Mongolian Connections: Religion is Religion

At the end of my first week here, I finally got a taste of Ulaanbaatar’s religious life. Though they are never particularly conspicuous and don’t seem to impact everyday life much (if at all), there are a few temples scattered around the city.

A quick updated rundown on Mongolia’s religious life: Under Stalin’s regime, the temples were (almost) all destroyed and the monks “purged.” The purges of priests in Russia were small compared to the purges of monks here. Although statistics in Mongolia generally seem pretty dubious, it is estimated that 30,000 lamas were executed during religious purges. All temples were razed, except for four (that I know of) that were preserved for cultural reasons. Two were converted into museums, and one (Gandan Khiid) was mostly destroyed, though Russian officials used some buildings to stable their horses and store things, until the prime minister of Mongolia had to whip up an active temple pretty quickly when a dignitary wanted to see one. Gandan Khiid was then kept in controlled “working condition” for diplomatic purposes. (Read: So that the government could pretend it hadn’t killed all the monks.) Unlike in the USSR, where religion was discouraged and at times persecuted, everything I’ve read describes it as pretty much forbidden in Mongolia.  

Since the fall of communism, however, it’s had a relatively tremendous resurgence. About 50% of Mongolians now identify as Buddhists, though 40% still consider themselves “not religious at all.” I’d be interested to see how that applies in Ulaanbaatar versus the countryside, and I’m not sure exactly how people were polled. (I tried looking up statistics for different areas of the US to compare, but the polls tend to be adherent-based, and I can’t really equate the two.) So although atheism/agnosticism is alive and well, religious devotion is on the rise. Christian denominations are apparently succeeding in various missionary efforts, and their influence has been significant as well, according to R and Prof. O. One result of this new rise in religion is the re-opening or founding of a few Buddhist temples. The largest of these is Gandan Khiid, the one that was allowed to operate under the communist government. It is one of the city’s main tourist attractions, so Friday R and I headed over to check it out and see a ritual. 

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I think there were two things influencing my preconceptions… First, my idealized vision of a population coming back to religion after years of oppression. In my imagination, I guess, though devotion still wasn’t the norm, (as evidenced by my post on the city’s lack of religious atmosphere), when people did embrace religion, they did it out of faith and enthusiasm for their beliefs. Second was a somewhat Orientalist idea of Eastern religion as more spiritual and even “pure.” Rightly or wrongly, Buddhism does tend to be considered more spiritual, closer to true belief and philosophy and separated from ritual, and a lot of people who identify as non-religious but “spiritual” identify more with Eastern religious doctrines. (If you disagree, let me know. I could be way off-base here, and trying to find people’s general opinions on forums, etc., yielded little of interest and made me lose a little faith in humanity.)

So I guess those things were swirling in my subconscious when I attended my first Buddhist ceremony. R and I arrived at Gandan too early, wandered around the monastery grounds and the streets outside, and then, when we heard a gong, (the first I heard in Ulaanbaatar, though I live across the street from a temple), we came back to try to watch the morning ceremony a bit. We walked past a huge incense burner on the way in, and the incense was thick in the air of the small main room of the temple, along with another smell I couldn't identify. There was a row of lamas on each side of the temple, and behind that a row of smaller lamas-in-training, young boys with shaved heads and dressed in the monastic red-and-yellow. The adult lamas were chanting (in Tibetan, we think), some from memory and some from books, and every once in a while the kids would join in for a line or two. (Though the kids’ participation was pretty sporadic and definitely seemed based on their whims rather than liturgical mandate.) 

A few laypeople did seem to be worshiping somewhat, walking to the back to revere the Buddhist statue there, and I vaguely recall someone touching one of the young lamas for a blessing. It was sometimes hard to tell the worshipers from tourists or onlookers, so I'm not sure exactly how many I saw. One older couple was especially interesting—very weatherworn, and the man was dressed in a traditional Mongolian herder’s outfit. R and I sat for a while to watch, and as I was observing all the lamas and their mini-lamas, something became obvious: They were bored. Not necessarily painfully fidgety-bored, but more bored than an average student would be in class, or a teenager in church. 

