Two Sundays ago, we visited the Royal Botanical Garden and walked out a path to its terminus at a large wooden picnic pavilion with a roof. From this vantage point we could see out across a deep green gully. On the far hill was a yellow-roofed lakhang and it was decorated with buntings and banners, which we could see flapping in the breeze even from this great distance. Thinley told us that one of the retired Je Khenpos had died and that his body was lying there in state. She told us that his body had not decayed nor would it, because of his great holiness. The state religion of Bhutan is officially the Drukpa Kagyu lineage of Himalayan Buddhism (according to my Lonely Planet guidebook), and its highest religious leader at any given time is the Je Khenpo who serves for a period of 5 years. This retired Je Khenpo was considered a very holy man, and his body had been lying in state for some time since his death in early June.
On Saturday we took the opportunity to take a weekend trip out of Thimphu, over a high moutain pass and down into a neighboring valley called Punakha - this is the winter home of the National Assembly and the monastic body. We hired the implacable Passang and his comfortable Toyota van to drive us there. This turned out to be a very auspicious weekend to be in Punakha, because the body of the Je Khenpo also made the journey over the high pass and down to Punakha, to be cremated at the dzong there.
We arrived at Punakha dzong, situated at the confluence of two rivers, mid-afternoon. It is not accessible by vehicle, but only by a gently swaying wooden footbridge suspended over the swift-flowing wide Mo Chu River, draped in fluttering prayer flags. Our dzong permits passed inspection and Don had put on his white kabney with some help from Passang, and we were admitted into the courtyard where the ceremony, it seemed, had just concluded. Sweepers with short-handled twig brooms were coming along and sweeping up the wrappers and the dust and leaves. Special ceremonial tents had been constructed in the courtyard, four of them surrounding a central tent with a dzong-like tin roof and turret. Inside this central tent, with red carpeting, flowers, bowls and tables piled high with offerings, and elaborate tormas (butter sculptures), was a central podium shaped with a Tibetan chorten. People were circling this central podium, so we joined the clockwise flow and slowly made our way around the tent, and then around the offerings inside the tent. Two monks were handing out reprinted photographs of the late Je Khenpo, His Holiness Je Nyizer Trulku. We realized as we passed by it, that the "chorten" in the center was in fact the pyre, with a kind of bread-oven opening on one wide blackened with smoke - smoke that was ever-so-slightly still drifting up into the air.
We stayed inside Punakha dzong for about an hour - we were ushered by friendly monks into two of the treasure rooms, where they let us light butter lamps and where we received scented water blessed by the monks in our outstretched hands (touch to mouth, spread on the top of your head...). One of the monks explained that there would be a puja starting at 5 - a collective recitation of prayers, chanting from rows of monks, beating of the tall ceremonial drums with curved red sticks, trumpets, bells, fluttering oboes. We stayed until it started and then when two small novice monks went by us with their arms full of wood we realized that the continuation of the ceremony also meant a continuation of the cremation inside the chorten. Thompson was a little horrified. Maybe the other kids didn't really realize what was going on - in any case, no body could be seen and the chorten wasn't really "body-shaped," so it was all a little mysterious.
The chants rose and fell across the courtyard; rows of people in their best clothing came in to perform ritual bowing: hands pressed together, touched to the top of head, the face, the chest in rapid succession, then kneeling and touching forehead to the ground, rising and repeating, and then took seats under the large tent and began to read the prayers in Dzongkha while the monks kept at their own prayers at a different speed and rhythm. The murmuring of both, punctuated with the unison drumming of some twenty gigantic drums, followed us out across the bridge and out of the spectacular Punakha dzong.
