A monastic (dis)order of mischievous monks

Nala Gumba, a Tibetan Buddhism monastery situated in the foothills of the Himalayas. In addition to the resident monks, guests are allowed to stay and learn about Buddhism.

The gong sounded and I sat up in bed, disoriented. Where am I? I glanced at my watch, which read 4:30am. The second strike of the gong reset my brain. I was at Nala Gumba, a Tibetan Buddhism monastery in Nepal, and it was time for sunrise puja.

I managed to get myself out the door by the fourth strike of the gong. I marched down the outdoor corridor, past the spinning prayer wheel, up the grand staircase, to the front of the temple.

The outdoor corridors of the Nala Gumba Monastery, decorated with intricate carvings, stretch from the temple to the monks' dormitories and classrooms.

Buddhist monks spin prayer wheels in a clockwise direction while repeating mantras to send good energy to the outside world.

As I shivered in the freezing Himalayan air, I reminded myself that I had voluntarily signed up for this. Sought it out, even. Just two days before, I was corralling third-grade children, yelling at them unsuccessfully to please quiet down and to please quit playing the human version of whack-a-mole, among the other unlisted duties of ‘volunteer English teacher’.

So as you might imagine, spending a few days at a monastery where I could learn about Buddhism and endeavor to reach enlightenment in the quiet, peaceful company of monks seemed like the perfect way to wrap up my month in Nepal. But as I stepped out of my rubber Birkenstocks and onto the icy stone temple floor, any morsels of inner peace cracked away instantly. Nirvana was a long way off for me.

I, the only foreigner on the premises, slipped into the parade of monks through the temple doors. The walls were exploding with mythical creatures and color, with ornate paintings of Buddha’s reincarnations, with a level of detail that could have sustained the world’s longest-ever game of ‘I Spy’. The monks shuffled onto cushions running parallel to the main aisle that rolled to the foot of a massive golden Buddha.

The walls of the Nala Gumba Monastery are covered in the ornate work of Tibetan artists.

Once the monks were seated, I found an unoccupied cushion and apologized to my spine for the two hours of cross-legged sitting ahead. With another sound of the gong, the monks began to pray.

Now, I’m not sure if you have ever attended a sunrise recitation of Tibetan Buddhist prayers, but as you could probably guess, it isn’t exactly the Ice Capades. Within a few minutes, I was back in my first period U.S. History class, putting in the work to score my name below the ‘Most Likely to Sleep Through College’ award in my high school yearbook. The incense smoke wasn’t helping; it swirled and bundled into the serpentines of a lazy dragon, affecting me like a hypnotist’s pendulum. But really, it was the discordant murmur of prayers that pushed me over the edge into the sweet, sticky fog of sleep. My chin fell into the palms of my hands, and I was gone.

Monks prepare to recite prayers in Tibetan.

Psst. Pssssssst.

I snapped my eyes open, unsure of how much time had passed. How embarrassing. Had I just been called out for nodding off? I looked around for the source of the psst, bracing to face a finger-wagging monk. But when I looked up, that was not what I saw.

It was a little monk. A little monk named Phurbu.

Phurbu, no more than 8 years old, turned toward me and stretched out his hands, which were wrapped in prayer beads. I watched him weave the beads through his fingers, then nudge his hands into the little monk next to him. Like me, Phurbu’s friend had fallen asleep at the wheel. He shuddered to life, saw Phurbu’s web of prayer beads, and knew the assignment. He slid his hand through the opening and let Phurbu further complicate the web. But when Phurbu yanked the beads outward, magically, they untangled from his friend’s wrist in the trickery of a Cat’s Cradle spinoff. Phurbu looked at me proudly as if he had just split an atom. “Magic,” he whispered, with a mischievous little grin.

I played the role of flabbergasted audience member as the two little monks went back and forth with their terribly obvious magic tricks until an older monk knocked his knuckle on the prayer scroll in front of them. They turned, tail between legs, back to the scroll.

Young monks-in-training read from Tibetan Buddhism prayer scrolls.

One hour later, the younger monks began peeling off their cushions and skipping out of the temple. Phurbu turned to me and said, “Miss, miss, come with me.” He grabbed my hand and I followed as he bounced down the aisle into the morning light.

Phurbu and I descended into the dormitory stairwell, which was now racketing with the shrieks and chaos of three dozen pre-pubescent monks who had just been released from an extended period of sitting still.

Downstairs, they were crowding into a single room, brushing their teeth and shivering from cold showers, waiting in an unorganized line. Phurbu pushed me to the front of the line where an older monk sat, his gloved hands rubbing some type of medical cream onto a bowed head. The monk nodded at a pair of latex gloves on the table and said, “You can disinfect the ringworm patches.”

