"What name will best describe Tibet in 2000?" As my plane roared over the lofty Himalayan Mountains on its way to Tibet, I found myself passing the time by reviewing Tibet’s long list of popular monikers. Such alluring titles as "Roof of the World," "The Land of Snows," and "Home of Vajrayana Buddhism and Bon Shamanism" came to mind. But these epithets have, since the Communist invasion, become interspersed with a host of less flattering titles, such as "Land of Decimation," "Land of the Downtrodden," and "Land of the Conquered." Thus, I was inexorably led to the above question. I was going to Tibet for a "site inspection" tour, which means that if the ancient country fulfilled certain criteria I would be returning at a later time with a group of tourists. Moreover, if I was going to help them capture the "Tibetan experience," I needed to have one myself. I knew it was possible I would find Tibet to be just a tangled mess of razed monasteries, the sad result of the irreverent Chinese takeover, but Tibet’s spiritual heritage is so exceptional that I decided that if I could find any remnants of it, I would return home satisfied. I met my Tibetan guide soon after gathering up my luggage. He was a short, quiet man named Lobsang. He seemed less pretentious and friendlier than the Chinese airport officials, and he was also physically much different than they. His sharp, weathered features were a stark contrast to the rounded, softer countenances of the Chinese. As Lobsang and I chatted while waiting for two other gringos he would be accompanying, I learned that my guide was of pure Tibetan stock, and as I was to find out during the coming week, this automatically put him in a class one rung lower than the Chinese. He was married with two children, although he had nearly became a monk during his ten years at a Buddhist-run school. I liked his demeanor, which I regarded as "typical" Tibetan; it was both spiritual and unassuming. During the 1½-hour ride into the center of Lhasa, the four of us in the car talked informally about Buddhism and other assorted esoteric subjects. Both Lobsang and I admitted to feeling a mutual affinity for each other and conjectured that it could be related to a previous incarnation. We also talked at length about the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama, the two chief lamas of Tibetan Buddhism who were now in exile or imprisonment. This was to be one of the only times we would talk casually on this subject, as any discussion of the high lamas is taboo in Tibet and is likely to get a person thrown in a Chinese jail as a spy or troublemaker. Tibetans found with photographs of the Dalai Lama get mandatory six-year prison terms.
My disdain for the Chinese regime reached its peak after I checked into my hotel and began exploring the streets of Lhasa. In contrast to the Chinese citizens in their modern Western attire, many of the Tibetans were shabbily dressed, and some had even become street urchins and beggars. But to their credit, I found that the local Tibetans had not lost their faith. As they walked along, many were continuously spinning their prayer wheels and invoking their Buddhist deities with the national mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum. As I passed the Jokhang, I found hundreds circumambulating the temple, while many others performed continuous full-body pranams (gestures of greeting) within its courtyard. While we were in Lhasa, Lobsang took us three gringos to visit the huge monasteries of Drepung and Sera, which still abound with red-robed monks and dark, mysterious chapels illumined by the steady glow of yak butter lamps. Lining the walls of the chapels and halls are shelves stacked with hundreds and thousands of Buddhist texts, some of which are copies of scriptures brought from India one thousand years ago or more. In almost every room there are a variety of statues depicting the past founders and lamas of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as the horrifying weapon-wielding deities that protect the religion. All these assorted images, some of which are twenty or thirty feet tall, are cast in metal and then painted over, often with a gold-based paint. The high point of my stay in Lhasa was visiting the Potala Palace, the nerve center of Tibet and ancient residence of the Dalai Lama. The main door of the palace entered into a long, dimly lit hallway, on one side of which were the elevated and imposing statues of Padmashambava and King Songsten Gampo, the founders of Buddhism in Tibet. After inwardly bowing to these heroes of the past, I continued to the end of the hall, where there was the golden tomb of one of the past Dalai Lamas, the first of many such structures I would encounter in the Potala. These breathtaking tombs are step-pyramids covered with thick sheets of gold. The largest one in the Potala is occupied by the fifth Dalai Lama, the greatest of all past Dalai Lamas and the ancient builder of the Potala Palace. About thirty or forty feet in height, it is covered with thick sheets of gold and hundreds of precious gems. One of the highlights of my tour of the Potala Palace was walking through the Dalai Lama’s private quarters. As I surveyed each room, I envisioned the young lama in his study learning his daily lessons, or in his recreational room passionately tinkering with an assortment of gadgets. When I reached the meditation room, I stopped to feel the waves of energy that still saturate the place, as well as to glimpse the illustration of the blue, multi-armed form of Mahakala attached to the wall. Apparently Mahakala protected the Dalai Lama while he visited the subtle realms of the Buddhist universe.
