Part 8 (2/2)
He wavers to his feet as I leave him. It is long before dusk, but a deep, sunless cold is settling in. The knee-jarring descent is still dotted with pilgrims. They clasp one another's hands as they go, still praying, and even now stop to touch their fingers to rocks dented by Milarepa's feetstones smeared with cotton threads and yak b.u.t.teror add a pebble to a cairn. I glimpse Iswor, two hundred feet below me, waiting, and blunder down among loosened shale. A flotsam of empty cans and cigarette cartons strews the way, as if even litter becomes holy here. On either side the slopes sink in diagonal blades towards the Lham-chu valley, while the skyline shatters into crags. High to our right a black peak named the Axe of Karma threatens the sky, but not (it is said) the pilgrim walking in Tara's grace.
I come at last into a valley soft with evening sun. Beyond an isolated rock imprinted by the Buddha, the Lham river flows through level gra.s.slands, and nomad horses tinkle on its far side. I have eight miles to go, but the way is easy beside sliding rivulets, s.h.i.+elded by mountains converted to Buddhism long ago. From another prostration platform the eastern tip of Kailas momentarily breaks into view, while to my left gleams the mountain of the Medicine Buddha, whose slopes are spread with healing herbs and minerals.
The sun has set by the time I reach camp. A few stars are out, and the meadows under Zutrul p.h.u.k monastery, the Cave of Miracles, are quiet with sleeping yaks and foreign tents. Ram, who has glided ahead of us all day, augments our iron rations with warming soup. We sit silent together, while the night cold waits outside. Now that the pa.s.s is behind us, we all seem drained. We spread our sleeping bags on the hard earth as if its stones were velvet. For a while I write notes by torchlight, trying to recall the colour of pilgrims' clothes, the texture of rocks on the pa.s.s. But my fingers are stiff with cold, and I soon give up. In the minutes before sleep, a shadowy melancholy descends: the bewilderment when something long awaited has gone.
A wan light has broken around the tent. I have slept only fitfully. Outside, the Saga Dawa moon still hangs in the dawn, a leftover ghost above the misted valley. Beside our tent a rivulet of the Lham-chu crackles through ice-splinters; but I notice for the first time the tint of yellow shrubs familiar from Nepal trickling back between the rocks, like the return of old life.
The monastery crouches under the wind-shattered terraces that pour down from Kailas to the west. Its walls are rough-built and low, lined by small, regular windows like the gun ports of a galleon. Its history, like that of all these Kagyu outposts, is one of mixed marvel and obscurity. Founded in the 1220s, yet so poor a century ago that only a single caretaker lived here, it was razed in the Cultural Revolution, then rebuilt in 1983 as this mud-brick redoubt.
s.h.i.+vering in its temple at dawn, I pa.s.s now-familiar figuresAvalokitesvara, Amitabha, Padmasambhavaseated like inquisitors in their jade-green haloes, until I reach the cave of miracles. This too is familiar: a rocky overhang, no more, where the poet-sage Milarepa meditated and sang. The imprinted stones laid on its altar preserve the pa.s.sage of other saints and hermits, even the hoofprint of the steed of King Gesar of Ling. But its treasure in this place of his power is the figure of Milarepa. The original statue, it is said, was shaped from the saint's own blood and excrement by a tantric disciple, the Divine Madman of Tsang, but this, if it ever existed, has gone. Instead another, bronze Milarepa sits on his stone altar. Of all bodhisattvas, his statues are the easiest to recognise, for he cups his right hand to his ear, listening to the whisper of the sky-dancers, perhaps, or to his own singing.
His life story, recited to a disciple before his death in 1135, is one of black magic and self-violence, rapt attachments and their sundering, ascetic tribulation and ecstasy, all told with the intimacy, even charm, of a first-person narrative that has endeared Milarepa to his people for centuries. In fact this autobiography, together with most of Milarepa's songs, was written by a scholar 400 years after the life it recalled; but whatever its source, it casts Milarepa in a role of human poignancy.
His is a tale of fearful penitence for the murderous crimes of his youth inspired by a vengeful mother, whom he loved. For years he served the grim teacher Marpa, who put him through Sisyphean torments before he was shriven. When he returned to his former home he found the house derelict in the moonlight, shunned by villagers who still feared his memory. Inside he came upon a mound of rags and bones that he realised with horror had once been his mother, and on this he rested his head for seven days, practising the transience of all things.
