Bathing in Buddha's Glory

[Guest guest]

Bathing in Buddha's Glory

 

Every morning before preparing ghee tea, tsamba and cheese for the

family's breakfast, 60-year-old Yamzhoin first changes the water in

the silver decanters in front of statues of Sakyamuni (founder of

Buddhism) and Zongkapa (founder of the Gelug, or the Yellow sect of

Tibetan Buddhism) at her home.

 

Then she lights a butter lamp, clasps her hands and prays silently.

 

Around 9 o'clock, after her children have all gone to work, Yamzhoin

begins to take ritual walks three times along the Bakor Street of

the Jokhang Monastery.

 

With a prayer wheel turning in her right hand and the Buddha beads

twisted in her left hand, she recites the Six-Prayer Words

repeatedly.

 

Noon has almost arrived when she finishes the ritual walks. She then

buys some beef and vegetables for lunch at the Chongsaikang Grocery

Market and goes home to prepare lunch.

 

Through rain, wind or even during the coldest days of the year,

Jokhang Monastery and Potala Palace are always encircled by elderly

Buddhist devotees like Yamzhoin, who pray and kowtow along the walk,

wishing for happiness and health for themselves and others.

 

For Tibetans, Buddhism is part of their lives.

 

The festivals

 

There are more than 150 festivals within a year in Tibet. There are

several major religious days every month. All of these festivals are

intertwined with the devoutly religious culture.

 

The fourth month of the Tibetan calendar is called the Sagya Dawa

Festival by Buddhists. The 15th day of the month commemorates

Sakyamuni's birth, Nirvana and becoming Buddha.

 

On that day every year, all of Lhasa is permeated with the scented

smoke of burnt joss sticks. Before the first light of morning

reaches the Potala Palace, groups of Buddhists from all over the

region have already prostrated themselves at the foot of the Potala

Palace.

 

They also take ritual walks along the Lingkor Roads of Potala

Palace, Jokhang Monastery, Ramoche Monastery and other famous

monasteries.

 

Monasteries are not the only places where the pilgrims visit.

 

Sacred mountains and lakes are also musts for these devout

worshippers.

 

For instance, the 6,714-metre-tall Kangrenboqe is the highest peak

of the Gangdese cordillera, located in Buran County of Tibet's Ngari

Prefecture, over 1,700 kilometres away from Lhasa.

 

It is considered a holy mountain not only by Tibetan Buddhism, but

also by followers of the Bon and Hindu religions as well as Jainism.

 

Legend has it that Sakyamuni and an eminent Tibetan monk named Milha

Riba once visited the mountain. Throughout history, many dignitaries

used to cultivate themselves and lecture on Buddhist doctrine there.

 

Pilgrims believe the stories with such conviction that circling this

mountain once can clear out and purify the sins of one's entire life.

 

Despite such a far journey, pious Buddhists flock to the mountain,

both young and old.

 

Walking one circle around the holy mountain is a 52-kilometre trek

around the rugged mountain path and a climb over a 6,000-metre-high

hill strip. However, pious disciples, including old people with

walking sticks, stagger and persist till the end. Some pious

disciples walk around the mountain, kowtowing and prostrating

themselves on the ground of the rugged pathway.

 

Namco Lake in Damxung of northern Tibet is one of the holy lakes for

the pilgrims. In June of this year, the lake witnessed a grand

ceremony for the Tibetan Year of the Sheep, held once every 12

years. Namco Lake, meaning heavenly lake in Tibetan, is the lake

with the highest altitude in the world. Its total area is 1,920

square kilometres.

 

As winter arrives, monks and nuns from the major monasteries in

Lhasa -- the Gandain, the Zhaibung, the Sera and the Jokhang -- are

now preparing for the Grand Summons Ceremony, which is held once a

year in a small monastery named Jamg Monastery in Lhasa's suburban

Quxui County. Over 30 kilometres away from Lhasa, the Jamg Monastery

is surrounded by hills on three sides.

 

This ceremony is said to have been established in the year of 1205

by Zongkapa and has continued until today. Its tenet is to carry

forward Buddhism, and benefit every living thing.

 

While testing their wills in the face of the coldest weather of the

year, the young lamas also present their many years of cultivation

achievements at the Grand Summons Ceremony.

 

It is more or less a grandiose debate session as the monks sit down

on the sand, and begin debating among the monasteries.

 

The testing contents all concern philosophical Buddhist issues. If a

lama answers beside the point, the other monks on the scene sneer at

him, and the examinee would feel too ashamed to show his face.

 

Story of the monks

 

According to the statistics of Tibet's regional management

department, the total number of Tibetan monks and nuns is 46,300,

including 4,300 nuns, who cultivate themselves in their own

monarchal monasteries, or go to other monasteries for acts of

pilgrimage.

 

They also hold small-scale Buddhist activities among the population

at the invitation of disciples.

 

Young monks have many different stories about how they chose the

celestial life.

 

Dainzin, 21, was born in a peasant family in Zhangdo Township, Dagze

County, with the name Dawa. At the age of six, he swam and played

with children from the neighborhood in a sewage pool in front of his

home. Several days later, he developed a painful stomach ache.

