The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (42 page)

In the Hall of Spiritual Growth, the Yanghsin-tien, they were received by the Emperor in a high small room used only for secret conferences. Absolute silence reigned after the Emperor appeared
and the guests prostrated themselves; then at a word from the Emperor they took their places. An enormous cloth of yellow silk hung across the ceiling; a mighty dragon embroidered in gold, red and blue swooped across the symmetrical silken folds that came together in the middle of the ceiling. The windows were curtained despite the daylight; heavy bronze oil lamps hung on chains that pierced the silken ceiling, cast a reddish light over the carpeted steps, the ruler in his yellow gown and the resplendent motionless guests. Silently young eunuchs busied themselves above and below, served tea in a golden service. Ch’ien-lung raised a cup to his guests, held the little porcelain cup for a long time and read the verse inscribed on it, that he himself had composed:

The Yellow Lord’s hard low voice continued. These intrigues in the land, in particular the northern provinces, called for sharper vigilance. The so-called Wu-wei sect had been formed by a man called Wang Lun; factionalism among its adherents had led to the defection of one group, which gave itself the scurrilous name of the Broken Melon and instigated open rebellion. The Wu-wei sect itself seemed to have vanished from the earth, likewise Wang Lun. These people must be sniffed out from their hiding places in the great cities and among country folk.

Sung reported that instructions had been issued to Ch’en Yuan-li, Tsungtu of Chihli and to Hsu Chi, governor of Shantung.
Surveillance operations in the towns had been reinforced; the investigation of sudden deaths and unexplained assaults had improved immeasurably; population movements in the two affected provinces were under the strictest control both in towns and in the countryside, supervision and the compiling of name lists entrusted to absolutely dependable officials.

The Emperor spoke: “I have forbidden Excellency Chao Hui to unleash his elite troops until I give express orders. I may yet turn these troops on the rebels. For now I order you, Excellency Chao, to concentrate your forces in a state of readiness north of Peking. Have the local authorities make it known by wall poster and crier that civil jurisdiction will be suspended; the victorious elite of Excellency Chao are authorised, with the cooperation of the Tsungtu, to proceed directly against treasonable localities.”

Liu E, former Viceroy of Chihli, was present: a great bent figure with a long beard. Shocked like the others, he counselled against harsh threats that might lead to results not bargained for; the Wu-wei sect weren’t for certain of an anti-dynastic tendency; was there proof in fact of their presence at the scene. Threats might simply rally whatever remnants of the sect, bring discontented elements together.

Chao Hui, recognizing tension in the Imperial face, riposted. He referred to the arrest a month ago of forty men and women in the district of Taming, confessed adherents of Wang Lun who had been agitating among provincial troops against the war and the warlike alien Pure Dynasty.

Ch’ien-lung fixed his icy gaze on the Viceroy. “What do they have against the Pure Dynasty? My ancestors didn’t volunteer to come down into this Land of the Flowering Centre. If we of the Ta Ch’ing hadn’t come, what would the land be now?”

After a pause during which he stared fiercely before him
Ch’ien-lung continued: “The gentlemen whom I had the honour of greeting are no astrologers. My astrologers are conscientious scholars; they take ample time to complete a calculation. Just now you gentlemen were very rash with your conjectures; you came out with a conjecture before I’d even posed the question. The three censors, too, who set out this winter to investigate the calamity in the Mongolian town of Yangchou brought back honeyed conjectures to me. If a house, a theatre, a government building bums down somewhere, then—apart from the town god—the Taot’ai all the way down to the fireman and policeman are deemed responsible. The ancient books advise us that this practice should not apply in exceptional cases; you can proceed from here, my learned counsellors. After much conjecture, excessively furtive, prevaricatory, sugarcoated conjecture by my astrologers and censors, I am supposed to put my hand to my forehead and go to the Temple of Heaven, exculpate myself, perform sacrifices of expiation, ask Heaven’s will.”

“Laws against heresy are needed,” began A-kuei bluntly. “Your Majesty wouldn’t be the first to make or apply them. The behaviour of these Wu-wei people and their foul sect comes within the scope of such laws.”

