I walk the kora, left to right.  I turn the prayer wheels clockwise, one after another.  Some turn smoothly, spinning fast, with a gentle push.  Others must be pulled with force, calling out with squeaky groans, as if begging to be oiled.  I walk the kora, left to right, touch each well worn wooden handle, each radiating spoke.  I watch the turning, blurring motion, panels of color, red, blue, yellow, white, violet, green.  I walk with Tibetan pilgrims, in front of me, behind me.  They never stop moving their lips, saying their mantras, rushing past me on a mission, no time to pause and stare for long, too many circumambulations to complete.

My day’s objective: get up, drink tea, eat, walk the kora.  Even if I just circle once, I need to honor, need to pray.  Need to welcome back this place: Xiahe, Labrang Monastery, Gansu province, a poor and rugged desolate province in northwestern China.  Xiahe is a dusty town in a river valley nestled between brown barren hills, mounds of dry cracking dirt erupting from the earth like the rippled feet of elephants.  

I stay close to the Tibetan part of town, near the monastery and the kora, the path that circles its exterior with a steady stream of pilgrims.  The kora is lined with prayer wheels and chotens, small white temples that represent the cosmology of the universe.  The path is dirt, the sun is bright.  I wear two shirts, one sweater, one fleece, and one down vest but the cold still cuts to my core.  It’s late September and I’m leaving China, this time for who knows how long. 

Two days ago I said goodbye Dawei.  We kept each other warm for three years, but now it is time for me to go.  I’ve been living too long in a city of nine million, congested with smoke, traffic, angry people.  I’ve been living too long with no space to breathe in, no nature to retreat to, no rituals but writing to help me remember how to pray.  Now, I walk alone, as I did when I first arrived in this country.  Some travel for weeks to get here; I took a fifteen hour train from Chengdu to Lanzhou, and then an all-day bus.  Before I fly back to America, I want to ingest these mountains again, these monks and nuns, these country people: Tibetans.  This other face of China.

Six years ago I discovered Xiahe on my first trip to this country.  I was twenty-one and wanted to see the place where my mother was born, wanted to immerse myself in my childhood language.  But what captivated me the most was this Tibetan land, this culture in which a nun’s pursuits are not viewed as a frivolous departure from life, but as an essential occupation.  I wanted to walk the kora then, I even turned a few wheels, but I felt too self-conscious.  Now, today, I’m back on this path, this path I have always traveled. 

Outside of Lhasa, Xiahe is the leading Tibetan monastery town, says my Lonely Planet guidebook.  At its peak, 4,000 monks studied here, now there are around 1700.  Labrang is one of six major monasteries of the Gelupka, or yellow hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism.  This means little to me except for the fact that it is the same sect as the Dalai Lama.  His picture is not allowed in temples, but I’ve seen it in the homes of monks and villagers.  The religious restrictions are not as strict here as in Lhasa, though Tibetans have told me that the monastery is still highly monitored by Chinese authorities.  Religious freedom looks good for tourists.  See?  We allow the people to turn their prayer wheels, bow to statues, carry forth their superstitions.  The temples are being restored, the natives are content. 

I read that Labrang monastery was built in 1709.  Then, like most temples, it was all but destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of the late sixties and 1970s.  Teachers were killed or fled to the hills, monks beaten, books burned, treasures looted.  Finally, in the eighties, after Mao had died and the Cultural Revolution had been denounced a mistake, the slow work of restoration began.  Brick temple walls were resurrected, painted white or warm terracotta with a strip of dark blue on top dotted with white circles, and above the blue, a wide swath of brown.  Rows of narrow rectangular windows are also painted with dark blue trim; above each one hangs a white rippled cloth awning.  New wooden doorways are intricately carved with dragons, flowers, and Tibetan Buddhist symbols; other doorways are draped with billowing cloth, bright canary yellow or simple white adorned with more Buddhist symbols—wheels, conch shells, fish, lotus blossoms.

