Between Siliguri and Teesta Bridge there were some forty landslides. Once I had to tranship, scrambling knee-deep in mud along the mountainside for about thirty yards, with a sheer drop to the swollen waters of the river far below.
Kalimpong
A QUARTER OF A MILE UPSTREAM, the graceful white arch of Teesta Bridge floated like a dream between the steep tree-clad slopes. Within a few minutes we were across, and the jeep that had been sent to fetch us from Siliguri Station was shooting up the mountainside along a succession of hairpin bends that lifted us several hundred feet above the river every few minutes. Already the figures on the bridge looked no bigger than ants, while the river itself lay like a ribbon of grey-green jade between the mountains. Every time we swung round a bend new perspectives opened up before us, each one vaster and more awe-inspiring than the last. Behind us, to the west, loomed the mauve and indigo masses of the Darjeeling hills, while across the River Rungeet, to the north, the mountains of Sikkim flowed in ridge upon smoke-blue ridge to the far horizon. Soon the air grew quite cold, though the sky was a vivid blue and the sunshine more brilliant than ever. We were above the clouds. Looking down, we could see them drifting in fleecy white masses down the valley, following the course of the river. With the change of altitude came a change of vegetation. Sal forest gave way to fir and pine, while the bamboo became smaller and less frequent. Every few hundred yards an explosion of pure scarlet proclaimed the presence of the giant poinsettias. Thatched cottages flashed past. Shops, shrines.... When we were seven or eight miles from Teesta Bridge, and nearly 3,000 feet above sea level, thatched cottages began to change into English bungalows with tiled roofs and trim gardens and soon, strung out along the saddleback before us, I saw the town of Kalimpong.
It did not take Kashyap-ji and me many days to realize that we were in a new world. On our arrival we had been accommodated in a two-storey building just above Ninth Mile, and every day we walked through the main street to Tenth Mile, where a Newar merchant whom Kashyap-ji had once met in Calcutta gave us our morning meal. Most of the shops that were jammed up against one another on either side of the road seemed to belong to Indians, but the people passing up and down were of a dozen different national origins. By far the greater number were Nepalis of various castes and tribes, many in traditional Mogul-type costume, with kukris thrust into their waist-bands and enormous wicker baskets on their backs. Indians were well represented, though, and included Marwari merchants in saffron-yellow headgear, turbaned and bearded Sikhs, Bihari sweepers with long crown-locks, and Bengali clerks. There were also stocky Bhutanese in striped knee-length gowns, a few Chinese - the older generation in black silk trouser-suits - and a sprinkling of small, shy Lepchas from the forests of Sikkim. There was even the occasional pink-faced European, more often than not with a big black bible clutched beneath the arm.
Most striking of all, however, were the Tibetans, who so far as numbers went were second only to the Nepalis. Tall and barrel-chested, with gowns kilted up to the knee, ten-gallon hats thrust far back on their heads, and short swords dangling at their sides, they swaggered down the main street looking as though they owned the place. In a sense of course they did own it. Kalimpong owed its undoubted prosperity to the fact that it was the focal point of the trade with Tibet, exporting such things as cigarettes, kerosene, fountain-pens, and wrist-watches to the Land of the Lamas, and receiving in exchange wool, yak-tails, and musk. In the absence of motorable roads, everything had to be transported on the backs of mules. As we approached Tenth Mile, Kashyap-ji and I often saw forty or fifty of the heavily-laden beasts coming along the road in a great cloud of dust to the accompaniment of a tuneful jingle-jangle of mule bells and much cheerful shouting and whip-cracking on the part of the red-cheeked muleteers. Whether they were arriving or departing we had no means of telling, but men and beasts alike seemed in good condition, while the leader-mule tossed his red plumes proudly as he stepped out at the head of the caravan.
But much as Nepalis and Indians, Bhutanese and Sikkimese, Europeans and Tibetans, contributed to the colourfulness of the scene, it was not simply on account of their presence that Kalimpong was a new world. The whole atmosphere of the place was different. Coming as we did from the plains, where only too often life stagnates in its accustomed channels, we experienced everything as being not only fresher and cleaner but more sparkling and alive. It was like drinking ice-cold champagne after warmed-up soup. People went about their perfectly ordinary affairs in a perfectly ordinary manner, but whether on account of the altitude, or for some other reason, there was a sense of exhilaration in the air, as though it was the festive season, or as though they were all on holiday. Missionaries alone excepted, there was a smile on every face, and while it would be an exaggeration to say that there was a song on everybody's lips we could hardly put our head out of the window without hearing, loud and clear in the distance, the cheerful melody of the latest popular film song. And the colours! On account of these alone Kalimpong would have been a new world. From the blues and purples of the mountains to the reds and yellows of the flowers in the Nepali women's hair, they were all preternaturally vivid, as in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Sometimes, indeed, they glowed with such intensity that everything seemed to be made of jewels. And all the time, above the mirth and the music, above the life and the colour, above the steadfastness of nature and the security of civilization - above everything - there were the snows.
On the morning of our arrival they had been veiled, and we had seen nothing of them, but since then they had shone forth every day, and often for the whole day. With the blue of the valleys at their feet and the blue of the sky above their heads, the shimmering white masses stretched from end to end of the horizon majestic beyond belief. Since the building where Kashyap-ji and I were staying faced north, we had an uninterrupted view of Mount Kanchenjunga, the second highest peak in the entire Himalayan range and the third highest in the world. In the early morning it was particularly beautiful. Looking out of the window just before dawn, I would see it glimmering ghostly in the blue twilight, more like ice than snow. Then, as the sun started rising, the bluish tip of the summit would be flushed by a fiery pink that, in a matter of minutes, had travelled all the way down the peak. Soon the whole range would be a mass of pink embers glowing against the pale blue sky. Pink would change to crimson, crimson to apricot, apricot to the purest, brightest gold. Finally, as the sun cleared the horizon, gold would change to silver and silver to dazzling white. On particularly fine days the mountain wore a white plume, almost like a plume of smoke. According to the experts, this was caused by a strong wind blowing the loose snow from its summit. But whether it wore its plume or not, and regardless of the time of day, I was never tired of looking up at Mount Kanchenjunga as it sat enthroned in the sky. Totally absorbed in itself though it was, and utterly oblivious of my existence, the great white peak nonetheless seemed to speak to me. What it said, I did not know, but perhaps, if I stayed in Kalimpong long enough, and looked hard enough, I would come to understand.
Though I did not then know it, I was to stay there for the next fourteen years. After weeks of indecision, Kashyap-ji had finally made up his mind not to return to the Benares Hindu University. Instead, he would spend some time meditating in the jungles of Bihar, where a yogi whom he knew had a hermitage. Perhaps, as he meditated, it would become clear to him what he ought to do next. Meanwhile, I was to remain in Kalimpong. `Stay here and work for the good of Buddhism,' he told me, squeezing himself into the front seat of the jeep that was taking him to Siliguri. `The Newars will look after you.' There was little that I could say. Though I did not really feel experienced enough to work for Buddhism on my own, and though I doubted whether the Newars were quite so ready to look after me as Kashyap-ji supposed, the word of the guru was not to be disobeyed. Bowing my head in acquiescence, I paid my respects in the traditional manner, Kashyap-ji gave me his blessing, and the jeep was off.
I was left facing Mount Kanchenjunga.
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If Darjeeling was the Queen of the Hill Stations then Kalimpong, smaller and situated at a lower altitude, was undoubtedly the princess, as least so far as north-east India was concerned. The town's importance was due to its position as a terminal of the Lhasa-India trade-route, which, having traversed the Chumbi Valley and negotiated the Julep Pass, cut across the south-eastern corner of Sikkim to wind its way round the foothills and finally peter out among the dust and mule-droppings of Topkhana, as the Tibetan quarter at Tenth Mile was called. Being the terminal that it was, Kalimpong had a sizeable Tibetan population that included, besides merchants and muleteers, officers of the Tibetan government and maroon monks.
Most Tibetans; they never knew that my name was Sangharakshita, because nobody ever used it. During the first few years they called me Injigelung, which meant English Monk. And when I had been there a few years they called me Injigelung Geshe Rimpoche, which is much more respectful. But they always keep these titles going. They never descend to use your personal name. This would be regarded as very familiar and disrespectful.
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I settled in Kalimpong, and Kalimpong ‑ the name is usually interpreted as meaning 'a skull capsized' or ‘a capsized skull' ‑ a small town in the Eastern Himalayas, 4,000 ft above sea level, and from Kalimpong, from practically all quarters of Kalimpong, we had a wonderful view of the snow ranges of the Himalayas. I can see them in my mind's eye even as I speak. And among these snow ranges, among these snow peaks, is the second highest peak in the world - Kanchenjunga - which means 'The Five Treasures of the Snow'. And one could see Kanchenjunga, except during the rainy season, almost every day, just standing there against the blue sky; way up, as it were, in the blue sky. The whole area, in fact, was a very, very inspiring area indeed. One could say that Kanchenjunga was a very inspiring sight; it certainly was; and especially when one saw it practically every day ‑ one never got tired of looking at it ‑ this great snowy peak right up there in the blue sky, with the clouds far below, wearing its white plume, very often, where the snow was blown off it by the winds. But the whole area was very, very inspiring. I remember the atmosphere was very, very clear. You could see, very often, for many, many miles. The atmosphere, in fact, was so clear - and I believe that of Tibet, which of course was very near, just a few miles away, was even clearer ‑ so that in this very clear atmosphere everything stood out with greater vividness, with a very strange, almost hypnotic, vividness of colour. One seemed to see the colours much more clearly than one saw them down in the plains; much more clearly, certainly, than one sees them in this country ‑ even in Brighton! And sometimes it seemed, especially just after the rains, as though everything was made of jewels, that one was living in a world made of jewels, the colours of everything were so bright and so vivid. The white, of course, the snowy white of the mountains, the intense blue of the blue sky, the vivid green of the vegetation, and the scarlet and the yellow and the blue of all the wonderful mountain flowers. And also the gay costumes of the people, whether they were Nepalese or whether they were Tibetans or Bhutanese or Sikkimese, or even Indians. The only people who weren't very colourful in appearance, I'm sorry to say, were the Europeans, especially the missionaries who usually wore black.
So in this world, made, as it were, of jewels, in Kalimpong, I lived for fourteen years, and I founded a small monastery there after seven years a small vihara; and I had people staying with me from time to time. And all during this period, during these fourteen years, I was getting deeper and deeper into the study and the practice of Buddhism. And I had, fortunately, contact with quite a number of teachers, especially teachers from Tibet, who were at that time beginning to come out, including some very great teachers indeed, and from them I was so fortunate as to receive various ordinations and initiations.