“Consequently,” concluded Chao Hui, “this is a case for legitimate measures with a practical termination.”

“The eighteen provinces, Tibet, Ili, the islands-these have no meaning any more. What seems a trivial incident, the deed of this Wang Lun, comes to my ears. Why did I hear nothing of it? And yet I was placed upon the Dragon Throne to see, discern, guide, answer to Heaven. Where can I find the strength? And how can a single frail body withstand the blows that must be laid on it for so much negligence, carelessness? It’s no excuse to say that no one stands by me. You don’t accuse me. You’re not much help to me.
Wang Lun is at large in the land. The situation has a voice which I hear clearly calling, warning. And you, as ever, are sycophants.”

Chao Hui asked that he might be allowed to speak. He stepped back towards Sung, whose erudite forehead was already pressed to the carpet. “The matters Your Majesty has touched on are too subtle for the unaided advice of men schooled in politics and war. I humbly propose that a commission be named, comprising the five most senior astrologers and three politically adept servants of Your Majesty. Let the commission be empowered to make a thorough and wideranging investigation of this business and lay a report before Your Majesty and the Court of Censors.”

Chao Hui, less hardbitten than he looked, begged in an unsteady voice, “Whatever Your Majesty decides, pray doo not rescind your first order: to keep the Northern Residence under military protection.”

Slowly Ch’ien-lung’s gaze searched each face in turn. Then he nodded, stretched forward his ffinely shaped head as if he wanted to speak with emphasis. His voice was softer than before: “Proceed with the formation of a joint commission. The Director of Highways in the western provinces reports that winter shows signs of being short and mild this year; already the valley sections of the roads from Tibet are open. I place my hopes on one other adviser, an extraordinary one. I thirst after the Ocean of Wisdom, the Tashi-lama Lobsang Paldan Ishe. This is what I wanted to say to you. Mull it over, my noble Sung, Excellencies A-kuei, Chao Hui, with my astrologers. I have bestowed rank on you, but you owe me far, far more than that.”

And it had indeed been done, even before the conference in the Hall of Spiritual Growth: Ch’ien-lung had sent a letter to this man, this Ocean of Wisdom. Half ashamed of his action the Emperor
had kept it to himself. Three times the Yellow Lord had summoned him in earlier years. The Tashi-lama, Lobsang Paldan Ishe, Tibetan pope of the lamaic church, representative of the infant Dalai Lama, had declined: the journey would be too hard for one of his advancing years. In fact the wise old man knew he’d be expected to appear before the eastern ruler as tributary and vassal. Now the Emperor was seized by a passionate desire to see the great man from the west. The letter, couched in the most solemn terms, strove to conceal any hint of helplessness, referred first to a political matter: the friendship shown by the Tashi-lama to the foreigner George Bogle, emissary of the English in India, during his visit to Tashilunpo. Ch’ien-lung viewed this friendship with favour, for it demonstrated how far the influence of lamaic wisdom had spread, that even barbarian peoples sought through the intercession of the great lama to submit themselves to the protection of the Central Floreate Kingdom. He yearned to speak in person to the man who revealed himself hourly to be the incarnation of the Buddha Amithaba. “I am now so old, and the only indulgence that would give me pleasure before I depart this life is to see you and to pray in company with the holy Tashi-lama.”

The Tashi-lama Lobsang Paldan Ishe was not much younger than the Emperor. He hesitated a long time over his reply to Ch’ien-lung’s invitation. This man whose eyes flashed dark as the turquoise lake of Tsomawang, in whose waters great Mount Kailas is reflected and the God Shiva lives, spent two whole anxious days before accepting from the hand of the Chinese Resident the autographed letter from the Overlord of the eastern world. He fasted these two days, kept to his cell in the labrang, the monastery opposite the white roofed town of Shigatse in the valley of the Nyandju.

On the morning of the third day the walls surrounding the monastery town were rimed with frost. The gold tiling that roofed
the sumptuous mausoleums of earlier lamas was dulled; the fringes of the white woollen scarf which the great lama sitting at the window wore about his neck sported over the black massive sill, fumbled flapping in the biting wind over the weathered stones beyond.