But I am not interested in the temples.  I’ve been inside my share already, sat in darkened corners of musty halls that smell like burning yak butter, trying to be inconspicuous as I listen to young whispering monks, some distracted by my presence.  I’ve cringed when other tourists have entered the halls in the middle of a prayer session—a Chinese woman talking loudly to her companion, high heels clicking behind her, or two gangly Europeans, cameras slung around their necks, hovering in the shadows.  I know I am an outsider just like them but I cannot help but see their foreignness from a distance, feel annoyed by their gawking pleasure, their awe of the “exotic.” 

I don’t want to observe, I want to participate.  Today, I walk the kora.  Shadowed under wooden awnings, the prayer wheels come in rows, one after another.  Each one is the size of a big conga drum, some are shaped like hexagons.  Each is painted with bright colors, symbols, mantras, probably om mani padme hum, the mantra of compassion.   Inside the temples, the walls are painted with wheels of life, hungry ghosts stuck in hell, human meat devoured by vultures, gods with gnashing teeth and necklaces made of skulls.  Tibetans are not Zen Buddhists.  Intricate blueprints for the soul, rituals, cosmology, scores of gods and goddesses—they are interesting to comprehend, but for me they are distracting.  I prefer my Buddhism clean and simple: awareness of impermanence, compassion for all beings.

The Buddha taught that life is full of suffering, a truth that is not hard to grasp.  But he went further to explain how we create and perpetuate our suffering through the mind’s anxious grasping; regret for the past or longing for the future, we feed our worries and self-doubt with endless loops of fearful thinking.  We live in our mind, cut off from our heart, body, senses.  Stuck in our own particular stories, we are isolated from each other.

A small alcove appears before me, I step inside the darkened room.  Two wheels frame each side of the entrance and a giant wheel, perhaps eight feet tall, rests in the middle.  A circular handle runs around its base, one continuous metal grip.  I grab hold and lean my body into the spin, walking, left to right.  With each rotation a bell rings at the top. I wonder if this is a particularly auspicious prayer wheel, if size makes a difference.  Perhaps there’s a particularly powerful prayer written and rolled on a scroll tucked inside.

I step back out into daylight, cross the dirt road that runs through town and divides the monastery in half, then continue to walk the kora on the other side.  There are no wheels along this part, only temple walls and tall wooden doorways. Beneath my feet, the path is littered with garbage: plastic bags, wrappers, bits of string.  To the north, across the icy river, a road heads out of town, and behind the road are more barren hills.  Near the base of one hill lies a narrow patch of green, the only trees for miles it seems—new growth, probably juniper, which is burned in vats around the temples.  Breathing in, I taste its sweet smoky scent; soothing, like campfire smoke or incense, forest and church all mixed in one. 

I slow to let a trail of pilgrims pass.  I try not stare too hard, but nor do I look away.  An old woman walks in a green knit cap and a long black chuba, a thick traditional Tibetan robe; two young men in dirty sports coats and baseball caps saunter by; a young woman, her neck loaded with chunks of turquoise, coral and amber, pulls the hand of a child behind her.  They walk faster than I do, speed past holding strands of prayer beads, their dry cracked lips mouthing om mani padme hum as they rub each one.  I wonder if they have committed to a certain number of circumambulations in one day or week, and are in quest of a specific answer to a prayer.  Or maybe this is an annual pilgrimage, demonstration of devotion.  I try to not get in their way.  Don’t mind me, I’m just turning your wheels, making my own ritual.  Yes, I am Buddhist, I might answer if you ask, because I am, just not like you.  It’s easier to say yes than try to explain my hesitation.  I’d rather acknowledge unity than get stuck on details. 

Left to right, left to right, I don’t know why left to right, I just know my right arm is working overtime, wheel after wheel… Now, here comes the giant choten with its blackened spots where Tibetan pilgrims touch their heads.  I circle the choten, but I don’t lean over to touch my head, because I don’t know what that’s for.   I’ll just skip this part, my ritual is not the same as theirs, even though I am turning their wheels. 