But during those fourteen years I didn't stay all the time in Kalimpong, I sometimes went down to the plains, as it were just to see what it was like, at first. Went down sometimes to Calcutta, sometimes across the sub‑continent to Bombay, and also to Delhi; visited sometimes the Buddhist holy places like Buddhagaya and Saranath and Lumbini and Rajgrha and Nalanda, and eventually, towards the end of the fourteen years, or rather during the second seven of the fourteen years, I became involved with a very big movement, that is to say the movement of mass‑conversion of ex‑untouchables, ex‑untouchable Hindus, to Buddhism. That again is another story; a very lengthy story. But most of the time I spent in Kalimpong, and there I did, also, a certain amount of literary work, especially during the rainy season. I must say that I used to enjoy the rainy seasons in Kalimpong very, very much, it's a very beautiful season of the year; it's not cold, it's still quite warm, but all day, or most of the day, the rain simply comes down. You hear it just peacefully falling on the roof, peacefully falling on the leaves of the trees, peacefully falling on the crops in the fields; Just peacefully falling down. And everything becomes so quiet and so hushed. And of course there are no visitors, so you can get on with your work, you can get on with your meditation, you can get on with your writing. So the rainy season was my favourite time for quite a number of years, for writing. So this was my life; this was my life in India; this was my life in Kalimpong, for fourteen years. This was my life until 1964.
Begging Round
A monk's robes and his bowl were his two wings, and equipped with them he was free to go, or to stay, wherever he pleased, dependent on all, and dependent on none. With robe and bowl, therefore, I made my way from the Dharmodaya Vihara to the bazaar at ten-thirty each morning, not walking at a respectful distance behind Kashyapji as before, but on my own. As the custom was, I went barefoot, with lowered head, and did not speak to anyone on the way. According to the most austere tradition, a monk should gather alms without omitting any house but accepting from all impartially, whether rich or poor, believing or unbelieving. Kashyapji had chosen not to follow this procedure. We had accordingly `begged' - the Buddhist monk is not supposed actually to ask for alms, thus differing from his Hindu counterpart - exclusively from Buddhist Newars and such Hindu Biharis and Marwaris as Kashyapji had become acquainted with in the course of the week following our arrival. At first I continued to go for alms in this way, but as the weeks went by I gradually extended the scope of my operations, preferring to take smaller amounts of food from a number of houses rather than larger amounts from only two or three, even though this meant going further afield and, in consequence, spending more time out on my almsround. Such an extension of the scope of my operations would, I hoped, better enable me to act upon the Buddha's advice to the wandering monk and - as the Dhammapada puts it - `gather alms in the village even as the bee, without injuring their colour or scent, collects honey from the flowers.'
For the greater part of the way my almsround lay along the road between the Dharmodaya Vihara and Nepali Building. This road, which was the main road, ran straight through Kalimpong, winding up from the plains of Bengal to join the middle of the saddleback along which the town was spread out and plunging down, a few miles farther on, into the valleys of southern Sikkim. My first halt after leaving the Dharmodaya Vihara was about half way along the high street, at the open-fronted shop of a Marwari cloth merchant. This merchant was extremely kind to me. As soon as I took up my station outside his shop he would appear from the back part of the premises, where the living quarters were situated, with a brass tray piled high with rice, curried vegetables, and crisp, crinkled-up poppadams. Had I allowed him to do so he would have filled my bowl to the brim. At the end of the high street the road divided, the left hand fork winding on up to Nepali Building and beyond, the right hand fork falling steeply into the lower reaches of the bazaar. My way lay along the first of these. On the left, on the way up to Dailo, the pine-covered hill that formed the more northerly hump of the saddleback on which Kalimpong was situated, stood the buildings of the Church of Scotland Mission, the most prominent among them being a church, the square grey tower of which was one of the first things one saw on entering the outskirts of the town. On the right, backing onto the lower bazaar, stood a straggling row of open-fronted wooden shops, none of them more than a single storey high and all rather ramshackle. Indeed, they looked as though they might fall down at any time. Outside three of these shops in turn I halted for a few minutes. The first two, which were situated next door to each other, belonged to two Newar silversmiths, with furnaces and shabby display shelves both occupying the front part of the premises, facing onto the street, while the third shop contained the dispensary of a Bihari homoeopathic doctor. In contrast to the Marwari merchant, who wore a white shirt and dhoti and a bright yellow puggaree, the Bihari doctor wore a white dhoti, a long navy blue waistcoat, and a brown pillbox hat of the Nepalese type. As for the two silversmiths, they and their teenage sons and nephews were dressed in loose-fitting white jodhpurs and double-breasted Nepalese shirts that made them look as though they had just got out of bed, especially as they were all red-eyed from bending over the small charcoal furnaces. At each of the three shops I was received with folded hands and given a few spoonfuls of rice and curried vegetables. Depending on how much food I had already collected, I either went round to the back of the shops, where an old Newar woman lived, or on past Nepali Building to Kodamull Building, a cold, gloomy warren of a tenement block in different parts of which stayed four or five Newar merchants. Sometimes I did not go to either place, but went straight back to the Dharmodaya Vihara. All the way along the road there were, of course, plenty of shops and houses other than the ones at which I had stopped with my bowl, but some of these were occupied by Tibetans and Chinese, and not being sure of getting vegetarian food from them I did not include any of them in my almsround.
Since I went on my almsround with lowered head I did not see much of Kalimpong on such occasions. Apart from the road immediately in front of me, all I saw was legs. Some of the legs were short and thick, of the colour of weak tea, and with enormously developed calf muscles, almost like footballs. These, as I knew, were the legs of Nepalese coolies, dozens of whom could be seen at any hour of the day straining beneath the weight of enormous loads borne on their backs in cone-shaped wicker baskets. Others were black and stick-like, with ends of off-white dhotis flapping above bony knees. Some legs were sheathed in tight-fitting white jodhpurs or were encased in Western-style trousers, while others were decently concealed behind the skirts of black, brown, or blue gowns or heavy maroon robes. Besides human legs there were animal legs. There were the dun-coloured legs of the mules, and they sometimes passed by in such numbers, and raised such clouds of yellow dust, that I was forced to stand at the side of the road until they had passed. Some pairs of legs were going in the same direction as I was, others in the opposite direction. Some moved quickly and briskly, some slowly and saunteringly. For my own part, going and coming, I did my best to maintain the modest, measured gait considered appropriate to the alms-gathering monk.
Returning from my almsround one day, I was accosted near the two silversmiths' shops by a tall, handsome Nepali, apparently a year or two older than myself, smartly dressed in immaculate Western-style clothes. Dropping to his knees directly in front of me, there in the road, he inclined his head in a deep reverence and remained in that position, with eyes closed, for several minutes. On rising to his feet he asked me who I was and where I came from. In accordance with monastic tradition, I did not speak to anyone when I was out alms-gathering, not even to the extent of returning a salutation, but so open and friendly was the young man's manner, and so alive his face with genuine interest and sympathy, that I willingly answered his questions.
Dharmodaya Vihara
I filled several pages in the front part of my notebook with passages from Shantideva's Shiksha-samuccaya, or `Compendium of Instruction', an English translation of which I had found in the wall cupboard in my room. Several pages in the back part of the notebook were filled with haiku.
There were haiku with images of mountain and mist, of snow-peaks flushed with dawn and of blue hillsides gleaming, at eventide, with the orange jewels of village fires. There were haiku with images of cloudless blue sky, and of pink and white roses in bloom.
The Rains
In June the rainy season began. The grey clouds came rolling up from the plains, first of all infiltrating the valley of the Teesta in loose, detached masses, then moving in across the hills in a solid wall of rain that at times blotted out the entire landscape. For days on end Mount Kanchenjunga could not be seen. Instead, even when the sky cleared, there was only thick white cloud piled up against the horizon. Though the rain fell heavily enough at times, the rainy season was much less severe in the hills than in the plains. In between the downpours the sun was hot and bright, and the sky intensely blue, though the thick white cloud hardly ever moved - hardly ever moved aside to reveal the snows of Mount Kanchenjunga sparkling through the rain-washed air. It was my fourth year in India. Already I had learned to love the rainy season. I loved the heavy drumming sound of the rain on the roof. I loved the sense of green things thirstily drinking up the rain and growing as they did so. Above all, I loved the way in which the rain insulated one from the rest of the world, weaving around one a silver-grey cocoon of silence within which one could sit, hour after hour, and quietly muse. No wonder the Buddha had advised his monks not to wander about during the rainy season but to remain in one place, whether in a mountain cave, a woodland shrine, or a shed at the bottom of somebody's garden! No wonder the rainy season had come to be regarded, in the course of centuries, as a time of spiritual retreat - a time of more intensive study of the scriptures and more intensive practice of meditation!
YMBA
Classes were held from four o'clock to six o'clock in the afternoon, and no fees were charged. Most students came to the vihara straight from school or, if they happened to live in the bazaar, after dashing home and gulping down a cup of tea. Initially about forty students attended the different classes each day, but as the weeks went by and examinations, both internal and external, drew ever nearer, numbers rose first from forty to fifty, then from fifty to sixty. With so many students coming for tuition each day we were rather hard pressed for space. In the end Joe took his students in the room he had been given downstairs, while Swale used the big room next to the library where we held our lectures. As for me, I took my students in the corresponding room upstairs which was my bedroom, study, editorial office, dining-room, and reception room. At the close of the two hour session there would be a general stampede to the Recreation Hut. Having devoted themselves to their studies for the greater part of the day, most of the students felt that they could now throw aside their books and enjoy themselves for a while with a clear conscience. Gradually some of them got into the habit of spending, altogether, anything from four to six hours at the vihara every evening. This was not just because they enjoyed playing ping-pong, carrom-board, and draughts, and the other games we provided. It was not just because they enjoyed one another's company. In some cases, it was at least partly due to the fact that, when they went home, it would be to a hut full of younger brothers and sisters, where the only light was that of a paraffin lamp, where there was no quiet corner, and where, more likely than not, a stern father would expect them to sit up studying long after the rest of the family had gone to bed.
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From half-past-three the vihara started filling up with young men. Despite the fact that they already had a day of school or college behind them they were rarely late, and indeed seemed to look forward to their evening tutorial classes. Having left shoes and sandals in the back hall, and having leapt up the stairs two at a time in their bare or stockinged feet, the students of each of my own two classes came crowding into my room with broadly smiling faces, most of them bidding me a cheerful `Good evening, Sir,' as they took their places on the floor in front of me and pulled out their books and notebooks. Sitting on my bed with my back to the window, I took first the Class X or matriculation students for English, then the Intermediate students for English and logic, one class playing ping-pong and carrom-board in the Recreation Hut while the other studied with me. Altogether I had not less than thirty students, the greater number of them being in the lower class. Most of the students were in their late teens. Ethnically, religiously, and linguistically, they were quite a mixed lot, as were the students in the classes taken by Joe and Swale. Features ranged from the definitely Mongoloid (high cheekbones, slant eyes, and hairless faces) to the definitely Aryan (prominent noses and incipient beards and moustaches), while complexions varied from blue-black to pinkish white, and from dark brown to light yellow. Some students were high caste Hindus, others tribal Buddhists. There were locally born Nepalis and Tibetans, as well as Sikkimese from the Protectorate of Sikkim and Indians from the states of Bihar, East Punjab, and Rajputana. Some students had Nepali for their mother tongue, some Tibetan, and some Hindi: several spoke two of these languages, or even three. Among the Hindus (who overlapped with the Nepalis and Indians) there were a dozen different castes, and among the Nepalis (who overlapped with the Hindus and the Buddhists) a dozen different tribes. The typical student, however, tended to be Mongoloid rather than Aryan in appearance, light brown rather than dark brown in complexion, Hindu rather than Buddhist, speaking Nepali as his mother tongue rather than Tibetan or Hindi, and occupying a lower rather than a higher place in the caste system.