From Maitreya’s chapel, it was just a short walk to the huge room constructed specially to accommodate the colossal, stupa-tomb of the tenth Panchen Lama. Above this towering gold-plated pyramid is the sacred mandala of the Kalachakra, a form of Tantrism practiced in the legendary kingdom of the immortals, Shamballa. The Panchen Lama has a special connection to Shamballa by virtue of having incarnated there as its king. Past Panchen Lamas have even written guidebooks on how to travel there. The current incarnation of the Panchen Lama was kidnapped by the Communists in 1995, soon after he was installed, and another was chosen by the Chinese to rule in his place. Apparently the Chinese intend to handpick all the high-ranking lamas until Tibet is completely subordinate to China and its communist mandates. Even though Tibet has its "dark" side, I ultimately decided to lead tours there in order to support the native Tibetans. I also want to help them showcase their miraculous achievements, which still survive as their magnificent temples and monasteries. But time may be running out for the survival of Tibet’s spiritual heritage. Lobsang told me that the Chinese are currently trying to phase out Tibetan guides and replace them with their own. In this way, they will be able to control what information is given foreigners, but at the cost of potentially loosing much of Tibet’s true spiritual history and wisdom. Recently, the Chinese imposed a law on the Tibetan people forbidding them from keeping any images of the Buddha within their homes. It’s a sad state of affairs when the natives of what was once the most spiritual country in the world are not even permitted to worship in their own homes anymore. Perhaps we can do something to help. Mark Amaru Pinkham, who took all the photos accompanying this article except for the stock photo of the Potala Palace, is the author of The Return of the Serpents of Wisdom and Conversations with the Goddess. For the past seven years, he has led people through transformative experiences at many of the world’s most sacred areas, such as Tibet, India, Egypt, and Peru. You can check the schedule of upcoming tours at <http://www.newagejourneys.com/>, or phone (800) 231-9811. |
As we entered the city of Lhasa, the road was suddenly flanked on both sides by fancy hotels and shiny new office buildings, the result of the Communists’ 15-year modernization project. The days of itinerant holy men and crowds of monks filling the streets of Tibet’s capital city ended when the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950. At that time, the number of monasteries throughout the country was suddenly reduced from 6,000 to a couple of hundred, and cloistered monks and nuns were forced to shed their robes in favor of apparel more suited for work in the fields.
But the pragmatic Chinese stopped short of religious genocide and preserved some of Tibetan Buddhism’s most important landmarks, such as the Potala Palace (above) and the Jokhang (right), the holiest temple/monastery in Tibet. Today, the Chinese use the Buddhist monasteries to help pad their coffers by charging admission into them, as well as by asking a exorbitant fee for the privilege of taking photographs of their indwelling rooms and images.
After Lhasa, we traveled by land rover to Gyantse and Shigatse. Since it was the monsoon season, many of the roads were washed out, so we were forced to ford broad, rapidly moving rivers. Once in Gyantse we visited the Kumbum Stupa (right), a gigantic stupa (dome-shaped Buddhist shrine) with 108 rooms. Kumbum means "one thousand" and refers to the number of images contained within the stupa’s prodigious number of rooms. As we climbed to each successive level of the stupa and visited its corresponding rooms, I was impressed to find that the one thousand images were not small statuettes, and some even had dimensions to rival those I had seen in Lhasa. Our view at the top of the stupa was spectacular, and allowed us to survey the entire city of Gyantse, as well as the surreal-looking hilltop monastery used by the Tibetans as a fort during the British invasion under Colonel Younghusband at the beginning of the last century.
Of all the monasteries I visited in Tibet, I found the most impressive to be the Tashi Lunpo Monastery (right) in Shagatse. I was in awe almost from the moment I stepped through its main gate. Greeting me were three towering temples with pagoda-style roofs completely covered with gold. But before I could assimilate this eye-opening sight, Lobsang whisked me to a chapel at the back of the compound to see one of the tallest statues in all the world, a sixty-foot golden statue of Maitreya, the future Buddha. I felt humbled by its immensity and the amount of work and devotion that had gone into its construction. According to my guide, the statue took 900 artisans four years to complete.