Mongolian Connections: For the Birds (Deer?)

Above the doors to many Buddhist temples, Buddhist centers, even stores selling religious items, golden sculptures of two deer sit looking at a wheel. Usually one deer is a female, and the other has a horn (or two?). When we first saw this, Prof. O pointed out that the reason was because Buddha, when he first began to teach, preached to two deer. Thus, when one enters a temple, one passes below the deer, Buddha’s first disciples.

Of course, this story reminded me of the story of St. Francis preaching to the birds. I don’t know much about the Buddhist background, but in Francis’s case, his preaching demonstrated not only his humility, because he desired at that moment to preach to lowly animals, but also his power, because the animals fell silent for him and cocked their heads as if they understood.

It certainly seems plausible that the Buddhist story has a similar lesson. So I wonder, why does this story strike chords across cultures? What is it exactly that makes a learned man preaching to those who presumably can’t understand him (until they do) so appealing as a leader? Is it the humility? Is it the power? Is it, paradoxically (or not), both? And is there a fundamental difference between this story set in the context of a religion that forbids the killing of animals (Buddhism) and this story set in the context of a religion that does not believe animals have souls, or at least, not souls as worthy as men's?

EDIT: Oops. Mistranslation. Having now done more research on Buddhism, I've discovered that Buddha was preaching to human disciples in a deer park--not quite the same thing as Francis's situation. So I guess that's not a connection, after all, but I'm keeping it as a Meditation, because, why not?

Meditations: Syncretism

All over Mongolia, at the tops of almost every hill or mountain, you might be able to discern an irregularity in the silhouette. If you’re close enough, you can make out clearly a big pile of rocks, sometimes with something sticking out of the top of the pile. These are ovoos, sacred cairns. Usually they are covered in blue scarves, with maybe some yellow ones as well. If you’re enterprising enough to walk up to one, you’ll find more thrown onto the pile. Single cigarettes, cakes, apples, small bills, and once I even saw a steering wheel cover (although I’m not sure that was an offering, exactly.) They are not always at the tops of mountains; often they are just sitting by the side of the road. They range from huge and imposing to piles so small that I’m not even sure they are meant to be ovoos, and not just where someone dumped out some gravel for whatever reason.

At the shaman ritual a couple weeks ago, I noticed a bunch of scarves tied to some rocks, and though I’d read that ovoos existed, I wanted to get more insight, so I asked Prof. C about it. “Oh, that is a place sacred to the shamans.” The blue of the scarves represents the blue of the sky, because the sky gods are the most important gods in Mongolian shamanism. While we were there, a few women did go up to this boulder-ovoo and pray. 

While we were driving back after the ceremony, I noticed an ovoo on the way and tried to take a picture of it. Prof. C stopped the car, and we got out to see it. He collected three stones from the road, instructed me to do the same, and we walked up to the ovoo. “Go always in this direction, like the sun,” he explained, motioning with his finger. (Oh, I realized, that’s why the clock goes in that direction… I guess?) As we walked around, we threw each of our three stones onto the cairn. “You walk around three times,” he explained. We walked around three (more) times, and then headed back to the car. “They are near passes on the road, so you get good luck. Sometimes, if I do not want to stop the car, I just honk three times. One, two three!” He laughed, and I did, too. Once we were back on the road, I asked him what was the significance of three. “It is for the Buddha. One is for the Buddha, one is for his teachings, and one is for his monks.” …Wait. I thought it was a space sacred to shamans? I asked, “So it is shamanistic, but also Buddhist?” Prof. C didn’t seem too concerned by the question. “Yes. It is for both."