Panorama
At this point Burma Raja intervened. Hearing that he had called to see me, I at once went to the front of the vihara, where I found the magnificently beturbaned old man standing stiffly on the veranda, ignoring Aniruddha's clumsy attempts at polite conversation. `I have come to take you back with me,' he announced, tapping the ash from his big Burmese cheroot with his forefinger. `My guest cottage is at your disposal. The taxi is waiting.'
I had met Burma Raja once before, when he came to the vihara with Prince Peter to hear Dr Roerich's lecture, and we had then exchanged a few words. Swale had met him a number of times, and knew him quite well, as did Gopal Babu. In Swale's case, he had got to know Burma Raja mainly on the strength of his fluent Burmese. The old man was naturally delighted to meet someone with whom he could converse in his native tongue - someone who had, moreover, spent much of his life in Burma, and who enjoyed a good Burmese cheroot. As for Gopal Babu, in former days he had been Burma Raja's manager. Even as a boy, in fact, he had run errands and done odd jobs for him. It was from these two people that I had learned what little I knew about the personage who had intervened thus dramatically in my affairs, and who now awaited my response to his generous proposal with a smile of such warmth and understanding. From Swale I had learned that he was the nephew of King Thibaw, the last king of Burma, and that his wife was the second daughter of King Thibaw and the notorious Queen Supayalat, known to history as the Cobra Woman. Had Burma now been a kingdom instead of a republic Burma Raja - as he was popularly known - would in all probability have been king. As things were, however, he remained Prince K.M. Latthakin. From Gopal Babu I had learned that for many years Burma Raja had been a leading figure in the social life of Kalimpong, taking a prominent part in everything that went on, from tennis parties to tiger hunts. In the case of his wife the princess, however, there had been no question of any social life, and hardly anybody ever saw her. Burma Raja was emphatic that until she could appear in society in a manner befitting her position she would not appear in society at all. Since 1947, the year of Independence, there had been no question of either of them appearing in society. The new Indian government having cut their modest allowance by more than half, the old couple were now living in greatly reduced circumstances, and Burma Raja himself led a quiet, semi-retired life. His life was not so quiet as to prevent his seeing his friends, however, nor so retired that he did not know what was going on in the world. Both Swale and Gopal Babu visited him regularly, as I knew, and it must have been from one or the other of them - perhaps from both - that he learned of my predicament. Being as impulsive as he was generous, he came at once to the vihara to place his guest cottage at my disposal.
It did not take me long to make up my mind to accept his offer. Apart from bundles of unsold Stepping-Stones I had very little luggage, and everything was soon stowed away in the back of the taxi which was waiting below at the roadside. While I was packing Burma Raja remained standing on the veranda, sternly ignoring Aniruddha's requests that he should come in and sit down. `He can't be a real monk!' he exclaimed in disgust, when we were seated in the taxi. But I did not want to think about Aniruddha. I was too glad to be leaving him and the Dharmodaya Vihara behind me. Turning right at the T-junction we passed the thana, the post office, the Town Hall, the jail, and then, swinging slowly round bend after bend, drove along the Upper Cart Road, through the Development Area, until we came, after about two miles, to the top of a narrow lane flanked by dense evergreens. Turning right down this lane, we eventually emerged into a small, grass-covered compound on the open hillside. At the rear or hillward end of this compound there stood a red-roofed bungalow of modest dimensions. Beyond, on a slightly lower level, there was another compound, and another bungalow, also red-roofed. Both bungalows faced north-west, and commanded much the same view as the Dharmodaya Vihara. Burma Raja lived in the first bungalow, which was appropriately named `Panorama'. The second bungalow was the guest cottage, and to this he now led me. It consisted of four or five small rooms, the most attractive of which was the front sitting-room, where there hung several oil paintings. In this pleasant retreat I soon made myself at home, monastically speaking. A glassed-in veranda at the back became the Stepping-Stones editorial office. A bedroom was transformed into a shrine and meditation room, the first separate one of my own I had ever had. In this room I placed all the shrine equipment I then possessed - a large Tibetan-style colour print of the Buddha and a miniature stupa or reliquary. At night the bungalow - or guest cottage, as Burma Raja preferred to call it - was strangely quiet. The only sound to be heard was the intermittent tinkle of the tiny wind-bells hanging from the eaves of the little Burmese pavilion outside. Sometimes I could hear the silvery chime through my dreams. Life is sweet, the wind-bells seemed to be saying, but not lasting. It passes away, even as the sound of the wind-bells passes away on the breeze.
The Hermitage
`The Hermitage' was situated at a bend of the road a few hundred yards short of Ninth Mile. I must have passed it more than once, but could not remember having noticed it before. This was not surprising, since it stood well back from the road, and on looking up all one saw against the hillside was a small wooden bungalow that had evidently known better days. It had not always been called `The Hermitage'. What it was originally called I do not know, but it had been built twenty years earlier by an Englishman, probably a missionary or a retired army officer, and had been untenanted for some time. Joe had come to know about it through Karka Bahadur, who had heard about it from his father, who had heard about it from his Hindu Newar mistress and her half-Sikkimese son, to whom it jointly belonged. It had first been offered to Joe himself, but since he did not like the place he had suggested it might do for me and the YMBA. So far as I was concerned, it would more than do. In fact I fell in love with the place as soon as I saw it. Joe therefore discussed the question of rent with Mrs Bishnumaya Pradhan and her son Tashi Tsering, who were so delighted with the idea of their bungalow being occupied by the English Buddhist monk who had recently organized the reception of the Sacred Relics that they declared themselves happy to take only sixty-five rupees a month. They also declared that they intended to rename the bungalow in my honour. In future it would be known as `The Hermitage'.
Like so many other buildings in Kalimpong, the bungalow into which I moved at the beginning of June stood on a narrow ledge that had been cut out of the hillside. In this case the ledge was rather broader than usual and was bounded at each end by a jhora or ravine in which grew clumps of bamboos. `The Hermitage' was situated at one end of the ledge (the one that was nearer the town), while at the other end stood an octagonal summer-house. Between `The Hermitage' and the summer-house, as well as all the way along the front of the property, was an extensive garden - or what had once been a garden - in which grew a variety of fine ornamental trees. There were magnolias and tulip trees, besides camellias and chocolate palms and a number of other trees whose names I did not yet know. There was also an ornamental pond in front of the summer-house, circular in shape, and surrounded by a parapet.
`The Hermitage' itself was a simple frame building with a corrugated iron roof that had once been painted red. What colour the walls had been painted it was difficult to tell, for the paint had peeled off long ago, both inside and outside. Moreover, many of the boards that comprised the exterior walls of the bungalow had warped and shrunk to such an extent that light penetrated through the chinks into the rooms. There were also cracks between the floorboards, through which one could see the bare earth only a few inches below. Despite its semi-derelict condition, however, I was delighted with the place. It seemed to suit our requirements exactly. No sooner had the question of rent been settled, therefore, than the YMBA moved in from Banshi's Godown, and I moved in from Burma Raja's guest cottage.
There were five rooms, three of which opened directly onto the veranda, which was scarcely big enough to accommodate three chairs. In the middle one of these three, which extended from the veranda to the back of the house, we installed our ping-pong table, which filled practically the entire room, leaving only a narrow gap on either side and barely space enough at each end for the players. The front room on the left, which contained a plank bed, a rickety gate-legged table, and a kind of settle, became my bedroom and study, while the corresponding room on the right, which contained a small cabinet which had once been glass-fronted, became our library and reading room. The two smaller rooms at the back were reserved for guests. As for the summer-house at the far end of the garden, which unlike `The Hermitage' was a pukka building, that is to say, constructed of reinforced concrete, this naturally became the shrine room. Here I pinned up my Tibetan colour print of the Buddha, which apart from the miniature stupa was still the only religious object I possessed, and here I performed my devotions each morning and evening and meditated.
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For the last few months of my tenancy I therefore had the place entirely to myself and was able to enjoy its peace and seclusion undisturbed …
I soon settled down in my former room on the left of the games room, which was bigger and brighter than the corresponding room on the right, besides being farther away from the smoke of the kitchen. From the curtainless front and side windows of this room I could see a portion of the road below, as well as the foothills of Sikkim towering in the distance, and sitting at the rickety gate-legged table I would sometimes look up from my work to study the passers-by. This was especially the case when it happened to be raining heavily and I had no visitors, and when in any case I was in a reflective mood. Apart from the loudly chattering boys and girls on their way to - and from - school, most of the people who passed the bottom of the track leading up to my front gate (actually there was no gate but only two mildewed posts) were peasants and coolies bound for the bazaar, and many of these - women and bare-legged men alike - carried on their backs the traditional cone-shaped bamboo basket. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, which were market-days in Kalimpong, they would pass by earlier than usual, and in greater numbers, and their baskets would be heavily laden with charcoal, vegetables, and grain. Some of them would have chickens dangling head downwards from their wrists, legs tied together and wings feebly flapping, while others would be driving before them two or three protesting goats or even a whole herd of buffaloes. Whatever it was that they were taking to market, I knew that they were taking it with the intention of selling it for the best price they could get and with the proceeds buying such things as paraffin, cooking oil, and matches, which they could not produce themselves. (Clothes were of course bought only once a year, at the time of the autumn pujas.) I also knew that regardless of what price they succeeded in getting, some of them were sure to end up spending a good part of the money in the liquor shops with the result that the next time they passed by, on their way home, they would be shouting incoherently and staggering from one side of the road to the other.
But even though most of the people who passed by the bottom of the track that led up to my front gate were peasants and coolies, this did not mean that those who did not fall into this category were not sufficiently varied in type. On looking up from my work I might see a Tibetan official in dark-coloured chuba and homburg out for a morning stroll - though most Tibetans lived at Tenth Mile, and were rarely seen in the vicinity of Eighth Mile or Ninth Mile. Or I might see a well-to-do Sikkimese nurseryman from Seventh Mile hastening to the bank, or a Muslim roti-wallah or bread man on his rounds staff in hand and tin box balanced on turbaned head, or a white-shirted Bihari barber making his way to the house of a regular customer. Or I might even see a priest from the Roman Catholic Mission, or a pair of nuns. The priest would be wearing a white tropical soutane, and would generally have his nose in his breviary, while the nuns, whose habits were either black or blue in colour, would keep their heads well down and hurry past `The Hermitage' as though conscious that the place contained something - or someone - inimical to their faith.
When tired of sitting at the rickety table I sometimes walked up and down the path that ran between `The Hermitage' and the octagonal shrine room, as I had often done when living in the chalet. This path divided the garden into two unequal parts, in the more extensive of which - the one that lay farther back from the road - stood the majority of the ornamental trees that had been planted by the original owner of the property. With the exception of the forty-foot eucalyptus standing immediately opposite the front door of `The Hermitage', the biggest of these trees were the magnolia and the tulip tree, both of which were now perfect specimens of their kind, as were most of the smaller trees by which they were surrounded. Since not all the trees bloomed at the same time of year, there was always a gleam of colour to be seen among the branches apart from the glossy green of the leaves. At one time it might be the cream colour of the enormous, globe-shaped magnolia blossoms, at another the mingled pink and white of the tulip tree's upward-pointing blossoms, conspicuous on their leafless branches, at yet another the deep red of the camellias or velvety-white of the gardenias. As well as the blooms of the ornamental trees there were those of the bamboo orchids and ginger lilies which grew in clumps at the foot of the bank to the rear of the garden. Though the former were partly pink and partly cerise, while the latter were wholly white, both looked more like butterflies than flowers and one half expected them to fly away. Yet whether the gleams of colour among the branches were many or few, as I slowly walked up and down the path, which sometimes was bordered with shocking pink zinnias and bright orange marigolds, I nearly always experienced a deep sense of peace and harmony, of fulfilment and well-being. It was as though the trees were my silent companions - companions who could share my thoughts and feelings, and from whose tranquil presence I derived nourishment and inspiration. Indeed, as I walked up and down in their leafy neighbourhood sentences of articles and stanzas of poems would come unbidden into my mind, as well as feelings and insights for which I as yet had no words. When that happened I would experience an intense joy, the flowers above my head and at my feet would shine with an unearthly radiance, and to me it would seem that the garden of `The Hermitage' was a veritable Garden of Eden.
