Tinley, my first Tibetan teacher, here in Boudha in Kathmandu

This is the 2nd post in the series of reflections on field work.

• With those who speak both English and Tibetan, consider alternating the language you’re speaking with them throughout the course of the conversation, both to clarify points and to share equally the burden and excitement. But then find people who only speak Tibetan so you can practice. Important: Do not insist on speaking only Tibetan with those who know english! I made this mistake early on and regretted it the rest of the time.

• It’s not a good idea to combine English teaching with research. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone by having my informant practice his English with my research questions. You will get unreliable answers.

• Have people write things down. If you don’t have anything to write with, at least have them spell it out. When asking about a term or place or whatever it is, you will be very grateful to have the proper (or close) spelling later when trying to remember or asking someone else about it.

• There’s a Tibetan saying about studying one word a day so that you will know 100 words well after 100 days. This is good advice. Don’t try to learn dozens of new words a day. Focus on one or two important ones and practice them throughout the day. I tried to memorize hundreds of flash cards in the first week and ended up retaining only a few and feeling frustrated that I studied so hard and gained so little in the end.

Sunita and her chickens in Kathmandu

Now that I’m back in the U.S. I’ve had some time to reflect on my experiences at Menri monastery in Dolanji. It already seems like a dream. I hope to post more personal thoughts in the future, but for now I thought I’d say a few things about field work, in hopes that others who are embarking on similar journeys can make use of lessons I learned along the way.

This post on the subject of working at length in someone else’s space is the first of 5-7 posts on the subject of field work. All of the posts in this series will almost certainly be of interest only to field researchers.

• Do as they do. Just because you don’t share their beliefs doesn’t mean you can turn your back on the Big Guy when exiting his room. At least not until he tells you not to do it. Abiding by their customs will make everyone more comfortable and cooperative.

• Prepare yourself for monks and others who are not happy to see you, wherever you are. Be sensitive but also realize that there are always a few bad apples in the bunch. In any event, be sure to give your contacts and everyone (including yourself) a break at least one day a week.
  

  Monk at Triten Norbutsé Monastery

• In places where you’re constantly observing, such as the temple, find a good vantage point for watching, listening, and filming where you won’t be in the way or distracting the monks, and sit there every time. See if the temple caretaker will even let you keep your cushion there so that the monks get used to it and you as part of the scenery. Move only if something happens out of your field of view, and then only briefly.

• When spending a lot of time observing or filming or otherwise being with people in the field, try to strike a good balance between being present enough that they get used to you and not so present that they get irritated by you. With certain people there is a difficult period where novelty and initial tolerance has turned to irritation before the getting-used–to period has begun. It’s important not to retreat at this stage, unless the irritation really grows in intensity. Doing so not only makes it harder for others to get used to you but also signals to them that they can wait to behave normally until you’re gone.

While I’m waiting for stuff to download here at an internet café in Kathmandu, I thought I’d take a moment to tell you about goats.

Goats are not only one of the preferred meats of Indians and the Nepalese, they are strange and extremely entertaining creatures. Yesterday I watched as a couple of kid goats — who are surprisingly cute at that age — bucked and flopped and played atop the brick walls around the monastery.

Kid goats playing at Triten Norbutsé monastery in Kathmandu.

Back at Menri I once stopped just below the temple to blow my nose. When I looked up there was a goat there. I had not seen or heard him approach. He and his cronies, who were close behind, were positively obsessed with this strange thing called “blowing one’s nose.” When I stopped blowing and looked up, they halted their approach. When I resumed, they crept closer. Kind of like that creepy kids’ game in The Orphanage. See below for the goats.

And then, of course, there’s one of my favorite bits of goat multimedia, The Fainting Goats.

Just one more quick one before I go.

If you just look quickly at the small(er) print you might think that there are people in Solan who cannot decipher their own sexual orientation, or who would like to switch. Taking in all of the information reveals a scarier truth, however, which is that it is dangerous to be a daughter in the womb.

I remember our last trip to India, during which we met a pregnant woman who in all ways seemed to be a modern Indian cosmopolite. She was glowing with the life inside her and seemed happy in her love (non-arranged) marriage. When we asked whether it would be a girl or a boy, she said, “If it’s a girl I’ll kill it.” She smiled, and we laughed uncomfortably under furrowed brows. “I hate girls,” she said. “I hate daughters.”

This is not terribly uncommon on the world stage, but it is especially acute in the dowry culture here. A daughter is a major financial liability, enriching other families with the wealth of their own when they are married off.

Things are changing  — and by no means do all mothers actually treat their daughters like crap — but the sign above and the law it invokes speak for themselves. Indeed, signs for willing sex determination clinics allegedly say things like, “Pay 1,000 rupees now, save 100,000 later.”

Howdy, folks. I’m headed back to Kathmandu shortly to observe the main ritual that I’m studying. The little posting I’ve done of late is likely to get even littler, as I hear there is only four hours of electricity a day over there right now.

The truth is that there are probably only a few posts left in me before I return home at the beginning of August. Things are just too hectic as I try to finish up.

But I’ll be responding to emails and comments as usual, so ask away!

Jed

I am generally not a huge fan of Indian sweets. They’re mostly fudgy lard-milk squares as seen below. You might be saying to yourself that fudgy lard-milk squares sound kind of good. Sometimes they are. Every now and then one square tastes fresh and rich and delicious. More often, the old lard has taken on a  flavor that is both mildly putrid and somehow crayon-like.

A typical assortment of lardy sweets in a Solan window

Pastries are slightly less lardy but lardy all the same

Dough fried in hot lard — would be at home at any American county fair

Orange lard-fried squiggles

The pastries are a different story. They do amazing things with pistachio nuts, cumin, sugar, salt, flour, and of course lard. The “Jeera Biscuits” — sort of like a delicate shortbread cookie with a sprinkling of cumin seeds, sugar, and salt — are phenomenally good. Every time I’m in Solan I buy a case for 50¢ to last the week.

