June 1, 2011
After enjoying the towering view of the precipitous dark walls, the pounding and dashing freefall of the lovely fall of such pristine water, a miniature shrine perching up there in the corner like wedged into the forced space by the fall and so on, we climb up the winding steps of crude stone-slabs up to the main site. The landing, a Drupchu (blessed spring-water in the rock with the projecting cap like rock) by it, where one’s belongings except materials for making offerings have to be left behind and one’s body is searched of any like inflammable materials, cameras, etc. The body-search done by a uniformed cop with his bare hands and a few stationed cops in navy blue uniforms can be the precaution after the last incident of arson unidentified yet like done by who and that caused a heavy loss but the prime, the most sacred idols and holy artefacts were fortunately recovered. It’s said the only single monk then as the only curator was feared burnt to death or escaped; the speculation leads to the latter that sparks the guess that the curator as the one who absconded away and with something. Now there are more monks and the whole temples have been renovated with such spending for both the temple-buildings of stone-built walls with the fat wooden doorsills and the other parts covered with protective copper-jackets and the copper heads (Tok) on the top of the main temples, and the internal idols, murals done on a sort of detachable thin ply-materials fixed against the walls and other things like those brocade hangings.
Then to climb up the proper and wide but steep steps of stone-slabs to the main entrance that leads up again along the same steps to the internal landing that leads to the main Guru shrines on the far edges of the precipice. The breathtaking but chilling view down across the stretch of greenery of coniferous forests and the steep chasm down from the narrow small place protected by almost knee high wall. The prime Guru shrines at the far end built against the rocky walls: the ground floor accommodates the Guru’s core hermitage-den now barricaded, draped with multi-colored cloth-strips and sealed with a bronze plate with etched inscriptions. It is opened only on the certain holy day in the fifth month of Bhutanese calendar, once in a year. The dark anteroom to the sanctum is floored with polished wooden planks nailed down on the laid rafters below, the bronze covered door with inscriptions, the plain bronze covered doorsill, the murals telling the life story of Guru. It’s really surprising to find such enough spaces for the whole buildings on the spared ledges.
The grand holy bronze idol of Guru next to the hermitage-den, a pair of crooked ivory tusks set before the altar, the one facing the other (there are some such pairs decorated before the altars in the other temples as well), those brocade canopies and hangings down the well-sawed timber-ceiling painted with colourful motifs, the wooden windows painted with the same, those dark bronze bells hanging pendulously and so on speak how such expenses the royal government has bear as for the importance of the site, now a major tourist attraction.
Taking the narrow wooden staircase, we move up on to the second floor Guru shrine that houses the core idol of the site, Guru Sungjonma (Guru idol that once happened to talk to a certain blessed one). The pair of ivory tusks decorated on the counter before the altar; those brocade hangings, the old ones among the new exude an air of antiquity. The room is more spacious and so the altar here. It seems Guru Sungjonma is right above the sealed hermitage-den below. Karchung later whispers to me that when the whole site was on fire, it was found in the den below without incurring any damages; his voice with the struggled touch of proving it as a miracle.
My sister shows me the gold butter-lamp offering bowl set in a glass-panelled case with whitish metal frame before the altar; it is alight with the flickering flame. It’s almost 7 inches high with the inscriptions. As to pour a few drops of melted butter-oil in it from one’s container brought with from home, one has to wait after requesting the same to the concerned caretaker. Everyone wants to pour a tiny share in it. We can do so from the Chinese flask with us after the request made to the elderly monk and waiting.
We again move down the wooden staircase and take the other way around to see and worship the boulder below. It is said as enshrined with Tsebum (Life Bowl), the amulet for protection against evils, and blessed by Guru Rinpoche. There is an engraved eye painted, which is taken as naturally appeared on it. When Choedon later asks Karchung about the engraved eye on it, he says, “It’s Yeshi Chen (sublime consciousness eye).”
“What does it mean?” She asks again.
“Rangyi Mig (your eye)”, he says ignorantly, but the source of later joke when shared by my sister on our way back.
The contiguous shrines are more spacious with the same decorations on the counters before the carved wooden altars, the same brocade hangings. There is a wooden throne in each shrine, may be the seat of Jhe Khenpo, the supreme religious head of Bhutan. The murals done on the detachable ply-materials as for the walls being not plastered and rough. I pay more homage to the texts, the ancient ones, a set of bound ones with white cloth-covers labelled as Gyu (must be Buddha’s own teachings on Tantrayana, the final revised ones as well) and to idols. There is a giant bronze idol of Guru and such one of Buddha of Eternal Life: both holding a Bumpa (Tsebum) in their left hands rested on their laps. They are flanked by three-faced deities of the same sizes with the seemingly obscene postures but only for the attained and eligible ones to be followed so.