Spooky Kalimpong
I can cite an experience of my own in this connection where invoking the name of Avalokitesvara certainly helped; but it wasn't any such occasion as being shipwrecked or devoured by wild beasts or executed or anything of that sort. But it goes back to Kalimpong. I have related the story before; some of you may have heard it. Someone came to stay with me in Kalimpong - it must have been 1953 or 1954 - and he was very (...) He was of a well-known family, he must have been to public school. And he was about 24, 25, quite good-looking, quite well-dressed, well-spoken, the perfect young English gentleman. But it transpired, in the course of conversation that he was up to his eyebrows in black magic. You can't trust these public schoolboys! (Laughter) And he told me all sorts of hair-raising things about black magic going on - the main centres were London, Paris and Brighton (Laughter). He really told me some dreadful things about deaths being brought about by black magic and contests between black magicians, and all that sort of thing. It was really quite horrific, quite hair-raising.
Anyway, he was going on talking and talking about these things, and we were eventually left alone together, and he started talking about this subject. There was nobody else staying with me at that time, he was just staying for a few days, and my cook at that time lived outside. So after serving us with our meal, the cook left and we were left talking about black magic; and it was getting later and later, and darker and darker, and he was telling me more and more horrific things. My hair wasn't standing on end because I had didn't have any! (Laughter), but I started to get a rather uneasy feeling. I wasn't reassured when looking at him I saw that in the pupils of his eyes there appeared a little green flame, a little bright green flame in each eye. I thought, 'That's odd!' (Laughter) It was vivid green, emerald green, like two little green lamps, right in the centre. So as we talked, the little green flame got bigger and got brighter. I thought, 'That's very odd, it must be the reflection of something in his eyes.' I just glanced around the room: but no, it couldn't have been a reflection. To cut a long story short, this green flame got bigger just like the flame of a lamp that you turned up - bigger, brighter; big, green flames, and eventually they engulfed the whole room. So I thought, 'Something is going on.' (Laughter) I had heard - I think I must have read it in the Saddharma Pundarika Sutra, I'd read it by that time... 'There's something going on here' I thought, so I'd better do something about it.' So I just repeated 'OM MANI PADME HUM' to myself once - and the green flames vanished. And so it worked, you see.So there are certain circumstances, one might say, under which, yes, it works, apparently, where another human mind is involved which can be influenced, but I really doubt whether the invocation of the name of Avalokiteshvara would influence in the same way inanimate things, rocks and stones and trees - well, not trees - ships and so on, I'm really doubtful; even animals I'm quite doubtful about.
Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche and Vajrasattva
The chanting of the Vajrasattva mantra could be performed at intervals throughout the day. But why the hundred syllable mantra of Vajrasattva? Why not the mantra of Tara, or Manjushri, or Vajrapani, or Padmasambhava? The answer is quite simple. Vajrasattva is connected with death. The manner in which I first discovered this takes me back to 1958 or ‘59, when I was living in Kalimpong.
On one occasion I went up to Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, to see Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche, who was one of my Tibetan teachers. He was staying at the Palace Temple, on the outskirts of Gangtok. Upon arriving I was ushered into an antechamber and asked to wait for about half an hour. When I was ushered into his presence he received me, as always, in a very kindly and fatherly sort of way, and apologised for having kept me waiting--adding, by way of explanation, that he had been performing the Vajrasattva puja and recitation of the Vajrasattva mantra on behalf of a lama friend who had just died. As he talked a little more about this, I came to understand that Vajrasattva was connected with death.
A few years later, in the winter of 1966-67, I had a rather strange experience in this connection. I was back in Kalimpong, having spent two years in the West. By now I had decided to settle in England, and was in Kalimpong on a farewell visit, staying at my Triyana Vardhana Vihara.
One night I woke up at about two o’clock in the morning. I really did wake up--this was not a dream or a vision. Everything was bright as if I was in daylight. I sat up on my bed and, looking down towards the side of my bed, I saw a great pit in the floor that certainly had not been there the previous evening. I looked down into the pit. Standing there was an old friend--one who had been dead for several years.
The pit must have been just over six feet deep because he was about six feet tall and was completely contained in the pit. For some minutes I just looked. I knew that he was dead, of course. I also knew that something was wrong and that something had to be done. But what? That was when I thought of Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche and what he had told me about the Vajrasattva Mantra.
Sitting up on my bed, I started repeating the Vajrasattva mantra. As I did so, the words of the mantra--in Tibetan characters--came out of my mouth. They came out of my mouth and formed a sort of garland, or chain, which went right down into the pit and then looped back up again--just within reach of the person in the pit. My friend caught hold of this garland, and so pulled himself out of the pit. He then disappeared.
At that moment I suddenly heard horns being blown just outside. Only then did I remember that it was the night of the new moon and that the Jogis were abroad. The Jogis are a particular caste or sect of the Nepalese, a very strange people. A hereditary duty has been imposed upon them to go around at certain times of the year, on the night of the new moon, to collect the souls of the dead. The Nepalese people keep away from them. Dogs keep away from them too--even the fiercest dog will not touch them. In the morning they come to the houses that they have been clearing of spirits, and you are supposed to give them a little raw rice and some money. Most Nepalese people are so afraid they just throw the money and rice to them from a distance and retreat as quickly as they can.
Since that experience I have had a certain amount of faith in the Vajrasattva mantra in this connection. Vajrasattva is associated not only with death, but with `hell’--not hell in the Christian sense, of course, but in the sense of lower states of temporary suffering. And Vajrasattva is perhaps associated with hell because he is associated with death, at least so far as `ordinary’ people are concerned, people--that is to say--who have not attained Stream Entry.
I happened to be in Kalimpong on my sort of farewell journey, when I'd been in the West for 2 years and I'd decided to stay on in the West, went back to India, to Kalimpong to say goodbye to my friends. So I was staying at my vihara and some years previously I'd had a western disciple who was blind, a rather awful person. Anyway he'd been dead several years, and what happened was this: in the middle of the night I woke up, it was pitch dark, but I could see, I could see quite clearly. And by the side of my bed there was a deep pit, well literally a pit as if someone had dug it. So I looked down and there was this old disciple of mine, he was standing in this pit with his head just level with the edge. And he was standing there like that, very sad and very sorrowful. So it had occurred to me that he must be in a not very happy state, and I wasn't surprised knowing what he'd been like and how wilful he'd been. So I wondered what could I do, I should help him or try to help him in some way. Then I remembered JK and I remembered that he had recited the Vajrasattva mantra for this dead lama. So I started reciting the Vajrasattva mantra, and as saw the letters of the mantra come out of my mouth. And the letters of the mantra, and there are 100 of these letters - it's called the 100 syllable mantra - went down into the pit like a sort of chain, like a garland or like a mala, and were sort of circling like this and this disciple seized hold of me, like you see on a rope, and hauled himself up out of the pit. I saw this just as clearly as I see you all sitting here, and when he hauled himself out of the pit, everything vanished and it was pitch dark. And I heard the sound of a rams horn in the distance, and a rams horn was being blown by the jogi. Now what was the jogis? The jogis are a caste in Nepal who are sent out at certain times of the year by the king, the king sends them a special instruction, they go around the whole Himalayan area gathering the souls of the dead and people are very afraid of them. And the dogs are very afraid, even the fiercest dog won't go near the jotis. And just as darkness fell again, pitch darkness, I heard the sound of the jogi. I looked at my clock, it was 2 o'clock in the morning. The following morning of course a jogi came round with ??? and rice?? and ??? They are not poor, they don't do it for money, it's just the custom. And they're very very strange people. People don't like to talk to them, but I used to talk with the jogis and ask them about their work and all that sort of thing, I was quite interested. But anyway - I'm not going into all that - my servant, and disciples were very very afraid, they wouldn't go near the jogi, they'd run away. I'd say 'come out, bring out some rice and money for the jogi', they'd bring it and put it down and run away. I used to ask a jogi to sit down and I'd start talking with him, because I could speak Nepali. We used to have a bit of a chat. The jogis looked very strange, almost haunting not surprisingly. They had a little bag over their shoulder; some people believed that the souls of the dead were in that little bag. They came on the night of the new moon when it was very dark. But anyway, that's just by the way, that's just to illustrate my contact with Jamyang Khyentse, the use - the efficacy even - of the Vajrasattva mantra. And this is one of the reasons why in the FWBO we always receive the Vajrasattva mantra in connection with after-death ceremonies.
Bhante’s Tibetan disciple Sherab Ngawang (Prajnaloka)
“he'd been a monk in Tibet. He'd given it up, he'd traveled widely, he'd been married, he'd had all sorts of adventures, and then in his relative old age he decided he wanted to become a monk again, but he didn't want to become a Tibetan monk. And for some reason or other, he'd made up his mind that he wanted to be ordained be me and be my disciple, so I ordained him eventually, with some reluctance, after trying to persuade him to be ordained by Dhardo Rinpoche, I ordained him as a sramanera, and he remained a sramanera for many years. He was quite a character, nearly 20 years older than myself, but still a disciple. And I used to use him as an interpreter quite a lot, his English was good. Seminar.
The Sacred Relics
Since the procession was more than half a mile long, and since the road into the town was not only very steep but twisted round the hillside in a series of sharp bends, I could see large sections of it at a time. Right in front of the procession moved the tiny figure of the Long-Lived Deva, very upright and walking with a kind of military strut. Behind him, walking in single file, came a long line of red-robed Tibetan monks, about fifty in number, and mostly from the Tharpa Choling Gompa. Some of the monks carried musical instruments, while about a dozen others bore aloft the multi-coloured, many-flounced `banners of victory', which had been spaced out in such a way as to produce the maximum effect. Immediately behind the monks, and in front of our own jeep, came the palanquin containing the Sacred Relics. This was bright yellow in colour, and shaped like a Chinese-style pavilion, with curved roof and curled-up eaves, and it was borne on the shoulders of eight stalwart Tibetans, who were relieved, at intervals, by eight other stalwart Tibetans, so that the merit of carrying the Sacred Relics could be shared by as many people as possible. Behind us followed the vehicles that had accompanied the Sacred Relics from Gangtok, which were in turn followed by an ever-growing number of local people. The whole procession moved to the slow, heavy beat of an enormous Tibetan drum, while the almost continuous sound of the shrill, harsh geylings was punctuated from time to time by the prolonged roar of the twelve-foot trumpets, the echoes of which reverberated from the hillside.
