In Exile From the Land of Snows (36 page)

The tree grows out of a white brick island standing up, like a dolmen, thirty feet off the plain. Its luxuriant foliage sparkles in the late-morning sunlight; its root system spills exposed, like a wooden beard, down the entire eastern flank of the island. Bright red, green and blue prayer flags thread the branches, and the entire tree, top to bottom, stands entwined in extravagant umbilical-like vines, their abundance seeming more than coincidental. Unaware that the Dalai Lama is approaching, young boys climb through the branches to call one another from semi-concealed perches: below, three Tibetan women, each with a baby tied to her back, touch the trunk with their foreheads. The cool mountain breeze blows cleanly across the landscape. Nothing solemn or pontifical impedes the childlike ambiance of Lumbini, and despite its venerable array of roots, the tree under which the Buddha was born extends into the pastel sky in slender, supple and youthful lines.

The green water of a square brick tank is the Dalai Lama’s first stop. By its side he enacts a simple ritual, pouring sanctified water from a silver vessel, then touching a drop of the tank’s own contents to his forehead in blessing. Beside this water, then a lake, Queen Maya, the Buddha’s mother, paused before giving birth. Reaching term, she had, according to Shakyan custom, set off from the capital city of Kapilavastu to give birth in her parents’ house. The child’s sublime nature was already known from portents and a remarkable dream of a six-tusked white elephant, the supreme symbol of royalty, entering the queen’s right side at conception. Now, accompanied by miraculous signs and a host of
gandharvas
or angels, the birth took place by surprise in the open country, while the queen was still en route to her destination. Pausing at the lake in the center of the Lumbini Gardens east of the city, Queen Maya entered labor and, attended by her younger sister and maidservants, delivered standing up, holding the lower bough of a
palsa
tree. According to legend, the child emerged from her right side, took seven steps in each of the four principal directions, raised a finger and spoke, saying, “This is my final birth.” Brought back to Kapilavastu, he was followed by a sage who, having been alerted by celestial messengers, arrived to identify the infant from the marks on his body as a fully enlightened Buddha. Seven days later, however, Queen
Maya died, the Buddhist records attributing her demise to a reward of rebirth in a heavenly realm on the completion of her exalted task.

“The very purpose of voluntarily reincarnating is to produce some good result for others,” commented the Dalai Lama, reflecting on the Buddhist belief in the regular appearance of spiritually evolved beings in the world. “The reincarnation takes rebirth with choice, intentionally, deliberately, with the definite purpose of serving humanity through religious or other means. Now there are many levels of such beings. Among the highest are advanced Bodhisattvas and Buddhas who have the ability to project emanations. Among them there are also many degrees. For those of lower realization it is necessary for the central emanator to control each emanation separately. The emanations of higher beings can control themselves. The degree of spontaneity or acting without exertion defines the difference. I know of cases in which among one hundred emanations each one knows what the other one is doing while all have an individual sense of self or ‘I,’ though there is only one central emanator. But this is difficult to explain. Until one experiences it oneself,” he concluded, laughing, “one might think that such talk was just senseless, something like science fiction, or shall I say religious fiction.”

Led by a Nepalese archaeologist past a classical pillar built by King Ashoka in the third century
B.C.
, the Dalai Lama offers a scarf and proceeds up two flights of stairs into the single dark room of a small shrine by the tree. Prostrating and making offerings, he chants prayers, accompanied by fifteen monks. In the close, hallowed quarters, lustrous and serene, the monks’ mellifluous recitation filling the room, the pilgrimage briefly regains a personal moment. The Dalai Lama’s thoughts naturally turn toward his mother. “Though originally there was another plan,” he recounted, “somehow Lumbini became the last place I visited. When I was there, I felt this was auspicious. Because Lumbini is the place of Lord Buddha’s birth, it represents the beginning of something. Now my mother has to take rebirth, so you see, that was nice.”

After lunch the Dalai Lama is driven to an open field where, before a large tent enclosing a throne, the crowd is collected. At the conclusion of formalities, he begins his talk by beckoning all 8,000 to come as close to him as possible, which they do, bunching into a surprisingly intimate, tightly packed space at his feet. As though addressing his own family, the Dalai Lama speaks warmly for an hour and a half, on the necessity of living a good, moral and generous life day to day. Following his remarks he pauses and makes a pronouncement which astonishes his listeners: “The long night of our struggle is now coming to a close,” he says pragmatically. “I am sure that we will see one another very soon again—in Lhasa.”
Stunned, the audience musters a clattering, uncharacteristic round of applause—their happiness more deeply revealed in dozens of tear-streaked faces as the implications of what they’ve heard begin to dawn.