For years he lived as a hermit, near-naked in isolated caves. He ate only nettles, so that in legend his skin turned green. His sister, who at last discovered him, called him a human caterpillar. In the end his appearance became so terrifying that people fled on sight of him. But he himself felt refined to pure spirit. Often he would break into extempore song. Slowly his life and his teaching attracted a core of disciples, before he died at the age of eighty-three, poisoned by a jealous rival. His life and poetry, whoever composed them, turned him into Tibet's transcendent saint, so that long after his death a devotee claimed simply: 'People could tread on him, use him as a road, as earth; he would always be there.'
Around Kailas, Milarepa became the agent by which Buddhism supplanted the Bon, and his mythic deeds pervade the mountain. A Bon magician became the victim of Milarepa's greater magic, and the rocks of their contestMilarepa pulling Bonchung round the kora clockwisehad haunted our way. In a final contest the Bon magician challenged the Buddhist mystic to reach the summit of Kailas before him, and started to fly there on his shaman's drum. But Milarepa, travelling on a sunbeam, alighted first, and the magician's drum, bouncing down the mountain's south face, left the scars that mark it still. In an act of reconciliation, Milarepa gave the ousted faith another mountain, where its faithful still circle anticlockwise: the same mountain that comforted the old Bon lama in Kathmandu, and that rises snowlit over Manasarovar's northern sh.o.r.e.
The Cave of Miracles, so dark that I can barely see, is rife with Milarepa's magic. The thrust of his hands and shoulders dimples the rock ceiling where he lifted it up, and his footprint is revered on the roof above, where he tamped the ceiling down. Even his stone trident is here, although fractured by Red Guards, and a k.n.o.b of rock that protects those who caress it.
An attendant monk points to fingerprints in the soot-glazed ceiling. They come cold to my touch. Milarepa shoved the living rock about to create a temperate cave. Or so the monk says. The spiritual ordeal in the saint's tale is barely imaginable, but its human detail is gently moving: how mice are nesting on the shelves of his childhood home; how his fiancee wonderingly leaves him. On his fleeting homecoming the sale of his half-decayed books pays for the prayers for his mother's transmigrating soul. These mildewed tomes are his last possession, and of these he rids himself. He leaves the village clutching his mother's bones between his clothing and his chest, like the very signature of transiencehis own and hers. What other comfort was there for the bereaved? Only what the limits of human awareness told him: that everything, all appearances, were mistaken.
I leave money for his b.u.t.ter lamps before I go, and watch them ignite under the monk's hands.
Behind the monastery the cliffs are riddled with abandoned caves where the dawn light leaks over empty hearths and meditation platforms. All along the slopes, thousands of mani stones and carved boulders fire batteries of prayer across the valley. We turn to leave. The river flows full and blue now, bending south-west. Iswor is buoyant again, his head clear, while I go dreamily, as if days of fatigue were catching up.
The path lifts high over the river now and winds above a canyon daubed purple and black: the blood of the Devil's demon yak, it is said, slaughtered by Gesar of Ling. We tramp dazedly above, through scrub and russet shale, staring down precipices of harlequin oddness. Through this palette two pilgrims are moving forward like caterpillars, prostrating on the stones, rising again, their padded hands lifted praying, falling. Their faces are black and m.u.f.fled: two women, young, tired. One still mumbles prayers with each prostration, the other mews like a kitten. The dust of pa.s.sing ponies closes their eyes.
I overtake them cautiously, as if skirting some private rite, although they lift their faces and smile. Within an hour I have crested the canyon path, and there opens out beyond me the remembered peace of the Barga plain. Beneath us the diffused headwaters of the Sutlej river are seeping from the slopes a thousand miles before it joins the Indus, and the sky is static with clouds. The kora is closing now, turning along the southern hills of Kailas. Forty miles away, clear across the plateau, the white upheaval of Gurla Mandhata appears, with Rakshas Tal, the demon lake, stretched indigo below, and close at hand a path leads under the last foothills, where pilgrims are walking home.
SEARCHABLE TERMS.
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific pa.s.sage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.
