painting a place for us

All that remains of the splendor that Drathang once clearly had been is the skeleton of a single building. The surrounding complex is gone, the upper two floors of the lone surviving building lie in ruins, and the ground floor itself is far from intact. Its walls bear the painful scars of attacks made under the communist regime. In the places where a magnificent Buddha statue and eight bodhisattvas once stood today one finds bare patches of plaster, a series of halos marking the sanctity of heads that have long been gone, and bits of gilded throne protruding from the wall high overhead.

But what does survive stuns the viewer not only with its beauty but with the clarity of its vision. Between the long slashes of damage are among the most staggering murals we will see on our month-long tour of Tibet’s best preserved artistic treasures.

Viewing art in religious buildings is fundamentally unlike viewing it in museums or secular establishments. Looking at such art in situ, viewers are necessarily placed in the position adopted by the centuries of pilgrims and religious practitioners who had interacted with the art, gazing at it with awe and delight, making offerings to it with admiration or supplication, or simply opening themselves to the blessings and power of its presence.

To the degree that the artist expressly conceived the work with an audience in mind, the art will consciously heighten these responses. Exploiting features of perspective, lighting, composition or simply scale, the art itself anticipates and shapes the way viewers will relate to what they perceive.

Drathang’s wall paintings seem singularly designed to address its viewers. Here the art works on its audience not by the size of its scale but by the composition of a gathering of disciples around the Buddha. The painters clearly envisioned a highly diverse assembly gathering around the Buddha as he taught. An improbable range of ethnic types and colors crowd together around the Buddha, with yellow, red, green, blue and white monks, bodhisattvas, lay followers visually marked as Tibetan, central Asian, Indian, Chinese … Figures are positioned almost huddling together as if trying to draw as close to the Buddha, and the vibrancy of this gathering is palpable. Unlike some depictions of the Buddha as he teaches, not all figures face the Buddha, and not all sit in calm and attentive repose. Instead, the panel is teeming with energy and individuality, with some members of the assembly exchanging smiles of delight, some with eyes wide in amazement and others with their gaze focused intently on the Buddha. A few even appear with their hands in teaching position, apparently commenting to one another on what they are hearing. Even the snow lions below the throne seem caught up in the excitement of the moment, as the artist has pictured them scratching themselves.

Standing before this centuries-old vision of the Buddha and his audience, I suddenly notice that several of the figures in this audience are staring straight out at me, the viewer. In this instant, the artist’s work has reached out to include me in the assembly. Just as some monks in the gathering around the Buddha were exchanging looks, here these bodhisattvas are now exchanging looks with those of us who have joined the assembly in the temple all these centuries later. In this instant, I as viewer am given a place in the assembly. The range of diversity that the Buddhists of that era in Tibet envisioned as part of their community expands just a bit, to include an American nun who is among those smiling as she gazes at the Buddha and exchanges glances with the bodhisattvas also part of the assembly.

Most of these exquisite photos were taken by my wonderful traveling companions Wen-Shing Chou and Christian Luczanits.All

lhasa, tibetan and chinese

Arriving in Lhasa after an absence of nearly ten years, two major changes stand out immediately. One is the degree to which Lhasa has been turned into a Chinese town. The other is how many monks and nuns were in evidence.

With the exception of the old Tibetan area surrounding the Jokhang, Lhasa seems more Chinese than Tibetan. Passing through its streets, one sees larger Chinese shop signs and hears more Chinese spoken than Tibetan. In fact, Lhasa often has the feel of a standard colonial outpost. Much as did India under the British rule, Tibet attracts young men with economic ambitions coming to make money to support themselves and their families back home in China. As did the British in India, Chinese may lived their whole lives in Tibet without ever bothering to learn the local language.

Meanwhile, even as Lhasa is increasingly Sinified, its Buddhist heart is very much in evidence. It is often said that the practice and study of Dharma is far livelier in eastern Tibet, mainly for political and historical reasons. The occupation of Tibet by China employs, among others, the tried and true colonial method of divide and conquer, and part of that process involves dividing the area of Tibet into several different Chinese provinces. Western and central Tibet lie within the boundaries of the so-called Tibetan Autonomous Region or TAR, while Kham and Amdo were politically amputated and grafted onto the provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan. In these two provinces to the east of the TAR, Tibetans are politically grouped with other ethnic minorities and thus receive less intense scrutiny than they do in provinces where they are the single largest rivals to Chinese hegemony.