After we had gone about a mile I saw ahead, on the right hand side of the road, the sheltered spot that Tibetan mule-drivers sometimes used as a camping ground. Beyond this, I knew, was the Dharmodaya Vihara. But there was no sign of any trouble. Indeed, as we passed the vihara the light `auspicious shower' that had started when the Sacred Relics arrived from Gangtok suddenly stopped, the sun came out, and the dazzling white peaks of Mount Kanchenjunga were revealed looking down on the scene. As the procession turned left into the High Street - the Long-Lived Deva still marching ahead, and the geylings and twelve-foot trumpets making a tremendous racket - we found ourselves moving between the densely packed ranks of the cheerful and excited people that lined it on either side. Smiling faces looked down from the windows and balconies of the two- and three-storeyed buildings. On the steps in front of many of the shops stood braziers, from which the smoke of burning juniper-twigs drifted across the street in dense white clouds. Chuba-clad figures prostrated themselves in the path of the procession, while others, detaching themselves from the crowd, darted between the legs of the eight stalwart Tibetans and passed underneath the palanquin to the other side - thus obtaining, as they believed, the blessing of the Sacred Relics, or at least good luck. By the time the procession had debouched from the High Street into the more open road that led to Tenth Mile the crowd had thinned out considerably, and I could see the figure of Thubden Tendzin walking incense-stick in hand beside the palanquin, the black chuba that he had donned for the occasion contrasting strangely with the intense pallor of his face. On their arrival at the Tharpa Choling Gompa the Sacred Relics were received by the abbot and, no doubt, by Rani Dorji. I had noticed that as we drew near to Tirpai the monks carrying the twelve-foot trumpets detached themselves from the procession and rushed on ahead. As we entered the gompa there they were, inside the gate, blowing for all they were worth on their prodigious instruments, the mouthpieces of which rested on the shoulders of red-robed novices.
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The Himalayas
I was deeply affected by my surroundings. They stimulated and inspired me, and without that inspiration I probably would not have written `Advice to a Young Poet' at all, at least not in the same enthusiastic manner. I was inspired by the bamboos and the orchids, by the haze-softened foothills, gashed red here and there by the landslides, by the changing cloud formations, by the breadth and blueness of the sky. Above all I was inspired by the snows.
The snows were not visible from `The Hermitage', but as one walked up the road, in the direction of the bazaar, they gradually hove in sight. By the time one reached the Dharmodaya Vihara, which was situated half a mile from `The Hermitage', there was the dazzling white mass of Kanchenjunga, with its twin peaks, piled up on the horizon at an unbelievable height. For the best view of the snows one had to climb up to Dailo, the skull-shaped hill beyond Dr Graham's Homes, and one day, with three companions, Sachin and I did just that. The three companions were Jungi, Dawa, and Omiya, the cheerful Bengali proprietor of a small watch-repair business in Darjeeling with whom Sachin had become acquainted and who was now spending a few days with him. As agreed the night before, we met at Sachin's house after breakfast and from there set out. The climb was a stiff one, especially towards the end, and it was not until nearly midday that, having emerged from the pine forest, we found ourselves on the bare top of Dailo Hill. The sun was shining brilliantly. Below us was the River Ranjit, winding through silver sands towards the plains, while around us, and stretching away into the distance, rose innumerable hills, all covered in soft blue haze. Aloft on the horizon, and extending in an unbroken line from farthest east to farthest west, were the snow peaks of the eastern Himalayas. There must have been hundreds of them. Except for Kanchenjunga and Lama Yuru, a pyramidal mountain so called from its resemblance to a meditating monk, I did not know their names. Nor did I care to know them. For me it was enough to sit there in that intense stillness, five thousand feet above sea level, simply contemplating those silent white forms. Contemplating them in this way - taking darshan, as my Indian friends would have said - I could begin to understand why the Himalayas had such a hold on the imagination of the people of the sub-continent and why they occupied so prominent a place in the religious and cultural life of Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains alike. I could understand why Kalidasa, in an oft-quoted phrase, had described the Himalayas as `the congealed laughter of Shiva', and why the author of the Skanda Purana had gone so far as to personify the Himalaya or Himachala, in the singular, and extol him as a deity, saying:
He who thinks of Himachala, even though he should not behold Him, is greater than he who performs worship at Kashi. And he who contemplates upon Himachala shall have pardon of all sins. All things that die on Himachala, and in dying think of His snows, are freed from evil. In a hundred years of the gods I could not tell you of the glories of Himachala, where Shiva lives and where the Ganga falls from the feet of Vishnu like the slender thread of the lotus flower. Truly, as the dew is dried by the Sun so are the sorrows of mankind dried up by the sight of Himachala.
I had contemplated Himachala, and though I did not feel that my sins had been pardoned I could well believe that my sorrows had dried up, at least for the time being. Sachin and the others, however, were growing restless. After a picnic lunch we had lain in the sun for a while, steeping ourselves in the silence and solitude, but now they were moving about and talking. It was time for us to depart. Having commemorated our visit with a poem, which we traced out on the ground in charcoal, we therefore started making our way downhill.
Khachu Rinpoche and Padmasambhava
The discovery in question took place in Kalimpong, shortly after I had received the abhishekha of the Greatly Precious Guru, Padmasambhava, from Khachu Rimpoche, a leading disciple of Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche. I received the abhishekha on 21 October 1962. The following morning I went into town and on my way through the bazaar happened to see a Tibetan monk squatting at the roadside. In his lap was a small bundle of rather grubby xylograph texts that he was offering for sale. Since the monk was obviously in need of money, and since the texts were very cheap (so cheap that even I could afford to buy them), I at once bought them and returned with them to the Vihara, where I showed them to Khachu Rimpoche. His response was one of surprise and delight. They were Nyingmapa texts, he exclaimed joyfully, as he thumbed his way through them. Most of them had to do with the Greatly Precious Guru, and the fact that I had come across them so soon after receiving the abhishekha, and in such a totally unexpected manner, was extremely auspicious. It showed that I had a special connection with the Greatly Precious Guru, and with the Nyingmapa tradition, and that my efforts to realize the import of the teachings which the abhishekha had empowered me to practise would prove successful. Whether or not Khachu Rimpoche's `reading of the signs' was correct is not for me to say. In any case, what I am concerned with at this juncture is the fact that among the texts I had bought, and which Khachu Rimpoche had greeted with such enthusiasm, was one entitled Tharpe Delam or `The Easy Path to Emancipation'. This little work dealt with the general and special preliminaries to the practice of Ati Yoga, the highest teaching of the Nyingmapas, and the main general preliminaries consisted of the four mula or `foundation' yogas, in the first of which Khachu Rimpoche had already given me some instruction.
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I remember about ten years ago or maybe a little less, in Kalimpong, up in the Himalayas, I was entertaining to lunch an American couple - he afterwards wrote a book about his experiences called The Razor's Edge - and a Tibetan lama, rather a distinguished one - he was the head of the Pemayangtse monastery in Sikkim, and he was a friend of mine, a man of about forty-five who had arrived in the area fairly recently. So in the course of the lunch - and it's rather interesting that the lama himself didn't understand any English - in the course of the lunch the American said rather sceptically, and with rather a knowing sort of smile, said to the lama through the translator, `I suppose you haven't heard of anyone who can levitate?' So the lama said rather modestly `Yes. In fact, I do a little myself.' So the two Americans nearly fell off their chairs. They said, 'You can do it yourself?' He said 'Yes. I don't think I could do it right now, but if I'm alone in the jungle, in a secluded monastery, if I spend about six months there meditating, I can do this at the end of that period.'
Dhardo Rinpoche and Guhyasamaja
Though Lobsang was writing the article, in a sense he was not its author, as the material for it was being supplied by Dhardo Rimpoche, for whose knowledge of the Dharma he had the highest regard and with whom he was in regular contact. The Rimpoche was aware, of course, that I was helping Lobsang and aware, therefore, that material supplied to the young Tibetan aristocrat was also material supplied, indirectly, to me, and that I would need to understand it thoroughly if I was to give the article an adequate revision. Sometimes Dhardo Rimpoche seemed to be communicating to me, through Lobsang, material not intended for the article or indeed for publication at all. Thus for four or five afternoons in succession, apparently at the Rimpoche's behest, Lobsang gave me a detailed account of the meditational practices of the Guhyasamaja Tantra. So complex were these practices that as soon as he was gone I wrote down what I remembered of them, in this way accumulating quite a sheaf of notes on a highly esoteric subject. It was curious, I reflected. Ever since my first encounter with it, some years earlier, in an article written by a Bengali Indologist, the mere name of the Guhyasamaja Tantra had possessed a strange resonance for me. In Nepal a lay Tantric yogin had told me that together with the Prajnaparamita `in 8,000 lines' and the Bodhicharyavatara it was one of the three foundational texts of Nepalese (Newar) Buddhism. With the Prajnaparamita or `Perfection of Wisdom' literature and the Bodhicharyavatara or `Entry into the Life of Enlightenment' of Shantideva I was already familiar. Indeed, I prized them highly. Was there, then, a hidden spiritual connection between these two texts and the Guhyasamaja, and why had Dhardo Rimpoche chosen to reveal to me some of the secrets of Tantric Buddhist meditation?
When I was in the midst of writing the Survey a Tibetan friend asked me to help him with the English of an article on `Buddhism in Tibet' that he had agreed to write for an American publication. The friend was Lobsang Phuntsok Lhalungpa, an official of the Tibetan government who had grown up in Lhasa and now lived in Kalimpong, and the publication was The Path of the Buddha, a book aiming to present Buddhism `from the Buddhist point of view'. Helping Lobsang with the English of his article actually involved the complete re-writing of some three-hundred foolscap pages of manuscript, my friend's command of the `tongue/That Shakespeare spake' being then quite rudimentary. Though the work was onerous, and could hardly have come at a more inconvenient time, I did it willingly, the more especially when I discovered that in writing his article Lobsang Phuntsok was drawing not so much on his own knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism as on the knowledge of an eminent Incarnate Lama who afterwards became one of my most revered teachers. This was Dhardo Rimpoche, the Greatly Precious One of Dharsendo. For a period of several months, therefore, I not only carried on writing the Survey but wrestled with Lobsang Phuntsok's grammar and syntax, not to mention his spelling and handwriting. Sometimes what he had written was so confused as to be unintelligible. When that was the case I was obliged to call on him for verbal explanations of what he was trying to say, and these explanations often led to our becoming involved in prolonged doctrinal discussion. Such discussion did not always succeed in making his account of Shunyata, or of the Trikaya doctrine, seem any the less confused, with the result that he had to refer back to Dhardo Rimpoche, the original source of his material, for further clarification. Having done this, he could be sure that whatever explanations he now gave me were correct and I, for my part, could be sure that in re-writing his pages in accordance with them I was not misinterpreting Tibetan Buddhism. All this naturally took time, but eventually the work was done and the article despatched to the United States where, after being edited and drastically shortened, it appeared as Chapter Six of The Path of the Buddha in 1957. As so often happens, a benefit conferred turned out to be a benefit received. As a result of re-writing Lobsang Phuntsok Lhalungpa's article, and especially as a result of the prolonged doctrinal discussion to which this frequently led, in the space of three or four months I received from him and, through him, from Dhardo Rimpoche, a comprehensive grounding in the history, the schools, the doctrines, and the practices of Tibetan Buddhism - a grounding that often went far beyond the topics actually dealt with in the article. At a time when reliable books on Tibetan Buddhism could be counted on the fingers of one hand the experience was of immense value to me, and laying down my pen after re-writing the last sentence of Lobsang's manuscript I felt as though I had been given an intensive course in the subject.
