a stupa at the request of his master, only to be told to tear it down, return the stones to where they came from — and then start all over again. He was not offered a single word from the sacred teachings, but received plenty of humiliation and beating. In the end, the master relented and passed him the secret of attaining enlightenment in his lifetime. But even then he had to spend decades meditating in caves, with little to eat but nettles, which turned his body green, like a caterpillar. He did find his Way, and left thousands of poems, which are recited to this day. They reflect the mind of a remarkable and enlightened man.
Dwell alone and you shall find a friend.
Take the lowest place and you shall reach the highest. Hasten slowly and you will soon arrive. Renounce all worldly goals and you shall reach the highest one.10
It is Sogyal Rinpoche, the great Tibetan commentator on the Book, who helps me make some sense of it. I have also brought with me his Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and am reading it in bed. I find a good metaphor in it. When you go to meet a stranger off a plane, if you have a picture, you can recognise him. Without it you do not know who you are looking for. The Book of the Dead is for the living as well as for the dead. Enlightenment comes with preparedness: you have to rid yourself of ignorance, anger, and hatred, the mind's poisons. Then you have a chance of recognising it when you encounter it in the bardo. I do not need to believe in the bardo or in reincarnation. I can take his words as advice for this world, even though that is not what he intends. For him, reincarnation is the fact of life, and death.
Dreaming is as near as I can come to understanding the bardo. Dreams seem so clear, so vivid, so real, even if we only find them so while we are dreaming. Sogyal Rinpoche in fact compares the ‘mental body’ in the bardo with the dream body we have when we dream. But then, when we wake up, we know we have been dreaming. And we have a mind when we dream. What is it that directs the mental body in the intermediate state? He says it is the consciousness — but is there any consciousness after we die? I am slowly falling asleep; the last thing I read is Sogyal Rinpoche's remark,‘Going to sleep is similar to the bardo of dying, where the elements and thought process dissolve, opening into …’
We get a call from Tseten two days later. He sounds calm, and not as sad as I would have imagined. He thanks us for the khata, and the money, and then apologises for turning us away. I tell him I understand. I do not even mention filming. The whole thing barely makes sense to me, but I would hate them to think I was getting in the way of their mother's reincarnation. They could not even be at the sky burial themselves. No close member of the family is allowed there; it is said that their sadness would hold back the soul and slow down its journey into the next life.
I am not sure when we can resume our filming with Tseten. Will we have to wait out the forty-nine days, till his mother finds a new life? I am prepared to wait. I should try to think that it is nothing if there is another life to come.
But I am not ready to give up. Phuntsog is now my hope. He knows how keen we are to film a sky burial. Whenever he is going to perform one, he lets us know, and we then visit the family and ask if we can film it. We have three straight rejections. While we are waiting for our chance, I invite Phuntsog, his wife and children to our house to get to know them better. He does not mind talking about his work. ‘It has been decided by the Buddha a long, long time ago that this is the occupation of our family. We have been doing it for many generations. Whoever needs my help, I will go and take care of their dead to the best of my ability,’ he says with a kind smile, while emptying the chang in his cup. He took the job over from his father eight years ago, and says if his sons do not get a place in college, he will pass his skills to them.
Phuntsog enjoys the company of the living, although he has few friends. In Tibetan society, he is regarded as the lowest of the low, along with butchers and blacksmiths. I did not believe it until I was confronted with it myself. We were having some of our film characters over for a meal and I suggested we invite Phuntsog. To my surprise all the Tibetan members of the crew said it was out of the question. ‘No one will touch the food from any dish he helps himself from,’ Penpa warned me. ‘And I think he will be as embarrassed as us. Why don't we give him something instead? Like rice and butter and fruit — something he and his family can enjoy at home.’ I tried to plead with them and for the first time almost caused a revolt among my team. I had to give up. Fortunately, though, Phuntsog did not give up on us.
Finally, three months after Tseten's mother passed away, Phuntsog came to us with news of the death of one of the local blacksmiths. He had drunk himself to death and brought ruin on his family. Some years back, he had sold his son for adoption and had promptly got drunk on the proceeds (just £30, Phuntsog told us). His wife had left him and the woman he married later was forced to beg at the entrance to the monastery. He would spend the money she received on chang. Phuntsog thought the blacksmith's wife would probably let me watch his sky burial, at least from a distance.
I go to visit the blacksmith's wife with Pantog, our housekeeper, to offer my condolences and to seek her permission. She lives in one of the old parts of Gyantse at the foot of the fort; I like walking there, through its well laid-out lanes lined with traditional houses. But the blacksmith and his wife did not live in one of those. Their dwelling is at the back, where the road stops. It is barely a house, just three mud walls stuck on the side of a stone ruin — there is no door. When I enter I see she has a tiny kitchen area, and a single main room, which is empty except for a small table. On it a few butter lamps flicker wildly. Her husband's body lies on the floor in a corner wrapped in a white cloth. I can hardly believe what I see; I would not have thought anyone in modern Tibet lived this desperately. Pantog hands her a khata and a 50 yuan note. ‘He drank everything away,’ she wails through her tears. ‘Now he's gone, the easy way. But what am I going to do? How am I going to live?’
I cannot think of anything to say that might comfort her. I leave without making my request. I decide I will just go to the burial, without the cameraman, and trust that she will not mind. If her husband took so little care of this life, perhaps he would not be too concerned about the next one.
When the day comes, I get up very early. I walk from the back of our house under a dark blue sky, past the racetrack and the government grain store, heading for a barren hill. It is about two hundred yards from the sky burial site, but I have brought a powerful pair of binoculars. The site is at a gentle height, standing on its own, surrounded on every side by low meandering hills. Phuntsog has told me that this makes it easy for vultures to see the smoke from his juniper twigs and to land. Aside from two simple shelters and a semicircle of large flat stones made shiny from use, the site is bare. The only colour I can make out is the maroon robe of a monk, sitting and meditating in one of the shelters. I am told that monks often choose such places for meditation: their being places of death helps them to conquer their fears, and to appreciate the impermanence of life.
Just as the sky begins to lighten, the body of the dead man is brought up. Two men carry it, and two others follow behind. Once the corpse is on the ground, the men circle it three times, and then they take a break in the shelter. They drink tea and chang and talk; I see that they are even laughing. After about thirty minutes, they re-emerge. One man lights a pile of juniper twigs and tsampa, the smoke wafting away. Phuntsog lays out his tools — a huge knife, a pair of hooks, and two hammers.
The body remains on the ground, face down, while Phuntsog begins cutting it into large pieces, which he hands to the other men. The men lay the flesh on the stones and, using the hammers, begin pounding it into a pulp. Watching them do this, I cannot imagine Tseten and Dondan looking on while it was done to their mother. However they might try to rationalise their emotions and think of what is good for the soul, this would be too much. Perhaps this is the real reason why close relatives are not allowed at the sky burial.
Suddenly I hear singing — a work song, cheerful and rhythmical. I look around to see where it is coming from. The men at the burial site have their backs to me, but one turns in my direction and I can see — it is them! They sing with gusto, as though they are bringing in a harvest, or working on a road gang. Have they forgotten this is a death? No, I realise, for them the death is not the point. The death has