The Broken Rules of Ten Read online

  It can’t be.

  But I knew it was. Lama Nawang Gephel, prize scholar, equally skilled at grasping advanced sutra and tantra teachings and rumored to be heading for the highest academic honor possible, a geshe lharampa degree. And presently hiding out in the woods, smoking ganja. Wow. He was 17, handsome, brilliant, and Apa’s favorite novice monk since forever. He terrified me.

  Nawang tipped his head back. Twin ribbons of smoke flowed from his arched nostrils. I backed away fast. I didn’t want to know.

  I scurried to the front of the prayer hall, my heart hammering. I crouched at the base of the broad steps leading up to the huge front doors, counting breaths. In three short days we would all be inside together, along with our leader Rinpoche, and representatives from all the other monasteries in Macleod-Ganj, attending a daylong ceremony to consecrate our newer, bigger hall. The powers that be had declared the date to be highly auspicious for Tibetan Buddhists around the world—Lobsang excitedly reported he’d heard a day this favorable for sacred events wouldn’t come around again for 20 years. So starting at dawn, bells would be rung, long horns blown, and hours and hours and hours of chants recited under the watchful gaze of miscellaneous deities and Rinpoches, our teachers past and present.

  For now, the bright red and royal blue double doors stood firmly latched, their front draped with twisted ropes of brilliant orange, yellow, and blue material.

  My pulse had finally returned to normal. I listened, but heard only silence.

  I continued sneaking across the grounds, past the looming two-story central monastery, which housed the old assembly hall, the abbot’s quarters, a library for the super-sacred texts and statues, and the small alcove for our protector deities; past the huge tree-lined courtyard where we held our debate sessions; past the cluster of little cottages where our Lama elders spent all their time meditating, studying, and reading, or teaching us to meditate, study, and read.

  I finally reached the large, separate kitchen building and hurried to the water pump in a clearing on the side. I checked around. The area was deserted. I grasped the iron handle, cool to the touch. I lifted and lowered it a few times, enough to release a thin trickle of water. I held my shemdap under the spout and let the water soak into the material. Then I rubbed the cloth hard against itself. The spot was stubborn. I rinsed. Rubbed some more.

  This is getting ridiculous.

  The first time it happened, this accidental release in the middle of the night, I panicked. I actually snuck into the woods beyond the monastery grounds and buried my shemdap in a shallow hole I scraped out with my hands. The second time, I stuffed the soiled underskirt into the middle of a pile of zhens awaiting washing outside the laundry house. Tonight, though, I would have to bring this one back to my living quarters, and hope no one noticed it was soaking wet. I was literally running out of robes.

  I paused, mid-scrub, struck by a possible solution. When I’d put away my “Westerner” clothing this visit, back in October, I had noticed a neat row of cotton superhero underwear, tightly rolled, lining the bottom of the duffel. Who knows why my mother had packed them—my father must have told her a million times to leave anything overtly “commercial” behind in Paris. She probably did it to spite him. But right now they beckoned to me like the multiple arms of my dream-goddess.

  I draped the shemdap over the pump and crossed the yard to the kitchen.

  Within minutes, I had forced open the one set of window shutters without a broken latch (not for nothing did I work in the kitchen), climbed inside, and tiptoed past huge cooking pans, hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and dozens of teapots, lining the wooden shelves. I avoided the crates of vegetables and barrels of barley flour, and finally, carefully, skirted the huge table set at the back of the kitchen. There, a fresh batch of ornate butter sculptures and glazed, cone-shaped gtormas—sacrificial cake-offerings to our teachers—patiently awaited the upcoming ceremony. Wouldn’t want to bump those.

  I pushed through a narrow curtain behind the table and stepped into the dank storage room where my father, as Monastic Disciplinarian, stashed all contraband, including my duffel bag of clothes.

  I felt my way to the back corner. The blue nylon bag was there, right where he’d made me store it six months ago. I dropped to my knees, unzipped the top, and felt around inside. First I located the small penlight I’d packed in Paris, in case of emergencies. This was definitely an emergency. I clicked it on and directed the narrow beam inside. Everything was where I’d left it—wristwatch, baseball cap, Nikes, jeans, T-shirt, hooded jacket, and at the bottom, the layer of rolled-up briefs.

