Tseten and Dondan clear the space around the mandala and Yangdron and some of the villagers lay carpets around it. Mila disappears into the house and then re-emerges wearing a maroon shawl and a crown-like hat of red and yellow silk. He sits down facing the mandala. A small settee is brought out and placed near him, and a long black dress — his wife's, presumably — is on the settee. Three nuns take their seats on the carpets to the right of the mandala — two of them hold the large ceremonial horns, and the third a smaller horn and a bell. The two nuns who were tending the lamps join the others on the carpet with sutras in their hands. Tseten sits down next to Mila, with his hand drum, a bigger drum on a stand, and a pair of cymbals. At this point, the huge sack full of cowpats I saw on my way in is dumped in front of the mandala.
Mila shuts his eyes and begins to pray, and Tseten and the nuns join in. Then the prayers stop abruptly, and the horns and trumpets burst out in the deepest baritone imaginable. The richness of the sound takes me by surprise — it is such a small band, and all women at that. It seems to come from the depths of space, like rolling thunder. Some Tibetans liken this music to the roaring of a tiger. To me it sounds very much as though the nuns are trying to communicate with another world. If the soul is listening, I think, it must hear this.
When the playing stops, the man who has been making the tso goes to the mandala and, much to my dismay, starts laying cowpats on it. Mere minutes have passed since Tseten and Dondan completed it! The cowpats look awful, like warts on the cheeks of a beautiful woman. The man sets the cowpats on fire and soon a huge red flame leaps into the air, lighting up his face. Butter is poured on the flames, and immediately I feel the heat from where I am crouching, some distance away. I wonder aloud at its intensity, and the man who has lit the fire takes a step back and reveals the secret: the cowpats are from the rare red yak, known to produce the fiercest flames, and therefore the most purifying power. ‘With the mandala at their base, these flames can reach the soul of the dead wherever it is, and purify any sins it might have,’ he tells me proudly.
But before the flames can work their magic power, there is something more mundane to be done. The soul of the dead must be fed. In the midst of the nuns' chanting and the crackling cowpats, plates of food are thrown into the flames one by one. Mila says a special prayer with every offering. ‘He is pleading for the soul to enjoy its favourite food,’ the fire-tender tells me. ‘They are giving her the best food because from today on, the soul can no longer taste anything from this world.’
‘But can the soul eat?’ I ask him, genuinely curious. For some reason, I can imagine the soul hearing the chanting, but not quite gulping down all these dishes, even if they are her favourites.
‘You are right,’ he says. ‘She can hear the chanting, but she can only smell the food being offered in her name, and the incense.’ He points to the clay pots hanging on the wall, with juniper twigs burning in them.
I find myself grappling with the gaps between these beliefs and my own. There has to be a soul there somewhere, otherwise what is the point of all this? I smile to myself as I remember a curious story. Hugh Richardson, another well-known British diplomat, stationed in Lhasa in the 1940s, went to offer condolences on the death of a Rinpoche, an incarnate lama. The abbot told him that the ‘Rinpoche’ would like to receive him in his cell. He wondered if he had made a mistake. He found the Rinpoche sitting in his usual seat. Before he could say anything, the abbot said: ‘The Rinpoche welcomes you and asks if you had a good journey, and are you in good health?’ It went on like this for some time. ‘Everything seemed to be as usual, so that the visitor almost began to doubt his own senses.’17
I look around and catch sight of Loga, sitting near the stairs with a bucket of water at his side. What is going on inside that locked head? Does he know that his mother has died and her soul is struggling for rebirth? My experience of the ritual may not be all that different from his. I can follow the process, even enjoy it, but it is like watching a play in a foreign language — fascinating, but mostly beyond my grasp.
In the midst of my distractions, I hear a loud sob. It is Tseten's sister, Samchung, from Shigatse, standing on her own in the corner, her eyes swollen with tears. Soon I see that she is not the only one crying. Dondan has tears welling up in his eyes; Tseten is wiping his face with his shawl. They all gather in front of the burning mandala — Tseten, Dondan, Samchung, and Yangdron, all weeping openly now. Mila drops five balls of tso, one red torma, and a slip of white paper into the fire. Then Tseten walks up to it, and tosses something into the flames. Before I can tell what it is, the fire consumes it. Tseten stands before the fire like a statue, his eyes fixed on the dancing flames. Just then, the sonorous long horns boom out again. The ritual is coming to an end.
I turn back to the fire-tender for an explanation. He tells me that Mila and his family believe that up until now, the four devils who took their mother's life — the devils of air, blood, flesh, and spirit — are still badgering her soul. The devils are represented by the red torma. By chanting prayers and feeding them with tso, they hope to pacify these devils. In case that does not work, the four wrathful deities guarding the four gates of the mandala are also invoked, and asked to bring the devils under control in the flames of the red yak cowpats. At the same time, the soul of the dead, represented by the slip of white paper, is purified of its sins, and readied for its next life.
‘But why was everyone crying? Were they no longer worried about distracting the dead?’ I ask him.
‘Until today, the soul of the dead can remember its previous life. It can smell its favourite food. But from now on, the soul's karma is stronger — what the family does will not matter to it. Also this is the last time that the soul of the dead sees its family.’
The mention of karma makes me ask something that has been troubling me. If reincarnation depends on your karma, what difference does the ritual make? Why all the prayers, all the offerings, the mandala, and the fire? A poor family cannot possibly afford them; what happens to their dead?
My questions take him off guard. ‘It doesn't matter whether you're rich or poor. What matters is that you do your best. But every little helps,’ he says after a pause.
I suppose I should not be posing difficult questions right now. I just ask if he noticed Tseten throwing something on the fire.
He nods. ‘Perhaps photographs of his mother. They have to go. All traces of the dead must be removed. Also, after today, the family will not mention her name in the house.’
Tseten's mother has been dead for a month, but, according to the family's belief, it is only now that she is transformed — she is no longer a mother, no longer a wife. Just as the family have tried to make the devils let go of her soul, now they too have to let her go, completely. From this point on, if they wish to mention her, they will refer to her simply as ‘the one who has passed away’, and never by using her name. It is perhaps for this reason that the Tibetan word for body is iu, which means ‘the thing that is left behind’.
The ceremony I have been watching marks the final big push to the soul's quest for its next life. The family's faith in reincarnation is absolute, as it is among all the Tibetans we are filming. But my doubts do not want to go away. Does it never even enter their minds that there is possibly no next life? And if there is not, then what?
Perhaps reincarnation can be seen as a state of mind, a mental construct. But I know that is not what the Rikzin family means by it, nor what Tibetans seek when they look for the reincarnate being who will be their new Dalai Lama, their supreme spiritual and political leader. Successors to the important Buddhist lineages are chosen based on the belief of reincarnation, a method that dates back to the fourteenth century. Patterns of water and clouds over a lake, dreams, and of course, wills and instructions of the incumbent incarnation lamas — these are all guides. The present Dalai Lama, the 14th, described his selection in his autobiography: ‘The Regent saw the vision of three Tibetan letters — Ah, Ka, and Ma — followed by a picture of a monastery with roofs of jade green and gold and a house with turquoise tiles.’