What?

I was confused. I had come to this monastery in anticipation of simple Buddhist living. You know, like rice and curry, hard mattresses, silent meditation, deep breathing, zen type of thing.

But the image I had concocted in my head was a colossal mismatch from what my eyes were seeing, which was a sea of bouncy little monks, coughing and sneezing and stretching their highly contagious ringworm patches into my lap. I rolled the gloves up and over my sleeves (lest I add ringworm to my ever-growing list of traveler’s ailments) and wondered about the treatment’s efficacy; curing a ringworm outbreak among monks in a monastery reminded me of the time I tried to evacuate a family of squirrels that had moved into my bathroom's air vent for the winter (think duct tape, a garbage bag, and a cardboard trap door). Nearly impossible, but I figured that they had to try.

As the older monk and I worked through the line, the little ones scattered to their classes. At the monastery, boys learned more than how to become a monk; they also took classes in math, science, and language, which included Nepali, Tibetan, and English. Most of them had been brought to the monastery by their parents around the age of 5 and would remain here until they turned 18. At that point, they would make the decision to stay in the monastery or venture into the outside world to begin a normal life, family and all. I wondered how normal it could be, considering that their childhoods were spent almost entirely inside the walls of a temple, limited from interaction with females.

Phurbu insisted that I come to his class. Images of third-graders using one poor kid's arms as the rope in a game of tug-of-war flashed into my mind, and I seriously considered slinking away to my room. But Phurbu would not take no for an answer.

I gave up and followed him to math class, where half of his classmates fiddled with their homemade spinning button toys, and the other half yelled a song about multiplication tables at me. One little monk’s energy exploded into a spontaneous cartwheel, which revealed that underwear was not required under monk robes.

By the end of the class, I had reached a new level of exhaustion. I was determined to make myself scarce for the remainder of my stay. But first, it was time for lunch.

We migrated to the dining hall and I located the table of older, calmer monks. For a moment, I ate my vegetable dal bhat in peace, thankful for the opportunity, at last, to practice mindful eating. I was so invested in my rice and curry that I did not see the security guard take a seat across from me.

The security guard, however, noticed me immediately. He identified me as an English speaker and yes, he guessed it, an American! Now was no time for lunch, he decided for us both. It was time to recite his list of historical American figures, and it was my job to confirm. “You know Washington?” Yes. “You know Lincoln?” Yes. “You know Armstrong?” Louis, Lance, or Neil? This opened another can of worms.

He questioned me with such ferocity that I did not realize that an entire chili pepper had snuck onto my spoon until it was too late. My sight turned red, my nose ran and eyes watered, I exhaled fire. The pepper’s capsaicin assaulted my throat, triggering a violent outburst of hiccups while the security guard demanded an answer: “You know the Wright Brothers?” Things were not going well at the monastery.

Vegetable dal bhat, a simple meal of rice and vegetable curries, is a common dish at the monastery.

After lunch, I slipped out of the dining hall and angled covertly toward my room along the outdoor corridor. I desperately needed a nap. Phurbu, ever the watchman, immediately spotted me, ever the sore thumb, and asked me to join their game. I felt guilty about declining, so I agreed and waited for him to explain the rules. But Phurbu had no time for that, not while another little monk in thick glasses held a rubber ball in his hand. Phurbu took off in a sprint and Squints of Sandlot turned to me. I knew I was in trouble, so I started to run.

Like a hunter pointing his rifle, Squints narrowed his eyes and smiled mischievously: he had me pinned. He flung his cape over his shoulder and cocked his arm. Like a stupid gazelle, I took one long leap to, I don’t know, jump over the ball? Fake out the little monk? In reality, I leaped directly into his line of fire. He pelted the rubber ball right into my hip.

Aside from the welt and the small humiliation of being laughed at by a bunch of monks-in-training, I now had the ball. And no mercy. I spent the next ten minutes jaunting around the monastery’s courtyard, pelting the little monks with the rubber ball. I was very successful. 

They were saved from my ire by three strikes of the gong, which signaled afternoon classes were about to begin. I quickly escaped to my room in the chaos, locked the door, and breathed a sigh of relief to be alone. I laid down on the hard mattress and sank blissfully into sleep.

At some point, a mallet collided with brass somewhere in the monastery, yanking me from my slumber for the second time that day. I opened my eyes, again groggy and disoriented. What time is it? Another clang brought me back in touch with reality. It was time for evening puja.