  I grabbed a pair of Superman underpants and pulled them on under my robe. They seemed much tighter than I remembered. That was probably good, come to think of it. I looked at the shoes with longing. On an impulse, I shook my jeans out and held them to my waist. The pant legs barely reached my feet, instead of pooling onto the floor like last time. My mother was actually right, for once. I wouldn’t even have to roll the cuffs up. I was about to try them on, when a sound from inside the door turned my blood to ice. I swung the narrow circle of light across the room.

  A pair of floating, yellow-green eyes glowed back at me.

  “Lhamo?”

  The eyes blinked. I could just make out a scrawny black body in the darkness.

  She must have leapt through the open window, looking for scraps of food. I inched toward her. When I got close, I reached out to stroke her neck, but as usual, she hissed, swiped at me with bared claws, and darted away. Lhamo was a stray, and as feral as the wrathful goddess I’d named her for.

  Time to go. I stuffed the jeans in the duffel and hurried to return it, when my foot knocked into what felt like a tower of bricks, toppling it. I aimed my penlight. Dust specks danced as its bright beam found a scattering of hardcover books, no doubt left behind by visitors and swiftly confiscated before we students could get our hands on them. One was deliciously thick, and it drew me like a magnet. I knelt down. Please, let it be interesting and let it be in English. The title shone in the light: The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  As Valerie would say, “Far out.”

  My father’s scowl invaded my brain. I shook it off. No way was I leaving this here. I tucked the penlight and book inside my monk’s bag. Two steps further, I paused, struck by another thought. If Lama Nawang could smoke ganja, right behind the prayer hall, what was I so afraid of? I decided then and there to take the entire duffel back to my sleeping quarters as well. It was mine to take, wasn’t it?

  Yeshe and Lobsang would help me figure out where to stash it.

  I grabbed the duffel, pushed through the curtain, crossed the kitchen, and dropped the bag out the window onto the ground. I shimmied after and pulled the shutters closed. I reached down for the nylon straps.

  A hand grasped my forearm.

  “Lama Tenzing, you surprise me,” Lama Nawang murmured into my ear. He was holding my wet shemdap in his other hand.

  If I was about to die, now would be a good time.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Walk with me,” Nawang said and set off without waiting for a reply. His stride was smooth and sure. My duffel bumped against my legs as I tried to match his gliding steps. A small dark critter, low to the ground, streaked across our path and into the bordering trees. Lhamo was keeping her eye on me.

  We walked in silence. The quiet grew denser with every step, until I couldn’t stand the weight of it.

  “I saw you,” I blurted, my voice cracking like an egg. “Back there, behind the prayer hall.”

  “And I saw you seeing me,” Nawang answered, his voice low and calm.

  “What were you doing there? Who was that boy you were with? Why were you two smoking ganja?”

  Nawang laughed softly. “So many questions, Tenzing. Such a monkey mind you have. Let us trade, shall we? A question for a question, an answer for an answer.”

  He held up my shemdap. “Why were you washing this in the middle of the nigh
t?”

  My mouth went dust dry.

  “Nothing to say? Let me guess, then.” Nawang’s voice was pleasant, as if wrapped around a smile. “You had a dream, perhaps?”

  How did he know that?

  “Yes.”

  “A woman came to you, in this dream?”

  A flash of memory, like lightning: The curved waist, rounded breasts, the streaming light . . .

  “Yes! But how did you . . . ?”

  “I want to show you something.” Nawang had led us to a tiny hut set at the back of the private cottages. This must be his new living quarters. According to Lobsang, who somehow always found out about everything first, in September Nawang’s status as rising star reached the ears of some old, wealthy Swedish lady in Macleod-Ganj. She was a big fan of His Holiness—supposedly he’d even stayed at her house in Stockholm once—and had just finished a month-long retreat at the Tushita Institute, down the hill from us near the Dalai Lama’s residence. She was so inspired by the experience she decided to personally sponsor a lama, which basically means sending money, daan they call it, every month to pay for living expenses and other stuff. His Holiness asked my father for a name, and of course my father immediately suggested Nawang. Anyway, she must have started sending a lot of daan. Within days, Nawang had moved out of the older boys’ dormitory and into his own place.