I noticed this first with the mini-lamas. They weren’t really paying attention (and the adult sitting next to them didn’t seem to care), and instead kept pinching each other or guffawing or chattering under the chants about whatever it is schoolboys chat about. (Having never been a schoolboy, I can only imagine what that is, and I suppose I will never know.) They looked exactly like boys their age (10-13?) might look like in the back row of a very boring assembly. Except this wasn’t the back row of a very boring assembly—it was the second row of a religious ritual. The kids were wedged right between the laypeople and the adult monks, and they seemed to care very little about the opinions of either, and even less about the ceremony.  

The adult monks weren’t chattering, but they were pretty clearly not putting in much effort to attain spiritual enlightenment, either. One kept yawning, occasionally through his recitations, but mostly in his pauses, and another chanted monotonously away, looking every bit like a kid who is made to apologize recites, “I’m sorry I called you a poo-head and broke your doll, and I promise not to do it again.” He looked about as much like like he was rolling his eyes as he could without actually doing it. It seemed to be just chant-chant-chant, another day at the monastery for these guys. I’m aware that I’m making a few assumptions, and reading into these guys’ expressions maybe more than I should. After all, these were a few monks at a morning ceremony at one temple. But I do want to say that these specific monks just did not seem that into it. They didn’t look spiritual, and they didn’t look like they cared one bit about what they were doing; they were just trying to get it done. I was confused as to why one would become a lama in a still relatively non-religious society unless one really felt called to it, but R explained that it is already very prestigious, and kids are sometimes put into training at a young age because of the honor of having a lama in the family. 
 

So that was my first impression of Buddhism in Mongolia. The next night, I found out more about it. While talking (or listening, more) to a group of expats, I heard that it is well-known that monks in Ulaanbaatar are corrupt. That was most of what I heard, confirmed later by R, and I wasn’t sure exactly what “corrupt” means, but one guy (X) did tell this story:  He had been talking with a monk the day before, and the monk said that he was worried about going back to the monastery because he was in trouble. When X asked why he was in trouble, the monk said that earlier that week, he had taken his wife’s car for a drive, gotten too drunk, and crashed it into a bus. (I can’t remember if it’s a bus, a car, or a truck, but I remember it being a relatively big vehicle, so I’m going with bus.)

Fun facts: Monks here are not supposed to marry, they are not supposed to drink to excess, and they are definitely not supposed to drink to such excess that they crash their wife’s car into another vehicle. Twenty years in, and already Lamaism in Ulaanbaatar is going the way of the medieval papacy. This is not a new phenomenon, however. The giant Buddhist sculpture at Gandan Khiid was originally commissioned in 1911 by the Bogd Khan, the spiritual leader of Mongolia, in the hopes that such devotion might restore his eyesight. His eyesight was due to a “severe illness” according to the plaque in the temple, and further research reveals the nature of the “severe illness”: Syphilis. Earlier, in the nineteenth century, the monk and poet Danzan Ravjaa spoke out against the corruption and hypocrisy of his contemporary lamas. (It should be noted, however, that Danzan Ravjaa was a member of a monastic tradition that allowed drinking and marriage, and his criticisms were more against the lack of compassion and devotion he saw in other monks.) His most famous poem “Shame, Shame” has a line that certainly might apply to the lamas I saw at Gandan Khiid:

“And the monks who call meditation a hindrance, shame!”

The whole thing reminded me of medieval monasticism and priesthood in Europe, and how, though there were devout monks, there was also a lot of corruption and a lot of simply not being true to the philosophy they were meant to be following. I can imagine monks at Cluny reciting their psalms with exactly the expression of the bored lama, and little nobles dropped off at Monte Cassino gossiping with the same subdued zeal as these mini-lamas. Across cultures, though monasticism has high ideals and attempts to root itself (initially) in its belief system, as it becomes popular or prestigious, it descends into just another way to be, at best, an ordinary human being, mistakes and all, (eg drunk-driving and crashing), and at worst, corrupt and sinful and power-hungry (*coughcough BORGIA coughcough*).  

I don’t have a conclusion in particular here; I just want to point out that religion is religion, and religious institutions don’t seem to be any better or any worse depending on the societies (or faiths) from which they spring.

