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The Nechung Oracle of Tibet
I visited India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following — which I wrote in a travel journal in Dharamshala, India — is from my 2008 trip.
Monastery of the Nechung Oracle
We stepped outside and entered the nearby Monastery of the Nechung Oracle, who works with all four sects of Tibetan Buddhism. We entered to the right a small shrine room with a large dark bowl of a strange, fermented brew. Bottles of whiskey and scotch sat on the same table, below a glass cabinet. Hmm. These are ingredients for the Oracle’s altered state, his weird trance in which he makes predictions in an extinct, ancient version of the Tibetan language, while an interpreter jots them down. When the Oracle is in this state, he is believed to be channeling a deity, although I’m more inclined to suspect him of channeling a ghost, like a Victorian medium holding séance. It’s a theory, anyway. Tibet has a tradition of numerous oracles in different regions, and they are frequently female; the one who’s famous, however, is the Dalai Lama’s traditional Nechung Oracle.
Around the area that includes the Tibetan Exile Government building, the Tibetan archives library and the Oracle monastery, I twice saw benches flanking the wide entrance to temples or other buildings, and on these benches stray dogs were curled up.