This I have heard.

Inside the nomad’s small stone house, someone had tied a white cat to a pole with a string. The string looped around the cat’s neck and extended a few feet so that the cat could walk around the pole, which was painted red and located in the center of the room. The house only had two rooms—three if you counted the dark entryway that led from the shed to the courtyard outside. From outside, the house was small and plain: square stone with the flat wooden roofs typical of Golok, eastern Tibet. An eight-foot wall of seemingly haphazard stones enclosed the small courtyard. The only entrance: a wooden gate that one passed through like yet another doorway. The wall’s top stones sat arranged with a fish scale pattern of dried dung patties, and the top beam of the gate was painted with a row of white circles, full moons. The courtyard itself was just scrub grass and dirt, a path leading to the shed around which a few wooden stumps had been placed as seats or workbenches.

The shed entrance gaped doorless. To the left, a pile of long black human hair coiled on one of the stumps. Someone—a corpse or a living person—had just been shorn.

Possibly though, the hair had been cut to rid its owner of head lice. The house was a nomad’s house, after all, which meant it was hardly lived in. Only in winter’s coldest months. It meant that the householders actually spent most of their lives in tents sleeping on top of each other, circling around one small fire beneath the square smoke hole in the tent’s roof. Made of woven black yak hair, these tents were continually unstaked, rolled up, and moved as the animals grazed their way farther up the mountains, and there wasn’t much time or place for bathing.

Nomads usually took one bath a year—on Losar, the Tibetan New Year. This day, which usually stretched itself into a week, involved drinking Chang and hard liquor, renewing vows, tearing down and replacing
prayer flags, and tying a new tree limb onto the roof of your house. The men usually did this. Wood was scarce (there were hardly any trees on the Golok plains, and limbs were often brought in by travelers from other counties), so the men helped each other, going from house to house in great drunken groups, lifting the six-foot limb up to whomever had climbed there to throw last year’s branch down. After the tree branch was secured, they laced it with small, multicolored prayer flags. Across town, the tree limbs vibrated on roofs like old TV antennas.

Last year’s prayer flags were burned or buried. It was like the death of an old friend—the prayers written across their face unreadable now, their color all gone. By nightfall, the men were drunk and filled with emotion. They built fires and stomped in circles, screaming high-pitched whistles, their arms flung over shoulders. And at some point during all these festivities, they took their yearly bath. And it was after this time that they put away their tents and returned to their winter houses.

Stepping through the nomad’s doorway, you had to lift your feet over the threshold built up from the bottom; you had to bend your head down low, stepping like a goose. This was a protection against the Rolang, a breed of local zombies who were taller than normal Tibetans but found it impossible, in their rigor mortis, to bend their torsos or knees. Anyone else stepping into the shed would feel the narrow walls, the rows of nested dung clumps leaning like a tower of cordwood. Boards laid down formed a pathway around the weaving mounds and stacks of wooden buckets. Each dung clump was the size of a small plate but light as paper. When burned, proper and well-dried yak dung gave off a very fine white smoke that smelled faintly of burned grass. It was almost sweet.

Pushing aside a blanket nailed in a doorway, you entered the first room of the house. Another dark hallway. Shelves, rolled bedding, large bags of barley flour kept here in the coldest outer layer. The nomads followed a similar strategy in their tents, storing food that needed to be kept cold on the outer edges, while bedding and perishables (yogurt and milk and butter) that could easily freeze would be kept closer to the middle, near the fire. Everything took place at this center, beneath the square cut in the roof flap. The house was a longer, drawn-out version of this, as you passed through doorway after doorway to get to the one large room where everyone in the family slept, which housed the family altar kept in a wooden cabinet on the farthest wall. Here they lit incense offerings to the Buddhas, the beings in the pure realms—a way to communicate with the dead.

Beneath a row of windows, the nomads had placed long benches covered in brightly woven carpets. In front of the benches, they set low rectangular red and yellow chests painted with swirls of flowers and animals, auspicious symbols. Here rancid yak butter tea was served. Here they ate tsampa, wet rolled balls of barley dough, out of bowls they could hold in one hand. The corners of the room were stacked with bedding and mats that were arranged on the floor each night for sleeping. No one slept with his feet facing the altar. No one took the position of the grandfather, who stayed always, sleeping or sitting or chanting or turning his prayer wheel, in the corner of the room inside a flat four-sided box, the sides rising above the bottom of his torso and legs. This meditation box lifted him slightly off the cold floor, and he stayed in it always, singing his soft prayers night and day next to the altar.