Nevertheless, Buddhist practice is certainly alive in central Tibet as well. (see Christian's photo above of public teachings we came across at Ramoche temple in Lhasa). We found the debate yards of Sakya and Sera monasteries vibrant with the sounds of monks sharpening their understanding of their textual study. Elsewhere, we happened upon a small monastery whose abbot was conferring a highest tantric initiation that very day, his monks having just completed the corresponding sand mandala. Unlike similar initiations I had seen in Tibetan monasteries in exile, every single monk, even the young monks in the back rows, who had earlier been playing and giggling, evidently knew all the complex mudras and performed them correctly with great solemnity once the initiation had begun. Although this was not primarily a tantric college, it was clear that this abbot had taken great pains to train these young monks.

Thanks again to Christian Luczanits for the marvelous panoramic photo of Lhasa that heads this entry...

overwhelming loss

Three days drive east of Shigatse, across wind-scorched plains and over dizzyingly high passes, lies the ancient kingdom of Guge. This kingdom, though now best known as a series remote and ruined monasteries, was instrumental in the revival of Buddhism in Tibet. It was a king of Guge who invited Dipamkara Atisha and hosted him during the first years of Atisha’s history-making stay in Tibetan territory. It was here that Rinchen Zangpo labored so fruitfully to render the Sanskrit canon into Tibetan.

In most of the places we visited in central Tibet, the signs of damage to monasteries are limited to shells of buildings, with the rubble mostly cleared away. The old statues made of bronze and other metals that can be made into bullets and weapons were hauled off to China long ago, and the shards of statues that had been made of brittle clay were long swept away.

At Tholing, an ancient seat of the Guge kings, the entire central room of the main chapel is conceived as a walk-in three-dimensional Vajradhātu mandala, with a huge seat for Vairocana Buddha at the center and other larger than life sized thrones at each of the four gates of the mandala. Normally as we walk through temples in Tibet, members of our group call each other over to share a quiet discussion of some detail they have noticed. Here the group falls utterly silent as most of us scatter on our own to bear witness to the incomprehensible clash between the beauty of what once was and the ugliness of what was then done to it.

None of the figures that had once occupied the walk-in mandala escaped the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution. The thrones stand empty. The temples roof had been removed, letting the rain in to do the remaining work of wiping the paintings off the walls. The only other hints of what was once here are random bits of exquisitely modeled limbs and torsos of the statues of the surrounding deities on the outer walls. A few images, too high to be attacked completely, have had their heads bashed in.

For the first time on this trip, I am reduced to tears. Later I see that I am not alone in this response.

nechung - the oracle in a box

just down the hill from drepung monastery outside lhasa is the monastery dedicated to the nechung oracle, traditionally consulted on matters of interest to the tibetan state. of course, the nechung oracle that is still consulted by the fourteenth dalai lama has relocated to tibet with the rest of the tibetan government-in-exile. but the original seat stands, as it were, and bears magnificent visual testimony to the protectors and all they protect us against.

the oracle of nechung arrived on this spot in a box, it is said, having earlier resided as a fearful spirit menacing the inhabitants of some other valley in tibet. a shaman practicing the indigenous tibetan bon religion was called in to remove the evil being, and he did so by trapping it in a box, which he then placed in the river to be carried downstream. when the box hit land near the current site of nechung, the spirit escaped and took to living in a tree and resumed its activities of harming the locals. this time, rather than a practitioner of bon, a powerful buddhist teacher was called in. this time, the spirit was converted to buddhism and left unharmed - and untrapped in a box - in a pact in which it agreed to serve as a protector to the dharma in tibet and to the tibetan state and its guardians.

we were unable to locate the tree, which we had heard was still standing somewhere. but we did find the monastery, bursting with murals of various protector deities - most quite terrifying. in keeping with tradition, the background of these images of wrathful deities and protectors is black, and we also found on some walls paintings of the gruesome offerings that protector deities like to receive: weapons, animal skins, skullcups filled with blood and other things not found in the sutras.

chanting for a place in the assembly

a couple of clips of monks reciting the texts they have memorized as part of their exam for admission to Tashilhunpo Monastery in central Tibet. they then stand and must struggle to adjust their robes correctly. once accepted the abbot and disciplinarian dispense advice to the young novice monks.

buddhism is good for business

The road from Tibet’s main airport into the city of Lhasa passes beside massive images of Shakyamuni Buddha, Tara, Amitabha and Chenrezig that emerge from the rocks as if self-arisen, as indeed Tibetans say they are. Small groups of Chinese Buddhist nuns and lay devotees dressed in grey make deep bows before each image, while other mainland Chinese tourists smoke cigarettes and pose with each other for photos. A few foreign visitors throw khatas up onto the stone. Drivers and tour guides wait patiently for the tourists and pilgrims to finish up before packing them back into the vans and buses that will ferry them into Lhasa. This is the first sign of one major change I will observe during the rest of this trip. In its effort to 'develop' Tibet - read here 'turn into a profit center,' the Chinese government is moving quickly to capitalize on Tibet's potential as a tourist destination. Understanding that a major part of what makes Tibet interesting to visitors is of course Tibetan Buddhism with its monasteries, temples, and the many other marks it has made on the Tibetan visual environment. Buddhism, it seems, is packaged into Tibet as a tourist spot.

