INSIDE LHASA

Evening Star, Issue 23665, 27 August 1940, Page 12

INSIDE LHASA

A SPIRITUAL QUEST AVERAGE MONK RATED LOW Tibet is one of tho few countries left on tho map that can still wake in ns emotions similar to those felt by Shakespeare’s contemporaries when they tried to imagine what Jifo was like In the .Indies or tho Americas (writes Campbell Nairue, in ‘ John o’ London’s Weekly ’). Wo have lost the faculty of believing in such prodigies of Nature as men “ whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,” and wo are bound to accept the verdict of science that the Abominable Snowmen of tho Himalayas are just a species of bear. But the spell Tibet casts over tho Western mind does not depend wholly on the notion that its pinnacles may bo tho home of some unrecorded physical phenomenon. Its remoteness from the outer world, its reluctance to admit strangers—that is enough to invest it with mystery and poetry. Alost travellers who cross its frontier do so as mountaineers, botanists, qr explorers. Tho journey undertaken by Afr Theos Bernard and described in ‘ Land of a Thousand Buddhas ’ was essentially a spiritual quest. His American parents had been following the teachings of the East all their lives, but that did not prevent them from trying to turn him into a lawyer. A few years after he had qualified he decided that the law was not for him: “ I could not see any purpose in material success, and there was a growing yearning in me for inner development. I was sure that my greatest happiness was to bo found in striving towards that goal.” Ho, had long been attracted by Buddhist teachings, and he now determined that he would tost the claims made for them by putting himself through the required training. The first step was to learn all that could bo learned from hooks. The next was to study the wisdom of Buddha at its fount. GARGANTUAN MEALS. He wont to India, and after a period of preparation under an Indian teacher he set out for Tibet. The purpose of • his visit smoothed the way, and the Tibetan officials hastened to- do him honour. Their hospitality was sometimes embarrassing. He found, for example, that Tibetan meals are on a Gargantuan scale. One of the gastronomic ordeals he bad to endure on the first stage of his journey was a banquet of more than 50 courses:— “ I remember that when, after a couple of hours of feasting, pineapple was brought in, I felt inward relief, imagining that this must be the end! But no! There were 18 other courses "fter this, and it must have taken another hour and more to consume them.” Many of those dishes had been imported from China and India. It astonished him, as well it might, that his hostoss’had not tho slightest idea how they wore prepared: “A woman of that class had nothing to do with cooking or, for that matter, with anything that might he thought of as work.” NON-STOP TEA DRINKING. Dr Johnson boasted that he could drink tea at any' hour of the day or night. Even so, it is probable that, a Tibetan could have drunk him under the table. Mr Bernard was appalled by the amount of tea consumed:— “ Fifty cups are a modest beginning, if you go in for it at all. If you are an ordinary tea drinker you may con-

sumo somo 20 cups in the course of a meal, which is spread over several hours. And you take a half-dozen cups with each brief call you make. To refuse renewed helpings of tea when your cup is empty is regarded as an insult to your host, so if you are clever you learn artfully to sip.” Mr Bernard’s goal was tho sacred city of Lhasa. lie not only received permission to go there, but was allowed to live within its walls—a concession never before granted to an American. The first dignitary on whom he called was the King Regent of Tibet: “ Never shall I forget the excitCmicnt as I stepped across the sacred threshold and looked into the sparkling eyes of this young man, who is not yet 1)0 years of age and head of the last theocracy on earth. . . . He was standing in his golden box watching with those sparkling eyes of his every move 1 made and the rhythm of every muscle of my body as 1 tried to merge with the vibrations of the room.” THE REGENT’S BLESSING. Tlie Regent attributed his deep interest in Tibetan Buddhism to a past life in that part of the world as a spiritual leader and teacher, and when the audience was over he put round his visitor’s neck a small red silken scarf, tied with a triple knot. Mr Bern aril did not realise the full significance of • this—a token that he had received the Regent’s personal blessing—until ho saw people crowding to their doers to look at him as he rode homeward. . The mob on, this occasion was friendly, but not long afterwards he had a narrow escape. While he was taking photographs of a religious festival' someone in the crowd threw a stone. Others followed, hitting him on the shoulder anil head. He had the presence of mind not to show fear or anger:— I straightened my shoulders, lifted my head high, and directed my eyes straight ahead, anil, with the air of a great dignitary of the faith, I advanced with a rapid, firm stride, tramping down anyone who did übt stand aside. I turned neither right nor left, nor looked at any individual, nor sail! a. single word. The crowd opened before me, and in the effort to draw back some persons foil, and I without much ado merely walked over them.” INCARNATION OF.A SAINT. Tho Lamaist officials had now decided that ho was the reincarnation of an ancient Tibetan saint. Pux-ification ceremonies were arranged so he could regain contact with his inner self; that is, with the part of him that was presumed to have had a previous existence. The T’ri llimpoche officiated—highest religious dignitary in Tibet in the absence of a Dalai Lama—and one supposes that this was equivalent to the baptising of a foreign visitor to England by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Mr Bernard gives this account of the final initiation which took place at dawn in the private shrine of the T’ri Rimpoehe:— i “ The sun had not yet come up, and tho light within was very dim; there was but the dull flicker of a few small butter lamps before his altar. I arranged myself in the customary meditative posture, and the two of ns remained in dead silence to greet the now clay, symbolic of a now world for me. Tims we remained for three hours, like two frozen images, but the light and the speech within were more illumining, more eloquent, more active, than anything 1 had ever-experienced before.”

