The single bare bulb puts out maybe 15 watts of light; I can barely see the monk. Or maybe it’s the smoke; the wood stove is just a small barrel – to fuel it you remove the lid (or rather the monk does – he’s constantly messing with the fire) and smoke billows into the little room. We’re at almost 12,000 feet in the Himalayas, on a high ridge above a thousand-year-old monastery where a 70-foot-tall, golden Maitreya Buddha shines in the light of the moon, which is full.
I’ve been here for several days with my interpreter, who is quickly becoming my friend.
Konchok, who is 27, is a Buddhist monk raised in a village of only six houses, without electricity, almost on the Chinese border, as remote a place as there is India. He had never even heard of automobiles when he saw an army truck at age 9; he thought it was a moving house. To join the monastery he walked three days through the mountains, over an 18,000-foot pass, accompanying a train of yaks. |
As a young adult he studied in India and got turned on by the world, by the quest for knowledge and deeper self-awareness. He began asking questions and found his elders didn’t have answers, that they followed the steps without question because it was tradition.
So he left his monastery (with his elders’ approval) and now goes from one monastery to another, seeking answers; he goes to villages to teach, and encourage people to look for deeper understandings of their faith. He cares deeply about tradition, but has seen so much change happen so quickly (he carries an iPhone and has a laptop). He wants to understand for himself what the world, and being human, means. |
At the monastery beyond our window the monks are practicing for seven days in preparation for their annual festival. After practice they will meditate for a week. Then they will don intricately carved masks and call upon deities to help redirect demons towards spiritual awakening, thereby protecting the earth, as they have for over 1,000 years.
The smoke is too much for me and I step out onto the roof. Standing in the moonlight, high above the frozen valley, surrounded by towering peaks, my ideas about the traditional and modern worlds are being cracked apart by what my investigation here is revealing. One of the several reasons cham is threatened is because young people here are having an awakening, fueled by their contact with the outside, modern world, and are refusing to follow the traditional steps without knowing their meanings. This is a threat to cham, and even monastic life itself.
But a new kind of self-awareness is blossoming in the Himalayas. Intelligent, kind, and respectful people – Buddhist monks – are questioning systems and plans they don’t understand and yearning to find answers for themselves, which is just as the Buddha taught.
What could be more beautiful than that?
But a new kind of self-awareness is blossoming in the Himalayas. Intelligent, kind, and respectful people – Buddhist monks – are questioning systems and plans they don’t understand and yearning to find answers for themselves, which is just as the Buddha taught.
What could be more beautiful than that?
photos by Nathan Whitmont