Rubbing my palms, I found myself regretting the decision to leave behind warm outfits. Travel light-is a thought that gelled well with my minimalistic approach to life. It was a misty February morning and I was eagerly looking eastwards for a ray of warmth. With the sun still shy, I had braved one full peripheral circle of the gigantic Namdroling monastery, gently (and sometimes forcefully) turning the silver colored prayer wheels while in my shorts and tee. Just about 20 hours back, I was this lone foreigner in a tiny 12-seater bus carrying Tibetan monks and natives to Bylakuppe. 20 hours later, the “foreigner” had become a thing of past, with every cell in my body resonating with the untainted surroundings.
Śunyata is a word originating from the word Śunya which refers to empty. Quintessentially, it talks about reaching a point where one is devoid of “I-consciousness”. The point where one is bereft of any “self” existing essence. The thought had been sown deep in my head by a book I had picked up the previous day, and accentuated by the talk I had with two monks while en-route to one of the largest settlement of a wonderful people in exile. Even as I was engulfed in the profundity of the word, I could not stop noticing the elderly Tibetans, undeterred by the steady wind, taking purposeful steps around the temple. Each time one of them passed by; the air resonated with heavy-bass chants (a practice known as overtone chanting or throat singing) that resembled the gong in the monastery. The wrinkled faces, the multi-colored Paang-dens (aprons) and the steady rolling of the prayer beads amidst thick fog created an unsullied imagery in my mind.
With the sky gradually emanating an orange tinge, human activity had started picking up. The young monks perhaps in their late 20s were the first to be seen. Offering a cup of tea made warmer with their act of compassion to the elderly, the monks readied themselves for another day of existential chores. The clean shaven heads and intriguing maroon robes painted a very homogenous visual, rendering them non-differentiable. This was perhaps the first step towards renunciation of the “self”. However like all the prayer wheels that were identical, yet some had to be pushed harder than the others to turn them around, no two monks in their existential lives could be painted in the same exact colors. While some returned my attempts to start a conversation with a holy-indifference, certain monks were glad to spend several minutes explaining the root cause of pain, and the need to be self-aware, and the challenges with meditation and so on. I sensed conflicting thoughts there – aim at abandoning every act of self-actuality while retaining your existential individualities and innate idiosyncrasies!
By noon, I had made my way on foot to several other unobtrusive monasteries in little Tibet. It’s strange how we constantly combat the feeling of void or emptiness and question its origin and relevance. But isn’t it the very same component that the world we supposedly live in is composed of? If the world that we see is empty and an illusion, and that this emptiness is not relative but the absolute truth, then there certainly is a method in this madness. Emptiness isn’t then just a strange feeling we wake up with on certain mornings, but an intermittent manifestation and reminder of what we truly are. Our daily battles for existence would have perhaps rendered this very core part of ours into a vestigial phenomenon. I was jolted back to where I was by the fluttering of the prayer flags in the strong winds. In ages did I experience silence such pristine that I could hear, feel, breathe and almost touch it. Meanwhile, a steady breeze had carried the voices of several monks who had assembled in what sounded like a lunch gathering. It was strange to observe “discipline in chatter” for the voices were neither shrill nor shambolic, but picked up and plummeted together like classical music.
Curiosity had dragged my foot towards the hostel area where the monks studying Buddhism among various other disciplines resided. Cramped double occupancy rooms disseminating popular Bollywood music from the 90s caught my attention. I had still not been able to get over the childhood fixation of imagining lives of others. Would a prolonged hostel life make you more communal and hence dependent as opposed to being a recluse? Wouldn’t a monk’s mind wander out of the confines of the monastery walls into the city and the amusements it offers? A group of tiny 7-10 year old monks suddenly hurried past me. One of them while on a roll, sang Isska time to disco, not bothering what it meant. I had to control my urge to pick him up in a tight cuddle, for one is supposed to look up to them in reverence.
A whole day had passed floating between thoughts and aberration, hypotheses and interpretations. The visuals around me had changed now; leaving me constant in a moving frame. The bus would carry me back to a city of deception and deduced reality. My mind absconded out of the window wondering as usual. What if every entity we conveniently and “scientifically” termed as non-living had been able to renounce this false notion of self-entity way back in time and achieved Śunyata in absolute real terms? A group of Tibetan school kids returning from their vacations had been observing me off and on. Coincidentally when the stereo in the bus played this Tibetan pop song, all of them sang at the top of their voices with a shy smile on their faces. Only 2 English lines from the interlude I could catch hold of… “Thank you India, Love you India…”
