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...