Mongolia is Relevant: The Dalai Lama

Perhaps you have heard of the Dalai Lama. He’s kind of a big deal. The word “lama” is the word for a high-ranking Buddhist monk; it’s Tibetan in origin, but it is used here (though technically incorrectly) interchangeably with "monk." So when you go to a monastery, you can refer to the men there (all in red, with orange sashes) as either monks or lamas. (In one amusing typo on a museum plaque, a great “llama” had bestowed a gift on the temple. I immediately thought of The Emperor’s New Groove.) 

So that’s what the “Lama” in Dalai Lama means—but what about “Dalai”? It’s not Tibetan, but is the Mongolian word for “Ocean.” In the sixteenth century, Altan Khan, a ruler in Mongolia, bestowed the title of “Dalai Lama” on Sonyam Gyatso, the first person to receive it. (Two other Dalai Lamas were retroactively declared, making Sonyam Gyatso the third official Dalai Lama.) Thus, the most powerful living man in Tibetan Buddhism owes his title to a Mongol Khan, centuries after Genghis’s reign.

The Tibetans tend to refute this legend, saying that “Dalai Lama” was a Mongolian translation of a term already in use in Tibet, and that “Gyatso” (Tibetan for “ocean”) was used in titles before the Mongols applied “Dalai” to “Lama.” However, Mongolia legendarily thinks of itself as an ocean, (because of its vastness), and Genghis Khan means “Ocean King.” Genghis took this title after he had united all the Mongol people and had finally become ruler of the whole “ocean,” that is, Mongolia. 

(Definitely Ocean.)

Tibet and Mongolia are both landlocked, but one has a literary tradition of using the “ocean” as a symbol of significance, and historical precedence in using “ocean” as a person’s title. So, whatever the direct linguistic lineage of “Dalai Lama” is, I’m thinking the influence was very much Mongol. So you’ve been mentioning a Mongolian tradition for years and haven’t known it.

 Rajat and the Dalai Lama are tight.

Meditations: Religion and the Lack of It

I wrote earlier about how Stalinist the city is, and part and parcel of that feeling is atheism. Mongolia, or at least Ulaanbaatar, appears to be pretty irreligious. This isn’t entirely recent; the most prominent faith in Mongolia was generally Buddhism, which is pretty different from a “religion” as Westerners see it, and even when the great Khans were in power and had access to three major religions (Nestorian Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism), there was never a national dedication to any of them. 

So when Stalin came in, destroyed the monasteries, and attempted to eliminate religious practice, it was pretty effective, and much of the population of Ulaanbaatar today is practically atheist/agnostic. This isn’t noteworthy, I guess, but what is noteworthy is that it shows. My first couple days here, it struck me that the city was missing something, and I couldn’t quite figure out what. But then I realized: No church bells or calls to prayer, no cathedrals standing as a testament to a formerly religious world , no mosques. It might only be noticeable because of the other places I’ve been in the past year. Oxford is in some ways a collection of churches, with bells ringing most of the time (especially when you’re trying to study); Istanbul is defined as a meeting-point of different religions; and in Egypt, when the muezzin called, people made a point either to find a mosque or they got down and prayed where they were.

So this sudden lack of religious institutions—I’m feeling it. Of course, many parts of the US are irreligious, but New England still has its charming churches, Chick Fil-A is still closed on Sundays, and crosses dot the Midwest. Even New York and LA are marked by different types of worship; the skyscrapers of New York are a testament to commerce, and LA’s billboards (Lose one million pounds with Lap-Band!) and malls (from Armani to Abercrombie & Fitch outlets) display its worship of materialism and other superficial stuff. So it may not be religion exactly, but there’s an argument to be made that it is. (In 1989, Jill Dubisch wrote an article saying that the health food craze had all the necessary aspects of a religion; I’d like to see the same for NYC’s commerce or LA’s… LA-ness.)

Ulaanbaatar, then, is the first place I’ve been where I really felt the lack of religion. Where it really felt that they were missing something. So forget all the arguments you usually hear about religion and its benefits/downsides, about moral repercussions, inevitable conflict, self-righteousness, charity, etc. etc. This question is all about culture (as poorly defined a term as that is): What benefits does religion give to a society’s culture, its institutions and architecture and rhythm, and can those benefits be gained by a substitute instead? In today’s world, should those benefits be gained by a substitute instead?

