More of What Happened Before Tibet Happened #4

Learning from Wisdom Keepers

Beth Robinson

Dec 20, 2022

The first stanza of one of my 1992 poems reads:

My Native friends remind me

That movement is not linear

Time does not march forward

Nature has no sharp corners

To wear and break.

Apparently the movement of this narrative is not meant to be linear either, as my Tibet Journal entries once again throw me backwards in the timeline. At least some of the story of the last of the Four Things I Always Wanted to Do, the one I thought I was not yet ready to write about, is asking to be told next. The one whose phrasing now makes me cringe: Learn about life from an Indian medicine woman. Here is a link in case you didnʻt already read about the Four Things I Always Wanted to Do:

They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir

What Happened Before What Happens Happens

When I was in fifth grade, I stole a book. Even worse, I stole it from my Sunday school. I was a child who followed the rules, but I broke them this time because I could not bear to go on in life without this book. Today its front cover is missing, reminding me with two stamps that it belongs to the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Greeley. It was n…

2 years ago · Beth Robinson

The intention to learn from traditional wisdom keepers has played out in the form of many teachers, and of bonds so strong that these relationships became more than teacher-student – in fact, often growing into the relationship we call “family”. Tiyospaye. ʻOhana. Family with all the complexity inherent in family ties. Some of that being what I am, perhaps, not yet ready to write about.

Still - here are the stories that come to mind as I re-read this Tibet Journal entry from May 13, 1992:

“Why do I wish to make this journey? A good question Vijali has asked. I donʻt wish to lose sight of the original idea, to trek in the Himalayas. To commune with those strong mountain spirits who humble me with their vastness, who teach me how strong and how weak I am, to know more of my physical limits. Part of my “hope parcel” now is also to learn from Vijali about practices, about her way of being in the world, feeling deeply connected to those who suffer, to villages and villagers, and to the stone people she carves around the entire globe. Her art has this passion. And part of why I am sitting here has to do with sitting at Green Grass with tears streaming down my face. I think I am fulfilling a pledge of service.”

Sitting at Green Grass. So now, what happened before Tibet happened was that Green Grass happened.

Late 1980s, early 1990s, there were not a lot of women in my fields of mining and banking. I always preferred solidarity to competition, so when I met a woman lawyer my age working on one of my deals, I invited her to lunch. Our conversation started with the usual “where are you from?” When she replied “Yankton, South Dakota”, I did a double take at this woman who appeared to be as wasicu (white) as I am. I questioned, “On the rez?”

Her eyes widened. “How do you know about the rez?”

After I explained about fulfilling my college language requirement with Lakota, she explained she had lived in town just outside the reservation, where her dad had the butcher shop. And part of her surprise was that, “coincidentally,” a few weeks prior she had been walking in Central Park and heard a powwow-style drum group. She followed the sound and found a family from back home, from Yankton, drumming in the middle of Manhattan. They were living in the Catskills and since then she had been driving up on weekends to sweat with them. “Sweat” not meaning some kind of physical labor or exercise. She meant she was participating in sweat lodge, purification ceremony. She invited me to join her; for months I politely declined.

Eventually I gave in. The first time was all it took for me to slip into the routine of weekends with Izzy and Nora Zephier and their children and Izzyʻs brother “Uncle D”. We went to sweat, drank endless cups of the colored water that passed for coffee in their household, cooked big pots of soup we ate with frybread, and laughed until my sides hurt. Knowing I was up before dawn, Izzy would frequently call at 6 am for a chat. He called me “Tunkasilaʻs banker.”

Izzy was doing on a small scale what another brother, Loren, later did much more successfully as “Chief Standing Elk” and as “Chief Golden Light Eagle,” namely gathering a group of gullible non-native followers. It all broke down within a couple of years and taught me the great lesson of discernment. None of which erases the correct teachings about Lakota cultural practices, the valid advice, and the genuine friendship we shared.

One summer, some of us traveled to South Dakota to support Izzy at a Sundance ceremony, which like the purification lodge is one of the seven sacred rites brought to the Oceti Sakowin people by White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman. She saved her people by appearing during a time when they had forgotten the sacredness of life and their connection to Mother Earth and restoring their spiritual compass. She also promised that she would return when humanity was again at a crossroads.

This particular Sundance took place at Green Grass, where Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the 19th Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle, resides. And this particular year, before the end of the four-day ceremony, the Keeper brought out the Bundle and a long line of people stretched up the hillside waiting for the honor of approaching and praying with it.

Maybe it was the effects of the ceremony, of days in the hot sun singing sacred songs behind a Drum. Maybe it was the power of the Pipe Bundle itself. Whatever the reason, when my turn came to touch the bundle, I was overcome by a strong energy and emotion. Without hesitation I knew I was to commit to her stand for honoring our connection with all our relations. I prayed silently through my tears to White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman with the words, “I am nothing, I am nothing, but I want so much to do your work.” I stood up and walked back down the hill shaken. Had I just offered myself to her service? What did that even mean?

One evening a year or so later my phone rang. (Remember land lines? This story would never have happened once we all had mobile phones.) The woman on the other end introduced herself as Paula Horne, and said she was looking for Loren Zephier and someone gave her my number and said I knew the family. I told her I had met Loren at sundance, but had not heard that he was on the East coast. And then Paula and I talked for another 45 minutes. And talked almost daily in the early part of 1992.