There is an old some 12 inches high idol of the deity with the greenish paint. Our friendly and talkative mate, the young Bhutanese, Sharchokpa, in a maroon sleeved jacket and monk-like garment (but he is with his wife, not a monk now), who knows little Tibetan as for his studying at a monastery in Kalimpong and Karmapa Rinpoche there being his Guru, introduces the old idol of the deity knowingly to us that before the reconstruction as for the fire it was the prime one here in the deity chapel. The next by chapel with the inscribed bronze covered pillars and the same altar and the decorations... Our Bhutanese mate knows a secret place here. There is no one here who looks after and introduces us so, as there seems to be the shortage of manpower at such time like today or more are huddling around those a few foreigners as we are the local ones. (Some minutes earlier when I was standing outside leaning my hands on the banisters, I found a Bhutanese guy calling me from the below as to attend there thinking that I was a caretaker here for being in this maroon robe. When I told him that I wasn’t one, he asked me to call one. I asked the young monk, who accepted and went down. An elderly cop knew the case, approached me and asked, “Tourists?”
I answered in a broken Dzongkha, “No, a Bhutanese guy”.
“The door to the ground floor shrine, the prime one with the sealed hermitage-den, must be closed”, he said. I was on the left side.)
Yes, the secret place he knowingly shows us is the doorway with the hinged wooden door set in the polished wooden planked floor. The dark door way down the rock, like an abyss. Someone has a flashlight, not working first. Choedon makes it work. I see a deep hole down with jagged rocks, the hole seemingly tapering down. There are those money notes offered by devotees, just lying there. The Bhutanese mate makes a joke of taking them as there is none present.
As said as the real Tiger Den, the site named after, at the hidden angle of the dark wet rock, སྟག་ཚང་། written on the rock above the entrance hole in Tibetan or Dzongkha characters. The narrow opening can be entered by crouching low, which leads down the crude wooden steps done on a single trunk of a cut tree and the wider opening to the edge of precipice on the other side. We don’t venture to go that far to the creepy edge.
Then to step down bare footed to the last shrine here with the stupa: Kudung Chorten (the one enshrined with the sanctified body of one of the core late disciples of Guru here) and a hole down the rocky floor next by: the wooden banisters around the opening and many notes down there that hide the inscribed dark rocky bed, a deity den. Walking clockwise around the giant stupa, I find the dark bare rocky walls at the back chilling and wet with the drippings, a small pool at the foot on floor level: again Drupchu to be drawn with the scoop, a tin container nailed to a wooden shaft. There are such ones at some points here. (There is one between Thimpu and Paro, a pipe stuck into the hill base by the main road. Karchung stopped for the same, cool and refreshing Drupchu of Drupthob Thangong Gyalpo, the sage, the founder of Tibetan spiritual operas. A temple, now a museum, of the Drupthob can be seen from the road across the river over the other side just ahead off Chuzom to Paro.)
Choedon looks so fittingly good in the checked Bhutanese half-Kira put on with the help of my sister Tsomo at the entrance as prompted by the presence of those a few security personnel, who inspect sign of such respect obeyed by a local one or not.
It’s to take the same way back up to the point on the adjacent semi rocky hill, but not till the beginning point from where to ascend down. A turn to take next by the wooden shack and along the winding foot path meandering up the hill with some trees, shrubs and a gurgling brook. After some walk we come to a solitary shrine, to be reached by the steps off the path, built against the rock housing the hermitage-den of a sage or shaman. Only an elderly monk in a grubby pink coat looks after it; he has got more to say. We’re the only visitors at the time. The proper wooden shrine houses the standing idol of the sage in the carved wooden altar, a pair of ivory tusks here too. We do the prostrations and offering in notes. The potion poured in our right palms from bronze vase like done at every shrine at Taktsang. The hermitage den at the back can be reached by the wooden steps. A den in the rocky wall. As on the notice the monk says that any wishes can be fulfilled made before the den. So I introduce the same to Choedon, who I find a moment later standing before the den and praying. I stand behind her and try to configure a better thought to pray for. A foot impression left on the rock next to the den; the monk says it’s of the sage and the other one is on the other distant spot in the other place—a sign of sublime mysticism. After having Drupchu at the right corner of the shrine and Karchung filling a plastic bottle, we hit the road.