Akbar, Moghul Emperor, 134 Amitabha Buddha, 126, 1712, 214 Amitabha valley, 169, 181 Angkor Wat, Cambodia, 139 Annapurna (mountain), 1 Api (mountain), 147 Arjuna (mythical archer), 141 Avalokitesvara (bodhisattva), 66, 171, 194, 210, 214 Avalokitesvara (mountain), 188 Axe of Karma (peak), 213
Barga plain, 144, 148, 218 beyul (sanctuaries), 82 (sanctuaries), 82 Bhagavad Gita, 141 bharal (mountain sheep), 103 (mountain sheep), 103 Bhotia people, 19, 21, 25, 60, 78, 86 Bhutan, 76, 172 Bhutan, Maharaja of, 144 Blakeney, Major, 169 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, 31 Bon (Tibetan faith), 103, 126, 163, 168, 173, 17780, 216 Bonchung (Bon wizard), 167, 176, 216 Bonri, Mount, 10 Borobudur, Java, 140, 142 Brahma (Hindu G.o.d), 5, 119, 122 Brahmaputra river: source, 5, 100, 12930; course, 129 Buddha, Gautama, 6, 120, 185 Buddha, Samantabhadra, 51 Buddha, Vajrasattva, 50 Buddhists and Buddhism: and Mount Kailas, 6; obscurity, 19; in Tibet, 301, 49; and reincarnation, 434; statues, 489, 657; Mahayana, 4950; deities, 4950, 667; doctrines and beliefs, 502, 77, 134; art, 523; ban on taking life, 69; affected by Western ways, 70; Chinese attacks on, 114; adepts, 1346; wheels, 156; victory over Bon, 1623; takes over Bon G.o.ds and practices, 178, 216; effect of purified eyes, 193; and death, 1979, 2023; see also see also tantrism tantrism Burma: palaces, 140 Burroughs, William, 199
Cave of Miracles, 216 Ceremony of Long Life, 44 Changan, China, 88 Chenresig (Buddhist G.o.d), 49, 65, 206 Cherkip see see Serkyi Cherkip Serkyi Cherkip China: bans pilgrimages to Kailas, 7; Cultural Revolution, 7, 114, 117, 121, 184, 192, 214; invades Tibet (1959), 32, 43, 46, 82; and power of Mount Kailas, 34; Khampa resistance to, 79; closes Tibet's borders, 85; attacked by medieval Tibetan warriors, 88; road-building in Tibet, 91, 95; immigration officials in Tibet, 108; destruction and persecution in Tibet, 111, 114, 121, 134, 170, 214, 217; troops in Tibet, 146, 170, 217; soldiers at Mount Kailas, 1489, 1578, 160; Red Guards, 170 Chiu monastery, 1235, 1278 Choku monastery, 1704 chortens, 71, 1667 Christianity: missionaries in Tibet, 99, 102, 164; and Tibetan Buddhism, 1023
dakinis, 153, 108, 1956; see also see also sky-dancers sky-dancers Daks.h.i.+nkali valley, 678 Dalai Lama: flight from Tibet, 323, 106; and reincarnation, 45, 49; and hidden Shambala, 82; status, 102; Chinese hostility to, 109 Damding Donkhang, 185 Darchen, Tibet, 1446 dead, the: disposal in Tibet, 1502, 154; and mountain path, 1845; and Vajra Yogini burial ground, 1957; and reincarnation, 201 death: denied by Hindus, 1412; ritual and experience of, 198202; see also Tibetan Book of the Dead, The delok see also Tibetan Book of the Dead, The delok (returned from dead), 202 Demchog (G.o.d), 137, 150, 1589, 175, 1934 (returned from dead), 202 Demchog (G.o.d), 137, 150, 1589, 175, 1934 Deng Xiaoping, 111 Desideri, Ippolito, SJ, 989, 129, 143 Dharamsala, 60 Dharapuri, 93 Dhaulagiri (mountain), 1 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 31 Drachom Ngagye Durtro, 150 Drira p.h.u.k Gompa (Monastery of the Cave of the Yak Horns), 1867, 195 Drokpa people (Tibet), 110, 157 Drolma (Buddhist G.o.ddess), 49, 53, 210 Drolma-la river, 191, 195, 205 Durtros, 150, 152, 154