The next day, when I went to the Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum with R and Prof. O, we saw a lot of Mongolian Buddhist art, much of it by Zanabazar, the founder of an important style of Monoglian Buddhist art, and the leader of the Mongolian Renaissance. Zanabazar had studied in Tibet, so his sculptures were very heavily influenced by Tibetan art. The paintings of the Zanabazar schools, likewise, strongly resembled Tibetan/Indian art. While looking at all the sculptures, I noticed one of Ganesha, and one of another Hindu god. I stopped and asked Prof. O about it: “Aren’t those Hindu gods?” Her nonchalance was similar to Prof. C’s when I asked about Buddhism and shamanism. “Yes, they are from Hinduism.” So what were they doing being sculpted by Buddhists? “Oh, Buddhism uses many things from Hinduism; some of the art, some of the gods, lots of things.” Apparently, as R continued to explain, there was no way, really, to separate Buddhist philosophy from Hindu philosophy, or to separate their cultures or even philosophies. “It is all syncretism,” she said.

Ah, syncretism. In Christianity, syncretism is most obvious with pagan-Christian syncretism. The combination of Easter (a goddess) and pagan fertility rituals with the springtime resurrection of Christ, or images of Christ as Apollo, or the merging of the Christ-figure with Dionysus. But in these cases, there are clear lines to be drawn. Easter, the bunnies and the eggs = pagan, Apollo = pagan, Dionsus = pagan. Christ = Christian. Even in Christianity, however, things aren’t always so simple. Irish mythology is especially complex, because it was all recorded by Christian scribes, and set in a Christian framework. Thus, though it features gods with strange powers who seem to live forever, they may live in a world that is untouched by the Fall of Man, a Paradise near Ireland. Their powers are witchcraft, but it’s not evil witchcraft, exactly. There’s no way to explain the case clearly, because it’s just not clear. Somewhere along the way gods became remnants of an Unfallen world became fairies became something that wasn’t exactly Christian, but wasn’t exactly pagan either.

This is what it looks like in Mongolian Buddhism and shamanism, as well. There is no way to separate one from the other, because each intrudes on the other so that they become one entity, waters flowing from tributaries into a single river. You might be able to trace from where the water came originally, but there is no way to separate the two streams now that they’ve joined. Blue scarves, sacred to the sky gods, are tied around the doors to Buddhist monasteries and the lions guarding their stairs. Yet Buddhist ideas of reincarnation (and Hindu ideas of reincarnation?) are also, in some ways, shamanist ideas of reincarnation. To be honest, I’m not sure which came from where first, and that’s sort of the point.

I wonder, why did the two fuse so completely here? Only 5% of the population identifies as shamanist, but many shamanist traditions live on. There are no longer any true pagans, (neopagans, sure, but that’s as different from paganism as “neo-shamanism” is from the old kind), but do any other pagan rituals live on in Western religions today? Do any significant pagan rituals live on, or any significant pagan philosophies? (Bunnies and sweets don’t quite make the cut.) Buddhism and shamanism did come into conflict in the past, but now there doesn’t seem to be much tension between them, perhaps because they share so much in common. So if things had gone differently in Europe and the Middle East, would it have been possible for religions that sprung out of each other (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) to syncretize in a significant way? Have they? Are Islam and Christianity reconcilable in the way that shamanism and Buddhism are? Why or why not? And if they had become one flowing river, how might that have looked, not only for the religions, but for the world?

Mongolia is Relevant: Why Natalie Portman Thinks You Should Learn About Mongolia

Images of traditionally dressed upper-class Mongolian women are scattered through UB City in ads or postcards. Check out these pictures of the traditional costumes of Mongolian women:

Look familiar? That’s because George Lucas used the outfits of Mongolian queens as the source for one of Queen Amidala’s costumes. Although it pains me that this now means that a pic of Amidala shows up as the first GoogleImage result for “Mongolian traditional dress,” using historical Mongolian dress as inspiration is still pretty cool.

Who knew there was such a direct link between Mongolia and Natalie Portman?

Mongolia is Awesome: Ogedei's Secret

At the National History Museum of Mongolia yesterday, I came across quite a few interesting things (hopefully to be posted about later), but one was especially Awesome.