Skipping over much of the story for now, a couple of years later my friend Paula went to work for Arvol Looking Horse. It did not take long before they were a personal team as well. He helped raise her eight children and eventually they married. The commitment and drive to help her people that I had heard in my first conversation with Paula now found an enlarged focus. After the birth of the first white buffalo calf in 1994, Arvol was thrust into a more public role as the prophecy of return was fulfilled on his watch as Keeper. Paula was the perfect partner for his heightened profile and responsibilities.

On June 21, 1996, following instructions given to him in ceremony, Arvol convened the first World Peace and Prayer Day (WPPD), actually four days of prayers for peace and protection of the earth at a sacred site. The 1996 WPPD took place where it is said White Buffalo Calf Woman originally appeared. I found myself a supporter of WPPD from the start, and two decades later stepped up as one of the organizers of the 2017 ceremonies on Hawaiʻi Island, hosting over a 100 spiritual teachers and supporters from around the world.

With some of our Maori friends before we took them to the airport after WPPD 2017.

I was surprised to re-read in my Tibet Journal, not in the typewritten version I quoted above, but in my actual handwritten journal, there were added words. “I think that the White Goddess has asked me to come and I am fulfilling a pledge of service,” is what I wrote. As I try to unpack the connection for this telling, the threads of connection suddenly seem obvious, even if I have been oblivious as to their meaning through three decades.

Here is another one of those threads.

Back to June 1992. When I returned to Manhattan from my Tibet trip, I called Tsultrim (who was still living in upstate New York) and left a message that I was back. She returned the call a day later, inviting me up for the weekend for the ritual painting of the newly built stupa and a Dakini feast. According to my journal, I felt ambivalent, not yet even unpacked, but concluded “it must be right that I go.”

When I pulled into the driveway at Tsultrimʻs I saw some boys at a basketball hoop. I commented to my passenger, “These Tibetan kids sure look just like native Americans, that one looks just Two Dance, the son of my friends who moved back to South Dakota.” A second later Red Tail ran up to his brother and I realized these actually were Izzy and Noraʻs sons! I jumped out of the car and walked down towards the familiar sound, the unexpected sound coming from a spot near the Tibetan stupa. Tsultrim was standing next to Izzyʻs drum. He looked up and stopped drumming as he dissolved into laughter. We hugged and explained to Tsultrim how we knew each other.

She gave me that long Lama Tsultrim look again, evaluating and concluding from what she saw. “You have a lot of synchronicities in your life, Beth,” was her comment – she did not add “And you should pay attention.” That went without saying.

So here is one more synchronicity in this particular web of connection. Somewhere in the early 2000s, Paula and Arvol come to stay at my house in Litchfield County, Connecticut. They had an invitation for a conference or function in New York City, and then were going to offer sweat lodge ceremonies nearby, so this was a chance for a few days of quiet and outlet shopping. As we settled in, they presented me with a red silk Tibetan scarf. “We were just in Colorado with our Buddhist friend Tsultrim,” Paula explained. “She gave us this scarf and I felt we should give it to you.”

I just shook my head. “Your friend Tsultrim?,” I laughed. “Remember the story of my trip to Tibet the year we met?”

The red scarf still hangs over my meditation altar and cushion.

These stories asked to be told today and now I am asking them why. Itʻs not like I havenʻt told the stories before. Not sure why I never wondered about the message in this intricate weaving between two seemingly unrelated Things I Always Wanted to Do. Not an intellectual weaving of generic commonalities between indigenous cultures and spiritual traditions, but very people-specific, story-specific ties.

Here is my first thought. And sometimes for overthinkers, our first thought is the best thought.

In each community Vijali entered during her World Wheel projects, she asked three questions. What is our essence? What is our sickness – personally, communally and globally? And the most important: What can heal this sickness, what can bring us into balance? This was the ongoing inquiry that gave birth to the performances she did and the sculptures she left as a reminder. An inquiry, above all else, into healing.

The message in the appearance of Miracle, the first white buffalo calf, the message that became the message of World Peace and Prayer Day, is also a message of healing. A message that the time has come for mending the Hoop of All Nations, not only all human nations but also the air, water, animal, plant and stone nations.

The story line of my trip to Tibet that is missing from the eighteen typewritten pages I shared with friends on my return, is the story of the interpersonal challenges and personal growth we experienced on the trip. Vijaliʻs way of being in the world called me to a whole new level of accountability for my thoughts, feelings and actions. Our videographer saw the World Wheel as consisting of the sculptures and performances. Vijali taught me that we were creating or damaging the World Wheel in each and every one of our interactions, with individuals, with communities, and with the natural world.

When we held World Peace and Prayer Day here on Hawaii Island in 2017, it was another journey of intense interpersonal challenges, sometimes rising to the point of “drama”. The takeaway from that experience for me was that a commitment to pray for world peace, or to contribute to the healing of a single place let alone the entire planet, is meaningless without a commitment to heal ourselves. And we do not have the possibility of healing until we acknowledge and hold with compassion and lovingkindness, with aloha, the continued imbalances we inherit and perpetuate across generations of trauma. I take responsibility for my own healing. I ask you and support you to take responsibility for yours. That is the essential work of being an ally. We are in this together.

I am still working on what was asked of me in 1992 in Tibet. To be in service to the White Goddess apparently means to be in service to healing. Each and every day, each and every interaction.

At the end of the 2017 WPPD solstice ceremonies, I made an offering at Halemaʻumaʻu and asked if my commitment to White Buffalo Calf Woman was complete. All I heard in the breeze was gentle laughter.

Dakini! Kandro-ma!