House Fulla Sky Pilots
Today was a day full of pujas.
Those of you who care about such things already know that the Mercury finally hauled his butt out of Retrograde today. We’d put a number of things on hold because a Mercury Retrograde is inauspicious for so many things, especially if they involve communication. Moving, buying a computer, starting a new project, signing off on contracts. Much of our race to get the house livable concerned moving in before the Retrograde got underway.
A bit of backstory. Back in the (Western) day, when I was starting a new job every couple years, part of the learning curve for my latest boss du jour always involved a little talk about Mercury Retrogrades, and why launching the new network/website/software app during a Retrograde was a bad idea. Usually the Talk would be met with a lot of skepticism. After all, there’s no mention of the Mercury Retrograde in any MBA course. It’s not something you can assign a numerical value for ROI calculations. On one job, the Powers that Be were so skeptical, I gave up and went on vacation, rather than face a software launch during a Retrograde that was particularly hellish. After the first Retrograde, a newly-enlightened manager type would often sheepishly appear at my desk, asking quietly, “Hey, um…when’s the next Mercury Retrograde? And, uh, how long do they last, again?” I did manage to educate some corporate folks that yes indeedy, that stove’s hot, but never without going through the burned-fingers stage of learning first.
Fortunately, we now live in a part of the world where such things as auspicious and inauspicious days are taken seriously. Too, our part of the world is one where a lot of different gods reside. It’s in one’s best interest to be nice to the neighbors, regardless of which plane of existence they’re actually living on. So it should not surprise you to learn that Joy, using her finely-honed astrology skills, and our Brahmin landlord’s pandit, using traditional Hindu astrology methods, happened to arrive at exactly the same result when it came time to schedule the house-warming ceremonies for the house. The date would be March 9, at about 8 in the morning. Bitu’s pandit would come and perform a big housewarming puja. Lena also formally requested the Kenpo of Ziggar Monastery, and Palga Tulku, a bright young man who’ll end up running Ziggar Monastery some day, to come and perform a Tibetan house blessing as well. At some point during the day, we’d do our own private ceremonies, too.
Another infonugget for you: when a Mercury retrograde ends, there’s sometimes a bit of whiplash as all the things that were fubared get un-fubared, and start up properly again, sometimes with a vengeance. Which is how our house filled up with such a huge combination of Sky Pilots from different religions. (Counts on fingers) Let’s see…Hindu, Tibetan, Native American, Druid, esoteric….
Oh, and did I mention that most of these ceremonies involve setting stuff on fire? No? My bad.
This is all taking place in India. Precisely scheduled and timed events are on everyone’s wish list, and let’s just leave it at that. So we three MommyWizards arose nice and early this morning, and Malka, our bhi, arrived early as well, to give the house a quick sweep-up and serve tea as required. Eight o’clock came and went, and things finally kicked off around 8:30, with the Hindu puja.
The Hindu puja was part wedding ceremony, part sympathetic magic, and part construction project. First came the transformation of the guest room into a temple with the judicious application of string, bright yellow cloth, and palm fronds. Our landlord Bitu and his wife participated in the ceremony as man and wife, gently tossing flowers, rice and ghee over ritual objects as incense smoke filled the room, and the pandit chanted a mile a minute. Then everyone adjourned to the street at ground level, to build a little god-house in front of our actual house, and properly furnish it with incense, flowers, and a small hand-made doll representing a servant to keep it up.
During a lull in the construction activities, Joy began a Native American ceremony. This one involved a burnt-food offering out on the balcony to all beings and sundry. Compared to the Hindu pantomime and house build, Joy’s ceremony was relatively simple, involving reciting a prayer and ringing a dorje to let the proper beings know that dinner was served. The burnt offering was left on the balcony to smolder at its own pace.
As Joy completed her ceremony, the Tibetans rolled in, and we settled ourselves in the office for round three.
Yes, the office is right next door to the guest room, where the pandit was now busily chanting a mile a minute while pieces of wooden crate burned merrily away in a brazier. Um, yes, the guest room is one of the interior rooms, with no window leading directly outside (though the windows do lead to the open-air corridor…) Why do I mention these things? Um, no reason, really….
The Tibetans. Right. Back to the Tibetans. Part of the Tibetan house-blessing style is to bring kataks to drape over the household altar, a main doorway, and the stove (Tibetan Buddhism is very practical when it comes to matters of food and shelter). Another part is to bring tsok–essentially a food offering that gets distributed to everyone attending the ceremony. Tsok usually consists of biscuits, small bags of chips, and individually wrapped candies–stuff people can easily drop into a pocket or bag and carry away. This is one of the few ceremonies I’ve been to where there weren’t any Westerners who needed reminding that spaghetti, soup and casseroles are not good tsok.
Lena had remade the office to offer Tibetan flat seating to Palga Tulku, Kenpo, and anyone else who wanted it. There’s a protocol to the seating thing, where the leading rimpoche gets the highest padded seat, and any majordomos, seconds-in-command, or runners-up get a slightly lower pad, and regular folks get floor-level seating. Palga Tulku, as a tulku and rimpoche in his seventh lifetime (or thereabouts), got the highest pad, with Kenpo seated a couple of inches lower. As I mentioned earlier, Palga Tulku is a bright young man in his twenties who’s completed his regular studies, and come to Rewalsar to continue his religious training as a Tulku. What this means in practical terms is that we all sat with Palga Tulku discussing things like Internet connection quality, and whether Airtel or Reliance offered the better cell phone service, before he picked up his vajra and dorje, and started belting out that old-time religion.
Tibetan house blessing ceremonies involve blessing and feeding the “spirits of the place,” rather than the building. The spirits are fed actual food. In our case, coffee, biscuits, rice, several kinds of dal, and incense were on the menu. The foodstuff is blessed and then carried ceremoniously outside to be burned. It’s not just one serving, either; we whipped up a huge serving bowl of spirit feeding goodies, and an equally large carafe of coffee, and both were emptied out bit by bit as the ceremony continued. An attending monk carried each plate and cup of coffee out to our balcony to be burned in a round metal bowl filled with coals and more pieces of chopped up crate.
Let’s review, shall we? At this point in the proceedings, we had the house filled with smoke from rose-scented dhoop, white sage, pine incense, biscuits, rice, dal, and the fore-mentioned pieces of chopped-up crate…which turned out to make somewhat toxic smoke. There was a moment of arranging and rearranging all of the various burning things on our balcony so people wouldn’t choke to death while blessing the house. Joy, Lena, and I stood it long enough to add our own plates of blessed foodstuff to the burning bowl, and then Joy retreated to my room to stave off an asthma attack as the Tibetan ceremony wrapped up. Afterwards we all adjourned for lunch at Bitu’s house, where they served Brahmin vegetarian fare.
Sunset, as I write this. A couple more private house blessing pujas, and we’re done.