A sign of this conceptualization lies just adjacent to the stone images: An amusement park with Buddha-themed entertainment that has been built since my last visit here, in 1997. At the beginning of the trip I did not consider the significance of this, but one month later when I passed the theme park again on my way back to the airport, the symbolism seemed inescapable: The Chinese government’s move to turn Tibet into a Buddha-themed tourist destination is echoed loudly in the rapidly growing tourist industry, that threatens to turn the sacred sites of an entire country into the playground of curiosity seekers with cash to spare.

This eventuality seems distant at the moment, though, and there do seem to be some benefits to the monasteries. To attract tourists to see the charms of a Buddhist Tibet, the government needs to permit and even sponsor renovation and repair of monastic buildings, and perhaps even some new construction. A major renovation effort was underway at Sakya Monastery (see photo.) If only for the sake of the tourist trade, those monasteries need to be filled with people in red robes. For the benefit of tourists, the main debate courtyard at Sera Monastery in Lhasa is surrounded by a paved and elevated sidewalk, ideal for snapping pictures, and afternoon debate is a heavily photographed event. It is impossible to foresee precisely how this tourism drive will shape life of monks and nuns in the long run.

For now, it is clear that Buddhism is very good for business. It remains to be seen whether business will be good for Buddhism.

the texture of monastery life

a few photos to convey a bit of the feel of daily life in some of the monasteries we visited.

to the left, young monks relax and await the beginning of an initiation that is planned for later that day. below to the right, one monk at Samye Monastery shaves the head of another as two newcomers sit and await their turn. and visitors from abroad - here, me - are usually good for a few minutes' diversion. in this photo, some monks have asked me to identify the lamas in a photo they were sent from south india.

zhalu - home to hero and polymath

buston is the author of the dge slong ma'i gleng 'bum, the only tibetan text i have located that is expressly concerned with the lives of nuns, and one i hope some day to translate. he was also a great sanskritist, a vinaya scholar with several commentaries to his credit, a translator and editor of the canon, an accomplished director of major art projects and a great polymath. in other words, buston is my hero. and zhalu is his monastery.

buston was apparently also a very good son. he had a stupa built for his mother in an exquisitely painted room constructed as a vajrabhairava mandala, as it is described in the Tantra to Eliminate All Bad Rebirths (sarvadurgatiparis'odhanatantra) which is understood to be able to prevent rebirth in any of the lower realms. nice, eh?

the landscape shot showing zhalu way off in the distance and dwarfed by the mountains behind it, was taken from a neighboring chapel in which sakya pandita is thought to have received his full ordination. zhalu is considered by historians to be the seat of a sort of sub-school of the sakya lineage, but the monks at zhalu itself insist that they are an independent lineage. interestingly, the circumambulatory path around the main chapel is bountifully painted with depictions and inscriptions summarizing past lives of the buddha and his main disciples, according to a text by one of the karmapas and firmly in the karma kagyu lineage.

zhalu also has a bit of a reputation in the area for a famous statue and conch. when i was telling some tibetan monks from tsang but now living in the states about the places i planned to visit on this trip, the only one that elicited any great response was zhalu, whose famous conch and statue i must be sure to see. they told me that on two separate occasions, thieves had attempted to make off with each of these two items. but each attempt was foiled as the conch began to blow as they carried it off, and the statue spontaneously became heavier and heavier as it was carried away from the monastery, until the thieves could hold it no more and had to leave it on the spot. i did see the conch, but never figured out which was the magical statue. perhaps the chinese have since devised a way to counteract its growing weight.

traveling around tibet, i was welcomed with overwhelming warmth by tibetans in most places, and often heard words of delight at seeing a foreign buddhist nun. only at zhalu was i challenged, in a sense, by two monks who wanted to know why i had chosen to become buddhist. not with aggression but with curiosity and perhaps a bit of doubt. my basic answer - that buddhism teaches that suffering and happiness are created within, and offers suggestions for how to do that - passed their apparent scrutiny and they then extended me their full hospitality and warmth (see photo).

zhalu houses an interesting example of the series of paintings that i was researching during this trip, paintings that provide visual exemplars of ideal monastic dress, architecture, conduct, and requisites (see photo). but despite the delicacy of zhalu's painting of the recommended behavior for monks and the many images of how to handle robes, zhalu monks do not seem to pay particular attention to adhering to monastic dress code.

and although it was once a seat of great, great learning, zhalu's several dozen monks currently have no teacher and therefore do not study. in most case, not even enough to identify most of the images painted in the spectacular murals that grace the walls of this moanstery. instead, the names of deities were written by better educated monks on small bits of paper and glued to the walls themselves...