We found seats behind a row of monks poring over scriptures. A couple of tourists were seated on a low bench, some of them turning prayer beads in their hands, other transfixed by the sounds and sights of a monastery prayer room. From inside came the clang of cymbals and the thud of drums, accompanied by the guttural chanting of Buddhist scriptures. The stairs brought us to a red door with minute colorful patterns on its frame. The words took me to some place higher-if only for the duration of the seconds it took me to read them. Learning to forgive is much more useful than merely picking up a stone and throwing it at the object of one’s anger, the more so when the provocation is extreme for it is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others. It would be much more constructive if people tried to understand their supposed enemies. Of forgiveness, a word that he has spent a lifetime trying to prove is more than a mere ideal, he had said: On the wall along the stairs were plaques inscribed with the aphorisms of one of the world’s happiest man, the Dalai Lama. We then climbed the stairs to the main prayer room. I was hooked more to the copper-blue of a verditer flycatcher, which made sorties from its perch on an electric wire to grab insects. It didn’t inspire that kind of feeling in me, but like any quiet place set in the midst of unspoiled natural beauty, it did remind me of the need to escape more often from the samsara of concrete structures. The website of the Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery extols Namo Buddha as a place that “inspires one’s faith renunciation and weariness with samsara naturally arise.” The monastery and its surroundings were like a buffer zone against the distractions of the world-at least the visual ones. It became clear quickly why the lama had gone on a retreat. My companion and I decided to look around. When I inquired about the lama, however, I learned that he had been in retreat for two years already and would be for another two. I had heard from friends that a lama I had known was now living in the monastery. (Opener) Prayer flags strewn at the monastery premise. The monastery and its surroundings serve as a buffer zone against the distractions of the world-at least the visual ones. So to allay their fears, pilgrims began chanting “Namo Buddhaya,” a mantra meaning “I take refuge in the Buddha,” while traveling through the forest. Though this tale of compassion inspired people to travel here for pilgrimage, they could not shake off their fears of wild animals inhabiting the dense forest. It was in Namo Buddha, according of legend, that a young prince had been so moved by the sight of a hungry tigress, about to devour her own famished cubs, that he fed them his own flesh and eventually gave himself to the tigress. That was our first glimpse of the monastery at Namo Buddha. And that was why I felt like being in a classic painting about a pilgrimage. There was a certain amount of romanticism, I felt, in meeting monks on your way to a monastery mentioned in holy texts. In the background to this coming together of tonsured monks in burgundy robes and hikers in quick-dry T-shirts was a large monastery of golden roofs and curly eaves perched on a hill. My companion and I ran into two Buddhist monks, stopped for a brief chat, and parted ways we towards a monastery and the monks on their way to the febrile city. The meeting would have made for a wonderful painting.
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