  We ducked inside.

  “Please, sit,” Nawang said. He pointed to a cluster of small, multicolored cushions piled on the floor. I set aside my duffel, pulled up a cushion, and plopped down. I was still pretty nervous. I’d broken probably six rules already tonight, easy. He could get me in a lot of trouble. Nawang lit a bunch of butter candles, in small tin goblets, and placed them on a few overturned wooden crates and atop a bureau of drawers in the corner. The small space quickly filled with the earthy scent of burning grease.

  I glanced around the room. He’d hung dark blue material on all the walls, and I felt like I was in an underwater cave. In the flickering light, I could make out a thin mattress, like mine, but placed on a high raised platform pushed against one wall. A beautiful fringed woven rug of bright greens, blues, and yellows covered the mattress, plus he had more colorful pillows stacked on one side. Compared to mine, his bed was luxurious. A second rug lay on the floor in front of Nawang’s meditation altar, which was a carved wooden chest the size of a big trunk. He’d positioned the shrine exactly opposite his bed. The top was covered with yellow material. A white silk scarf—a khata blessed by His Holiness, maybe—made curved loops across the front like a wide ribbon.

  The altar itself was crammed to overflowing with more candles, brass bowls filled with sweet rice and flower petals; a teapot; a plate of fruit; a necklace of glittering beads; some paper money; a photograph of His Holiness; a brass statue of the Buddha flanked by two other statues—one of Green Tara, the goddess, the other a protector deity, the birdlike Garuda; a small handdrum; and not one, but two strands of carved wooden prayer beads. A small bowl-shaped vase, his bumpa, was of beaten silver. Three peacock feathers were tied to a narrow cone on the top—the sprinkler, for scattering the scented water, or nectar, inside.

  My eyes widened. He had his own dagger? I wasn’t sure what the weapon represented—we weren’t allowed to take Buddhist Symbology until we were 16—but it was iron-blue and ornately carved. It had three blades. My chest cramped with envy. Nawang had a great setup here.

  Even more than the dagger, I envied him his privacy.

  Nawang lit the candles on his altar. He stepped backward onto his rug and proceeded to do about 20 prostrations in about one minute flat. The rumors about him flooded back to me—how he had accomplished over 100,000 prostrations during his very first retreat. While chanting. Without stopping. He was pretty much a legend among us lesser lamas.

  If the point here was to intimidate me, it was working.

  “Come closer,” Nawang said, rising from his final prostration. “Up here, next to me.” He stepped to the right of his altar and lifted one of the candles to the area behind and above the shrine. I moved beside him. A large thangka, painted on canvas and framed by strips of purple and gold silk, hung on the wall, but it wasn’t like any thangka I’d ever seen before. The central figure looked like a crazy man. His eyes bulged, his tongue stuck out, and he was both bright blue and flesh-colored, with way too many arms and legs. There were smaller versions of him repeated in all four corners, and only one tiny image of the actual Shakyamuni Buddha perched at the top. He looked outmanned.

  “Well?”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Look, Tenzing. Really look. What do you see?”

  I moved closer.

  “Ummm.”

  And then I saw it. Or them, I should say. The sea of blue arms and legs belonged to a “he.” He was facing me. The flesh-colored ones were most definitely those of a “she.” She was facing away. And “they” were doing something I’d never seen done before, except maybe in my imagination.

  No, actually, not even then.

  “Who are they?” I said, my voice hushed.

  “Kalachakra and Visvamata,” he answered. “Outer and inner, fullness and emptiness, the sword and the vessel.”

  “But what are they doing?”

  “Merging,” he replied. “The sacred union of male and female energies. Yab-yum.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t stop staring at the yum part. Pema. A sensation, so intense I couldn’t tell if it was pain or pleasure, almost liquefied my muscles, and I had to sit down before I fell down.