One butter lamp, dangling from a chain in the ceiling, burned constantly. Soot blackened the ceiling and dripped partway down the walls, clouding the upper glass of the windows. The soot had darkened the two red poles in the center of the room; it had turned the white fur of the cat tied with a string to a dull and dingy gray.

The cat spent most of its time sleeping on a flour bag that rested on one side of the red pole. When awake, it complained and mewed. It arched its back and pulled against its string, leaving its neck fur matted and clumped. Sometimes a daughter or the grandmother would untie the cat and walk it outside into the courtyard so that it could breathe some fresh air. But otherwise, the cat left little turds on the floor behind the flour bag and sat in its own urine.

It was unclear why the nomads had this cat at all. Or who took care of it most of the year while they were off herding. It clearly was a useless mouser, tied as it was to the pole. Perhaps the grandfather kept it as a pet. The grandfather, who, like the cat, never left the room.

Some say that the cat was tied with a string for its own safety. The village was overrun with dogs that had grown wild and inbred, forming large, roving, dog gangs. Since there were only two breeds of dog in Tibet—the white and fluffy monastery lap dogs, and the large black herdsman’s dog—their offspring were an off-kilter combination of black-and-white-spotted creatures whose front and back legs did not seem to match, whose heads were too big or too small, whose teeth jutted out at wrong angles, and who were terrifically impulsive and mean. These dogs had all but decimated the local cat population, and it was known that they terrorized the local nunnery. Nuns had to travel in pairs, running from assembly hall to retreat hut, from kitchen house to temple, carrying rocks in their skirts. The dogs would chase after them, growling and snarling; they’d throw their bodies against the doors the nuns quickly shut behind them, desperate to get in. Most people in town, actually, kept a rock in their pocket, or when they were approached by a group of more than two dogs, they would bend down, pretending to pick up a rock, and the dogs would scatter.

The only reason why the villagers didn’t shoot the dogs was because they were natural protection against zombies. Because every house in town had a thwarted doorway, the zombies were left to stumble in the streets, to lurch the wrong way around the mani temple, to knock over buckets and small carts, to wander into yak herds, bump into buildings, stone walls. Whole dog cartels chased after them, barking incessantly and tearing at their rotting clothing—the corpse confused and searching, unsure of why it was upright, why it no longer had a tongue in its mouth, why it couldn’t bend its legs.

The cat was also kept on a string because of the zombies. Because a cat was often responsible for turning a person into a zombie. Because so many people slept side by side, stretched out on the floor before the altar, they couldn’t prevent the cat from stepping over their feet in the night. If a cat walked over the feet of a sleeping person, or worse, the feet of a corpse, that person or corpse would most certainly become a zombie. It was Tibetan custom to keep a dead body lying in state for days while the family took turns reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead over it. When read aloud, this book helped guide the soul of the recently departed as they traveled in the realm called the Bardo—a confusing and dark place where one’s senses were assaulted and nothing was actually how it seemed, a nightmare tenfold. With a corpse in the house, a cat could not be let loose to roam where it wanted. History tells of a cat jumping over a corpse’s feet and the dead body immediately reanimating, leaping up and running out of the house into the village streets. In this way, a cat was a very dangerous animal.

Not that reanimated corpses were all bad. Some tantric magicians purposefully created zombies in order to steal their tongues. To do this, the tantric master would bind himself to the corpse with rope, lying on top of it, his lips pressing against the dead lips, his face against its gray face, open eyes looking into blank closed eyes. Then he would begin to breathe mantras, a word spell, into the cold mouth. Sometimes the ritual would take hours, breathing this way live-mouth to dead-mouth, waiting for the important moment of reanimation. When it arrived, the moment was fast and furious—eyes flung open, the corpse breathed suddenly on its own, leaping and flipping like a fish on a line. The tantric master, tied to the body, would be dragged wherever the corpse went, a captive dance partner. Now awakened, the corpse would stick its tongue into the tantric master’s mouth. At this moment, it would be up to the tantrica to bite it off. If he failed to do this, out of fright or disgust, the corpse would surely kill him; if he succeeded, the corpse would die (again) and the tantric master would have his sacred ingredient. Because the tongue of a Rolang zombie was coveted over many things as an item of great magical importance, used in rituals that were extremely secret and that most people would never come in contact with or begin to understand.

