KALACHAKRA 2000

If you are the Devil, this is not me telling this story.

A long drive out to the plateau. I drove the two day drive in one day. Unthinking. Already my dreams were starting to melt into daily reality. Long gravel road, big boulders bouncing my chasse, numb balls, intensely cold feet from crossing icy streams in the pre dawn. Keep the engine firing when the exhaust pipe is under water. Second day out of flu fever I was not sure of my mind.

The Kalachakra was a massive event/Festival. Tibetans, Euro-Buddhists, photographers and film-crew trash congregated. Tibetan faces cracked, high cheek bones and slanty eyes, snotty nosed children and I'm crammed in amongst them, a tike chewing on my Dalai Lama guaranteed radio.

We are the clan of the red string. Tantra Initiees, a Buddhist trantra mix of extreme proportion. This is not for me. This is for all sentient beings. Buddhas carved in rock surrounded by colorful flowers. The shamanic spirit is strong. Become the god.

The Dalai Lama's voice lilts like Yoda between depths of profundity and squeaks of hilarity. His darshan spreads across the crowd. We bathe in it, chewing on popcorn and dried apricots. His presence blesses the young boy cracking kernels for breakfast.

The sun baking down on us relentless as blood on my lips reminds me of the pain I have forgotten.

Meditation sermons and points thereof claim the mind but not to sleep. Achieve the emptiness to go beyond. Tantric sermons. Meditate on Gods - on the God you want to be, the god you will become through Tantra. For all Sentient Beings. This is a secret I cannot tell.

On my knees on melting black top with stones cutting into my shins and the smell of tsampa and mutton fat of the musty robes of the Tibetans around me - For all sentient beings.

On the twelfth day of the teachings, the fifth day after the opening trance sword dance ceremonies, the Kalachakra Mandala, made by the monks as a blessing for us pilgrims, is reveled. The Tibetans crush in madness to pass before it. One old woman goes down, a small boy goes down underfoot as the fervor is high. The police wielding batons try to control the crowd but they have no heart to crack skulls with lathi. The woman rises no more. The child is resuscitated.

I enter the room of the Mandala and feel the joy so beautiful. Thank you. We are showered in prasad and given zip-loc bags of medicine.

There is no beginning or ending.