 Not pictured: Churches, temples, or mosques.

Mongolia is Awesome: Stand Up For Your Rights!

Stalin had told Genden multiple times that he should get around to destroying Buddhist temples and purging the monks, but Genden refused to do so. Genden resented growing Soviet ambitions to control Mongolia and use it as their own satellite state, and at some point, Genden called the Soviets “Red Imperialists.” When Genden was in Moscow in 1935, he had a few too many vodkas (he was a very heavy drinker) and shouted at Stalin, “You bloody Georgian, you have become a virtual Russian Czar!” Yeah, that’s right. Genden told Stalin what everyone else was thinking years before they even knew they were thinking it.

But that’s not all: The tension swiftly escalated into physical conflict, and as the story goes, Stalin kicked Genden’s walking stick, Genden literally slapped Stalin across the face in return, and smashed Stalin’s pipe on the table. Thus he proved, in case anyone had forgotten, that the Mongolians have no fear, and they will slap mass-murdering dictators if they feel like it. Also that they hate smoking. (Kidding!)

Though one moral of this story might sound like, “You will do Awesome things if you get drunk enough,” another moral is definitely, “You will face the consequences for your drunken antics.” Back in Mongolia, Genden was voted out of office for threatening Mongolian-Russian relations, and a couple years later Stalin had him arrested and executed for being a Japanese spy and conspiring with Buddhist radicals. Although, I guess, if you’ve got to die (and you pretty much were going to die soon under that regime), you might as well have smashed Stalin’s pipe while you were alive.

Mongolia is Awesome: Names Edition

The Secret History of the Mongols was “discovered” only recently, in 1866 in Beijing. I’ve heard that it is the only work that survived because the Chinese destroyed a lot of Mongol sources, but this copy was written in Chinese characters, so it slipped past their radar. This discovery is significant for a lot of reasons, but it is relevant to this post because guess who discovered it…

Archimandrite Palladius. “Awesome” could very well have been his middle name, and it would have fit in just fine.

Meditations: Is stuff just stuff?

One of the most significant works of classical Mongolian literature is a book that describes the life and conquests of Genghis Khan, called The Secret History of the Mongols. (Yeah, a Westerner clearly chose that name.) Incidentally, it is one of the only works of classical Mongolian literature. Not much written by the conquering Mongols survives, and I’m not 100% sure of the reasons for that yet.

In any case, I’m reading The Secret History, and it’s an interesting work. It reminds me, actually, of the Celtic mythology I had to read for my Oxford tute, and I might expand on that more later, but the point of this post is to talk about a specific incident in the life of Genghis Khan. Though the details are fuzzy, the story basically goes down like this:

Genghis Khan, shortly after getting married, went to an ally of his father and presented him with a black sable coat. In return, Ong Khan (the ally), pledged to Genghis that he would unite the fractured Mongol people in return for the coat. Later, Genghis came to Ong Khan and asked for help destroying some pesky enemies who stole his wife.  Ong Khan’s response was centered around the coat; he recalled the gift, and recited a poem that ended with the pledge, 
“I shall now fulfill that promise

In return for the sable coat

I will destroy all the Mergids

And rescue Borte-ujun

In return for the sable coat

We shall crush all the Mergids

And bring back your wife, Borte.”

Note: The punctuation is pretty ambiguous/nonsensical in the version I have, so I just left it all out. Read it as you will.

The scene confused me a bit, because as much as I would be willing to do a lot for a sable coat, this khan did seem to be resting an awful lot on that coat. But the key seems to be in the word “promise.” The coat was not just a coat, it was a promise. It was a symbol of an alliance, and a gift that really meant something. This made me think a bit about what property can mean. We tend to view things as just things, and our culture both reveres stuff and looks down on reverence for stuff. Conspicuous consumption is very much alive, but discussion of money and flashiness are considered gauche.

A fur coat is great, and people work themselves half to death in order to make enough money to buy a fur coat (whether or not they actually buy one), but one isn’t supposed to revere the fur coat. And if the fur coat gets paint thrown on it, the proper response is not to throw a fit—after all, it’s just a coat, right?