Doctors at the Lhasa First People's Hospital found that he suffered

from thoracal empyema, which might be caused by the pathogenic

bacteria in the sewage.

 

"He could hardly endure the ache, and screamed all day and all

night. At that time, I thought that he would never get over it,"

recalled his mother, Zholgar.

 

A month later, the doctors had managed to save the life of young

Dawa, and his mother kowtowed continuously to the doctors.

 

The child left hospital and recovered, while his father was sent to

hospital because of cardiopathy. So Zholgar decided to ask a lama to

practice divination. The result said that only when the child

becomes a lama in a monastery could the disaster be eliminated.

 

On the day in 1988 when he formally became a lama, Dawa, who had

never left his parents, cried. He joined the Gandain Monastery,

about 10 kilometres away from his village. The Sutra Teacher of the

monastery gave Dama the name Dainzin, meaning to protect the power

of Buddha.

 

Now, Dainzin has grown into a young man. Over the past 15 years, he

has become one of the outstanding lamas of the Gandain Monastery.

 

However, he still has secular concerns.

 

He said that when his father died, his four sisters were still

young, so his mother had to shoulder the burden of the whole family.

 

He tried his best to give a helping hand. Whenever the monastery

gave them leave, Dainzin would go home and help with the farming.

 

Research from the local department concerned shows that among the

over 40,000 lamas in the region at present, young lamas amount for

the majority, all with different experiences. Some have turned to

the monasteries because of financial difficulties in their families,

some because of their poor academic achievements and failure to

enter higher levels of schooling, some because of marital

frustrations. A great number of lamas were influenced by their

family members, who are pious devotees.

 

"The experience, scope and knowledge level of this young generation

of lama is different from those of us when we were young. The

difference is the difference between heaven and earth," said Chilai

Ragyi, head of the Democratic Management Committee of Gandain

Monastery. "Most of them abide by our monastery disciplines, and

study the doctrine devotedly under the instruction of their masters

after they came to the monastery."

 

Of course, he said, some lamas left the monastery after a few years

simply because those young monks do not want to live a life

that "purges one's mind of desires and ambitions."

 

A few have also been expelled because they violated the code of the

Gandain Monastery, Chilai Ragyi said.

 

Old and new

 

As the economy booms and life changes, the young and old do have

differences over how to run their own religious lives.

 

After one day's Buddhist activity, the 25-year-old lama Ngawang took

off his claret kasaya and rode on a bicycle to buy some daily

commodities in Lhasa, some 4 kilometres away from the monastery.

 

His Sutra Teacher Qoidain is not very happy with that.

 

"You can go out of the monastery for your own business, but you

cannot ride a bicycle," he chides. "Since the ancient time, was

there any lama breaking the propriety for the sake of convenience?"

 

But Ngawang retorts: "Master, each time it took more than a half day

for you to go into the city, and you were extremely tired, streaming

with sweat, while it only takes one hour round trip by bike. "Among

the so many conventions of Tibetan Buddhism, is there any item

saying lama is not allowed to ride a bicycle? Moreover, when the

eminent lamas of the ancient times went out on a mission, the horse

was their necessary means of transport. Riding a horse does not

violate the doctrine of not abusing living things, let alone that

bicycle is made of non-living iron."

 

The elderly Tibetan lamas have spent the best part of their lives

worshipping ancient Buddha and cleaning and lighting lamps.

 

But today, especially because the monasteries now make more money,

young lamas, who have more pocket money, have developed interests in

modern gadgets, such as watches, mobile phones, televisions,

bicycles and motorcycles.

 

In the established monasteries with a long history, whether lamas

can use modern phones, watch TV, ride bicycles or use motorcycles

becomes a frequent dispute between the young and the senior lamas.

 

Senior monastery managing lama monks are coping with the changes of

time.

 

Chilai Ragyi said that, among the over 300 lamas at Gandain

Monastery, 70 per cent are young. Some 30 young lamas have bought

motors.

 

Most of them are from counties and townships in the neighbourhood.

In the busy season (spring and autumn) of farming, when the

monastery gives a leave, they will ride bicycles or motorcycles to

go home and help with the farming.

 

"It is completely understandable," he said. "But they leave their

motorcycles in the care of villages far away from the monastery, for

fear of disturbing the silence in the monastery."

 

Pinglha, deputy director of the standing committee of the democratic

management committee of the Tashilhungpo Monastery in Xigaze, said

that Tashilhungpo Monastery allowed the young monks to watch TV, so

that "they can learn knowledge, learn about home and abroad," he

said.

 

But programmes with violence and eroticism are forbidden.

 

"In the past, lamas in the monastery followed their schedule

according to the rise and set of the sun, or by knocking the gong

and beating the drum," Pinglha said. "Today, beating the drum is

only a style, all lamas, including senior ones, follow the time of

the day by their watches.

 

"In the past, the sutra books were printed with clumsy woodcarving

plates made by hand. Today, they are printed with advanced computer

typeset. Both the speed and the quality are 100 times better."

 

The story first appeared on the 4th issue of China's Tibet magazine.