When karma runs over dog…
The Lotus Lake hotel, which has been the MommyWizard base of operations here in Rewalsar, is situated right next to an enormous mani stone that is almost as tall as I am.
What’s a mani stone?
Well, at its most simplistic, a mani stone is a stone that has had the syllables of the mantra om mani padme hung carved into it. The Guru Rimpoche statue is surrounded by walls and piles consisting of nothing but thousands of mani stones in different sizes. But there are also much bigger ones, stones that were once part of Rewalsar’s natural landscape before the town came to be. These stones poke up out of the asphalt, or form one entire wall of someone’s house, and have manis carved into them in sizes ranging from miniscule to gigantic, and painted for maximum legibility. The mani stone I’m writing about, the one in front of the hotel, is such a stone, and sports not only manis but a portrait of Guru Rimpoche painted in vibrant colors, over a mani with syllables a good 12 inches tall. The stone participates in town life as much as any living being:
People touch the stone as they pass by it on kora;
produce-wallahs sell vegetables next to it;
other people set bits of burning incense on it;
monkeys clamber over it on the way to stealing fom the produce wallahs;
taxis race by it on the way to dropping off or pickingup passengers;
cows dump piss and shit near it as they graze the produce-wallah’s moldy rejects;
vendors sell malas and buddhist jewelry next to it;
motorcycles and mopeds putt-putt by it;
folks passing to or from the bus stand walk by it on the half hour;
and, for this blog entry, most importantly…
dogs sleep near it.
It’s impossible to doubt that the amount of karma stored up in this particular bit of rock is enormous. Which caused me to wonder about something the other day.
The karma of an animal’s life in Rewalsar is necessarily complex. Cows, for example, are holy beings, pretty much allowed to wander wherever they want, stand wherever they want, sleep wherever they want. With, of course, the exception of the produce-wallahs’ fresh wares. Then what you have is people coaxing a holy being into being holy elsewhere with a few shouts and slaps on the rump. Cows regularly wander the roads, where they have the right of way. I’ve been told that, should some fatal mishap befall a cow on the road–for example, a misstep down a particularly steep embankment–there are people who will collect the body, and treat it with all of the respect and last rites a human corpse would receive, including a formal cremation. In the States a cow might also receive a formal cremation, but the proceedings are less spiritual, and usualy accompanied by cole slaw, barbecue sauce, and plenty of paper napkins. But I digress…
There are also four or so monkey tribes living around the holy lake of Tso Pema. They live for the most part on puffed rice fed to them by pilgrims, stolen produce, and whatever they can harvest from the surrounding hillsides. In Hinduism Hanuman, the monkey king, is revered as a holy symbol of loyalty. In Buddhism, since one’s prayers are usually devoted to the salvation of all sentient beings, it’s only natural to send a few blessings directly toward any beings in sight, including the monkeys as they sit in the sun and groom themselves. After years and years of receiving blessings around the lake, the average Tso pema monkey has probably received an incredible amount of good blessings and karma. The monkeys tend to imitate their human neighbors, sometimes with startling results. It’s common to see monkeys moving bricks and stones around unattended construction sites, as if they were workers. After a big celebration of the His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s birthday, the public green where the celebration took place was taken over by monkeys, who arranged themselves into a group except for one monkey who would caper in front of them. After all, we humans had watched individuals perform songs and speeches the previous day, and been rewarded with food, so the monkeys attempted the same thing, with somewhat less success. Doubtless the monkeys copy human spiritual practices too: I have seen a monkey gently lifting and turning the pages of a Buddhist text while the monk who had been reading them went on break…
Then there are the dogs. Dogs in Rewalsar–and in much of India, for that matter–are not pets in the traditional sense. As in Mexico, most dogs are outdoor dogs that happen to get their sustenance from a combination of friendly handouts from townspeople, and judicious garbage diving. The dogs live their lives alongside people, but not necessarily interacting with them beyond what’s necessary. For the most part, the dogs are found sleeping in the street, walking along the kora path, and having the occasional squabble over dominance. The other day I spotted one deliberately stationed in front of the caretaker monk for the Guru Rimpoche statue, standing quietly while it receved a blessing.
But that’s not the dog this post is about.
The dog this post is about is a very young puppy who had the misfortune to be run over not three feet away from the big mani stone. By the time I came on the scene, the accident had already happened. The pup’s mother was by its side, gently giving her offspring little mommy-can-fix-it licks with her tongue, interspersed with encouraging whines meant to get the pup on its feet again. It was a heartbreaking scene. On the other side of the puppy’s body, out of its mother’s sight, was the glistening pile of intestines untidily spread along the asphalt.
Eventually someone took the puppy’s body away, and the poor mother went back to care for her two remaining pups. But I’ve been thinking about the incident ever since. it was one of those situations that always makes me want to go to the deities in charge, and say, “HEY! That wasn’t FAIR.” But then again, it all happened in the shadow of the town’s most powerful mani stone. Was the whole thing just kind of random and meaningless? Was it the puppy’s fate to be have such a short life, just so it could die with a huge boost ‘o’ buddhist juju at the end? Was that ugly death an expiation of karma for a previous, less savory human life? If so, what kind of rebirth is the puppy in for? I can’t help imagining that the puppy got reborn as some accomplished Buddhist practitioner, somewhere. Or maybe it managed to escape the great wheel of death and rebirth completely…