But in this story of Genghis and Ong, the fur coat was more than just a coat. That piece of property symbolized a pledge. And I think that our culture, though it is materialistic in its relentless pursuit of stuff, has perhaps forgotten how an item can be more than just an item. We crave things to have them, but we convince ourselves that we want to use them. You’re not supposed to admit that maybe you just want that iPad to have it, and that you’ll probably get tired of it in about four days anyway. You’re supposed to want it because it’s useful, not because you want to show others that you worked hard for your money, and you can spend it on something frivolous and sort of fun. One traditional use of money was just to show power, and in a world with an increasingly ambiguous power structure, maybe this is a worthwhile use. (A six-thousand dollar suit might not look better than a $600 one, but it does look more powerful. And that makes it worth it, right, Gob?)

That’s probably a bad example, but here’s another: jewelry. The symbolic nature of wedding rings and engagement rings is obvious—we wear them as a symbol of our commitment, dedication, etc., etc. No one blinks an eye when, in a movie, an angry fiancée/wife throws her ring to the ground. She’s not discarding the material aspect of the ring, she’s discarding the symbolic aspect. But how about a less popular jewelry symbol, the post-cheating jewelry? Kobe Bryant bought his wife a four-million-dollar ring after his cheating was discovered, and she stayed with him. Though people weren’t necessarily surprised, there was commentary on such a blatantly mercenary attitude. She stayed with a cheater for just a piece of jewelry? But the thing is, it wasn’t necessarily just a piece of jewelry. Of course, I can’t comment specifically on that case, but when a cheating husband buys his wife a diamond necklace, he is (perhaps subconsciously) making a pledge to her, and showing that he loves her, thousands or millions of dollars worth. He’s using a piece of property as a symbol of his dedication. This isn’t so different from an engagement ring, or even parents putting a down payment on a house for their newlywed child. (I’m aware of the crucial difference that one is an apology for wrongdoing and the others are spontaneous pledges, but that’s not the issue here.)

Somehow, it seems our culture has, while seeking money and things more relentlessly than ever, managed to forget one of the things makes stuff worth having: What it symbolizes. We’re more materialistic for material’s sake, but less willing to attribute meaning to the material. But that’s just my perspective, I guess. 

So think about it: How has property and its value changed over centuries? Do we really seek property more, but value it less? What are some examples of property in our society that do have a symbolic value? Is this mercenary, after all, and should we mean our promises without needing to materially commit to them? And if it’s true that we value stuff for its own sake, not for its sake as a symbol, does that make us more or less materialistic? Is it that simple?

Just so you know, I will unite your 
fractured people in exchange for this coat.

Mongolian Connections: Mandalas and Labyrinths

Yesterday my teacher, another student, and I went to the Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum, the main Mongolian art museum in Ulaanbaatar. There was a lot about it that was interesting, and I’ll probably write a few posts about things I saw/learned there.

But now, I want to talk about a Buddhist design called the Mandala. I can’t really describe a Mandala, but you can see it in the picture. It’s sort of like a maze, with four entrances (gates) and then a center as the destination of the maze. As R and Prof. O explained it, they are used in Buddhist meditation. The person meditating starts at one of the gates, and concentrates very hard on following the path to the center. (Technically, it is not a maze, because there is only one winding path to take, with no branches or dead ends.) While following the path, one is supposed to contemplate, and the journey is symbolic of the journey to enlightenment. Along the way, one must pass through bad things and good things, and things that are neither good nor bad but just are.

Of course, I thought, “It’s just like a labyrinth.” Although the original labyrinths were Greek and their exact function is ambiguous, labyrinths in Europe were traditionally used in forms of meditation and prayer. Some (like those in cathedrals) were big enough to walk on, and one could walk along the labyrinth’s course in prayer and contemplation until one reached the center. There is evidence that they were even meant to serve as a metaphor for the journey to the Holy City Jerusalem. Portable-sized labyrinths also existed, and one could trace the journey with one’s eyes or finger or whatever.

So the idea of some sort of labyrinth/mandala as an aid to and symbol of the journey to spiritual fulfillment is one that occurs across cultures and religions, and endures in a significant way in different societies. This makes sense to me, because it relates very much to what is true about human life in general: There is only one path of life, and the end is always the same (death). What is important is not where you end up, or even how you get there, but what you learn on the journey.