The Tito Gate:
2:00 a.m. January 21. In his private car the Dalai Lama has been asleep for many hours. Train 51 Up originating in Calcutta and going all the way to Jammu, beyond Pathankot, will not arrive until four in the morning. As the train pulls into Benares, the Dalai Lama’s saloon will be gently shunted from its siding and attached to the long line of sienna cars trooped behind the black steam engine. In the meantime, Samdong Rinpoché refuses either to leave or to nap. “His Holiness is in my station,” he announces. “Until he departs I must remain awake.” He and Ngari Rinpoché occupy a private retiring room beside the track. While they recline on fully made beds, their conversation ranges breezily from the world record for high-altitude parachute jumps, held by Tibetan commandos in the Special Frontier Force, to a debate on doctrinal points concerning the Buddha’s life. When the conversation pales and the men begin to get drowsy, Ngari Rinpoché manages to filch a silver-tipped ebony baton from a police officer sleeping nearby. With his prize in hand, he and Samdong Rinpoché abscond onto the dark platform to engage in a balancing contest: the stick held on the upright end of the middle finger. S. Rinpoché (endearingly referred to as such by his students) is a perfectionist by nature. Swirling around the platform, his well-pressed maroon robes gracefully distend like wings as he follows after the tottering stick. Dawa Bhotia and Mr. Dhawan walk up, returned from a jaunt to the movies in town, now that their duties are almost over. There is, as always, a great deal of talk about whether or not the train will arrive and if so, when. When it finally does, in the maw of the night, the baton is returned, brief partings are exchanged and the two-day journey to the Punjab commences, the interminable stops reeling back now in reverse order: Bela, Amethi, Jais, Rae Bareli, Lucknow, Sitapur, Shahjahanpur, Rampur, Ludhiana, Jullundur and finally, on a cold morning around nine, the dreary but familiar site of the Pathankot platform.

The maroon Mercedes, newly polished, waits under the eaves of the station’s portico. Beside it stands Kunga, the Dalai Lama’s chauffeur and proprietor of the Kunga Cafe in McLeod Ganj, his face impassively drawn after a sleepless night waiting for the train. A line of Willys Jeeps and Ambassadors, their Tibetan drivers at the ready, receive the party. There are no police in sight, however. Himachal Pradesh, it seems, is under the weather and could not send an escort. The first snow of the year has fallen the night before. In Pathankot it is only rain—dismal and mean—turning the main road into a mud bath, cars and trucks slithering through the slop,
splattering the stalls, stitching its rim with showers of umber spray. The baleful proprietors cower against the back walls of their cubicles. Hidden behind their piles of blankets and coats, soothed by radios and glasses of lukewarm tea, they watch helplessly as each behemoth adds its ration of mire to their goods. None move to rearrange things and—despite the total dearth of customers—certainly not to close shop. Even though winter comes for two months each year, its cold, in the normally sweltering subcontinent, is oddly denied, treated as a temporary aberration for which an open stall with no front wall will do just as well as in any other season. Past this oblique refusal of reality, the Dalai Lama’s column punches its way, charging the town, and the mile-long army base beyond, until, reaching the foothills, it crosses into Himachal Pradesh and enters the ancient labyrinth of river valleys, up which Alexander the Great himself is believed to have once passed, leading to the Kangra Valley and perched above it on the shoulders of the Dhauladar Range, Dharamsala.

There are no other cars on the road. Accordingly—with the Dalai Lama in his favored spot, the front seat—Kunga presses the accelerator to the floor whenever a straightaway opens in the forest between ravines. On one of them, a rear tire suddenly blows. The Mercedes skids to a halt, half off the road, followed by two Ambassadors filled with monks. Further back, the first jeep approaches at fifty miles an hour, its driver eager to keep up with the group, but, exhausted from his vigil at the train station, nodding at the wheel. Seeing the stopped cars at the final instant, he brakes too late and goes skidding into the rear end of the last Ambassador. Fortunately, no one is injured. At that moment a storm of hail and rain splashes down on the entourage, drenching Wangdrak, a tall Khampa in a green army jacket and heavy boots, frantically trying to change the Mercedes’ tire. Under sleek trees, the cars wait, hammered with hail, their occupants lost in thought.

An hour later the majestic peaks behind Dharamsala appear in the distance, glistening with new-fallen snow. The storm gone, the day turns progressively bright, the air fresh and invigorating. Now both Lower Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj can be seen ahead, nestled on their respective ridge backs, white and pleasing. Though it is too small to make out, Kashmir Cottage, the home of the Dalai Lama’s mother, stands halfway between the two. Scores of monks surround the house, having amassed at this moment sixty-two of an eventual hundred million mantras, but she is gone.