The nomad’s cat, like most cats in the village, was kept tied with a string to protect it from dogs and to prevent it from creating zombies. But this particular cat—the white cat tied to the red pole—was also tied to keep it from getting in the way of prostrating pilgrims. And because all Tibetans associated cats with zombies, this cat was also tied there to prevent pilgrims from getting too close to the altar. Because so many people came in and out of this particular small stone house. They came to visit the shrine that was housed in the altar, locked in the cabinet on the farthest wall in the farthest room. When they saw it, they brought their hands together and touched their heads, their throats, and their hearts, they laid their bodies out across the worn floorboards, placing their foreheads down. This house, it turns out, was different from all others in the village because the nomads who owned it were blood relatives, direct lineage descendants, of the great tantric master, Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorje.

When he was alive one hundred and fifty years ago, people traveled from all over Kham and Golok Counties, and as far away as China and India, to see the great Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorje dressed in his elaborate robes, his long, black hair wrapped up in a topknot, his beard finely greased. He was the living Buddha, the incarnation of a famous treasure revealer, the producer of great miracles.

Yet despite his miracles and auspicious signs, some people didn’t like Do Khyentse. Monks, in particular, found him rude and blasphemous, found his countenance shifty and ungraspable. He would often appear suddenly on the horizon, riding his beautiful white horse. “Kyabgong is coming!” his disciples would yell. But then it would take hours for him to arrive, his form wavering like a flag on the horizon. And from that distance, he would seem a grand warrior, his robes shining silver in the sun, a fine hat or a crown—it must be snow leopard fur!—haloing his head. Monks trained their eyes on the horizon, on his form, but then suddenly, he would appear beside them, a filthy beggar. “Get out of my way, you useless dogs!” he’d yell. Up close, they’d notice that he smelled like yak piss and rotten meat, that he was naked and dirty beneath sheepskin robes that shone, not with silver brocade, but with grease stains, and the crown was not a fur hat made of snow leopard–skin but Kyabgong’s own hair all snarled with sticks and marmot fat, knotted every which way on his head, dusty from many days travel. Other times, however, he appeared in the village in layman’s clothes, almost unnoticeable. Entering the monastery or palace, he’d transform into the most elegant nobleman in rakish robes, snow leopard-trimmed silk jacket wrapped diagonally across his chest, one arm covered and one arm clean and bare, smelling of jasmine, his long black hair loose and wild down his back, braided with turquoise, huge pieces of red coral, hammered gold beads. Do Khyentse despised all convention, including the convention of clothing, and so no one knew how he would look when or if he happened to arrive. He had been seen dressed as a Mongol warrior, a nomad, a white-robed magician, a monk, and an old woman.

It is said that the miraculous death of Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorje manifested in a variety of different ways, depending on the level of attainment of the viewer. Some say the great master had been giving teachings in all areas of the town, in the palace and in the streets, to people everywhere no matter their status. Some saw him giving teachings to dogs and horses, to the water spirits living in the bottom of a well. Some say that he was giving exclusive teachings to the king and that he died in the royal bedchamber, surrounded only by a few attendants and the king himself. Sitting in the posture of the Buddha, he dissolved his worldly body into rainbows, leaving only his fingernails and coils of long black hair.

Immediately after his death, out in the palace courtyard, Do Khyentse’s disciples saw swirls of rainbow light, and heard the sounds of ringing bells and women’s laughter; dozens of vultures and ravens appeared out of nowhere, circling and crying above the brilliant rainbows that hung in the air. “Oh Kyabgong has left the human realm! Our teacher is gone,” the disciples cried. The ravens and vultures cried.

