The Wind Horse That Powers My Life

When we finish bestowing our blessings, Uncle and I walk around the largest ovoo three times in the same direction the sun takes through the heavens. The thing is the size of a car and sprinkled with blue khadag, some now just rags due to the elements. Then Uncle does a series of full prostrations. A cloud of dust rises in the air. He moves so lightly, like a man half his age, his forehead kissing the earth, arms outstretched on the ground. When he’s done, he adjusts his robe and takes a seat. Within minutes he is in a deep place. Slowly I settle myself, clearing a spot of any sharp rocks. As we are a hundred meters above the plain, the sound of the wind sings in my ears, its voice mournful. I do not ask the question out loud, not wanting to reveal the existence of a shadow that is slowly entering my heart. Instead I think it to myself. How long do we wait?

Uncle sits with the half-lidded eyes of enlightenment. Already he is in the deepest river, a place the oldest ones can reach in a matter of minutes. The light as if bending around him.

I remember the half-finished letter tucked in my robe, the one addressed to the Rinpoche back at Yatuu Gol.

Most Honorable Rinpoche,

As it states in the Shantideva’s Bodhisattva Vow:

May a rain of food and drink descend

To clear away the pain of thirst and hunger

And during the eon of famine

May I myself turn into food and drink.

May I become an inexhaustible treasure

For those who are poor and destitute;

May I turn into all things they could need

And may these be placed close beside them.

Esteemed Rinpoche, please know I have done everything in my power to serve you in a manner most befitting of one who wears the robe. But like a pond that is overgrown with moss, I find my heart growing turbid with doubt.

Late one night I write this on a scrap of paper after a wave of skepticism washes over me at the thought of all I am soon renouncing: what would it be like each night to unbraid a woman’s hair, the smell of wildflowers suddenly filling the room? Three days after I begin writing this letter, the Rinpoche calls me into his chambers and tasks me with helping to find this reincarnation. Now I cannot help but wonder if it is the universe that arranges this series of strange events and slaps the rump of the wind horse that powers my life.

Here on this outcrop overlooking the endless grasslands, my watch beeps the hour.

Who sees the inexorable causality of things,

Of both cyclic life and liberation

And destroys any objective conviction

Thus finds the path…

I make myself as small as possible, then smaller still.