Berkley Center

Although Nepal has recently experienced major biomedical advances, traditional healers are still a vital part of Nepali village life. These healers do not use medicine as many of us may think of it. Instead of point-treating biological disease, spiritual doctors known as jhankris invoke shamanic techniques to rid the bodies of humans and animals alike of malignant spirits. They trap the spirit in the body of another animal and sacrifice that animal to banish it.

During the week of October 6, 2013, I was fortunate to spend time in the Nuwakot District of central Nepal. Here I was allowed to participate in a shamanic ceremony in which a Tamang bombo, a local term for jhankri, cleansed the body of a 96-year-old woman of a malevolent spirit. This woman, known as Amaa (mother) by the entire village, was nearly blind. Her wrinkled face and crooked smile had obviously seen and experienced a lot during her lifetime.

The day of the ceremony was auspicious for a reason that I could not discern. At 9 p.m., I was ushered into a dimly-lit, ground-level room that was heavy with the white smoke of a small fire and corn-husk incense. The smoke was so thick that one could literally see it collecting on the ceiling of the red clay room. This was not a problem for my Nepali friends as we walked in, but I had to crouch to avoid inhaling the smoke directly. It was in this setting that the afflicted woman and her two friends sat chatting and coarsely laughing, probably at me, an awkward foreigner.

In the center of the room sat the bombo, a middle-aged man wearing an off-white, long-sleeve shirt and a matching skirt. Strings of bells and rudraksha seeds were draped across his chest, making loud noise with his every movement. The ceremony lasted about six hours, during which time the bombo chanted, danced, and drummed to draw out the entity.

At various points during the event, the drumming and chanting got louder until eventually our spiritual guide started to convulse and dance around the room. Almost immediately a chicken was brought in and raised in a circular motion above Amaa’s head. A yellow string was tied from Amaa to the bombo and a black and white string from the bombo to the chicken. The animal was moved outside of the house, eventually beheaded, and eaten by those in attendance. The spirit was banished.

Although this ritual ceremony was rich in ethnographic detail, the social milieu of the event was almost more interesting to me as a budding anthropologist and student of Buddhism. Based on about a week of conversation, I found that almost every villager identified as Buddhist. Yet as I sat in front of the bombo, it was obvious that the village majority also participated in the blood sacrifice event. Blood sacrifice, I thought, was fundamentally against the Dharma.

It quickly came to me that the village was divided into about three groups based on how strictly one adhered to Buddhist Dharma. This manifested that night as some people being directly in the room during the ritual, some people standing outside of the house occasionally looking in, and, finally, some people who refused to attend the event at all. The strictest Buddhists were naturally not in attendance.

Because I am a vegetarian, I myself was labeled as a Buddhist in the village. I was quickly accepted and respected by my peers, and everyone greatly enjoyed talking to me both about why I do not eat meat and about the Buddhist philosophy I have read. They insisted, however, that I eat meat and drink the local liquor, called raksi, so I obliged. Blood sacrifice, meat, and liquor: three things that I thought fostered attachment, aversion, and delusion. They do not reduce suffering in the way the Buddha taught, so why was it okay to partake in them here?

I found that religious application and theory are applied in a unique manner in Nuwakot. People do not fit into hard categories of religion, per se. Instead, they fleet in between both animistic (Bon-like) and Buddhist practices depending on the type and extent of the ailment, what they need. Lamas and jhanrkis are both sought for spiritual and medical guidance, and there is a seemingly tangible competition between both religious leaders. In the end, the people want balance. Perhaps hard labels overly simplify their belief system. Although people may say one thing, their actual application of the Dharma may be drastically different.