Only then did the Emperor’s letter transform itself in the eyes of the brooding man, lose its menace.

Paldan Ishe had become a man of flesh. Something mortal, petty had blown from some corner through the vault of his soul. During his two days of hesitation the eastern Emperor Ch’ien-lung had communicated something to him.

Ishe had feared for his flesh.

Warmth, sympathy returned to the eyes of this incomparable man. Slightly ashamed he stepped back from the window.

Let Ch’ien-lung’s envoy enter; it would give him profound joy to read a letter from the Lord of the East. His assent followed much later, after all around had urged him for almost a whole month to decline. They could no longer disturb the holy man’s calm. In the faces of his pupils, abbots, doctors, learned men he saw the same fear that for two days had flayed his own body.

Lobsang Paldan Ishe came from the southern part of Tibet. His father had been the most effective civil administrator of the land of snows, the indispensable support of the learned and dreamy Hutuktu to whom the province had been entrusted. When the Tashi-lama, his predecessor, died Paldan Ishe was three years old.

Three clever, pretty boys stood in front of the old Dalai Lama under the radiant golden dome of his labrang in Lhasa. Together with the most senior of his abbots he prayed devoutly before hundred-armed Buddha, whose incarnation he was. When he turned smiling to the children, his glance met first the dark brown eyes of little Ishe, who held the glance with enigmatic seriousness. Thus was the migrating soul of the Tashi-lama recognized in the boy.

He was torn from his father, kept isolated through the years that followed; knew no games, no walks through busy streets, saw no other boys, no girls. The world came to him only in the trains of pilgrims gathering in the courtyards of Lhasa to catch a glimpse for a moment of the Dalai Lama as he hastened with amiable nods to his chapel or an ordination ceremony. It was always the same: prayers, prostrations, rapturous greetings.

Ishe grew into this monotonous life, devoid of all excitement and diversion. He had to incline his head like the Dalai Lama. Old men, beggars, high priests bent their backs to him. A terrible unearthly seriousness attached itself to his person; Ishe knew and saw nothing else.

He did not shrink from himself. He became familiar with the vast connectedness of worlds and their obdurate interweavings. The epochs of three Buddhas had been; the epoch of Sakyamuni was now; the Maitreya would come. A world-liberating spirit, the Buddha Amithaba, grew in him. He was only cautiously allowed to watch the bustle of pilgrims, must eschew all selfwilled acts.

Ishe matured. His wisdom was all encompassing. He lived already like the Dalai Lama in a state of profound happiness, pure knowledge, grave sympathy. He knew his place in the system of the world. Then he was brought to Tashilunpo to teach the great theories.

Decades slid by. With age there grew in the Reverend of Pure Devotion a sense of the magnitude of his task. The suffering he observed both near and far shocked him mightily. This was truly the world that must be succeeded by the world of the Maitreya. The Buddhas of this world and their emanations were no match for the overpowering, overwhelming burden of suffering and ruination.

Months before his departure a stream of pious beggars, pilgrim men and women from every province and from Mongolia made its
way towards Tashilunpo. Many who reached the goldroofed monastery town began to trace out in their own fashion the route the holy man would take: they threw themselves full length on the ground, placed a stone at their forehead, stood by the stone, threw themselves down again and so measured the road with their bodies.

From Lhasa caravans wended southwest to Lunpo; they swung onto the route the lama would take. Their passage could be traced. Countless prayer flags hung on strings from tree to tree, from post to post; they erected tumuli of stones with the six blissful syllables
om mane padme hum
. On passes and mountains they laid the shoulderbones of sheep. They pulled out their own teeth and stuffed them as sacrifices in cracks in the cliffs, cut off locks of hair, tied them with string and hung them to flutter beside bright rags.

Then the train filled the narrow streets as it left the monastery buildings with their crimson breastwork, the purple of their window bays, steep walls, the up and down of rockcut steps, the roofs and cells. The goldgleaming labrang looked from blackrimmed windows onto the departing caravan, like a widow whose tears were frozen. Bright flags flapped, horns blared. Lobsang Paldan Ishe, the Ocean of Wisdom and Virtue, had set off for Peking.