Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [32]
While monks are as common as birds, a special kind of monk always commands particular attention and respect: a Rinpoche, which means “precious one,” and most with that name are recognized as reincarnations of lamas. They’re distinguished by a ribbon of gold fabric worn around their burgundy robes.
So it created quite a stir when the Rinpoche who’d traveled to Thimphu to attend to Pink and Tshering walked into the offices of Kuzoo FM. It was my second week in the office, and I’d been spending my days talking to staff, helping them with simple problems like English pronunciations, and answering questions about my life back in the United States. Rinpoche held himself like a man who had been told from an early age that he was special. But for the robes, he looked like a hipster thirty-year-old, with spiky black hair and a confident strut—a guy from town stopping in to guest host a show, or say hi to his friends.
When I spotted him in the hallway outside the Kuzoo workroom and studio, I waved hello, then immediately hoped I hadn’t offended him with my casual gesture. But he waved back, sweetly, undisturbed, as I was obviously an outsider and not schooled in monastic protocol. Beside him was a dumpling of a lady who, judging by her features, had to be Pink’s mother. She beamed proudly, delighted to be seen in the company of someone so holy.
The arrival of a person of seniority typically compels Bhutanese to rise and politely but cursorily bow their heads and say, “Kuzu zampo-la, sir.” But when the gold-fringed Rinpoche stepped into the room, the young Kuzoo FM staff immediately stopped what they were doing, rose, and approached him, single file, heads bowed. Mechanically he reached inside his robes, produced a handful of thin silk cords, and placed them on each head that paraded by, every gesture accented with a little hum of a prayer. It was a simple blessing, as reflexive as genuflecting and crossing before you entered a church pew.
After receiving the blessing, the staff returned to their seats and proceeded to continue whatever they were doing, appearing now completely unaffected. I was rapt. I couldn’t take my eyes off Rinpoche. He must have felt my stare, as he soon motioned in my direction, while he addressed Pink in Dzongkha.
“Oh, that’s Lady Jane, from California and New York,” she told him in English. People seemed more familiar with my home state than my adopted one, so I’d started answering the question “Where are you from?” with a dual response.
“New York,” said Rinpoche. “That is a great country.” He paused, as if he was imagining the distance. “My father went to New York once.… Come here.”
I accepted the summons and rose from my chair. As he’d done with the others, he adorned me with the red silk cord. Mimicking the other Kuzooers, I bowed my head, low. But I’d failed to notice the second half of the ritual—pulling the cord forward and tying it around my neck. Rinpoche laughed kindly as Pink intervened, completing the task.
With barely a move of his arm, Rinpoche then pulled a three-foot fringed white silk scarf from inside his robes and threw it around my neck with a nearly invisible flick of the wrist. A standard greeting for an honored guest. He looked toward Pink and murmured in his native tongue.
“He says that’s because you did many good deeds in a former life,” Pink translated.
I smoothed out my hair from under the red silk blessing cord and adjusted my scarf. I found myself considering the idea of past lives: I liked this notion that it wasn’t only cats who got nine chances. That whatever goodness we might accumulate in one lifetime would influence where we went in the next. But what about the bad things we’d done? Was it possible to transcend them? Were our next lives determined by a median average of this life’s actions? Maybe in my next life I’d have a talent for speaking other languages, or a gift for playing guitar. Maybe, in