There are tons of reasons why the Mongol Horde had such success in battle, but one thing that kept them in tip-top shape was a bit more… inconspicuous. Apparently, underneath their chain mail (some of which was shown in the exhibit), they wore undergarments made of Chinese silk. Because silk is so tightly woven, an arrow losing speed is less likely to penetrate the fabric, so the silk works as a luxurious, soft, bulletproof vest. (Archers out there might be familiar with this idea, seen when a weak shot bounces off the cloth of a target rather than sticking in it.) This isn’t the point, though, as much as its medical advantage. Even when the point of an arrow still gets through the chain mail and silk, the silk decreases the chance that the barbs will enter the would (sources differ as to how--either by slowing its trajectory, entering the wound with the arrow, or, most likely, not ripping widely enough to allow the barbs to enter). During removal of the arrow, barbs cause a lot of damage (just picture it), so silk mitigates that damage and wounds are less likely to get infected. A medic treating a Mongol in silk would grip the fabric to pull the arrow out, leaving a cleaner wound.

So, yeah, even a Mongol’s drawers were ready for a fight.

Mongolian Connections: Prayer & Production

At Gandan Khiid last week, R explained to me the family/lama system that takes care of the practical needs of the monks. I knew that a lot of the Gandan monks lived in gers in the district around the monastery, but I expected that they lived in monastic communities, or that there would still be a lot of housing for them in the temple complex (it is a monastery, after all). But that’s not how these monasteries (the urban ones, at least) work. Basically, a family “sponsors” a monk, and provides his material needs. They feed him, house him,  and though I don’t know if they clothe him, they even do his laundry. In return, the monk is expected to keep them in his prayers, and to intervene with the divine powers for them in times of crisis. Taking care of a lama gives one very good karma, and the way the deal works is essentially: Material support in exchange for spiritual support.

Though the Christian system never worked quite the same way, the material/spiritual support exchange was crucial in medieval Europe. Wealthy merchants, nobles, and even royalty often donated a lot of money to particular monasteries, and in exchange, the monks were expected to pray for the donor and Gregorian-chant for him/her every so often. Oxford is a great place to see this in action—New College was founded by a bishop/chancellor (not a layperson, but it proves the point) so that, after his death, the choir there would sing masses for his soul. Even peasants without a lot to give utilized this system; because there were so many religious communities (and so much bureaucracy) in Oxford, there are still records that show the donations peasants made to this or that parish or monastery in their will. In return, the donor expected a grave near the church and maybe a psalm every Sunday or something.

The exchange was not always so specific. When we stopped by a convent in Greece, one student on my trip asked a nun what service the convent provided for the outside community. (I can’t remember the context of the question, but it did fit.) The nun, a little indignantly, explained, “We pray for them.” Being modern, enlightened high school students, this hardly seemed like a worthwhile endeavor.

But it is interesting that this exchange is crucial in these different religious traditions. There is a divide, in both cases, between the people who pray and the people who work. The lay/clergy or lay/monk distinction was generally clear in medieval Europe, as it is generally clear in Mongolian Buddhism.  There was/is not supposed to be too much crossover in the roles. Yet in the Christian case, the group of people specializing in prayer has become less significant. Christians are expected to pray mostly for themselves, and they don’t hear much about donating to people to pray for them. (The personal connection to God carries more weight now than it did in the hierarchical church system of 700 years ago.) That being said, most laypeople still don’t devote the bulk of their daily lives to prayer. So they are still, decidedly, laypeople, unlike the somewhat blurrier Beguines of the 13th/14th centuries, who worked for their subsistence but spent as much time as possible praying. Now prayer happens, but it usually comes after material needs (and usually also after material wants).

The Buddhist system in UB, on the other hand, still actively maintains (at least from what I heard) the idea of having a group of people dedicated to prayer, while others are dedicated to keeping them alive and praying.

So this Connection comes with a Meditation: What is it that, in different religions at different times, makes the need for separate groups so important? Why should some people pray and some people work? Is it like a spiritual mass production system, where more gets done if each person fits in one part? Are there political or economic reasons that people maintain it? And why did it change in Christianity? (A historian would be able to help with this question.) At what point did the system in which laypeople provided food/housing/clothing and a separate community was devoted to prayer become a system where most people did some of both? From a spiritual standpoint, does this mean people are losing out on prayer (or material goods, I guess, though that seems unlikely)? And lastly, do we still have any kind of system like this, in which some people are dedicated to ideology and some people are dedicated to material production?

