A Whole Other World

I'll continue the other articles later today, but have to get this in.  Chatted with a guard this weekend about the seasons of the year and asked when Mongols believe Fall started.  Thinking he would say the Fall solstice, I was surprised when he immediately replied, "the day after Naadam."  Naadam finished July 13th.  Wind started blowing from the north yesterday and BOOM this morning, July 28th at 8:00 AM, it is 47 degrees.  I am coaching a little league baseball team in one hour and I ask, how do you play anything other than a world series game or football in 50 degree weather?  Assuming it reaches 50.  Winds still blowing.  It could flurry before all's said and done.

The Xuree Tsam: Part 1

Now that I've caught my breath, I want to write those articles about the Naadam festival.  First the Tsam ritual dance.  At the risk of folks thinking I am a universalist (I am not), the Tsam ritual's nearest equivalent in Christianity is something between a Passion play and the Divine Comedy, but not really.  I am not an expert, but have spent a good deal of time making sure I don't say anything outright stupid in case a Tibetan Buddhist friend should visit this blog.  If you are a TB friend and know I have misrepresented the Tsam, please leave a comment and I will make a correction.  However, do know that our beliefs are in stark contrast to one another and that on a doctrine/practice level that will respectfully remain in tension.  There are several different Tsam dances, and I am not sure which one I watched.  Each dance as I understand highlights a different facet of Tibetan Buddhist doctrine and spirit activity.  It all takes place on a square with five circles and in the end forms a living Mandala. Since there was no one there to explain all the imagery going on (these are secrets guarded by the priests and commoners are not allowed to know them), instead of a play by play I want to introduce you to the main characters.

First we have the skeletons.  They enter and do a little dance to show they are in charge.  If you are not supposed to be in the circle they remove you.  Each character in the dance must pass between these two.  Interestingly, the myth is they were a husband and wife who were in a state of deep meditation.  A thief found them and skinned them alive, but since they were in a trance they never woke up and became buddahs.  Just don't let a cranky church usher hear about that one.

Next: enter Kashin Khan (King of Kash) and his six boys.  Why the boys were there I do not know.  Two of them did wake the White Old Man from his nap, but otherwise they just paraded around with their dad.  The king is a reincarnate character.  A big part of the dance is the cycle of rebirth that Tibetan Buddhists and many other eastern religions believe.  I witnessed people in the crowd praying to him throughout the dance.  (Notice the woman on the right?)

According to the mongolian newspaper article I read on it, the image of a buddha in the dance invites and is recognized as the presence of the buddha.

Next, Jahmsaran (sp?).  This wicked looking creature is . . . well . . wicked.  Isn't it obvious?  He's holding a human heart in his hand for crying out loud.  BUT here is where that fuzzy Tibetan Buddhist yin yang comes into play.  Good things are not ALL good, and bad things are not ALL bad.  Each (in their belief) has an element of the opposing trait.  Every good has something bad and vice versa.  So this evil looking guy, as I understand, serves a purpose that is . . um . . good, sometimes.  Well. . bad mostly, but in a way . . *>@&! . . never mind.  Anyway, the heart in his hand means he can grant heart felt desires.  I THINK he represents the antagonist in this case.  He must be appeased (again, I think) in order for the bad in the karmic cycle to be un-badified.  The reason he is so bad is he decided he was going to end sadness and make people happy all the time.  WHAT?!?  You got it.  You see if everything is good, that's bad in Buddhism.  So the worst thing you could decide to do is take away the bad, because that is what people stuck in the reincarnation cycle are here for, to have bad things happen.  Get it?  Now is the point where I know real tension exists between Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity, no matter how much the Dalai Lama wants to say we are all alike we are WAY different in how we view suffering.

Interesting?  Good.  This can sit for a bit and I'll do another article with the remaining cast later.  Originally I told Laura I would just write a couple paragraphs and throw in some pictures.  But I just CAN'T do that now.  So, for now I am going to let this digest.  Later I will introduce you to the black magician hero and the comedy relief.  Later I will try to put in words what I think is the plot of this tsam.

To the Woman I LOVE!

No frills here folks.  It's Laura's birthday and if I had my way with you all it would be an international holiday.  I love you Laura.  Happy 3(bleep)th birthday!  ;-)

Get Tsam for Free

Naadam weekend presented two really good (and free) photo ops.  One was a Tsam (religious masks) dance.  Even if it sounds boastful, I want it to be known publicly I learned of it from reading a mongolian newspaper article.  The other was watching the Mongolian archery competition at the Naadam stadium grounds.  More on those later, but suffice it to say both are free if you just happen to be passing through Ulaanbaatar on your way to . . um . . well, if your in UB.

The Khuree Tsam dance is actually a religious ritual, and I would never attend one being done for its real purpose.  However, this one was written in the stars to be done conveniently in competition with the first day of Naadam (the heaviest tour date in UB) and was summarily advertised in the newspaper.  Even though non-Mongolian readers (mere mortals ;-) would not know about it, I figured thrifty tour agencies would bring their customers to it to cut package costs, and a couple did.

Now I'm writing this for the lanky, long brown haired guy who was wearing an Aussie looking leather hat and carrying an out of the box digital camera with an "I can see the Mars lander" digital zoom and still had stickers on it.  Dude, you got ripped off!