At the same time, some villagers saw Do Khyentse galloping his white horse out of town and into the mountains. When they heard of his death, they said only, “Oh, no, the great master has left for Pemakö! He rode away hours ago.” The Chinese traders, when they heard about the death of a Tibetan, said only, “I saw a man who looked like a beggar fall off a bridge.” And the disciples, the nomads, and other villagers said, “That wasn’t him, fool!” Many however, especially the monks, did not believe Do Khyentse was dead at all. “Another one of his tricks,” they said. Others saw flowers raining down from the sky onto bridges, the branches of the willow trees, the river, market streets. Others heard earthquakes, saw tornados of light that hung like frozen pillars in the sky for days.

And so even his death was a debacle. A question. Who could trust their eyes? Because no one ever knew exactly when Do Khyentse was coming or going, or how, really, he got anywhere—he was so often known to be in two places at once. Always disappearing, reappearing, disappearing again. Gone on the bend of grassblade, any occasional wind. So familiar, the sound of his horse galloping away. Disciples lay in their tents, sat in meditation, or fed dung patties into the clay stove and heard it, never sure if it was the sound of their actual master or just the echo of their own minds coming and going.

It is recorded that Do Khyentse disappeared into a rock shaped like a vulture, a tornado, a forest, a charnel ground, a crystal palace at the bottom of a lake. He was known to dissolve into juniper trees, statues, the distant ocean. He was carried off on the back of a Yeti several times, and several times vanished, butter lamp in hand, into the mouths of caves. Whatever a person’s expectation upon meeting him, he was sure to do the opposite. He swam naked, rarely wore shoes, ate meat, was prone to fits of wrath, chopping animals in half and then bringing them back to life whenever anyone complained. Although he was married, he seduced nearly every woman he met. He got drunk in monastery temples. He punched a hole in the sky, punched his hand in a rock, asked people to push him off cliffs, a test of their devotion. He loved whiskey, guns, knives, and horses, and yet had no pretentions of status, was neither jealous nor possessive nor wanting of anything from anybody. He journeyed all over, never ceasing. He arose and fell like waves. Like rain and wind, a field of lupine flowers blooming and the sudden appearance of sun or bees. He never kept appointments. Sometimes it was unclear if he was even a normal person at all. Yet it can also be said that in every moment, wherever he was, he thought only of Dharma and how to free all beings from their suffering. This was his only concern.

So where to put a reliquary of such a person?

Some believed, or had heard, that Do Khyentse’s reliquary lay in the monastery at Lhagang, “The Village that the Gods Love,” ten miles down the road from this village. Some say that it was fitting for the great teacher’s remains to be there, sharing a building with a famous statue of the Buddha. It was fitting that Do Khyentse’s remains would be kept there in the monastery where Do Khyentse had had visions of his past and future lives.

Yet on the other hand, those who knew more about the great teacher
than mere speculation and rumor, understood that Do Khyentse hated pomp and circumstance, that for much of his life he traveled incognito, that he had no use for class or hierarchy; he believed in giving the teachings to all. How much more appropriate would it be, therefore (how much more like Do Khyentse) to have his remains not in a fancy monastery surrounded by monks and gold statues, but instead placed in a simple nomad’s home, guarded by an old man and a small white cat? The cat who stretches, grows tired at the end of a long day tethered, knowing more than anyone what it is like always to be stuck in the same place. The cat who, feeling this way, curls into a perfect white circle and sleeps like something not yet born.

And these nomads sitting around it, staring at the small white body like a snow drop tied to the blood vein, the red pole, are the sons and grandsons, daughters and granddaughters of Do Khyentse’s sons and daughters, from his wife and many consorts. In their faces, you can see his face—the proud forehead, high cheekbones, the long straight nose. After Do Khyentse died, they gathered up his long hair and teeth and fingernails, kept them on the stump outside the door while they built the reliquary covered in hammered silver. And then his hair and bits of fingernails were closed up in the box, which was placed in the altar, where it was never alone—for years and years, someone, like the grandfather, always sat by it and prayed.

After Do Khyentse died, the human realm was a bankrupt and desolate place. But Do Khyentse had taken the Bodhisattva Vow, promising to always return, to reincarnate again and again until every living creature—human, horse, dog, cat—was liberated from its suffering. In this way he became the heartbeat of all beings. Everything fragile and sweet in the world and everything terrible and brutal held together always. Do Khyentse was tied to this realm, destined to circle around and around the one vow, the one-pointed vision, through lives and lives and lives. He could never really leave.

Photo: H. Kopp-Delaney