Homicide Adjacent: Tim Bayliss, Monks and the Holy/Unholy Mess.

When darkness is a strength.

Likir Monastery. Ladakh, India.

I’d just emerged from an ancient Tibetan meditation room in a monastery outside Ladakh, India in the thin air of 11,000 feet. I’d been meditating inside the nearly pitch-black room for about an hour next to a sun-parched old monk in a weathered red robe. He had been gently cleaning the stone walls of any soot that might remain from the yak-butter lamps. The walls were painted with images of Buddhas and other deities, which are centuries old and can be destroyed by too much light. His daily routine is to meticulously care for the many meditation gompas so the decay of the paintings is slowed. They most certainly will disappear, but his job, which has been passed down since the 12th century, is to protect and preserve this spiritual art - as a practice - for the generations to come. As he cleaned he chanted a repetitive, cadence-rich sutra that monks have been chanting, whispering, shouting, or grimacing through, for longer than I can imagine.

It was the year 2001. I wonder if that monk knew or even cared about the year. I wonder where he is now?

I had traveled there, I suppose, to heal something. But also to temporarily escape my culture and try to settle into another. It did feel like something was being rung out of me in the time I’d spent in Ladakh. Perhaps it was my ‘identity’, which spun my concerns, obsessions, and ambitions on a loop tape in my head. They were, often unconsciously, a hyperbolic mantra. Yet in this place, they seemed to ease down into a mild hmmmm.

As I stepped out into the bright sun, I shaded my eyes, and the rest of the monastery appeared on the steep hill it’d been built into. My soon-to-be wife was relaxing on a worn step. All seemed satisfying and simple. White-washed buildings, prayer flags fluttering in the constant breeze, with a desert valley as its backdrop.

Suddenly, “Excuse me, do I know you?”

That question, at that instant, made no sense. Didn’t we all know each other? Why was he questioning that? He was a tourist, of which there were only a handful - a couple of Aussies, my girlfriend, and me.

“Have you been to Israel?”

“No.”

“Have we met you before, maybe?”

“No”.

My eyes were still adjusting to the blinding light, yet, I knew what was coming. In this far-off corner of a distant land, pursuing anonymity, and something akin to enlightenment…