I overheard your tour guides talking during the dance.  Afterwards they were taking you to a guanz (Mongolian for "hepatitis ridden greasy spoon") and then to the ARCHERY COMPETITION!!  For those with extreme short term memories, remember I said these were both free!  In the one in 6.3 billion chance this guy knows about my blog, I want to offer my condolences for however much you spent on your extreme vacation package.  The leg of it you did on July 11th could almost have been done for the taxi fare and a good tip (minus air fare). 

It's all good on Naadam weekend!

I figure I have spent enough time on the riot, let's talk about something fun (to me at least).

July the 11th through the 13th is the Mongolian festival called Naadam.  This type of festival is not unique to Central Asian peoples, but we have nothing like it in the States.  The closest thing I can compare it to is if you combined the 4th of July, the Olympics, and a county fair.  Almost everything closes for three days and the streets are quiet.

The festival centers around "The Three Manly Sports of Naadam" which are wrestling, horse racing and archery.  Each of these is written (or so I'm told) in the old Mongolian script on the mountain to the west of Zaisan memorial mountain.  In this picture you can see this and the Soyombo, which can also be seen on the national flag of Mongolian.

This year I am hoping to take some photos of the religious activities that are part of the event.  Some foreigners I've met think the Mongols are not a particularly religious people.  But I believe they practice their religion in ways so unfamiliar to us we overlook how deeply religious they are.  For example, one of the lead floats in the Naadam parade contains the Tsam masks.  If I can get a shot of it, you (like any tourist) will just see a bunch of people wearing asian looking masks, but really they are recognizing a pantheon of gods (the newspaper calls them  "burxad" which means gods, not masks) as part of their opening ceremonies.  Since our practices are so different we can look right over the religious aspect and just see a colorful float or tradition.

Think of it this way.  If you didn't know a thing about Christianity, what would a nativity float mean to you in the Christmas parade?  The meaning is not as clear as you might think.

Free at Last! Free at Last!

We have been liberated!  That's right, at midnight on July 5th Marshal Law was lifted.  We were no longer under curfew (meaning I could go on my 6:30AM walk) and we didn't have to carry ID (meaning I could once again look at police without patting my pockets).  I was even able to go back to work today.  Things will be slowly going back to normal . . . for a family living in Outer Mongolia.  Last week was filled with so many uncertainties that it was probably my least productive since returning.  But I sure caught up on prayer time.

For those just getting here, Sunday June 29th was the Mongolian mid-term elections.  According to reports the Socialist Party won by a landslide.  On Tuesday, July 1st, as the initial reports of the election results were coming in Democratic party supporters made a protest before the Socialist party building.  Things went from tense to explosive, a riot ensued, and the mob burned the historic Socialist Party HQ and looted the state cultural museum.  The next morning the president announced we were in a "state of emergency" and imposed marshal law.

There's a lot to say on what it was like to live under old socialism for a few days.  Granted it had it's limitations (like only one Mongolian TV channel and the papers were not published), but we had a lot more freedom than the old school communists would have allowed (the internet and cable television including CNN and BBC still worked).  Overall though, it was a phase you just prayed would pass.  And it appears to have done so.

If you would like to read more about the whole thing, the International Herald Tribune has several good articles on their website.  Try this one for a start:

 http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/07/02/asia/OUKWD-UK-MONGOLIA.php

You can also type "Mongolia" in their search engine for more stories.  

That was . . um . . unexpected

So, before starting this blog I asked myself, "what on earth would I talk about other than life in Mongolia."  Wouldn't you know the very next day we are in a "state of emergency" and under martial law at least until Monday, July 7!  The people of Mongolia, in protest to the outcome of the national elections, assembled in Sukhbaatar square on Tuesday and within hours it turned ugly.  For at least five souls now in eternity, it was deadly.

Martial law means we are under curfew from 10PM to 8AM, all media except the Mongolian National Broadcaster (MNB) is off, a barricade surrounds the center of the city, and things are . . . tense.  If you want more information about it go to the International Herald Tribune at:

http://www.iht.com/pages/asia/index.php.  

Type "Mongolia" in their search engine and it will pull up several good articles.

This obviously is not how you plan to START a blog, but I will share my insignificant part in the six degrees of separation.  Tuesday morning I was on my regular walk around the city center at about 6:30AM.  I rounded the north side of the parliament garden and here were these guys welding sheet metal to the wrought iron fencing of the parliament building grounds.  My experience has been that Mongols are not usually early risers, and outside of animal husbandry tend to put the work day off until about 9AM.  That being said, the fence was probably 60% complete at that early hour.  I thought, now what on earth are they putting this up for?  Walking east of there I passed through the university district and two schools already had long registration lines forming.  Again, very unusual since I am usually on these same streets alone.  

Where is this going?  Many of the demonstrators were young people 19-25 years old.  I had no part in the riots.  But hours after I passed by, these young people registered in their classes, steered clear of the metal fence and proceeded to the demonstration in front of the Socialist Party HQ.  A riot soon broke out, a fire started, shots were heard.  What I watched on television and heard through my window, they lived through.  And a few died.  

Sobering?  It is for me.  Eternity is a breath away for any of us.