Many of the others are tasteless, however. They do terrible things with chocolate here. Or, I should say, the chocolate itself is terrible. I have yet to sample anything chocolate that doesn’t taste like newspaper sprinkled with Nestle Quik powder.

Despite my negative review, I will be happy to play beefeater with the sweets pictured above, or any others, in order to satisfy readers’ curiosities. If you would like a detailed description of the experience of eating any of the above, post a comment or send an email, making specific reference to its placement in the pictures.

Another forest fire broke out or was set right above the nunnery and on the back side of the hill it’s on. Unfortunately, this video is terrible, like all my videos, but maybe you can get a sense of scale when I switch to night shot. I keep waiting for one to sweep up the monastery hill and level it. This one is the closest yet — I could hear the roar of trees being swallowed up.

I shot this from outside my room earlier tonight, actually. I just went out and noticed that it’s twice as big and moving down the hill. I can’t see the nunnery because it’s too dark and there’s smoke everywhere, but at this rate they’ll have to evacuate.

Sonam Kundop, who is actually one of the rare askers of why

I was frustrated one day a couple of months ago because I was stumbling over how to ask a simple “why” question. Months of living among Tibetans and I couldn’t form a simple question. Ridiculous! But then I realized that part of the reason for this is that you almost never hear monks — or any Tibetans for that matter — asking why.

I asked Geshé Tenzin, one of my teachers, what he thought about foreign practitioners, now that he has met so many. He said, “Tibetan practitioners always just accept everything without questioning. Foreigners always want to know the what and the why.”

In Kathmandu, when I would meet with the head of the School of Practice, he would make fun of me by following up the most mundane of my statements with, “Why?” and then let loose an infectious giggle.

About half of the monks I’ve met have asked me what I’m doing at Menri, but the questions generally stop there. The other questions they ask are all of the same ilk: Where are you going? When did you arrive? How long will you stay? Have you eaten? Maybe 10% of all conversations with monks feature questions beyond these four.

There is an interesting possible cultural dynamic here. Are Tibetans religiously or otherwise temperamentally predisposed to live closer to the present? Are why questions too bound up with distant past or future motivations and actions? Or maybe karma makes why questions irrelevant?

One ramification of this has become all too clear in recent days. Geshés and others never thought to ask what visitors thought about Bön, why they are interested in Bön, what they plan to say about Bön in their research publications. Now that the results of such research are emerging, the monks see that the people they helped are saying things that the monks never said — the conclusions these people reached are different and sometimes inflammatory or pejorative or just don’t make sense to them.

Is this kind of crisis enough to alter what seems to be a deeply embedded cultural trait? Or will the monks just refuse to interface with individuals whose motives are ambiguous? Unfortunately, for now, the evidence points to the latter.

The scholar spent ten minutes explaining that he wrote his book from a historical and sociological perspective, not from a religious perspective. He based his conclusions on evidence from documents and carvings, not from oral tradition. It was good that he said this, but it didn’t matter.

As soon as his ten minutes were up, arms shot up in the audience. The first monk to stand up made a good point about something the scholar had written about the founder of the tradition. The monk’s voice became increasingly impassioned as he quoted from the book and questioned how the scholar could make such a conclusion based on the limited evidence.

Monks behind him joined in, boisterously supporting his question and clarifying. When things got too loud or animated, the administrating monks hissed and clicked and waved their hands up and down.

A couple of monks had no questions to ask, only strong condemnations and pleas, and when they finished their speeches, the audience erupted in applause.

Bodies hunched forward on chairs, jumped up and sat back down, reached eagerly for the microphone, beat fists into their own thighs, and craned to look in all directions to see what others were doing and saying. A few pointed out that Muslims would behead such a traitor.

The scholar shrank in his chair and the flesh on his face sagged more with each question. Despite his defense that he was working from a different perspective and was only presenting his opinion, he had very little to say to monks who pointed out that Buddhists and other detractors would use his work to say, “You see? Even Bönpos are calling themselves fakes!”

In the end, the scholar admitted some errors, both in his original work (which is now 30 years old, after all) and in the translation from English to Tibetan, which was assisted by Buddhist monks who may have been inept at capturing the subtlety of certain ideas and expressions.

I asked a number of monks afterwards how it went and responses were mixed. Some said he had no good answers while others said it was a success because he agreed to change some things.

A fascinating meeting of traditional and modern, orthodox and heterodox, passion and passion. Selfishly, I’m just hoping this was a positive enough encounter that the monks will be willing to work with me again.

Tonight was the night. The Bönpo scholar whose book has created such a stir among the monks arrived a couple of days ago and agreed to a Q&A tonight in the library gathering room. For the past couple of days the monks have been studying as he has carried on with his business, visiting with Rinpoché, emailing with friends and colleagues at home in Paris, washing his clothes, and so on.

The scholar starts out by explaining himself and his book

At 5:45 pm tonight a steady stream of monks flowed into the library and up the stairs until there was a mountain of flip-flops, shower sandals, and old beaten-up loafers in front of the library gathering room. The scholar took a seat in front, flanked by a few of the elite monks who would help maintain order and clarify questions for him.

The room was positively sizzling with energy as people got situated. I couldn’t help but feel serious potential for things to get ugly. I was positioned with my camera in the middle of a throng of monks and wondered briefly if I should move to a safer, less populated corner of the room.

One of the flanking monks stood up to explain the ground rules. The scholar would give a brief introduction, after which each monk was allowed no more than two questions. Everybody would stay calm.

The scholar thanked everyone for coming and began.

To be continued…