Mr Bernard said that he would he willing to remain in Lhasa for the rest of Ins days, but he was told that since ho had been born in the Western world he had some pre-destinod purpose there and must return to fulfil it. So in due course he left Tibet, taking with him copies of the sacred books, the ‘ Kangyur ’ and 1 Tengyur.’ His intention was to have these translated, but we may have to wait a long time before they are given to the "world. The ‘ Tengyur,’ he assures us, runs to 333 volumes: “If the translation were actually started, and all arrangements made for its publication, it might be 20 or 30 years before the dream could become a reality.” INDIFFERENCE TO POVERTY. Would the project bo worth while? Perhaps: but there are passages here and there in this book which suggest that even Mr Bernard has his doubts. Ho recognises that the Tibetan way of life is by no means ideal. Preoccupation with the soul is apt to lead to neglect of the body, and Mr Bernard supplies ample evidence that the streets of Lhasa would he a sanitary inspector’s nightmare. Another black mark against Tibetan society is its indifference to poverty and suffering. (Compare Europe in the Age of Faith.) An American could not help being struck by fho contrast between the destitution of the hordes of mendicants and the opulence of the late Dalai Lama’s golden tomb. Ho had this uncomfortable glimpse of a Tibetan prison:— j *' Wo entered into a conversation with one poor fellow. He told us that he had stolen a couple of charm-boxes about five years ago, and ho had no idea when he would bo a'oleased. What actually happens is that the Government forgets whom they had put in and for how long, which means that once in, always in, unless one day the Government decides to win a little grace by releasing some of its prisoners; and on so auspicious a day any man may he the lucky one.” THE MONKS OF DREPUNG. Mr Bernard has clearly no high opinion of the average Tibetan monk Writing of the Drepung Monastery, outside Lhasa, an enormous warren housing nearly 10,000 monks, he says that only one out of every thousand is sincerely striving to gain spiritual insight. The fact that he allows himself to make such a wild statement—wild, because obviously, the truth cannot be known—indicates that in some measure Isis Tibetan experiences were disillusion, ing. Elsewhere he is startlingly outspoken : “ I imagine that if I were an integral part of this society, I might bo filling the role of the person who is now incarcerated in the dungeon of the Potala, with his eyes gouged out, while his son, apparelled in yellow silk, is sitting among the ranks of the minor officials in the presence of the Regent They don't seem to have as much valour in Tibet as there is in a negro running through a graveyard on a dark night And the reason is Religion—the deep-est-rooted evil of mankind—the sooner it is done away with, the more quickly will humanity begin to rise. 'When I say Religion, I moan this organised control, this dictating of sainthood.” There were, of course, aspects of Tibetan society that delighted him; its enjoyment of life, its unsolfconseious happiness. But one wonders whether voluntary imprisonment in Lhasa might not have become irksome, even to a man who is by vocation an ascetic. Had he remained wo should not have had this book, and a good book it is, though the colloquial, somewhat chirpy stylo is oddly at variance with the loftiness of the author's ideals.