 (Another popular journey to spiritual enlightenment)

Meditations: Shaman Ceremony

So yesterday, I got up at 4:30AM (only doable because my internal clock is fried, anyway) to attend a shaman sun-worship ceremony in the countryside. (Note: In Mongolia, “the countryside” is the word for pretty much anything outside Ulaanbaatar. I’m not sure if the Gobi would count, but it might.) The ceremony happens every year, and those participating must get to their site at around 2AM to prepare to begin it at dawn.

To get to the ceremony, we drove through the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, past some coal towns right outside, and then into a little valley with a few tourist camps. While we were driving in an even littler valley between two steep hills, Prof. C slowed down and started looking through the windows. I figured he was trying to find the ceremony, but I wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for. I sat, perfectly content to watch a few horses grazing, and a car painstakingly making its way down the slope. After a few moments of driving very slowly, Prof. C pointed out the window and said, “Look at that.” I wasn’t entirely sure what I was quite looking at—the horses weren’t noteworthy, so maybe it was the rock formations? There were a few white cars parked at the top of the hill, right beneath the ridge. Could that be the ceremony? Do shamans drive cars? I wondered.

Apparently they do, because Prof. C found a spot to drive off the road and proceeded up the hill. I thought, at one point, “It’s a good thing we’re in an SUV, because I don’t think a normal car could make this,” but then the car I’d seen driving down the slope earlier passed us, and it was a pretty ordinary sedan. Well, I guess if you’re in a sedan and you need to drive up a hill in Mongolia, you do it.

So we drove up —bumpity, bumpity— and parked next to the other cars. The views were beautiful. We walked up the remainder of the slope, and any ideas I’d had about hiking for miles up mountains in the Mongolian wilderness were quickly dispelled as I arrived breathless at the top. There were a few people gathered around the shaman, who was sitting on the ground and lamenting (this is not the technical term, but it’s the only one I can think of for the high-pitched half-singing, half-chanting). The top of his face was covered by the blue fringe on his shaman mask, and there were a couple people attending to him wearing bright dark blue with orange sashes. (Their outfits were cool, but I think my favorite was the ten-year-old boy in a Hello Kitty robe.) The people there generally ignored us, and so I just stood and watched and tried to look respectful. A baby started crying, and the other people said something to his mother, who took her away to quiet her down. Prof. C walked down the ridge for a minute and talked to someone on his cell phone, while I continued to observe and tried to absorb everything into my memory as best as I could. After a few minutes, Prof. C returned, pointed over the valley, and said, “This is the wrong ceremony—we’re on that mountain.”

After, all, who hasn’t gone to the wrong mountain for his shaman ceremony? So we loaded back into the car and drove down the hill to find the right Sun worshippers. The moral of this story: What did we do before cell phones?

We drove for a few more minutes, around a mountain and then up a ridge to where there were a lot of cars gathered, and Prof. C found the people he knew. The ceremony was very interesting… There were a few shamans, about 10-15 in full garb, and a few “helpers” in the blue-and-orange, whom Prof. C said were also training to be shamans; one young girl was also a psychology student at the NUM. We spoke to a friend of Prof. C’s, who runs a shaman center, and he pointed out which shamans belonged to which tribes. Apparently there were shamans from all different tribes across Mongolia for this event; the best I could figure was that these shamans all live in Ulaanbaatar, but their ties are to regional tribes.

The shaman outfits were incredible—they had lots of colored cloth snakes sewn all over their clothes, plus the hats and masks. (Check out my first post for a more detailed picture of a shaman.) There were differences between the shamans of the different tribes, but I couldn’t quite figure them out. Tons of people (70-100?) were sitting and standing in a large sort-of circle, and many sat next to little tables covered in cookies and tiny pots of milk/yogurt/airag. A few of these tables also had shamans who were dealing with people individually, while in the center maybe 15-25 people and a few shamans sat around a fire for the main, official part of the ceremony.

