Nirvana in the Palisades

For the past four years a group of 10 crimson-robed Tibetan monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India has traveled on a nine-month tour of the United States. When the latest tour finishes in early July, the monks will have visited 44 cities in 22 states, performing traditional chants and dances at museums, colleges, elementary schools and libraries. Drepung Gomang organizes the tour to spread a message of inner peace and to raise money for the monastery, which already houses 1,750 monks and accepts 150 new monks who’ve fled Chinese-occupied Tibet each year.

When the Drepung monks stop in Los Angeles they stay in the sprawling homes of Liberty Godshall, an energetic blond activist who lives in Santa Monica, and Kathy Rodman, a sexy mother of six with dyed auburn bangs who lives in the Pacific Palisades. Three years ago, during the monks’ first trip, Rodman offered to house two monks to help out a friend of a friend. Two months later she got a call: All 10 monks were going to show up at her house the following day. Rodman freaked, called her close friend Godshall for help, and Godshall agreed to take half the monks at her place. Over the years a number of other women in the Pacific Palisades have eagerly offered to host the monks in their own sprawling homes, but Godshall and Rodman won’t hear of it.

“They don’t like to share,” said their close friend Karen Fairbank.

GROCERY LIST

In mid-February, one week before the monks arrived in Los Angeles, Rodman, Godshall and Fairbank gathered in Rodman’s sunny kitchen looking out onto the Pacific to make a grocery list.

“Red peppers, green peppers, onions, that special basmati rice,” said Rodman, who was taking notes.

“I already have that,” said Godshall. “But we need a big bag of flour, remember that?”

“We need to find out if they’re Coke drinkers this time or juice drinkers,” said Rodman.

“Ice cream,” said Godshall.

“Tons of ice cream,” said Rodman, writing it down.

“Remember that first year when they wanted yak butter,” said Fairbank, “and we couldn’t find it, oddly enough?”

“You know, the butter is what makes their skin so good,” said Godshall. “Last year I asked them what moisturizer they use in Tibet, because it’s so dry up there, and they said butter.”

“Maybe we should try it,” said Rodman.

“I did,” said Godshall, making a face. “It gets rancid.”

MAGIC MARATHON

The following week the monks arrived in the middle of a torrential downpour. Traveling in a gray 11-seat van nicknamed the Monkmobile, they got stuck in traffic on the 405 and, because they couldn’t see through the rain, took the wrong exit and drove around Santa Monica for an hour. They finally made it to Rodman’s house at 3 in the afternoon. By 6 o’clock that evening, when Godshall and Fairbank arrived with armloads of Gelson’s pasta salad and roast chicken, seven of the monks had settled in the luxuriously cozy living room. Geshe Tenpa Sonam, the leader and, at 41, the second-oldest monk on the tour, was tucked in a corner reading a book in Tibetan. On a daybed Tsewang Dorje posed for Rodman’s 17-year-old son Nick, who took his picture with a camera phone. Rodman’s stepdaughter Simone, in black stiletto boots and tight jeans, picked her way around the room taking medium-format Polaroids of the house guests.

In a small TV room off the front hall the other three monks and their translator had piled on a couch to watch the Duke-Wake Forest basketball game. Television is forbidden in the monastery, so the first year the monks came Godshall prepared her house by covering all the televisions with heavy blankets. After the monks had been there two days one approached her and demurely asked, “Can we watch that?” and pointed at an obscured television.

“Of course,” she said. “It doesn’t offend you?”

“We just watch CNN for news of His Holiness Dalai Lama,” the monk replied.

“But then they were just watching everything,” Godshall said. “One year they stayed up all night watching a magic marathon until 6 in the morning. Not one monk went to sleep.”

THE TEA PUJA

The following morning it was too cold to swim in the pool, so the five monks who stayed at Rodman’s drove the Monkmobile to Godshall’s house, a large 1920s rustic “log cabin” she shares with her husband, the director Ed Zwick, and their two children. The monks hung out in the basement, which has been converted into a game room. Two of them were already immersed in a game of pool, which they played skillfully, and the rest were about halfway through “Bend It Like Beckham,” which played on a large-screen TV.

The only task scheduled that day was an hourlong performance for TreePeople, an environmental organization headquartered in Coldwater Canyon Park, off of Mulholland Drive. Just before it was time to leave, the monks walked out of the house and stood by the pool. A few touched the water, which was letting off steam in the cool morning. “It’s hot!” said one. “No,” said another. “Cold.”

