Beyond the Sky and the Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

facilities break down, and only the karma generated by that life remains, determining the circumstances of the next rebirth.
    This is a principal tenet of Buddhism, but the Buddha tells his disciples not to take his word for it. They are to analyze and search and test what he says for themselves. On his deathbed, he reminds them, “Decay is inherent in all compound things. Work out your own salvation with diligence.” I am struck by this spirit of independent inquiry, by the fact that enlightenment is available to all, not through a priest or a church or divine intervention but through attention to the mind. In Buddhism, there is no devil, no external dark force—there is only your mind, and you must take responsibility for what you want and how you choose to get it.
    I read until my eyes burn and my head hurts, until I fall asleep.
    But my sleep is punctured by the barking of dogs and frequent nightmares. I wake several times a night, and some nights merely float on the surface of sleep and anxiety, wondering if the other new teachers feel the same way, wondering what those goddamn dogs are still barking at, wishing for earplugs, wishing for Robert, wishing for home. I wake up exhausted. Even Lorna and Sasha, who have been completely unfazed by everything so far, complain of restless sleep and strange dreams. Someone says it is the altitude.
    I send telegrams to my grandfather and Robert to say that I have arrived safely. What I do not say is that my body has arrived but the rest of me is lost, perhaps in transit. In my dreams at night, I have lost my luggage, my wallet, my passport. I cannot find a taxi, I miss the bus, I drive past the airport again and again. I have brought the wrong ticket, I must make a phone call but I cannot find a quarter. My suitcase is full of toilet paper, full of ants, full of Orange Cream Biscuits. In my dreams, I do not know where I am going: am I coming here or going home? It is more than just the altitude.
    On Saturday morning, I go with Lorna and Sasha to the open-air vegetable market. Under roofed stalls, farmers preside over piles of potatoes, skinny green chilies, dried fish, unidentifiable roots and bulbs. Several varieties of rice, including Bhutan’s own “red” rice, which turns a pinkish-brown when cooked, baskets of rice crisps, buckwheat, barley. Strings of dried cheese cubes, pungent balls of raw cheese, dried mushrooms and apples and fierce red chili powder measured out in blackened tin cups. The odor of the cheese mixes with the caustic smell of betel nut and the lime paste it is chewed with, and sends us scurrying away. In the handicraft section, we find religious books and ritual objects—little brass bowls, chalices, long musical horns, incense. Bamboo baskets and mats, twig brooms, a black yak-hair blanket. I run my hand over it and shudder at the scabrous texture.
    At one end of the market is the meat department. Men with axes hack apart carcasses, hang up strips of red flesh. Legs and hoofs in one pile, intestines in another. “I grew up on a farm,” Lorna tells us. “This doesn’t bother me.” It bothers me, but I maintain a grim silence. I’m trying to appear as imperturbable as the others. Three pigs, the color of old wax, lie side by side, eyes frozen open. A man brushes past us, hoisting a bloody leg of something over his shoulder. “Yes, madam?” calls a boy with an axe in his hand. “Anything?” We shake our heads and move on.
    On the way out, we pass religious men with prayer beads, chanting prayers, telling fortunes with handlettered cards and dice. One man has a miniature three-storied temple, called a tashi-go-mang, its myriad tiny doors open to reveal statues and intricate paintings of deities. People touch coins and bills to their foreheads and then press them into the doorways for luck and blessings. “Do you want your fortune told?” Lorna asks. I shake my head vehemently. That’s all I would need—confirmation of my grandfather’s