Around the fire, people were singing a song; they had their hands held out, palms up, in front of them, and they were swaying a bit. A few people who were not by the fire, but instead were sitting by their tables and maybe talking to friends or doing their own thing, also held out their hands and swayed and sang. I asked Prof. C what they were singing, and he said they were giving thanks for their lives, and worshipping the sky gods, and asking them to help them with their troubles. Note: Shamanism is also called Tengriism, after the word for “sky,” because a lot of it revolves around worshipping the sky spirits. Later on, everyone around the fire sang a new song, and began to bow down repeatedly in the direction of the fire, (including one toddler in front of her mother, who did not look particularly happy about it.) Prof. C said that they were worshipping the fire, because fire is very important in their lives, too. When the ceremonies had concluded, a woman started a song, and most people joined in, at least for a bit; this was a song to the “Mother Land,” as Prof. C explained. Looking around at the views of their Motherland, I could certainly see where they were coming from.

Around the edges of the group, people would periodically go and throw milk (airag?) into the air, as an offering to the sky spirits. It was a constant aspect of the whole ceremony, that on the fringes people would throw milk, and then frequently they would bow and pray a bit, then return to the throng of people. At one point, some milk was thrown on us, and although I figured this was a common occurrence, the Mongolian woman we were talking to seemed peeved about it. There was even a little boy who was trying his hand at it, with a carton of milk and his own little spoon.

I got to meet a few shamans, including one who blessed me. I handed her a 10,000 MNT note, and I had to be careful to make sure it was faceup, with the picture of Genghis Khan looking at her. (The shaman’s helper next to me corrected me, for which I was thankful.) I knelt down in front of her, and she sniffed at both my ears (or maybe it was both sides of my neck?), said something to me in Mongolian, and then beat at my back with a… a… a thing. I’ll learn the real name for it eventually, but it was like a heavy piece of cloth that with ropes attached, and they may have been cloth snakes. Prof. C explained that the process beat the bad spirits out of the person, so that there should be no evil left in him/her. (Hear that? No more evil for me!)

When I inquired further about this woman and the people who came to her to be blessed, Prof. C said that sometimes people come to the shamans when they are having trouble, in order to ask for help with a specific problem in their lives. Maybe someone is sick, or there is a family issue, and the shaman will bless them and possibly give them advice.

Which brings me to my next meditation… In this ceremony, people sang praise for their lives and the things in their lives, they sought divine support, and they asked holy people for help with their problems. Of course, these are all aspects of Church services and pretty much most religious services/practices/prayers: Praise and requests, etc. So what is it about life that makes people need to praise a higher power for it? What is it about our problems that make us seek holy support? Why, across a million societies and in a million different ways, do we look to the heavens instead of to the world around us? Also, why is it that people continue to ask their God(s) for help when historically, He does not always oblige? And for people who don’t believe in a higher power (or for people who do, I guess): Whom do you thank when life is just too gorgeous to be believed? And to whom do you “pray” when it is just too awful?

So, lastly: Regardless of what you believe, next time life is wonderful, maybe try also thanking the people who are making it wonderful. And next time there is something awful happening, maybe think about what you can do, concretely, to make it better, or if not better, at least a little easier. Even so, the best answer might be the same as it has been for billions of people over thousands of years: Pray.

Mongolia is Awesome: Names Edition

I read in my guide about a mad Russian named Baron Ungern von Sternberg who served as quasi-dictator of Mongolia for a few years, and I thought “Whoa. That is an Awesome name.” As I read more about Mongolia, I realized that quite a few characters/places/things in Mongolia and its history have Awesome names (not all of them Mongolian). And so the Names Edition of “Mongolia is Awesome” was born.

Meditations: Stalin Lives!

Walking around Ulaanbaatar, one cannot escape the feel of Stalinism that absolutely pervades the place. If I were given only three words to describe the city, “Stalinist” would indubitably make the list, and I’m not sure that, if I were given only one word, “Stalinist” wouldn’t be it.

It shows in the city’s name: “Ulaanbaatar” is translated as “Red Hero,” and it received its name in 1924 after being conquered by communists. (Who exactly the “Hero” is, I have yet to discover, though I suspect it is Sukhbaatar, who also gives his name to the main Square of the city.) And the buildings… I never realized until I got here how much of an effect architecture has on a place (which shows how little I’ve been paying attention). Most of the standing structures in Ulaanbaatar were built by the USSR, and they look like exactly what you’d expect: Square apartment buildings. Period. But it’s a neglected sort of Stalinism, like an abandoned communist city, despite the crowds of people walking around, knowing to avoid the open manholes and unbothered by the bits of wreckage that stand on (or are) the side of the road. Grass pokes through the concrete and makes a reluctant appearance in backyards and parks, but even the plants here look Soviet.

