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perhaps for the devotees, here at last is unfettered Buddhist practice possible, the end of a long drawn-out battle with communism. I thought of the Black churches that arose in the South of our nation once the slaves were freed—organizing vehicles for the oppressed and out-cast, a means for self-validation and orientation as they face a precarious future. If the Dalai Lama knows they faithfully exist in Ulan Udi, where you and I don’t exist, there is a present and perhaps a beyond.
Buddhism will probably never be a major force in Russia. It is the religion of the orientals, the buryat and Mongolians, living in that part of the world.
At Ulan Udi I began to feel disoriented. I had no assimilated understanding of where I was. I seemed “an island castaway” as Robert Louis Stevenson described himself at one point in his Travels with a Donkey. Analyzing this feeling as we went along, I decided it was a consequence of believing I would never be there again. When I have traveled before, I have always felt I should be just where I was and that I would return. There was something about entering Russia from Mongolia that left me hanging. I did not believe I would ever get back to Ulan Udi, possibly because I didn't hear that place calling me. I blame myself, not Ulan Udi.
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