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It reminds me of a little story, as it were a little illustration sometimes given by the great modern Indian teacher Ramakrishna. He says you catch a parrot and you teach the parrot to recite the name of God. This is what they sometimes do in India and not only Hindus but Buddhists do this sort of thing. I remember Dhardo Rimpoche, my old friend in Kalimpong, had a very curious collection of birds and cats and dogs and one of his birds a mynah he had taught to recite om mani padme hum and believe it or not this was bird hung up in a cage on the verandah and as you went up the stairs to see the Rimpoche the bird would sing out om mani padme hum just like that and you would look around at first thinking it was a human being but it was this bird. And if the Rimpoche wanted to show the birds tricks to a visitor he would just go up and give it a little piece of fruit and he would say mynah om mani padme hum and at once the mynah would say om mani padme hum clearly as the Rimpoche.
Chattrul Rimpoche and the Tri Yana Vardhana Vihara
In the course of his visit Chattrul Rimpoche elicited from me the information that Everton Villa was only a rented property, that our lease would expire in September, that it would be difficult for us to find an equally suitable property that was to let, and that although my real aim was to establish a permanent monastic centre in Kalimpong there seemed at present little likelihood of my being able to do so. The centre, I explained, would be dedicated to the study, practice, and dissemination of the total Buddhist tradition, for I had long been convinced that, in the noble words of Dr Edward Conze, `the doctrine of the Buddha, conceived in its full breadth, width, majesty and grandeur, comprises all those teachings which are linked to the original teaching by historical continuity, and which work out methods leading to the extinction of [ego-]individuality by eliminating the belief in it.' The Rimpoche's response to this information was as categorical as it was unexpected. There was no doubt that I would establish a permanent monastic centre in Kalimpong, he assured me. In fact I would establish it quite soon, and I should call it `The Vihara Where the Three Yanas Flourish (or Blossom)'. Having given the as yet non-existent monastery its name in what I afterwards described as a mood of high spiritual inspiration, Chattrul Rimpoche addressed to me the Tibetan original of the following stanzas:
In the sky devoid of limits, the teaching of the Muni is
The sun, spreading the thousand rays of the three sikshas
[i.e. morality, meditation, and wisdom];
Continually shining in the radiance of the impartial disciples,
May this Jambudvipa region of the Triyana be fair!
In accordance with his request, [made] in the Fire-Monkey Year
On the ninth day of the first month by the Maha Sthavira Sangharakshita,
This was written by the Shakya-upasaka, the Vidyadhara
Bodhivajra: [may there be] happiness and blessings!
The fact that Chattrul Rimpoche had named my future monastery of his own accord greatly impressed my Tibetan friends, especially those of the Nyingma persuasion. According to Kachu Rimpoche, who came to see me shortly afterwards, it was exceptionally auspicious, as whatever Rimpoche Chattrul Sangye Dorje named was sure to prosper. I was pleased to hear this, but before the Triyana Vardhana Vihara - as I had decided the place should be called in Sanskrit - could prosper it had to come into existence, and as yet there was no sign of this happening. It was not that I doubted the reliability of the Rimpoche's prediction, but `quite soon' was a relative term and could as well mean next year as this year, or even the year after next.
In the event, my dream of a permanent monastic centre was transformed into a reality much sooner than I had dared hope. The turning point in its fortunes came less than six weeks after Chattrul Rimpoche's visit, when I was in Calcutta, having flown to the City of Dreadful Heat (as it now was) from Cooch Behar after a short lecture tour in the Doors, an important tea-growing area near the Bhutan-Assam border where there were many thousands of Nepalese Buddhists. In Calcutta I saw the Vaishakha number of the Maha Bodhi Journal through the press, gave weekly lectures in the hall of the Sri Dharmarajika Vihara, and spent time with friends like Soratha and Sachin. One day I received a batch of redirected mail from Kalimpong. Among the letters there was a rather disturbing communication from the landlord of Everton Villa. Though our lease did not expire till September, he wrote requiring us to move out by 15 May, as the property had been bought by a Tibetan who insisted on immediate occupation as one of the conditions of the sale. It looked as if the Maha Bodhi Society's Kalimpong branch would soon be homeless. The next letter I opened was from Marco Pallis, and in it my old friend promised very substantial assistance towards the realization of my plans. Having been buffeted one minute by the `worldly wind' of loss, I was being assailed the next by that of gain, and it was not easy for me to contain my feelings of joy, thankfulness, and relief. We would not be homeless, after all, and I would be able to establish my permanent monastic centre! The plans to which Marco Pallis referred were, of course, the ones I had already outlined to Chattrul Rimpoche and which had prompted him not only to give the monastery its name but to predict its establishment `quite soon'. Earlier in the year I had written to four or five people asking for their help in acquiring a place of our own in Kalimpong, as owing to the influx of Tibetans, who were buying up properties right and left, it would be impossible for me to find another suitable place when the lease on Everton Villa expired. So far the only response to my appeal had come from Dinoo, who had promised a thousand rupees. On the strength of Marco Pallis's promise of very substantial assistance (he did not mention the actual figure) I was in a position to start looking for a property and entering, perhaps, into preliminary negotiations.
There were three properties which I knew to be for sale and which were, severally, suitable for conversion into a small monastic centre, besides being of a price that might be within my reach. Two of the properties were situated down at Seventh Mile, not far from the Tamang village, the other at Chebo Busti, on the Lower Bridle Road, a mile or so beyond Chitrabhanu and Manjula. On my return to Kalimpong on 21 April, after spending exactly a month in Calcutta, I viewed each one of these in turn. It did not take me long to make up my mind. The Chebo Busti property was far and away the most suitable, and the most attractive, comprising as it did a stone cottage, sheltered on the north and south by magnificent Kashmir cypresses, and four acres of terraced hillside land. The cottage, which was perched on a rocky spur high above Fifth Mile, faced due west and commanded a panoramic view of the foothills of both the Darjeeling and Sikkim sides of the River Rangit.
Lama Govinda
Lama Govinda was at that time a little over fifty. In appearance he was of medium height, and his very slight corpulence was virtually concealed by the brown chuba that fell in loose folds to his feet, on which he wore Indian-style sandals. The chuba was made not of the usual heavy woollen cloth but of some light material more suited to the Indian climate. Over one shoulder he wore an embroidered bag of the type carried by South-East Asian Buddhist monks, while round his neck there hung a Tibetan rosary with the usual attachments. His costume was completed by a kind of stole which he wore over the rosary and which hung down on either side almost to the hem of his chuba. Being a married lama he was not shaven-headed, and his light brown hair was brushed straight back from a forehead of unusual loftiness and intellectuality. His forehead was, in fact, the dominating feature of his face, contrasting strongly with his rather full lips and weak, receding chin. In manner he was mild and conciliatory in the extreme and, as I soon discovered, courteous almost to the point of ceremoniousness, with an air of distinction as though he had always moved in good society. Only the subtlety of the smile that played about his lips, and the keenness of the glance that occasionally shot from his deep-set eyes, gave one any indication of the extent of the life - and the fire - that lurked within. Li Gotami was about twenty years younger than Lama Govinda, as well as shorter and plumper. Apart from the fact that her chuba was sleeveless (she wore a long-sleeved blouse underneath), she was clad in much the same hybrid but artistic costume as her distinguished husband. Though her dark hair was bobbed in Western style, she had the creamy complexion, the prominent nose, and the large black eyes that, at a later date, I came to recognize as typical of the Parsi stock from which she sprang. Besides being extremely vivacious, she was sociable and talkative, and possessed a clear, ringing laugh that was very infectious.
When one has looked forward to meeting two people as much as I had been looking forward to meeting Lama Govinda and Li Gotami - and as they, apparently, had been looking forward to meeting me - there is always the possibility of mutual disappointment. In the event, this was far from being the case. Within half an hour of their arrival at `The Hermitage' a definite rapport had been established between us and we were talking as freely as though we had known each other for years. As might have been expected, I felt a greater rapport with Lama Govinda than I did with Li Gotami, who in any case had only a fraction of the wisdom and insight that was manifest in almost every word that Lama Govinda spoke. Nevertheless, I appreciated Li Gotami for her liveliness and intelligence, as well as for her delightful outspokenness, which at times bordered on the outrageous. Though her religious affiliations were by no means exclusively Buddhist, she knew enough about Buddhism to be able to take a serious interest in the subject and there was, therefore, no question of her being excluded from the lengthy discussions in which Lama Govinda and I soon became involved.
What these discussions were about it would be difficult to say. It was as though in the course of the five days that my two guests spent with me in Kalimpong, as well as the seven days that I spent with them in Ghoom immediately afterwards, Lama Govinda and I ranged over practically the whole field of Buddhist thought and practice. On whatever topic we happened to touch, we found ourselves in agreement to an extent that would have been surprising had we not been familiar with each other's writings and had we not already exchanged ideas in a number of letters. Indeed, as the cloudless autumn days went by, my feeling that we were kindred spirits received more abundant confirmation than I had dared to hope, and I was left in no doubt whatever that despite the fact that he was a married lama and I was a celibate monk I had more in common with Lama Govinda than with any other Buddhist I had ever met.
One of the most important topics on which we touched, and in fact touched more than once, was that of the relation between Buddhism and the spiritual life, on the one hand, and literature and the fine arts, on the other. Besides being a Buddhist by conviction, Lama Govinda was himself an artist and poet of no small repute. He had held exhibitions of his paintings in a number of major Indian cities, and had brought out two small volumes of poetry in his native German. For my part, I had written poetry since the age of eleven or twelve, and was even now thinking of putting together some of my more recent poems for publication in book form. A few of these poems had already appeared in the pages of the Illustrated Weekly of India, which had financed Lama Govinda's expedition to Tsaparang in Western Tibet and afterwards serialized Li Gotami's account of their experiences, and from the nature of these poems he was well aware that I was no more indifferent to the claims of Beauty than I was to those of Truth or Goodness.
The fact that Lama Govinda and I cultivated literature and the fine arts did not, however, mean that he painted pictures or that I wrote poems in addition to doing such specifically Buddhist things as observing the precepts, meditating, studying the Dharma, and giving lectures. For him as for me the painting of pictures and the writing of poems was an integral part of the spiritual life itself. The relation between Buddhism and the spiritual life, on the one hand, and literature and the fine arts, on the other, was not, therefore, one that was merely external, as between different material objects. On the contrary, there was a deep inner connection between them. For this reason there could be no question of the cultivation of literature and the fine arts being inconsistent with the practice of Buddhism and the living of the spiritual life, as I had for a time supposed (or had been led to suppose), much less still of the one being actually inimical to the other. Thanks largely to his intimate acquaintance with Tibetan Buddhist art in all its forms, Lama Govinda's understanding of this important truth was at that time much clearer and more explicit than my own. In particular he had a deep appreciation of the relation between art and meditation. `Art and meditation are creative states of the human mind,' he had written in a little book on the subject that he afterwards gave me, `Both are nourished by the same source, but it may seem that they are moving in different directions: art towards the realm of sense-impressions, meditation towards the overcoming of forms and sense-impressions. But the difference pertains only to accidentals, not to the essentials. First of all, meditation does not mean pure abstraction or negation of form - except in its ultimate illimitable stages - it means the perfect concentration of mind and the elimination of all unessential features of the subject in question until we are fully conscious of it by experiencing reality in a particular aspect or from a particular angle of vision. Art proceeds in a similar way: while using the forms of the external world, it never tries to imitate nature but to reveal a higher reality by omitting all accidentals, thus raising the visible form to the value of a symbol, expressing a direct experience of life. The same experience may be gained by a process of meditation. But instead of creating a formal (objectively existing) expression, it leaves a subjective impression, thus acting as a forming agent on the character or the consciousness of the meditator.'