Then Tsewang Dorje, who was wearing black and white Diesel sneakers, found Godshall’s children’s stockpile of water guns. He took a shot at Ngawang Lobsang, who found another stockpile on the other side of the pool. Filling them up and double-fisting them like Chow Yun-Fat, he went after Tsewang Dorje. A few other monks joined in, while the rest ran and hid, shrieking with laughter.

The monastery bought the van two years ago for the monks’ tours. Inside, it looked the same as a van used by a high school soccer team. There were bottles of Gatorade in the cup holders, an empty Dasani water bottle rolled around on the floor, and an almost empty 12-pack of supermarket-brand cola was tucked under the first row of bench seats.

Gyaltsen Thurpa videotaped the view from Mulholland Drive with a Samsung 880x, and Tenzin Tenkyong practiced his English, reading aloud each word he saw. “Stop sign,” he said quietly, enunciating each consonant carefully. “Temescal.” “Bump.”

When they perform, the monks wear saffron robes over their crimson ones. Two of them play long horns, and two play small double-reed instruments that look like oboes. At TreePeople they performed four chants and spoke briefly about the importance of the environment. The 50 people in the audience, most of whom work for the organization, sat silently in the amphitheater in barn jackets and boots, closed their eyes and swayed while the monks -- unsmiling now, some looking serious, some looking bored -- blessed the trees and sang for world peace.

That evening they watched the Philadelphia 76ers play the Seattle SuperSonics, keeping a close eye on their favorite player, Allen Iverson, who has the Tibetan word for “power” tattooed on his left arm. Tenzin Tenkyong practiced his reading again. “Lincoln” he read off the screen. “Phil-a-del-phi-a.” “Nate McMillan.”

At 7 the monks went upstairs to Godshall’s living room for the daily tea puja, an offering ceremony that consists of pouring tea into a cup while chanting. The singing was led by Sopa Gyamtso, a rosy-cheeked, smiling monk who is one of those in charge of prayers back at the monastery. Singing with an open throat, he made a low, resonant sound that filled the room. Rodman and Godshall sat in the circle made by the monks, looking around at them reverentially.

“Wasn’t that the most incredible thing?” Godshall said later, sitting with Rodman in the kitchen.

“Oh, my God. I loved the way the guy who was leading it was so intent,” said Rodman. “The way his brows were furrowed.”

Godshall nodded vigorously. “Oh, I know,” she said. “And the way the light hit his cheekbones. He was like a Vermeer. A monk Vermeer.”

THE FIRE PUJA

The next day the only thing on the monks’ schedule was a fire puja that afternoon at the Malibu Colony home of Carol Moss, a longtime supporter of the Tibetan cause. The five monks staying at Rodman’s aimlessly explored the house. Tenzin Tenkyong flipped through an album of wedding photos. Gyaltsen Tharpa watched “MacGyver” and sorted through the jewelry they sell at their concerts. After lunch cooked by Nganwang WanChuck (white rice and a stew of bok choy and steak -- the monks eat red meat at every meal but breakfast on tour and at home), they wrapped themselves up in their robes and decided to watch a Mr. Bean video after nixing “Star Wars” for being too violent and “Harry Potter” for being too fake. It wasn’t the first time they had seen Mr. Bean, but they laughed hysterically as the mute Englishman fell asleep in a church, tried to pack a tiny suitcase and waited in line to shake hands with nobility.

Before they left for Malibu, Rodman met them outside with a stack of crimson Harvard sweatshirts, from the alma mater of her husband, psychoanalyst Bob Rodman. “It’s going to be really cold on the beach,” she said. “You guys should all bundle up.”

The color matched their robes perfectly.

The group’s translator, a monk named Thupten Kelsang, came out of the house wearing a light blue University of Chicago sweatshirt. The other monks pointed at him, chattered in Tibetan and laughed. Gyaltsen Tharpa translated for Rodman. “They say he looks like he’s from the ‘hood,” he said, laughing. Giggling, Kelsang went back into the house and changed into a Harvard sweatshirt like everyone else.

Twenty minutes later, after sitting in rush-hour traffic on the PCH, the monks walked past the Tibetan prayer flags hung around Moss’ front door and pointed at the snow lions on the Tibetan rugs in her front hall. Moss, who wore her frizzy white hair in a braid and was eccentrically dressed in fuzzy purple slipper socks, loose-fitting black leather pants and a red sweater, greeted them with a few words in Tibetan and directed them to set up the fire puja on the beach.

