She is tall for a Tibetan, but humble and soft spoken. I had tried to for her transformation and the intensity of the experience when she invites "the goddess" to take over her body and heal. In fact, I had thought we shouldn't offer this experience to our group of dancing pilgrims but Anahata insisted that it would be a blessing. We gave everyone the option to not attend if they choose and certainly to not present themselves for treatment.

We were ushered into the room, long and narrow with an assortment of faded throw rugs and pillows on the floor, her pallet and shrine at the far end under a window just over the street. It is a very humble room on the fourth story of an apartment building right off the main road to the Boudha stupa.

There were about 40 of us filling the room, including both camera crews and Yamuna's children. Lhamo and her husband wandered about offering us tea and cookies. And then she sat on her pallet, with Andrea to translate next to her, and proceeded to go into trance.


It started with prayers that got louder and more insistent. She was on her knees and abruptly began cackling loudly. She picked up her damaru and the drum filled the room in an overwhelming way. She threw grains of barley about and then with an urgency dressed herself in the clothes of the goddess......a brocade vesture, a hat representing the 5 aspects of enlightened mind. She was ready.

One of our women presented herself for healing. She stated her problem and then was asked intimate questions. Lhamo grabbed her and began to suck out the poison. There were moans from the patient that become small screams, cries. Everyone in the room leaned forward to see the blood dripping down the Lhamo's chin, to see what she took out of her mouth, to wonder at the questions that seem to probe into the depths of the past and the tender parts of the psyche.


One by one the women and Yamuna's children and husband presented themselves. We watched her beat on our pilgrims, some of them seemingly possessed by entities that had them in their grip, some of them possessed by their own negligence. She had a particular impatience with marijuana smokers and plied her short knife on their skulls to take away the fog.....she exhorted each person to change their lives, she prescribed medicines. She pounded them with her fist, brandished her long sword, entered their body with a metal tube sucking out the poison, the pain. The wounds closed like magic leaving bruises in the shape of her sucking mouth.


One by one the women were led away from her in varying degrees of shock. Held and consoled by their sisters, the room took on the look of an infirmary with women laying down, being held or stroked or just left to recover. Some sobbing. Women wiping away their tears.

The Lhamo shouted, laughed, threw water in someone's face, grabbed one of the big film crew guys and he howled and moaned with her mouth on him sucking out what ever poison she perceived. The room was an ocean of blood and compassion, we were locked in the drama of our karma revealed and cleansed, in sympathy for each other's pain and confusion, in the hope we have to be healed and held.

This evening Anahata had presented herself for healing. Her first experience during our scouting trip in May had been amazingly effective. I sat against the wall the entire evening. Lhamo has never consented to do healing on me. She has told me that I am in the arms of Tara and that She is taking care of me.

At the end, Anahata and I approached her with an honorarium from the whole group. She gestured impatiently for it to be given to her husband.

She held onto me firmly and placed a kata around my neck. She spoke to me with authority, with intensity, "....you are the teacher. They are very lucky to be with you, to be doing this dance. Very lucky. They should be grateful....."

Then she called for a bowl of milk and holding my head over the basin that held the blood and pus and poison of the evening's healing she anointed my head with the milk, praying intensely. She wiped my face with a filthy rag. Smiled. "Very lucky", she kept saying. We bowed.

She called for a small thanka of White Tara, wrapped it in a pristine white silk scarf and presented it to us all. She entered the ritual of release. It was longer and more violent then usual as she repeatedly hit her head against the rim of the altar, howling and moaning. We left in silence, feeling a bond beyond words. Holding each other's secrets sacred. Humbled by the Lhamo's service and prayers. May all beings be free from suffering. May they meet true teachers that inspire them on the way out of confusion and into the fullness of their potential.

Svaha

-Prema