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| Tibet. Source |
The
Dudh Kosi or River of Milk drains Mount Everest. It glimmers in its gorge,
turquoise and silver. I once trekked along it, to a spot where it joined one of
its seven sister rivers. The confluence of rivers is sacred in Hinduism. I
encountered a sannyasi seated in lotus position in the sand and gravel at the
place where the rivers joined. Sannyasis' renunciation of the world is so
severe that they perform their own funerals before taking to the wilderness.
This sannyasi was naked except for ashes. His limbs were as slim and slack as
jute ropes. His dreadlocked hair was piled atop his head. Once he had taken his
vow, that hair was never again combed or cut. There was nothing anywhere near
him except for the fierce V of mountains rising up thousands of feet from the
rushing river's bed.
The
rise of those mountains was an act of aggression to me. As I trekked, I felt
the mountains to be my enemies, eager to cause me pain, thwart and humiliate
me. And yet I adored their beauty. The Himalayas are active; they grow a couple
of inches every year, as the Indian subcontinent pushes into the Asian
landmass. There were no people; I was the lone other. There were only the
parrots down low in the gorge, winging, carefree, from river bank to river
bank, their highway air; their concern with the pitch of the mountains minimal.
Then, rising higher, there would be crows, then, still higher, lammergeier,
vultures that eat bone. The mountains bullied even sunlight; it visited only in
slants.
The
sannyasi said nothing to me, and I said nothing to him. I thought of everything
he had renounced, from peanut M&Ms to romantic comedies to the contents of
the Encyclopedia Britannica to crying over a broken heart to worrying about the
future to telling a friend about last night's dream. What did he receive in
exchange? I wondered what he knew, if anything. I kept walking. I was on my way
to a Peace Corps conference, the closest thing to a Roman orgy I'd ever know.
We'd eat till sick, dance, flirt, copulate. That sannyasi would be with me,
every moment. I'd be thinking of him. What does he know that I cannot access?
I
just googled "Dudh Kosi" to revisit this river in photos. I see that
now it hosts organized white-water rafters. I wonder what the sannyasi makes of
them. I wonder if he ever thinks of me; no, not really; of course I know that
he has never thought of me. I think of him often.
I
have long had this question: are contemplatives, the Desert Fathers, the Desert
Mothers, and all those who leave society and go off on their lonesome – Tibetan
monks, Hindu sadhus, Buddha, John the Baptist – are they truly holy? Or are
they merely crabby misfits who couldn't get laid and are too lazy or soul-dead
to engage in conventional hygiene?
Entering
the wilderness temporarily to contemplate a difficult question or to realign
yourself when you are off track is a necessary thing. In the Bible, Elijah left
society and slept under a juniper tree. There, Elijah was commanded, "Go
forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed
by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the
rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an
earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a
fire; but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire a still small
voice."
That's
where God was. God was not in the special effects: not in the wind, the broken
rocks, or the earthquake. God was in the "still, small voice" that
Elijah had to leave society, and enter the wilderness, to hear. A quote from
the Desert Fathers and Mothers: "Stay in your cell, and your cell will
teach you everything." I respect staying in one's cell for short
stretches. It's the lifelong rejection of society that gives me pause.
We
tend to stereotype urban life as stressful, and country living in wide-open
spaces as healthy and stress-free. My mother grew up in a village in Slovakia.
I visited Kovarce in the 1970s and it was postcard-perfect. Kovarce was
surrounded by fields of blue rye and red poppies. Clouds of white butterflies
rose into the sky. In the hills, wild boar announced their presence with heavy
pants. And the cuckoo – such a tender punctuation to the drawn-out ripple of
the breeze caressing leaves. Uncle John built an indoor toilet for our visit;
before that, all he had was an outhouse. He didn't even have a refrigerator.
When he wanted something to eat, he didn't stand in front of a cold, white
light and stare at leftovers. He went into his backyard and dug up his meal, or
picked it, or chopped off its head.
My
mother grew up in that idyllic, rural setting. She told me that there was one
guy in the village who didn't fit in. He hung himself. She and her brother Joe
peeked in the window. She remembered the corpse's black tongue sticking out of
its mouth. The entire village came out for his funeral, as they did for all
funerals. They marched in the funeral procession. They sang loudly, as they
always did – Slovaks do love to sing – and they wailed loudly, as they always
did. She told me that if anyone had paid that kind of loving attention to this
poor misfit before he died, he probably wouldn't have killed himself.
I
grew up on stories like that. Village beatings, murders, feuds, conspiracies,
and chicken thieves – and this was just our own family. I knew that the perfect
rural image is not what urbanites want it to be.
Contrary
to what we moderns want to believe about our "stressful" urban lives,
and rural peace and tranquility, rural people are far more likely to commit
suicide than urban ones. Young, rural Americans are almost twice as likely to
kill themselves as young, urban Americans. It seems that there may be something
salubrious about spending time around other people, and something stressful
about being alone in the back of the beyond.
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