Still, I worry I appear less devout.  I worry that others by my side will see straight through my purple vest and denim jeans to my mind of contradiction.  Contradiction between the part of me that wants to honor my Buddhist path, this lineage of wisdom, and the other part of me that resists and defies all attempts at classification.  God is too big for one religion, one name, much less one sex, a he or she.  God is even too big for my darling Buddhist concepts, like impermanence, interdependence, and the practice of living in the here and now.  There are times when all concepts lose their meaning, times when silent meditation or words in a book do not satisfy my desire to call out, sing, dance, pray—honor this life in a way that is expressive.  I am in your hands, oh sweet One.  I know You are listening.  I am listening, You are listening.  We are listening to each other’s prayers.  

To my right is the wall behind the monastery, to my left is the edge of a mountain.  Another empty part of the kora, an empty path behind the monastery we walk until the next set of wheels comes along.  I take it all in: air, mountain, footsteps, body, moving forward, squeezing gently past the slowpokes, trying to give elders their due space.  A woman with long graying braids smiles as I approach her side.  She wears a dusty olive green chuba lined with wool and trimmed with colorful striped cloth.  A pink sash is tied around her waist; on her feet are worn canvas sneakers, dirty white with a stripe of red.  Taking my arm, she nods and smiles a toothy grin, giving me a thumbs up.  We walk together, nodding, smiling.  I’m not sure if she knows I’m a foreigner; it’s possible she thinks I’m Chinese.  But what does it matter, she is welcoming me, nodding, telling me it’s good that I am here.

We walk behind the monastery in silence.  Up ahead, a young woman lies stretched across the ground, prostrating.  Wooden blocks are tied to her knees and to the palms of her hands with strips of white tattered cloth.  We step around her.  I turn my head to look closer.  A spot on her forehead has been rubbed bloody and raw.  Now it is scabbing, this place where she touches her head to the earth, over and over, head to earth.  She seems unaware of our presence, immersed in her prostrations, an expression of fervent anguish on her face—or is it devotion?  Every step, she rises, brings her palms together, raises them to her head, her throat, her heart, knees dropping to the ground, body stretching out, and up again: one prostration.  How many did it take her to get here?  I’ve seen people on a road in Tibet in the middle of nowhere walking to somewhere, like that.  Who would choose to go that route?  Only the most devoted, or the most desperate and afraid?   Desperate for some kind of healing, desperate for a miracle. 

I cannot imagine prostrating like she does, yet I am drawn to her devotion.  I long to offer my life, my being, this walk, the intention of this day to something greater than my own tired story.  I inhale into the place in my chest from where I’ve cried so many tears.  Tears of sorrow and of joy, tears of love—and the ache of letting go.  I breathe in and feel my senses ripen; I exhale, grateful to be alive.  Alive, alive, I am alive.  I trust that I am guided yet I know I guide myself.  Gravel presses indents into the soles of my shoes.  Air brushes tiny secrets across the surface of my cheeks. 

 Kan!  Yi ge laowai!  “Look!  A foreigner!”  From the edge of my vision, I see two Chinese men standing on the hillside to my left, cameras slung around their necks, pointing my way.  I don’t acknowledge that I understand them.  One cries to his companion with slight tone of mockery, “The laowai has come to turn the prayer wheels!  Hah-low!  Haah-low!” he calls with exaggeration.  I pretend I do not hear.  Can’t they see I’m praying?  Or trying to, learning to.  Join mind, body, breath—heart source, heart prayer.  But now they are disturbing me, calling me out my reverie, questioning my place here when I have finally been able to explain it to myself. 

I ignore them and keep walking.  They drift into the distance.  Yes, I am turning the prayer wheels today.  I am joining the pilgrims at Labrang who cannot imagine the world I come from: the Westerners who flock in droves to see the Dalai Lama, the concepts of God I hold in my head, the loneliness of our people, the wealth of our homes.  I know my reasons for being here are so different than your own, and yet, I long to walk by your side.  To look into your eyes without shield or guard, to smile at you with unembarrassed love, to know that beyond all thought and language there is a space we understand. 

I touch these wooden handles, the ones that so many have touched before.  Hand breath heart wheel body spinning: one continuous motion.