Haunting Voices from Beyond: Delog Narratives and Literary Anxieties of Karmic Retribution

In her novel, Elsewhere (2022), Alexis Schaitkin depicts a mid-20th century Shangri-la somewhere in verdant mountains at the end of a train line, its inhabitants cut off from the rest of the world except for trade. In this dark tale of speculative fiction, seemingly at random, mothers disappear each year, taken by the clouds into the eerie mists of the unknown. This “affliction” binds the community who gather afterwards to burn all photos of her and redistribute her belongings, while the remaining young mothers anxiously speculate about why the clouds chose her. It is not until the protagonist Vera herself has a child and flees the town out of anxiety over signs of disappearing that the reader glimpses a disturbing truth. In the tradition of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948) or Ursula LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973), Elsewhere takes up small-town traditions that work against its citizens and depicts in intimate detail the joys and anxieties of motherhood. Leaving for “elsewhere” is both Vera’s enactment of and liberation from its “affliction” in an excruciating loss of home, identity, and social moorings.

In Tibetan and Himalayan literature, delog narratives similarly play at the edge of the known and unknown, here and elsewhere, in the ultimate loss of identity—death. Unlike ordinary people, the revenant or delog (’das log) can venture into the realms beyond death, losing consciousness for a period of time, and then return to tell about it. The tales of their visionary journeys are both a literary enactment of the terrifying winds of karma in the bardo (bar do) that compel the deceased toward rebirth and a soteriological testament to the delog’s own liberating capacities in rescuing beings from torment in various hells. Such tales both edify ordinary people about the workings of karma and generate anxieties about death and rebirth. The listener and reader of these accounts are left to reflect on their own moral choices and the destinies of loved ones. What if a relative is suffering in hell? What if something we ourselves have done leads to such suffering? This “what if” question is highlighted in conversation with speculative fiction.

This paper takes up the issue of literary anxiety, the creation of speculative scenarios in literature that invoke anxieties about possible futures, individual or collective. We turn to the visionary autobiography of Kunzang Chökyi Drolma (b. 1869–70) also known as Zhukjung Khandroma, titled The All-Illuminating Crystal Mirror: The Meaningful to Behold [Life] of the Delog Kunzang Chökyi Drolma. Dictated to a scribe in 1940 at the age of 71, it chronicles her visionary encounters with hell beings who tell of their suffering and plead for help from the living. Raised as a nomad child herding animals in youth before having her first near-death experience and becoming a nun, she is remembered in association with Zhukjung Nunnery in the Do Valley of Golok near Dodrupchen Gompa in eastern Tibet, where she lived and taught. To this day, contemporary masters from the region extol her virtues, and her songs circulated beyond her autobiography in the decades after her passing. For example, her poignant song of a guard dog—cold, hungry and in chains—is said to have brought tears to an entire village.

Kunzang Chökyi Drolma takes a distinctive interest in the more-than-human. In doing so, she joins the ranks of influential Buddhist figures in eastern Tibet advocating for the compassionate treatment of animals, from Zhabkar and Patrul Rinpoche in the nineteenth century to the contemporary Tsultrim Lodrö. Yaks and other livestock send messages back to the living through Kunzang Chökyi Drolma, asking humans to refrain from pulling out their hair to make wool, forcing them to carry heavy loads, and making them endure cruel methods of slaughter. In visceral images, the deceased are depicted in the bardo chased and punished by the animals they harmed while alive or tortured in hell by the very methods of slaughter (such as strangulation) they used on livestock. In this way, her account is steeped in the nomadic way of life and also induces anxieties about its local customs and traditions, particularly with respect to karmic retribution for the mistreatment of animals.

This question of “what if” in the visionary narratives of delogs is highlighted in conversation with speculative fiction. Just as works of speculative fiction such as The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Parable of the Sower (1993) address social and ecological concerns through dystopian scenarios, delog narratives animate the Tibetan Buddhist imagination of rebirth with images of hellish torment. In this way, both types of literature amplify anxiety about dreadful possible futures as a warning and call to action. This is explicit in delog narratives which contain exhortations to repent evil deeds, perform purificatory rituals, engage in wholesome conduct, and earn merit to improve one’s rebirth prospects. Kunzang Chökyi Drolma further exhorts the living to liberate animals (tshe thar) and refrain from slaughter. Just as the disappearance of women in Elsewhere leads to scrutiny over the minor everyday choices in motherhood, the delog narrative of Kunzang Chökyi Drolma and its moving songs invites scrutiny over the ethical choices and local customs of Tibetan herders, hunters, and farmers in nomadic Golok.

Where does the literary anxiety and “what if” speculation lead the listener or reader? One place is disenchantment with local customs: the myth of the “affliction” that leads young mothers to flee their homeland in Elsewhere and cruel practices in animal husbandry and slaughter to be renounced in The All-Illuminating Crystal. However, the former leaves the protagonist and reader in an existential crisis (elsewhere turns out to be no better than home), whereas Kunzang Chökyi Drolma offers a model of liberation possible in a morally constituted cosmos and encourages ritual and ethical responses to anxieties over karmic retribution. Indeed, while Vera flees out of fear of disappearing into the mists, Kunzang Chökyi Drolma’s compassionate and visionary activity makes her socially visible and valued by her community, regarded as a realized master as evidenced by her epithet, Zhukjung Khandroma.

Sources

Kun bzang chos kyi sgrol ma. Kun bzang chos kyi sgrol ma’i ’das log mthong ba don ldan kun gsal shel gyi me long. In Mkha’ ’gro’i chos mdzod chen mo (vol. 18: 15–141), edited by Bla rung ārya tāre’i dpe tshogs rtsom sgrig khang. Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 2017.

Schaitkin, Alexis. Elsewhere: A Novel. New York: Celadon Books, 2022.