For the people of Tingri, whom I met long ago. The recent earthquake raises many thoughts about them, prayers for them, & the power places that they guard.
The Final Cave
Ten of us in the truck & some holding onto the outside bash our way across the desert that is Tibet.
We've learned the secret language of rocks, sand & all the shades of what is usually called brown.
Stained another earthy shade by tradition's regolith, we smell of burned juniper & butter fat.
We sing through the violence of our passage, heads throbbing in time with the molecules of the tune.
Most of us can't see outside the truck too well as it bounces down dry river bed miles of stones.
First village: find someone who knows the man who knows where we can find the final cave;
Second village: find someone who knows the man with a key to unlock the door to the final cave;
Third village: find the man with the key & persuade him to come with us without getting lost.
We see through our pain, sing mantras built out of oxygen atoms, noiseless in the brain's light.
The truck bumps & lurches its way across the salt spiked, sun flashed plain of the Sakyas.
Out there in the badlands somewhere there is a ruined gompa with a huge willow tree growing by it.
There must be land marks, but all we can see out of the back of the truck most of the time is sky.
Sometimes snow-capped Himalaya guarding the high plateau's edge & calling us back to our other life.
Sing on through the final headache, the price of this journey is pain, brain-bones rattled roadless.
Mind filled by aspiration prayers whose words unknit the storylines of inner & outer worlds.
It's really high & the final walk up a gentle path makes geriatrics of us all, past piles of mani stones.
Ahead, ruined walls splashed with vivid ochre paint on white lime & a tree festooned with scarves;
Scarves dangle from the cave's holy, holed roof, the old men light butter lamps & we all sit together.
Machigma & Padampa were here, a thousand years ago, we've read the story many times.
Dave leads the practice.
We sing.
Time stops.
Words stop.
Pain is gone.
We're silent & still together.
Om.
