Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

"The building stones. Nearly every loose stone was put in trucks. So the gompa couldn't be rebuilt. The gompa was over five hundred years old, and the old books said it had taken fifty years to construct. Fires were lit and kept burning for days, with paintings and altars and books for fuel. Everything that was not metal or rock was burned. There were a lot of stones. Some went to be crushed for Chinese roads. Some to an army base fifty miles from here. We were sent to use them to build barracks there for the Chinese invaders. That took another six months. Everyone was a slave to the Chinese in those years." He spoke in the distant, matter-of-fact tone Tibetans usually resorted to when describing the tragedies of the Chinese occupation. Lhandro had to distance himself from the events or he would be unable to speak of them at all. "When we were done here we had to rake the ground smooth," he added in a near whisper. "They made us spread salt on the soil, so not even a flower would grow again."

"Christ," Winslow muttered, his face drawn in pain. His eyes settled on a circular depression of blackened earth thirty feet away. It was, Shan realized, a small bomb crater. "It's like it just happened."

But not entirely. New rocks had been brought, or dug out of the soil, and arranged to outline several of the old foundations. And four small buildings had been rebuilt among the ruins. Three of them were at the far side of the old compound, over three hundred yards away, and had the appearance of painstaking reconstruction. The fourth Shan saw only as he stepped closer to the surviving section of outer wall: a small sturdy stone and stucco structure consisting of two new walls built into the surviving corner section of outer wall. In front of its door sat a young boy, playing with pebbles. As Shan appeared the boy's jaw dropped and he darted away toward the restored buildings in the distance.

In the same moment Lhandro touched Shan's arm. He turned to see Lokesh standing, slightly bent, holding his belly as he stared at the ruins, as though he had been kicked. As they watched, the old Tibetan turned, or rather staggered about, to study the trees and then the slope above with an anguished expression. He faced the ruins again and stumbled forward, slowly at first, then more quickly until, with a sound like a sob, he broke into a trot toward the center of the ruins.

He ran with a curious gait, repeatedly slowing, looking about, turning left, then right, then jogging again, once even stopping to squat and lift a handful of the sandy earth, gazing at it forlornly as the particles trickled through his fingers, then lowering his hand until it touched the earth. At several places where Lokesh turned, Shan saw there was a narrow line of stones that recalled former foundations. But at most of his turns the earth was bare, although Lokesh seemed to perceive something. As if, Shan realized, he saw the buildings that once stood, as though he were navigating around them.

Suddenly his friend stopped, close to the slope, more than halfway across the ruins, and dropped cross-legged onto the ground. Shan took a few steps forward to join him. But then a figure emerged from the buildings at the far side, walking hurriedly toward them, the boy at his side.

"The keeper," Lhandro announced with a tone of relief. "He will help us. He will help the monk." The rongpa stepped forward and met the man a hundred feet away. Together they hurried off toward the injured monk, now lying on a blanket by the stream.

Shan stepped into the ruins, wandering along a long line of rocks before pausing near the center of the vast ruin by two low oblong mounds. A small cairn had been built on each, and along the perimeter of each were stones inscribed with Tibetan letters, some carved, some painted, with the mantra to the Compassionate Buddha: om mani padme hum. Mani stones, they were called. As he studied the first mound a deep sadness welled within him. Between the two mounds was a square, eight feet to the side, three feet high, made of stones and mortar. Someone was building a chorten, one of the seven-stage shrines, capped by a balloon dome and spire, that were often used to mark sacred relics. How many had there been, he wondered, how many monks at such a large gompa? Three hundred perhaps. Even as many as five hundred.

He felt weak and sat, facing the mounds, and found his right hand extended over his knee, the palm and the fingers extended toward the ground. They had formed a mudra, the earth witness mudra, calling the earth to bear witness.

When he finally stood he saw that Lokesh had not moved. Shan walked to his friend's side and sat again. Lokesh's hands were bent in a mudra as well, the thumb and index finger of both hands touching to form a circle, the remaining fingers of each hand extended upward. Shan studied it a moment, confused. It was the dharmachakra, the wheel-turning mudra, a mudra used by teachers to invoke the union of wisdom and action which was the goal of Buddhist learning.

"I didn't know," his friend said after several minutes, his voice cracking with emotion. "No one mentioned a name for this place where we were going. Rapjung gompa is its name. That plain is a holy place. Metoktang it is called." It meant the Plain of Flowers.

"You were here before?"

Lokesh nodded. "I didn't recognize it. Who could have recognized it, after what they did?" He shook his head forlornly. "I always came on a trail that led from the south, not from the west like we came. There were so many buildings, beautiful buildings. And the slopes were covered with trees then, beautiful tall evergreens and rhododendron. I heard the Chinese had taken the forests. I didn't know they meant like this. Not a twig left except that little grove of junipers."

"Did you come for the government?" Shan asked.

"Before that. Rapjung was famous for its medicine lamas," Lokesh said, his voice cracking again. "Not just doctors, but scholars of medicine, those who first found awareness in Buddha and then dedicated their lives to understanding the connection between the health of men and the natural world around them. This plain has great spiritual power. Students came from all over Tibet, from Nepal and India even, to learn about herbs and mixing medicines. There was one lama who taught only about the hour of mixing."

Shan remembered the strange haunted feeling he had experienced out on the plain. "The hour?"

Lokesh nodded his head solemnly. "There were times of the year when certain medicines should never be mixed, times of the day when certain mixtures were best made, when they would be most potent, certain places where mixing worked best." He stared down at the barren earth at his feet. "Special medicine plants grew here, on the grounds and out on the plain and in the mountains nearby, that grew nowhere else," he said, surveying the stark ground of the ruins with haunted eyes. His mouth opened and shut several times, but no words came, and his eyes grew moist. The Chinese had poisoned the earth with salt.

"It was such a joyful place in the summers," Lokesh continued after a moment, an intense longing entering his voice. "The lamas took us on the plain or into the mountains and we pitched tents so we could collect wild plants and study them, and sometimes collect big sacks of herbs to send to the medicine makers. There were special songs they sang to invoke the healing power of the plants and special foods they ate. When I was here there were a dozen lamas of over one hundred years. I asked one of them whether he lived so long because of the special herbs here. He grew very solemn and said, no it wasn't the herbs, it was the songs, because the songs kept them connected to all the deities that lived in the land here. They knew teaching songs that would be sung all day without repeating a verse."

Teaching songs. Lokesh meant special recitations of ancient texts, memorized by the lamas, sometimes done to the accompaniment of horns and cymbals and drums.