – he made no charge – but because he was proud of this Ladakhi tradition, and felt that it had potential to help people when Western medicine had failed.

‘I do not take “tourists”,’ he began. ‘I take people who are really interested, and who are respectful of our traditions. No cameras allowed. First rule.’

‘When did you know your sister was an oracle?’ I asked him.

He thought for a moment. ‘My sister little older than usual when she got the spirit inside her. She was something like twenty-five. Most girls more like sixteen.’

I asked him how they recognised her symptoms when they first appeared.

‘When spirit is inside her she has no fears, no shame; she is acting like a mad person, actually. Completely crazy if you have never seen it before. In Ladakh we know the symptoms so we took her to the monastery and spoke to Stakma Rinpoche in Shishod. He is what we call a
lapok
– one who is able to train the oracles. He said she was becoming an oracle and therefore needed some training.’

‘It must be very frightening for a young girl,’ I said. ‘To have these visions, and be hearing voices. How did she know she wasn’t going mad? If this happened in the West we’d probably lock that person away for the rest of their lives.’

‘Here it is not frightening,’ said Norbu. ‘Oracles have no memory of the spirits once they have gone – you will see. Spirit comes – maybe one hour, two hours, and all kinds of crazy things are happening, and afterwards she is normal again. But training is
definitely
necessary to control the spirits.
Rinpoche
told us that when the spirit comes first both good and bad spirits are there. Training is necessary to separate them. If not, person can go mad permanently. So my sister went to Sabu Lamu for guidance, and she stayed with her for some time. When she came back she was fully trained oracle, and recently she has become the main oracle for the town of Leh. This is a great honour for our family.’

‘Why has it been so difficult for me to find an oracle?’ I asked Norbu. ‘So many people who must have known about them professed a total ignorance. I must have asked thirty people.’

Norbu looked embarrassed. ‘These traditions can be secret,’ he said, ‘and some people not liking foreigners coming to ask questions. Some people have asked me to take down my sign. But I have no problem with people seeing things, and nor does my sister, as long as they are interested people, or people with real trouble who need help. No problem for us. Sometimes Western medicine is not working, and oracle helps.’

‘So she won’t mind if I talk to her?

‘Why would she?’ said Norbu lightly. ‘Come tomorrow, eleven o’clock, you can see. One German fellow is also coming – he has some problems.’

I got up to go, but first I had one more question.

‘You seem quite Westernised,’ I pointed out. ‘Your clothes, your music, your brand of cigarettes. What do you think about the oracle? Do you really
believe
she is speaking with gods?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Of
course
I believe. Many times I’ve been sick and my sister has cured me. We do not believe “blindly”; we believe because our experience tells us it works. Once I saw my sister treating a cow. They had taken it to the vet and he could not find out what was wrong with it. They had given it antibiotics and still it was getting thin – you could see the ribs through the skin. And my sister pushed her hand into the cow’s side and took out a big nail which the cow had eaten.’

‘She cut the cow open?’

‘No, there was no cut. Hand went inside, and then nail was out. Afterwards cow was better.’ Norbu grinned. ‘When we ask the gods for help, they listen.’

Next morning I was up early, in time to gather my thoughts at a chai stall in Leh before departure. Around me, the ancient market place hummed with life. There were khaki trucks carrying troops to repair the roads and bridges; a muleteer, wearing traditional Ladakhi clothes, goading his unruly beasts onwards with a willow stick; several diminutive boot-blacks, carrying boxes of polish and brushes, tapping the Western tourists on the shoulder to tout for business. Many of them were from Bihar, one of the poorest states in India, and came up here during the summer to earn some money. Who knew where they slept, who took care of them? Some of them seemed scarcely ten years old, like characters from Dickens.