Moss had invited about 50 people to the fire puja, for which she made a generous donation to the monks, and whose purpose is to remove obstacles. “It’s mostly neighbors and friends,” she said, walking through the high-ceilinged living room to check on the food in the kitchen. “A couple from New York who are renting up the beach, an Irish man who is writing a book on Tibetan Buddhism, a Vietnamese aesthetician. Anybody who I thought would enjoy it.”

Outside, there were three more sets of prayer flags flapping in the wind. The semicircle of monks took up half the deck, so the guests were squeezed onto the other side. Godshall’s husband, Ed Zwick, was sitting at the far edge of the deck, the ocean breeze ruffling his curly hair. “So I was on my way here when I get a phone call asking me what I was doing tonight,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m on my way to Malibu to go watch 10 Tibetan monks perform a fire puja, what about you?’ ”

“Did you totally love saying that?” asked Godshall.

The monks don’t have the fire puja chants memorized, so they read from photocopied scraps of paper. Moss sat in the center of the front row of chairs, clutching a small bundle of irises, which she would toss in the fire as an offering when the chanting was over. Dressed now in a calf-length shearling coat, she gazed serenely at the monks in their Harvard sweatshirts, bent over their Tibetan cheat sheets. It was hard to hear them over the crashing of the waves. They chanted for 30 minutes and then there was momentary silence.

“That is it,” Kelsang said finally. “The fire puja is now over.”

Moss’ guests gathered their offerings -- flowers, fruits, handwritten prayers -- and headed down to the beach.

SACRED OBJECTS

The next day was the start of the Tibetan New Year, and the monks had stayed up late the night before, calling their friends in the monastery. In Tibet (and the Tibetan diaspora), New Year’s is a time for celebration, but the monks were scheduled to perform in Santa Ana at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. The current exhibit, “Tibet: Treasures From the Roof of the World,” features almost 200 sacred objects never before seen in the West. It has been controversial among Tibetan rights groups because there is no mention of the Dalai Lama or the fact that the Chinese government has destroyed 6,000 monasteries and temples since it took control of the country in 1951. The Tibetan Assn. of Southern California had been fighting with the Bowers for months on this topic and decided to stage a protest in front of the museum the same day the monks were scheduled to perform.

Godshall and Rodman, hoping to avoid the protesters, arrived with the monks at the museum at 10 o’clock and snuck them in the back entrance. After the monks had finished unloading the van -- including a large blowup photo of the Dalai Lama they had had made at a Kinko’s the previous day -- they had half an hour to look at the exhibit before the museum officially opened.

Rodman and Godshall moved slowly through the galleries, pointing out how they had been altered to feel more like a monastery. “Ooh, this is our favorite,” said Rodman, pointing at a case of triple-edged ceremonial daggers. The text explained that they were used to strike the three enemies -- greed, hatred and ignorance.

The monks almost immediately disappeared. Some milled around the costume area. “Big hat, no?” said Gyaltsen Tharpa, pointing to a large gold-plated crown. He pantomimed putting it on his head and falling under the weight.

But not all the monks were cheerful. Tenzin Tenkyong sat down in front of a 2-foot-tall statue of a bodhisattva with a woman wrapped around his torso. “I feel confused,” he said. “In Tibet everything is in a monastery. It belongs in the monastery. Now it is here, behind glass.

“I feel confused,” he said again, softly.

MOUNTAINTOP

A few days later the sun was out for the first time during the monks’ stay in Los Angeles. After a performance in the morning at the Village School in the Pacific Palisades they decided to take a sightseeing trip to Hollywood, stopping first at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to compare hand sizes with John Wayne and Ava Gardner. Then they headed to Griffith Park for a hike. Genden Kyatso, a Tibetan activist, took them to Berlin Forest, a steep trail that leads to a summit offering a panoramic view of Los Angeles, from the Pacific to Atwater Village. The monks playfully ran around the trail, racing each other and finding shortcuts through the brush. Tenzin Tenkyong, out of breath and sweating, pointed to his thighs and said, “Tomorrow pain.”

Tsewang Dorje practiced the slang he had learned from their host in Indiana. “Yo, yo, what’s up, what’s up?” he said. “What’s up, dog?”

At the top of the mountain they stayed for 20 minutes, taking pictures of each other from every angle. “The mountains look like Tibet,” Tenzin Gyalpo said.