And up again along the winding path across the sloping face of the hill. At last we can make to the top, the temple on the edge of the rocky quay. But it isn’t that dangerously perching as seen from the below; it isn’t higher than the adjacent rocky hill nestling Taktsang on its waistline-ledge and a temple on the top as seen from below. There is more space here, but the temple was seemingly erected out at the edge for a reason to be visible from below or any. Entering the entrance gate with the heavy wooden door and fat doorsill painted tawny-red, we step on to the narrow compound paved with soft-stone-slabs that leads around and up to the temple by a wooden staircase. The altar, a pair of crooked ivory tusks adorn here as well. My sister asks the elderly caretaker monk for the favour to do dice-divination and he does: a pair of dices should be tossed by my sister, the devoted seeker, on to the holder like a disc; the monk inspects and says the message is so favourable.
The creepy path around the temple for clockwise circumambulation, especially at the far edge behind the temple. Taktsang below can be viewed magnificently and mystically perching on the ledge with its maroon painted sloping corrugated iron roofs glaring.
After the visit we have our packed lunch by the stupa a few steps from the temple. A drizzle for a moment doesn’t trouble us at all. I find it really refreshing after a long walk and invigorating for the further walk up to the next top through the pine forest dotted with fragrant cedars. I walk ahead all the way along to the top. The flat-top here is more spacious, more space for walking around the temple, the three storeys one known as Zangdok Palri (copper-colored hill of glory) each floor housing different prime idol, the top housing the giant bronze idol of Lord Buddha. Those mud sculpted ferocious deities around the temple like protecting it; the front part is almost ground level only for the short stone-slab-steps. We wait for the caretaker monk, as he later shows up after Karchung walking some far for him, as there isn’t anyone else and the door padlocked. A wooden shack on the raised spot just off the temple; it must be the caretaker’s home with those stacked fire-woods by it. There isn’t anyone here as well.
There are three Bhutanese women as our companies, who arrive at the site just after us. An aged one and the two young in Kira; as we talk, they are from Punakha. As from their complexions and hands they are from a village, farmers. When we talk to leave after deciding to put the offering materials in a handbag and hang on the door from the bolt, Karchung can find the caretaker, a young monk in a brown T-shirt who doesn’t talk more than a few words during the entire visit inside. The dust coated wooden planks of the ground floor, those wrathful deity-idols standing side by side and armed with weapons on either side of the entrance. Each floor spares walking space around the prime idol set in the mid on the throne for its being a shrine in the form of mentally erected Mandala.
I am the first to get near the ground floor entrance after the visit. A knock on the door, even if it isn’t locked from inside, and I find when opening the creaking door our frank Bhutanese mate with his demure wife are by the door. I introduce them how to take the way up by doing the round from here, the ground floor.
And to take cruder and steeper paths down the slopes with those sprouting bamboo saplings as the only means for a grip as to save from rolling down freely. We’re to reach the other side of Taktsang by climbing down from the other side after making to the tops of both the adjacent semi-rocky hill and and the rocky one nestling Taktsang. It’s to suffer painfully from astringency till reaching the base camp after visiting the deserted ante-shrine and crossing over to the next vegetated hill to follow the winding path down.
From the point on the slope it’s to take the path across the rocky face to the ante-shrine. The path is well-made with rails at the dangerous points, the concrete slabs joining the other sides where there are gaps. The stone steps with raised almost shoulder-high walls on the one side leads up to the shrine with a tiny front yard. The youngest Bhutanese woman of the three as our companies has been talking sort of indulgently on her cell phone like to her lover. We have to wait here for almost half an hour but in complete vain. Both the simple shrine and the caretaker’s shack are locked. The old Bhutanese woman of the three expresses her frustration that I can’t get so clearly. Our Bhutanese mate, the monk like guy who speaks little Tibetan, and his wife are here as well. And so I am going to meet them later at Paro. One among us says the wooden bridge made out of a single trunk of a tree connecting the Taktsang proper with this ante-shrine was taken away after a monk had cost his life while crossing it to go to the ante-shrine.
Back again to the point to make the final knee-paining descent with the help of the crude but helpful walking-stick made by Karchung. Choedon is robust and makes her way ahead to the base camp with Karchung without taking any rest after the first. I follow my sister and can make there trying to be at her heels. Our Bhutanese mate and his wife are out of sight, but the three Bhutanese women are at one time ahead of us and the other time behind us. Later we can give them a lift up to Kyichu temple after resting at the camp for some minutes.
A satisfying sense of a real pilgrimage has been made with the taken hardships is with me while passing aback along the same road to the staying place by the river or across the river from TTC, my childhood school when learning was shunned through every means.