Pulling into Katwali Bazaar the snowstorm’s toll is immediately visible. Even in Lower Dharamsala things are a mess. The road is so engorged that safe passage upward is impossible. Word is that a bus has gotten stuck on
the long gradual route past the army cantonment and the Tibetan Children’s Village. Even if it gets loose, there is no place for it to go in a foot and a half of snow. The decision is taken to attempt the back road, a thin track clinging to the mountain with a plunge down one side for hundreds of feet. This is the road most commonly used by pedestrians hiking between McLeod Ganj and Gangchen Kyishong, the Secretariat. At the end of Katwali Bazaar the column turns right and heads directly for the compound, where the Dalai Lama is driven to the Kashag building. Running inside through the cold, he is met by the Cabinet, assembled, according to protocol, to greet him. Here, though, he receives word of another delay. The back road as well is out of operation. Two jeeps have met head-on at the most dangerous curve. The descending one is stuck in the snow and starting to sideslip close to the edge. The second is unable to retreat down the hill for fear of doing the same. They remain frozen in a cockeyed embrace, blocking the last road to Theckchen Chöling. There is nothing to do now but walk up. While the Dalai Lama shares a cup of tea with his Cabinet ministers, an attendant is dispatched up the hill to the palace to fetch a pair of boots. Simultaneously, the heavy custom-built four-door salmon-colored jeep, given to the government-in-exile by the soldiers of the Special Frontier Force, is brought out from its berth. With it there is some hope of negotiating halfway up the road to the start of a rocky path through the woods. With the arrival of his boots the Dalai Lama departs, waving to a group of government workers and their families who have hurried over to see him. By a cluster of households belonging to the
gaddis
or hill folk, he steps from the jeep and sets off up the steep trail. Quickly, he picks his way from concealed rock to concealed rock beneath the smooth white surface. As he breaks the path for all those who follow, his red and ochre robes pass beneath a white cloak of pine boughs, his lone figure reappearing farther up, cast against the limpid sky at the summit of the hill, his pilgrimage complete.

D
HARAMSALA
F
EBRUARY
14, 1981, 6:00
A.M.
The Dalai Lama sits on his throne in the Central Cathedral. Outside, the night is black and still. A cold breeze blows down from Mun Peak. Two old women, up before dawn, circumambulate the temple. They cannot see within. The building’s curtains have been tightly drawn, its front door locked, its side doors guarded by a watchful group of monks. Only a hint of the bright electric light inside appears around the border of each window.

This morning’s proceedings are of the utmost secrecy. No outsider, Tibetan or otherwise, is permitted to view them. Except for the participants, few even know they are taking place. The principal monk has already engaged in extensive preparations. For two days the members of his monastery have recited prayers while he has labored to purify mind and body. His daily meditation practice has been conducted with special care. Fish, pork, garlic, onions and other impure foods have been eliminated from his diet. He has eaten from his own set of plates, kept separate from the others in the monastery. To complete his cleansing, blessed saffron water has been poured over the crown of his head and mantras recited.

On rising this morning, four attendants help the monk dress. His plain habit is put aside for an elaborate costume stored in two trunks. Ordinary pants are donned, followed by red brocade trousers, whose legs are six feet wide. It takes seven folds before the pads sewn into the garment are positioned at the knees. Fastened at the ankles, the trousers bulge a foot to each side. Matched by a red silk shirt placed over an undershirt, they
are followed by two heavy robes loosely fastened with a belt and covered by a thick piece of brocade with an opening for the head. The monk’s knee-high white leather boots are then tied on, toes curled up, wrathful eyes of crimson silk appliquéd on the ankles. So attired, he is helped into a jeep parked between his monastery and the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in the Secretariat compound. In darkness, the jeep slowly winds its way over the back road, through McLeod Ganj and down the approach to the Central Cathedral. From here he is escorted up the building’s front and into a small room in the rear, where preparations continue. A triangular jerkin fashioned of gold-leafed ringlets and styled in the manner of ancient Tibetan mail is put on, its points, front and back, ending at the waist. Next, a type of backpack is securely fastened about his middle. It supports four flags interspersed with three victory banners. The flags, made of doubled-up brocade, hang from flexible metal poles and run the full length of the monk’s back; the banners, shaped like a roll of umbrellas, ascend from mid-thigh to above the head and are crowned with golden points. His sleeves are now bound with strips of red cloth; the left one, padded for archery, is stitched with three more scarlet eyes. Then a front piece of exquisite yellow, gold and red silk, its base exploding in hundreds of rainbow-hued threads, conceals all. At its center lies a golden mirror, the cardinal points dotted by clusters of turquoise around an amethyst, its polished silver core emblazoned with the Sanskrit mantra of a tantric deity. A three-foot-long silver sheath and sword are buckled on the left side, a golden quiver filled with arrows on the right; a golden thimble, used when drawing back a bowstring, is slipped over the right thumb. These are the accouterments of an epic Tibetan warrior, a hero from the days of Gesar of Ling, Tibet’s great legendary king. But, despite the martial nature of the uniform, the monk is not going into combat. Rather, in a few minutes’ time, as he sits beneath the bright lights of the cathedral, his consciousness will be cast aside in trance and replaced with that of Dorje Drakden—“the Renowned Immutable One”—chief spirit minister and bearer of counsel for the State Oracle of Tibet. More than a week ago the three days of the New Year’s celebrations were concluded, and now, as it has for centuries, comes the first official trance of the year.