A couple spring to mind. First I thought of academics; higher humanities education doesn’t produce a lot (except papers), but professors/ researchers are supported because, by teaching and researching, they are advancing knowledge (as opposed to prayer). To an extent, I think this makes sense—we value education in a similar way to how people used to value religion. My second idea was, of course, the world of “finance” or “consulting” or “banking.” (I will never understand what sort of a Venn diagram those three belong to.) No matter how many people try to explain it, it seems that this is just turning money (aka paper) into more money, and usually for the people who had money to begin with. In some ways it makes sense (providing mining equipment and railroads to mine Mongolia’s gold, for example), but a lot of it just looks like a whole lot of nothing. (And, as evidenced by certain financial situations, it becomes a whole lot of nothing sometimes, too.) These people who do not produce are supported because the world values money. (Did finance/banking as we know it originate in the US, where money was valued in a way, if not to an extent, that it hadn’t been before?) I’m not sure finance fits in as well, because people do not actively support financiers the way people actively support academics; it’s more that financiers know how to manipulate a system dependent on capitalism (and the fact that people do value capitalism) for their benefit. These examples bring up another possibility: Are the four systems (Christian monks, Buddhist monks, academics, and finance) just a way to perpetuate the rich being able to avoid manual work or physical production, the way academics and finance often seem to be to me? (Yes, a lot of people advance themselves from poverty through academics or finance, but this often seems to be the exception.)

If anyone has thoughts, I’d love to hear.

Mongolia is Awesome: Names Edition

Before I came, I read in my guidebook that there are souvenir shops just about anywhere you look, selling t-shirts, tacky (probably Made-in-China) novelty items, and postcards. Of course, most people who know me know that I was on the lookout for postcards from just about when I touched down. But my first couple days, I was dismayed to see not a single postcard or souvenir shop in sight. It occurred to me that this was probably because I don’t exactly live in a touristy district. And having explored the centre of the city, I was confused as to where exactly the tourist district was.

 Then I noticed a particular street on the map: “Tourist St.” Oh. That’s right, the Mongolians have unabashedly named one of their streets “Juulchin Gudamj,” literally translated as “Tourist Street.” Well, they know how to tell it like it is…

Meditations: Khölbömbög!

Okay, I admit it: this has very little to do with Mongolia. But it is related to traveling (marginally)…

Part of the privilege of being abroad in even-yeared summers is the World Cup. I know, I know, you can see it in the States on TV, and I’m sure there’s bars that get really into it, but it’s not the same as all the bars setting up screens and crowding with people for a few hours every evening, and hearing collective citywide cheers from my window, and having a go-to conversation topic with just about anyone in the city. Although I should admit, as much as I like the idea of the World Cup, the first real (start-to-finish) match I saw and paid attention to was the Japan-Paraguay match last night. And it got me thinking…

 

In the first few minutes, a Japan player ran into a Paraguay player and the latter fell down for a minute. It was pretty clearly an accident, and when the Paraguay player got up, the Japan player seemed very apologetic and even helped him up a bit. Immediately, my loyalties shifted to Japan. (They were less enthused about their anthem than Paraguay, but this made up for it.) It was so nice to see an athlete actually be polite and helpful in the game.

Alas, though, this was not to be the norm. The rest of the game, I was shocked by how the players seemed so unconcerned for their opponents. As professional football players, they all have something important in common; they all know what it’s like to fall and/or be hurt and also tired and stressed. So why couldn’t they extend a little compassion, share a joke, anything? Prove that people basically good, or something. But instead, (and this is really what got to me), they were 100% only out for themselves and their own team. Of course, I understand wanting to do your best and win, but what about when they protest perfectly fair calls? What about a specific moment when the ball went out of bounds, and both the Japan player and Paraguay player who’d been with it raised their hands to claim their own possession? In the replay, it was pretty clear that Japan had kicked it out, so why did he even try to claim it? Isn’t it just as bad to win because of an unfair call (where’s the merit in that?) as to lose?