Since Li Gotami too was an artist, and had almost as intimate an acquaintance with Tibetan Buddhist art as her more celebrated husband, she naturally had more to contribute to the discussion when Lama Govinda and I touched on the relation between Buddhism and art than when we touched on more abstruse topics. At such times it seemed as though all three of us were kindred spirits, and that there was a meeting of three hearts and minds as well as of three bodies. With her hearty good humour, and her readiness to say - especially in connection with certain prominent figures in the Buddhist world - things that Lama Govinda only permitted himself to think, Li Gotami indeed enhanced the rapport that had been established between us and made it possible for us to talk more freely than ever.
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Ghoom is a strange place; even higher than Darjeeling it is frequently lost in the mist from whence it get its name. This was the scene when Lama Govinda was snowed in during that winter so many years ago. "I had taken refuge in this temple during a terrible blizzard which for days on end covered the roads with snow and ice. The suddenness and violence of the storm were something which even the local people had not experienced in their lifetime, and for me, who had come straight from Ceylon clad only in the yellow robes of a Theravada monk and a light woolen shawl, the contrast was such that I seemed to live in a weird dream. The monastery itself, situated on a mountain spur jutting out high above the deep valleys which surround the Darjeeling range, seemed to be tossed about in a cauldron of boiling clouds, rising up from invisible dark valleys, lit up only by continual lightning, while other clouds seemed to be sweeping down from the icy ranges of the central Himalayas from which they were rebounding, thus adding to the confusion of the elements. The uninterrupted rumble of thunder, the deafening noise of hail on the roof and the howling of the storm filled the air."
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`The Pines' was small and dark, and set among pine trees the foliage of which was inky black rather than dark green. There was mist everywhere. The name Ghoom was indeed said to mean mist or fog, and it was well known that however clear a day it might be down at Teesta Bridge, or in Darjeeling, on passing through Ghoom one would be sure to encounter anything from a thick blanket of white cloud, through which the grey-blue shapes of the pines loomed like the shadows of giants, to a veil of mist so fine as to be almost invisible. Surrounded by mist as it was, `The Pines' was naturally both cold and damp, especially as the place had not been lived in for a while, and the three of us spent much of our time huddled round the tiny charcoal fire trying to keep warm. We also spent much of our time talking, and in the greater silence and isolation of Ghoom the rapport that had been established between us in Kalimpong was considerably deepened. One morning, however, when the weather was brighter than usual, we paid a visit to the famous Ghoom Monastery, which was only a short distance away. This monastery occupied an important place in Lama Govinda's spiritual history, for it was here that he had met his guru who, as I knew from the articles that had appeared in the Illustrated Weekly of India, was Tomo Geshe Rimpoche. The monastery also occupied a place in my own spiritual history, though not nearly so important a one as in the case of Lama Govinda. I had been to see it six years earlier, on the occasion of my first visit to Darjeeling, and had vivid recollections of the golden face of the colossal seated image of Maitreya, the coming Buddha, looking down at me through the gloom. Now I was happy to be able to visit the monastery - or rather, the monastery temple - with Lama Govinda and Li Gotami.
As we lifted the heavy felt curtain that screened the entrance I saw the same colossal figure seated there in the semi-darkness, the same golden face glimmering beneath the great jewelled tiara. Smaller figures gleamed from behind the glass doors of showcases and glowed with a subdued richness from the frescoed walls like reflections seen in deep water. Rosary in hand, Lama Govinda and Li Gotami moved clockwise round the chamber, pausing for a moment in front of each image or thangka and reciting the appropriate mantra, and I followed in their wake. Some of the mantras were new to me, and of these two in particular - the mantra of Shakyamuni and the mantra of Padmasambhava - not only sounded strangely familiar but also set up reverberations that made themselves felt in the remotest corners of my being. The whole experience affected me deeply. There was the rectangular chamber itself, dimly lit from above by the light that filtered in at a kind of skylight, there was the brooding presence of the images, with the colossal Maitreya silently dominating the rest, and there was the sound of the mantras as the two dark figures in chubas made their way with bowed heads round the chamber. What affected me most deeply, however, was the evident devotion with which Lama Govinda and Li Gotami recited the mantras and the way in which they seemed to feel, behind each image, the living spiritual presence of which the image was the representation or, indeed, even the veritable embodiment.
Darjeeling
Darjeeling was thirty-two miles from Kalimpong by road but only fifteen miles away, so I was told, `as the crow flies'. It was scattered along a ridge, at a height of eight thousand feet, on the other side of the River Teesta. This meant that in order to get there from Kalimpong one first plunged down four thousand feet to the valley (or rather, to the bottom of the crack between the two hillsides), crossed over Teesta Bridge, then shot up eight thousand feet through tropical jungle, tea gardens, and tracts of pine forest to Ghoom by a series of hairpin bends even longer and more acute than those by which one had come down from Kalimpong to Teesta Bridge - all in the space of two to two-and-a-half hours, depending on the precise degree of impatience and recklessness on the driver's part. This was altogether too much for my stomach, and between Ghoom and Darjeeling I was violently sick. Hardly without exception, this was to be my experience on nearly all my subsequent visits to Darjeeling, at least until I discovered car sickness tablets, and the fact may have accounted for the somewhat mixed feelings with which I came to regard the Queen of the Hill Stations. On the present occasion, having recovered from the effects of the journey, and adjusted to the change of altitude, I started looking about me.
Darjeeling was much bigger than Kalimpong, much closer up (apparently) to the snows of Mount Kanchenjunga, much more definitely Nepalese in character - and also much less Europeanized than at the time of my previous visit. (This visit had taken place in 1945, when I was still in the army, and I had vivid recollections of the Chowrasta and Observation Hill, as well as of the Tibetan monastery at Ghoom.) Whether on account of the rarified atmosphere of the place, or whether because, the rains being over and gone, the festival season - the season of the autumn pujas - was now coming upon us, a marked sense of exhilaration prevailed. The rose-cheeked young men seemed more animated than in Kalimpong, as well as healthier and happier. Seeing their cheerful Mongoloid faces, I could not but feel more animated myself. So much so, indeed, that before long I had seen all the things I wanted to see, and met all the representatives of religious and humanitarian organizations I was supposed to meet.
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The Tamang Gompa and Bhante’s talk on “om mani padma hum”
The two members of the Tamang Buddhist Association were brisk, dapper little P.T. Lama and his big, pan-chewing brother Inspector T. Moktan. The latter, who was in the West Bengal police, was the more religious-minded of the two, and always came to see me when his duties took him to Kalimpong. A widower with two small daughters, he had decided, most uncharacteristically for a Nepalese, not to remarry. Though the two brothers were looking for me, and I was looking for them, we did not meet until we happened to bump into each other in the bazaar. They at once took me to the Tamang Gompa, as the pagoda-style Nyingma temple was called, and showed me the new mani chamber they were constructing there. A mani was a prayer-wheel or, more accurately, a prayer-cylinder, and a mani chamber was a chamber containing, not a prayer-cylinder such as was twirled by old-fashioned Tibetans as they took their evening stroll, but a giant version of the same devotional aid, a version which in this case would stand eight or ten feet high and occupy practically the entire chamber. They were constructing the mani chamber in memory of their mother, the brothers explained; it was nearly completed, as I could see, and they would like me to speak at the opening ceremony. I at once accepted the invitation. The principal object of worship in the Tamang Gompa was the enormous sedent image of Padmasambhava that had given me, three years ago, so overwhelming an impression of the spiritual reality of the Precious Guru, and I was happy to renew my connection with the place. I also accepted the invitation because I knew that even educated Buddhists like P.T. Lama and Inspector T. Moktan knew very little about Buddhism, and I was glad, while remaining personally not keen on prayer-cylinders, to have the opportunity of explaining the meaning of an ancient Buddhist tradition.
A few weeks later, therefore, I was back in Darjeeling and back at the Gandhamadan Vihara. This time Sachin did not accompany me. He was more than willing to do so, but according to the Hindu calendar both the days for which I would be away were inauspicious and his mother did not want him to be from home then. On arriving in Darjeeling I again renewed acquaintance with the Burmese Maha Thera, then spent the remainder of the day seeing people, visiting bookshops, and executing various small commissions for Sachin and Miss Barclay. The day concluded with a three-cornered philosophical discussion between me and two Bengali Hindu friends - a discussion which lasted until the stroke of midnight. Next morning, after an early bhojana-dana at the home of Kali Kinker Barua, I made my way down the hillside to the Tamang Gompa, my host escorting me. The opening of the new mani chamber was a very public occasion, with the Deputy Commissioner, Sri Dutt-Majumdar, presiding, and my own lecture as the principal item on the programme.
I had decided to speak on the meaning of the mantra om mani padme hum hri, this being the mantra embossed on the great copper cylinder that stood awaiting the push that would give it its first ponderous revolution on its axis. A good part of my lecture was devoted to explaining the significance of the Jewel (mani) and the Lotus (padma), which were, I said, universal symbols, being found, in different forms, all over the world. In the words of the summary I afterwards wrote of the lecture:
The lotus grows in water, and water always represents life. Philosophically speaking, life is what we call Samsara, the repeated process of birth and death. Life and birth are closely connected, and for this reason the Lotus stands for the Garbha, the feminine principle, as well. It also represents the heart, and the emotions, since these are both associated with the feminine principle.
The jewel, on the other hand, symbolizes light. Light represents knowledge. The source of light is the sun, the heat of which fecundates the earth. The Mani or Jewel therefore represents the active generating power, the masculine principle. Since reason is supposed to predominate in man, it also stands for reason, intellect and spiritual understanding.
In explaining the significance of these two symbols I was careful to insist that whereas a concept had only one meaning a symbol suggested innumerable meanings, so that the significance of a symbol could never be exhausted intellectually. It was therefore possible to interpret the words mani padme, literally `the Jewel (is) in the Lotus', in a number of ways. They could signify the presence of a spiritual reality behind the veil of appearances, or the fact that every man and woman possessed the potentiality for Enlightenment, or the desirability of harmonizing the rational and emotional sides of our personality. Thus the meaning of mani padme was not abstract and philosophical but concrete and practical, and might be summarized as follows:
All our thinking is in terms of pairs of opposites. We think of the true and false, right and wrong, etc. The Jewel and the Lotus represent the ultimate duality of existence. In China these two principles are called Yang and Yin; in India they are sometimes called Purusha and Prakriti, Shiva and Shakti. When we say that the Jewel is in the Lotus, we are reminding ourselves that things are not really separate from each other, and that our dualistic way of looking at things is a delusion. When we realize, by spiritual practice, that duality is only the creation of our own minds, we become enlightened.