But here’s the thing: Ulaanbaatar is not communist. It is not Soviet, and officially, it never was. The Mongolian people are pretty ready for the future, evidenced by some of the new modern buildings and the rapid privatization of the country’s industry. When the coordinator of International Programmes dropped me off, I asked about a statue in front of the NUM and wondered who it was. She said she doesn’t like him much, that he was president of Mongolia when the NUM was founded, but she does not like him much (she repeated), because he was friends with Stalin. So people’s attitudes seem to be very un-communist.

My first meditation, then, is very appropriate to Mongolia in general (as I’ll get to later): How significant is the past? What prompts a people to reject their past, and once they collectively want to, how easy is it? Is it even possible, or does the past still stand as long as the buildings do? How are our own societies still tied to the past? Did America emerge the way it did due to the very fact that it was without a past, that it was a people starting fresh and erecting their own buildings? Getting back to Mongolia, is the Stalinism something that will wear off as new institutions of the country emerge (i.e. democracy, capitalism, technology), or has it made enough of a mark that they’re stuck with it for a while? What effect will new institutions have not only on the literal remnants of the past (buildings, statues, etc), but also on people's views of the past? And I haven’t even started with gers yet.

Mongolia is Awesome: Who needs kegs when you can have a dragon-head fountain?

When researching Mongolia, one comes across (rather frequently, actually) facts about the country that pretty accurately reflect how just plain Awesome it is. One of the first of these I found is the following:

When Karakorum was the thriving capital of the Mongol Empire and the Mongols had more riches than they knew what to do with, they captured a French sculptor and brought him to Karakorum specifically because they wanted a goldsmith to aestheticize their excess. Then they commissioned a fountain that was a giant tree with an angel at the top and 4 dragon heads coming out of the trunk. But here’s the best part… This fountain did not dispense water, because who needs water, really? Instead, when a trumpeter blew a bugle, servants began to pump, and from one dragon’s head flowed wine, from one flowed rice wine, from one flowed honey mead, and from the last flowed airag (the fermented mare’s milk drink that is a staple of the countryside).

Do you need any more proof that Mongolia is Awesome?

Mongolia is Relevant: Our Lady of the Mongols

I found out I’d be spending the summer in Mongolia just before I went to Istanbul. I was initially interested in two (very broad) aspects of Mongolian society—nomadic culture and traditional literature, and modern Mongolia’s development—and didn’t know much about the Mongol Empire. It was something that pushed on the fringes of what I studied, but rarely explicitly intersected with it, at least in what I read (mostly European/American texts). So it was a bit of a joy to encounter in Istanbul the character “Mary of the Mongols.” Mary was so nicknamed because she married a Mongol khan, after his father (her original betrothed) died. When that husband was assassinated by his brother, the brother also wanted to marry Mary, so she fled back to her father (an Emperor), who then planned to marry her off to a different Mongol khan (the fourth in this story). Instead, Mary joined a convent and gave enough money to rebuild the nunnery and attach a church. In honor of her, the church is referred to as the Church of St. Mary of the Mongols, and she is affectionately termed “Our Lady of the Mongols.” She also donated money to help build/decorate Christ Chora, (or I think she did—she was certainly featured in the mosaics there along with other benefactors).

So I heard about this woman and her churches and discovered, for the first time, Mongolia making an impact in a tangible and permanent way, only days after discovering that Mongolia would be making an impact on me in a tangible and permanent way. We (myself included) tend to reduce the image of Mongolia to some remote steppe and desert, whose empire was as brief as it was massive. But that’s just not true, as a little bit of Mongolian-history sleuthing will show you. For a while, Mongolia was there, not only pressing at the edges of the world, but slipping into and out of it and leaving their mark all over the continent. They may not have constructed many extant buildings, and Genghis Khaan may not have left much documentation, but as Our Lady of the Mongols demonstrates: Mongolia is relevant.