I want to see a team (or player) who tries to correct the ref when ref makes un unfair call in their favor; I want to see someone who, if an opponent goes down and the ball goes out, stops to help up the opponent and brush off the grass; I want to see a winning team who shakes hands with the losers before they all get together and shout and celebrate and do whatever it is winning football teams do (I shudder to think). One of the things that I love about tennis is that the players (Federer excepted, of course) tend at least to appear to be good guys. I know there were players in the past who were famous for their tempers and foul language and general jerkishness, but what I remember (and love best) about tennis was watching Blake and Nadal (or whomever) be polite to each other, and express their admiration for the player who just beat them or lost to them or whatever. I think I may have cried because there was just something so beautiful about athletes saying, “We’re opponents, but we’re not enemies, and competition is not as important as being a compassionate and courteous human being.” I miss that. And I think football could use that.

But perhaps I’m being too idealistic—maybe it is too much to expect players to strive to be the best and compete, and then risk a loss over courtesy. And I don’t think that the players protest fair calls knowing they’re fair; I think probably they convince themselves that the call is unfair, or that the other guy really did kick the ball out. But that is a problem. Something in the sport is wrong if people actually actively convince themselves that they are always in the right.

So what is this? What about football breeds such behavior? Is it that good playing requires aggression, and aggression and courtesy are too hard to reconcile? Is it because these athletes are treated like they’re the tops, so they get that idea into their brain and can’t discard it, even when they’re playing someone who is playing better than they are? Or is it that the guys who are jerks and push and trip and yell are the ones who tend to succeed? Like in politics, does all the scum float to the top, leaving clearer water at the bottom where no one sees it?

That’s Meditation #1. The second thing I was thinking about was loyalties, and from where they come. If your nation’s playing, it’s pretty easy, obviously. But what about those games (most of them, especially if you’re USA) where your team isn’t playing. Brazil or Portugal? England or Germany? Japan or Paraguay? A game isn’t fun unless you’re cheering for someone, so how does one decide for whom to cheer? In some cases it’s obvious. Sports history might influence you (e.g. I will never root for Ghana), and in some cases maybe real history or politics influences you (I was glad to see N Korea lose to anyone), but it’s not always that clear.

For example, in the Paraguay-Japan game, for whom was I to root? I didn’t have language or geography favoring either, I’d never been to either, and I didn’t really know who was a better team. So the passionate anthem got me for Paraguay, but the courteous player and efficient playing in the first few minutes switched me wholeheartedly (and tragically, in the end) to Japan. But, fresh off my readings of the Crusades and Holy Wars, etc., etc., watching the Paraguay players cross themselves or pray, I thought, “Oh wait, should I be rooting for them?” …No… Religious affiliation, which was a pretty strong binding factor 5-10 centuries ago, is no longer taken into account much; “Christendom” as an entity no longer exists like it used to. So that’s out. East vs. West? But, no, not that either. Apart from the fact that it was always a pretty fuzzy categorization anyway, it doesn’t really apply at all now. Korea and Japan are considered by some to be more “Western” than “Eastern” in culture, values, and whatever else people use to classify. (I’m aware of the absurdity of categorizing “culture and values” at all, much less into such arbitrary categories as “east” and “west.”) So that doesn’t work… Geographical proximity? No… The English I’ve talked to cheer for Brazil over Portugal and Argentina over Germany. Some people choose based on whether they want an underdog or a winner, I guess. But for those of us who are football-clueless, that’s about as helpful as “East” vs. “West.”

In a flattening world, where do our loyalties lie? When we have so much in common with everyone, and still so much that is different, whom do we consider close to us?

The Mongolians were all rooting for Japan, and one guy we talked to said it best when we asked him why: “Japan has good team.” I think that works perfectly—Choose the “good” team, however you want to define “good,” and cheer away.

 (Who even produces knockoff flags?)