Lamasery Founded In Riccarton

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31724, 6 July 1968, Page 14

Lamasery Founded In Riccarton

A lamasery for the teaching of the wisdom of Tibet is to be dedicated in Christchurch today. It is no mud - brick, fortified monastery, but a vaguely church - like weatherboard house in Clarence Street, Riccarton.

The lamasery will have its own lama Sman-Blk-Pa, known to his friends as Sid. The lama said yesterday that he did not know he was one until about five years ago, when an envoy from the Dalai Lama found him in Rotorua. On the eve of the dedication of his Australasian headquarters the lama put on his carpet slippers and settled down in his comfortable study to tell his tale.

“I was born at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire,” said Sidney Mead, D.D.M., DEM., Member of the Esoteric Brotherhood of the High Himalayas. “At a very early age I trained for the Anglican ministry at Jesus College, Oxford, but I was ordained by the Congregationalists. My first assignment was on the Gold Coast of Africa—Sierra Leone, the white man’s grave. “I wasn’t there long. I was Invalided home with malarial fever. I came out to New Zealand 28 years ago as a free-lance minister, and went to Taumarunui. It was a wild, rough place then—God, she was rough.” Mr Mead skimmed over the next 20 years or so in New Zealand and Tasmania, and came to the turning point in his career.

"The Dalai Lama, now banished to New Delhi, knew there were two lamas in New Zealand,” he said. “They were lamas in previous incarnations and he sent one of his lamas to find them. “He came to Auckland five years ago. No, I can’t tell you his name—he doesn’t want it published. He had two clues: one was that there would be dolphins on each side of the ship when he reached port (and there , were) and the other was that the first man he should seek out was a wood-carver. “He learned that there were some Maori wood-carvers at Rotorua, so he went down there. He found a friend of mine who was a Maori woodcarver and placed several Tibetan treasures—each at least 300 years old—-in his lap. “One was this golden ceremonial dagger used for putting thoughts into a man's brain through the third eye. Another was a blaek jade replica of the sacred buffalo of Tibet, which has been valued at $6OOO. I have it here.

“The lama asked the earver to pick up any objects he recognised as having belonged to him 300 years ago. He picked up three things, but he said the buffalo belonged to another man in Rotorua—me.

No, the wood-carver doesn’t want his name published.” Mr Mead said be was called to the house and told that he and the wood-carver had worked together as lamas in Tibet 300 years ago. He soon came to believe it, and the lama stayed and instructed them both in the “inner wisdom.” “Lamas are born, not made,” he explained. “I’d realised that I was a lama before the Tibetan left us. Here is a copy of an oil painting of me in my former life. It comes from the sacred city of Lhasa.” Unless Mr Mead has had three or four extraneous arms amputated and surgical changes made to the oriental slant of his eyes, the picture does not look much like him. But his wife thinks it does “Especially when I’m asleep.” said Sman-Bla-Pa. “You’ll have to come back when I'm in bed.” As well as the Riccarton lamasery, Mr Mead has a

house in Nelson, one in Auckland, and three more in Tasmania. He was a little vague about the financing of these investments and Of his frequent trips between Tasmania and New Zealand. “We believe in the law of supply," he said. “We have love offerings from our students. Grateful students and well-wishers seem impelled to send something along. We don’t solicit or refuse, but we are never short of capital.” 57 Students He said that students paid no fees for their instruction in “every branch of esoteric wisdom,” except for about $1.20 a month to cover the costs of mimeographing lessons. Fifty-seven students had already enrolled with the Christchurch lamasery. When the faithful gather, the lama does not don the saffron robes of the Buddhist monk. Instead, he wears vestments which he claims to have obtained from the Archbishop of Antioch.

“He is very old and bedridden,” he said, “and he lives in New Plymouth. No. he doesn’t want his name published. He wants to remain in obscurity.” “Main Work Healing” Mr Mead said he wore the archbishop’s robes because they were healing robes. “Our main work is divine healing,” he said. “My wife—Sister Lakin! Devi—and I both heal, and we’ve had some really spectacular results. No, they are not for publication they're too sacred to be published.” The lama claimed to be able to heal animals, people, broken marriages, and diseased trees. In this life, Sman-Bla-Pa has never been to Tibet, nor travelled by yak across the Tibetan plains. But he has asked the Chinese Communists if he could go there. “They told me I could get in,” he said wistfully, “but they could give no assurance that I would ever get out.”