Ancient Teachings, and Giggles, in the Himalayas
By Brendan Mollica

Brendan Mollica of Randolph spent three months in the Himalayan region of India known as Ladakh through a Vermont program called the Vermont Intercultural Semester.

Every morning Stanzin Namgyal rises at about 5:30 and dons the robes of a Buddhist monk, wrapping and draping the simple red cloth around himself in the traditional fashion. Then he slips into his plastic sandals and hurries through the snow to the main prayer room of his monastery at Hemis, a small town in the trans- Himalayan region of India known as Ladakh. After doing his prostrations before the various Buddhas depicted in sculpture and paintings, he takes his place beside his fellow clergymen and joins in the morning puja, or chanting ceremony.

Stanzin Namgyal is 12 years old.

He is by no means the youngest monk there. Some children next to him are 8, and all have been living at Hemis monastery for some years already. These younger members of the order are seated in the back of the room, with the elders towards the center, closest to the golden Buddha figure.

As the chanting continues, the 10-year-old monk on Stanzin's right produces a handful of candy, skillfully hidden in the folds of his robes. The two proceed to eat quietly, keeping one eye on their prayer books and the other on the elders a few benches away.

I was under the impression that every little kid in a monastery was completely above the base desires that the rest of us are subject to, like candy. There's something about the robes and the shaved head that makes you think even though the boy is just seven, his mind is swelling with knowledge about inherent truths of existence and he's just a stone's throw away from nirvana. However, when this same "minimonk" uses some creative extortion to shake you down for a donation to the monastery, the saintly image disappears almost entirely.

It's hard to hold a grudge against him, though. The more you're around the small monks, the more you realize that first and foremost, they're just regular kids. They fall asleep in the classroom during English class, they sing pop music, and they play cricket in the street behind the main monastery building. What was very comforting for me during my five-day stay at the Hemis monastery was the realization that mostly, the little monks just want to play, like any other kid does.

I shared a room with a monk who was about 27, one Tashi Dorje, and I realized that even lamas don't outgrow boyish impulses by their late twenties.

When I first met Tashi he was holding some prayer beads in one hand and a road helmet in the other. Nothing changes your view of the Buddhist monastic life quite like getting a ride to your sleeping quarters on the back of a lama's motorcycle.

When we got to his room that I'd be sharing for the next four nights, the first thing I noticed was an electric space heater in the middle of the floor. Typically, those are illegal in Ladakh- electricity is provided by the government free of charge, and heavy appliances like that use too much power. Generally, if a government worker finds someone with something like that, hefty fines and legal penalties ensue.

When I asked him about it, he simply held his index finger to his lips and said, "Shhhh," eyes twinkling in exactly the same way as the little monks did as they munched their contraband candy in the prayer room.

After one of the warmest nights I'd spend in northern India, I went the next morning to speak with an older monk who maintains all the various ceremonial objects at the monastery. His name is Lobzang Tundar, and he epitomizes my concept of the aged Buddhist monk: kind, grandfatherly, and immensely wise.

Almost 70-years old, Lobzang's first prayers of the day take place at precisely three in the morning. He teaches the dancers at the religious festivals their ceremonial steps, maintains the masks they wear during the performance, instructs woodworkers on the proper ways to make mandalas for aiding meditation, and teaches how to play the traditional instruments of the monastery, everything from drums to elaborately decorated horns and double-reeded clarinet-looking things.

He loves the monastery and loves to teach. He's firmly resolved to stay at Hemis until he passes away in order to transmit as much knowledge as possible. He says this smiling broadly. In fact, he says almost everything smiling broadly; the smile never seems to go away.

As Goes the World…

That is, until the conversation turns in the direction of the future. More and more often the students coming to him for instruction are distracted by outside influences, and the skills and traditions lately haven't been learned with the same level of proficiency as before. He names TV as the main culprit, but there's a plethora of other factors contributing to the disruption of monastic concentration.

"When I was young you could find complete seclusion to study the teachings," he says.

With ever-advancing transportation and communication technologies, complete seclusion doesn't exist very much anymore, even in the remote Himalayas. And so, the attention that was previously given by pupils to preservation of tradition is increasingly spent on media and merchandise from the outside world, and this is greatly troubling to the aged monk.

Emerging from Lobzang's smoky room I, too, felt his concern. In an age of aspartame, infomercials and of stars enhanced with silicone, the monastic life doesn't seem to stand much of a chance.

Already there are American-brand junk food wrappers in the streets between monastery buildings. The monks at Hemis, like the rest of the people on the Indian sub-continent, haven't quite learned how to adjust their waste management behaviors to compensate for the non-biodegradable materials of the modern age.

It's just a small example, but already the Western influence is visible in monastic life. As I trudged through the snow back to Tashi's room, I couldn't help but think that Lobzang's outlook was right- if things continue at this rate, traditions will be forgotten more rapidly than ever before, and the future does look pretty bleak.

Then a snowball flew past my head.

Absorbed in my brooding thoughts, I had wandered directly into the middle of an epic snowball fight between two groups of mini monks. Ducking, weaving, laughing hysterically, their world was a blur of red cloth and flying snow. Tashi Dorje stood off to one side, watching his pupils with a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Later I would learn that it was he who had thrown the first snowball of the morning.

So then it occurred to me- yes, the monastic traditions face troubled times ahead. But realistically speaking, there's never been a time when they weren't facing troubled times.

In this century it happens to come in the form of lip-synching pop singers and overly-packaged corn puffs instead of marauding invaders on horseback.

The threat of losing some heritage is real, but what is equally true is the fact that right here in Hemis there's a group of kids having a great time being with each other, who love the teachings and the ways of the monastery.

As long as there's this youthful enthusiasm for the faith and the persistence of the playful attitude that hangs in the air as thickly as the incense, the future can't be all that dark after all. With that, I hurried inside to put some gloves on and join the fun.

Brendan Mollica, a 2006 graduate of Randolph Union High School, spent three months in the fall of that year in Ladakh, a former Buddhist kingdom that is now part of India. As a member of a Vermont Intercultural Semester (VIS), he did community service, study, hiking, and homestays in the Himalayan region. Mollica will attend Ithaca College in the fall. For information on VIS programs, see www.VermontIS.org.