The references to Purusha and Prakriti, and Shiva and Shakti, were for the benefit of the Hindu members of the audience, the opening of the new mani chamber being not only a very public occasion but something of an inter-faith one as well. It was not that I really believed in the possibility of establishing an exact correspondence between Buddhist and Hindu symbols.
Besides explaining the meaning of the mantra I sought to account for the effect produced by its repetition. Words were sounds, and sounds consisted of vibrations. Every word we uttered not only conveyed a meaning but set up certain vibrations, which could be either harmonious or discordant. It was these vibrations, and not the rational content of the words, which influenced us most deeply, and it was possible for us to be influenced in this way because we, too, were made up of vibrations. Not only our physical bodies, but our minds as well, were vibrating at a certain rate. Everything in the universe vibrated. Buddhism and science agreed that nothing in the world was solid, but that everything was in a state of perpetual oscillation. At this point I referred to an American scientist's success in measuring the power of mantra vibrations numerically by means of radiation (particularly radiesthesia). The highest rate at which a mantra could vibrate, according to this authority, was 250,000 times a second. Several mantras vibrated at this rate, the mantra om mani padme hum being among them. This information, which I had gleaned from the writings of the Tantric scholar Dr Benoytosh Bhattacharya, was music to the ears of my Tamang Buddhist friends, as was the information, gleaned from the same source, that the revolution of a mani-cylinder released beneficial cosmic forces in favour of the person revolving it. When I sent a copy of the printed summary of my lecture to Lama Govinda, however, he responded with a flat rejection of the idea that the emotional and spiritual effect of a mantra had anything to do with its vibrational value as measured by a scientific device. Mechanistic interpretations of this kind, he roundly declared, were rank materialism, and as such quite inconsistent with the principles of true Buddhism. In deference to his superior understanding of the subject I therefore never reprinted the little article in which I had summarized my lecture at the opening of the Tamang Gompa's new mani chamber, but years later, particularly after becoming acquainted with Pythagoreanism, I sometimes wondered, pace Lama Govinda, whether there might not be a correlation, even a correlation expressible in mathematical terms, between the numerical frequencies and ratios that obtained in the outside world and human emotions, and whether the one might not, conceivably, have an effect on the other.
The new mani chamber having been opened and the massive cylinder given its initial push, I returned to the Gandhamadan Vihara and spent the next few hours absorbed in one of the books I had bought the previous day. It was T.S. Eliot's The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. In my lecture I had spoken of the desirability of harmonizing the rational and emotional sides of our personality. There were certainly sides of my own personality that needed to be harmonized and integrated, though these were not so much the rational and the emotional as the religious and the aesthetic. Sometimes the two overlapped, even coincided, but more often they remained separate and distinct, even mutually antagonistic. This meant that usually they tended to alternate, sometimes even within the space of a single day, with now one now the other predominating, whether in respect of my inner preoccupations or my outward activities. On the day of the opening ceremony this was certainly the case. Having given a lecture on the meaning of a Buddhist mantra in the morning, and spent the afternoon absorbed in English literary criticism, in the evening I attended the full moon day puja in the Vihara's shrine-cum-lecture hall, administering the five precepts to the assembled Baruas and delivering my first sermon in Hindi.
Yiga Choling, Ghoom
Bhante’s 1st visit to Dargeeling and Ghoom
On the mornings that Audrey complained of headaches I walked alone round Observatory Hill, where already trees stood leafless in the mist. Not having seen the snow ranges, I looked out eagerly for them every time the white cloud masses drifting past on the precipitous farther side of the deep, haze-blue valley seemed about to leave the sky clear. After waiting and watching for nearly an hour I happened to raise my eyes and there they were, seemingly half-way up the blue, more jaggedly white and splendid, and bigger and bolder and closer, than I had ever imagined mountains could be. Despite their size they rose clear of the bastions of cloud with an ethereal lightness that made them seem almost to float in the midst of the air.
Shortly before my departure I hired a pony and rode over the ridge into the nearby village of Ghoom. Though seemingly meek and docile enough when I had selected him at the pony-stand at the end of the Chowrasta, no sooner were we well out of town than my mount did his best to unseat me, first by galloping furiously and then by rubbing himself against a railing that overlooked a sheer drop of several hundred feet. But I clung grimly on and soon we were in the thick of the swirling white mist of Ghoom, pierced here and there by the shadow-like shapes of pines. Turning off from the main street, down which ran the track of the little toy railway, I rode through the drizzle between rows of low, open-fronted shops which sold nothing but knives and daggers, up a track leading away from the town to a spur swept by icy blasts. Through the mist came a curiously muffled sound of drums and horns. Presently the white walls and curved red roof of the Tibetan monastery, which was my destination, rose vaguely through the prevailing greyness.
Inside the temple all was gloom, for light filtered in only through the open door behind me and a kind of well in the roof. As my eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness, I saw hanging in two rows from the ceiling, so as to form a sort of aisle, great cylinders made up of silk flounces of different colours. At the far end of the chamber a lamp flickered above rows of brass and silver bowls. Only gradually did I grow aware of the atmosphere of the place, a peculiar combination of stillness and vibrancy which I have since come to recognize as characteristic of Tibetan temples.
As I stood and gazed, I slowly made out, above the bowls and the lamp, first a great pair of hands, laid flat one above the other, then an enormous trunk with a swastika on the breast, and at last, more than twenty feet from the ground, the broad gently smiling face of the image. In the forehead gleamed a huge precious stone. This was Maitreya, the Coming Buddha. Later I learned that the founder of the monastery, the great Tibetan saint and yogi Tomo Geshe Rimpoche, had installed the image of the Lord Maitreya there as a prophecy that the time of his advent, as well as of the world-wide dissemination of Buddhism, was at hand. To me the great figure portended the dedication of my own life to the service of the Dharma.
Gangtok
For my part, I knew that a mystery of some kind surrounded the person of the Maharaja of Sikkim. According to one account, he was a mystic of an advanced type who spent most of his time in meditation. According to another, he was an alcoholic. Whatever the truth may have been, he in fact led the life of a recluse, appearing in public only on the most important occasions.
One such occasion was that of the first public exposition of the Sacred Relics, which took place the following morning in the palace lhakhang or temple. This was not a mere chapel within the palace, as I had thought (thinking, perhaps, of Rani Dorji's chapel at Bhutan House), but a very new, very square, dazzlingly white, yellow-roofed building of traditional Sikkimese type that stood at the opposite end of the ridge from the palace which, I could now see, was a medium-sized country house built after the English pattern. More than that I did not have time to observe. With Sangharatana and Kashyapji I was ushered up the narrow staircase and into the first-floor chamber in which the Sacred Relics - both those of the two arahants and of the Buddha - were being kept. Here too the impression was one of light and colour. Crimson pillars with elaborately carved and painted capitals supported the roof, while the walls were covered with frescoes of the most brilliant hues. At the far end of the chamber the enormous golden figures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas gleamed from behind panes of glass. The reliquaries containing the Sacred Relics were placed on a kind of throne that stood immediately in front of the central image, leaving only a little gangway behind. The silver-gilt reliquary containing the remains of Shariputra and Maudgalyayana was the more interesting of the two. It had been presented by the Buddhists of Ceylon, and was a replica of the stupa in which the Sacred Relics of the Buddha's two chief disciples had been found by General Cunningham. After the three of us had chanted the Refuges and Precepts in Pali, followed by some verses of blessing, Venerable Sangharatana took out two small keys and proceeded to open the reliquaries and remove the lids. The lid of the reliquary containing the Sacred Relics of the two arahants was modelled after the dome, harmika, and umbrella-spire of the stupa, while its base, which was about sixteen inches in diameter, was modelled after the stupa's railed circular plinth. On the raised middle portion of this base were the two steatite boxes in which the Sacred Relics had originally been found and two golden lotuses, the boxes being situated to the north and south and the lotuses to the east and west. On the lotuses stood two gold-rimmed glass capsules, circular in shape. These capsules were about half an inch thick, and about two inches in diameter, and each was attached to its lotus by a little golden ball. The greyish crumbs of bone on which all this artistry had been lavished, and which the Government and people of Sikkim were receiving with so much enthusiasm, lay at the bottom of the capsules - all that was left, humanly speaking, of the two lifelong friends who had been the Buddha's chief disciples.
By the time we had finished arranging the opened reliquaries on their brocade cushions the chamber was full, and presented a more colourful appearance than ever. Sikkim being a Buddhist kingdom, and its ruler not an ordinary Maharaja but a Chogyal or Dharmaraja, that is to say, a Righteous Monarch, the first exposition of the Sacred Relics was being attended not only by the reclusive Maharaja but also by the royal family, the royal court, and members of the clergy and nobility, all resplendent in traditional costume. Since for the laity this costume was the chuba (long-sleeved for men, sleeveless for women), and since on occasions like this the chuba had to be of Chinese silk brocade, the two or three hundred people ranged on the right hand side of the throne supporting the Sacred Relics and down the side of the chamber were an unforgettable sight. There were chubas of every imaginable hue - magenta, bottle green, chocolate brown, orange, peacock blue, royal purple, and violet, all shimmering and glittering in the sunlight that streamed in through the lattices of the big square windows. There were ruby chubas, sapphire chubas, and amethyst chubas. There were even chubas of silver and chubas of gold. Amidst all this magnificence it was easy to forget that Sikkim was a country a third of the size of Wales, that its capital, Gangtok, contained two thousand souls, and that its entire population numbered less than one-hundred-and-fifty thousand.
After the Maharaja and his entourage had paid their respects to the Sacred Relics by prostrating themselves and offering, one by one, the usual silk khata or ceremonial white scarf, the doors of the palace temple were opened to the public, and for the next few hours Sangharatana, Kashyapji, and I were kept very busy indeed. In front of the Sacred Relics passed a stream of people, all desirous of paying homage to the Buddha and his two chief disciples. Besides the Sikkimese themselves, who in any case were of quite mixed descent, there were Tibetans, Bhutanese, and Nepalese, all in their distinctive national costumes. There were even a few Indians, mainly Marwaris and Punjabis. Most of the worshippers were content simply to press their foreheads to the edge of the throne on which the two reliquaries had been placed, offer their silk or cotton khata together with some money, and then pass on. The more orthodox, or the more devout, retreated a few paces from the throne in order to make a triple prostration, after which they would insist on having the reliquary containing the remains of Shariputra and Maudgalyayana, which was the larger of the two, lifted up and placed on the top of their heads by way of a blessing. Followers of Tibetan Buddhism, it seemed, attached great importance to actual physical contact with sacred objects. Every few minutes, therefore, Sangharatana and I, who were stationed on either side of the throne (Kashyapji found it difficult to remain standing for very long) had to grasp the base of the reliquary firmly in both hands and then, between us, lift it up a few inches before gently lowering it onto the bowed head of the devotee, who would receive the blessing with hands resting on the edge of the throne and tongue respectfully protruded. Whenever there were a number of such worshippers in quick succession, this process of raising and lowering the reliquary was apt to degenerate into the administration of a series of rapid bumps on the bowed heads that appeared in front of us. Sometimes, for one reason or another, the bump would be quite a hard one, whereupon Sangharatana would laugh heartily. As for the recipient of the bump, from the pleased expression with which he or she looked up at us afterwards it was clear that they were only too happy to be blessed in this emphatic and unmistakable manner.
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