  Nawang, too, sat. He waited next to me. He said nothing.

  Two times two equals four, four times four equals sixteen; I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha; Frére Jacques, Frére Jacques, Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

  The feeling finally faded, and I could breathe again.

  “Good,” Nawang said. “Now, let me ask you one more time. Why were you washing your robe in the middle of the night?”

  Somehow it was easier to answer him face forward in the wavering candlelight, and before I knew it I had confessed everything. I told him about the new force stirring within me, a force I found baffling, and more than a little frightening. How it got particularly strong when I was anywhere near Pema, and how sometimes, at night, females would visit my dreams, sometimes Pema, but lately an older woman, one with lots of strong smooth arms and full round you-know-whats. How the feeling inside me would rise and rise until my insides exploded, leaving me abruptly awake, damp with shame, and something else.

  “Pema,” Nawang said when I had finished. “She has an older sister, yes?”

  “Yes. Dawa.”

  “‘Dawa Dolma,’” he nodded his expression thoughtful. “‘Heavenly maiden of the moon.’” He focused in on me. “Listen, Tenzing. You have nothing to feel distressed about. This force you talk about is frightening, but also a gift. It means you are changing, growing. Transforming from boy to man.”

  “Sometimes it hurts,” I whispered.

  “Poor Tenzing.” He touched my arm. “Poor lad, you’ve had no one to talk to about this, have you?”

  He was right. Valerie was hopeless, and my father, well, he was the last place I’d go for advice, especially about this kind of thing. As for Yeshe and Lobsang, even though they were six months older than me, their bodies were still the bodies of little boys—Lobsang’s plump and roly-poly, Yeshe’s all sharp bones and angles. Unlike me, they seemed scarcely different from when I’d left last year, maybe a little taller, but otherwise unchanged. And the older boys? Let’s face it, they made a point of avoiding me, of never sharing anything about anything with me—when your father is Monastic Disciplinarian, and rumored to be Abbot next, you’re not exactly considered “close confidant” material.

  “Tenzing,” Nawang’s voice brought me back. “Listen. This is important. The barrow of self-knowledge requires two separate but equally essential wheels to progress: change, and its twin sibling, suffering. Pain always accompanies gr
owth, and growth, pain, until we finally learn to free ourselves from both. You are not alone in this experience.”

  Relief swept through me. I was not alone.

  Nawang’s eyes were like two black pools.

  “This woman who visits you in your dreams? I believe it is her,” he gestured to the thangka. “Visvamata.”

  “Visvamata.”

  “Yes. She calls to you, as she called to me when I was your age. This is a great honor. When you feel this force you describe surging in your body, do not resist it, nor give in to it, but rather let it move through you like a current, from root to belly. Embrace the energy, work with it, honor it. Let Visvamata and Kalachakra merge. With practice, you will learn to contain this force. Then . . .” Nawang’s voice was weird and dreamy, as if he had fallen into some kind of trance. “Then she will know you are ready.”

  He was starting to scare me. Ready for what? I shifted away from him slightly.

  His eyes came back into focus. He clapped me on the back and laughed.

  “Listen to me, eh? Sometimes I forget where I am. The main thing is, I’m here for you. Think of me as a friend.” He nodded to himself. “I’ve always liked you, Tenzing Norbu.”

  “You have?” I didn’t think he’d even noticed me.

  “Of course.” He cocked his head. “I would like to debate with you soon. Today, in fact.”

  My body flooded with yet another unfamiliar sensation: pride. I was special! None other than Lama Nawang himself wanted to debate me!

  He stood and held out his hand.

  “It’s late.” He pulled me up.

  My glance fell onto his shrine, and he followed my gaze.

  “You like my phurba?”

  Phurba. That’s its name. I nodded.

  “Want to hold it?”

  I nodded again.

  He handed the dagger to me. I studied it in awe—the ornate iron handle was crowned with three snarling, wrathful gods, their faces painted blue, and white, and red, the blade carved with shooting flames. I curved my fingers around the handle and hefted it.