Ellora (temple, India), 139 Everest, Mount, 1
Flaming Rock (sacred stone), 209
Ganga Chu river, 128 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma), 141 Ganges river: source, 5, 100, 128; course, 129 Gaurikund (tarn), 212 Gekko (Bon deity), 177 Gelugpa (Buddhist sect), 104 Gesar of Ling (Tibetan epic king), 175, 215, 218 Golden Basin (Mount Kailas), 167 gompos (dark lords), 153 (dark lords), 153 Gotsampa (lama), 175, 187, 208, 210 Guge (kingdom), 172 Gurla Mandhata (mountain), 89, 11516, 118, 121, 132, 142, 147, 218 Gyangdrak monastery, 161
Hamsa, Swami Bhagwan, 101, 207 Hanuman (Hindu monkey G.o.d), 175 Haroun-al-Ras.h.i.+d, 88 Hea.r.s.ey, Hyder, 99 Hedin, Sven, 101, 125, 1301, 159, 170, 2078 hermits, 1334, 136, 167, 169 Hilsa (village), 912, 95, 98, 103 Hilton, James: Lost Horizon Lost Horizon, 32 Hindus: and Mount Kailas, 6, 1012, 197; venerate Lake Manasarovar, 122; on shooting stars, 132; temples copy Kailas's layout, 139; bathe in Manasarovar, 141, 183, 212; view of death, 1412; exhausted by pilgrimage, 1824, 208, 212; deaths on Mount Kailas, 184, 207 Hitler, Adolf, 102, 131 Holmes, Sherlock (fictional figure), 31 Humla (region), Nepal, 1, 845, 103
India: pilgrimage tours to Kailas, 1078, 184; see also see also Hindus Hindus Indus river: source, 5, 1001, 130; course, 129
Jains, 168 Jamgon Kongtrul the Great (lama), 133 Java, 140 jhaboos (yak-Indian cow cross), 78, 85, 91, 154, 203 (yak-Indian cow cross), 78, 85, 91, 154, 203 Jung, Carl Gustav, 52, 199
Kagyu sect and monks, 127, 134, 149, 187, 194, 199, 214 Kailas, Mount (Mount Meru): as goal, 47; mystery and sacred image, 56, 334, 52, 1934; as source of rivers, 5, 18, 100, 1289; pilgrims to, 32, 478, 72, 92, 1012, 1078, 137, 14650, 1523, 156, 1589, 1678, 1767, 1928, 2049, 218; viewed, 11617; and Lake Manasarovar, 11819; deities and spirits, 1379, 1756, 1934; shape and geology, 138, 143, 189; temples copy, 13940; ascent, 155, 1678, 174, 18998, 2039; cleansing power, 1589; Tibetan name (Kang Rinpoche), 158; ceremonies, 15962; mast erected, 15961; Russian-German evangelist at, 161, 1635; and earth connection to heaven, 1623; flies in from unknown country, 163; remains unclimbed, 1689; Bonpo claim to, 1778, 180; guidebooks to, 1935; and visions, 193; descent, 21118; Milarepa reaches summit, 216 Kalacakra Tantra, 812 Kali (Hindu deity), 679, 139 Kangri chorten, 166 Kangri Latsen (G.o.d), 1734, 176 Kangyur (Buddhist sayings), 51, 128 Karakorum (mountain range), 90 Karnali river and valley: course, 2, 5, 18, 20, 357, 71, 8990, 98, 106; source, 129 Kathmandu: highway to Delhi, 1; and rural immigrants, 8; monastery, 69, 76 Kawaguchi, Ekai (j.a.panese monk), 101, 127, 144, 170, 186, 207 Kermi (village), 25, 27, 34 Khampa people, 79, 110, 157, 173 Khmer people (Cambodia), 139 Khojarnath monastery, Tibet, 110 Kingdon-Ward, Frank, 83 Kipling, Rudyard: Kim Kim, 31 Koros, Alexander Csoma de, 81 Krishna (Hindu G.o.d), 141 k.u.muchhiya river, 71, 79 Kunlun (mountain range), 90
Laing, R.D., 199 lammergeyers, 867 Landor, Henry Savage, 100 Leary, Timothy, 199 Lha river and valley, 148, 167, 170, 174, 185, 188, 191 Lham-chu river and valley, 21314 Lhasa: riots, 145 Lipu Lekh pa.s.s, 184
<script>