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The Sacred Mountain of 'Wu T'ai
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Peking, for all its moods of softness, belongs indisputably to the North, where camels and horses take the place of buffaloes. There are times in spring when the sand of the Gobi Desert comes riding in opaque yellow clouds upon the wings of an evil wind, blotting out the sun, seeping through windows and doors, penetrating even into bookcases, and torturing the noses and throats of those who huddle within their houses. In winter, freezing winds bring tears to the eyes which soon form icicles clinging to the lashes. The cityâs softer aspects are the residue of centuries of imperial rule during which a yearly harvest was reaped of all the manifold forms of beauty which China's far-flung provinces had to offer. So, in pleasant weather, Peking displays southern graces - a gentleness, a languor, a delicacy which offset the grimness of her intimidating gateways set amid ponderous fortifications.
The time came for me to take leave of this voluptuous softness and to journey to Wu T'ai Shan across the great North China plain â in autumn and early spring, yellow and parched as a desert; in winter, a dreary wilderness of snow; in summer, an endless vista of softly waving green or pale yellow. I must enter the lonely mountains lying several hundred miles to the west.
Fortunately it was June, my vacation having begun-early owing to a political strike at the university. The little train chugged slowly through the richly cultivated fields which, east and south, stretched to the horizon and far beyond; while, to the north and west, blue and purple hills were already visible. Bare, treeless slopes succeeded the great ocean of rippling green maize and kaoliang; and, before dusk, we came to Nankâou, the principal gateway through the Great Wall. Like a monstrous Chinese dragon, the Wall sprawled across the hills, clinging to the ridges in a series of stupendous undulations. A single hundred-yard section of it would be accounted an engineering feat of some magnitude. How was it possible to visualize it rising and falling uninterruptedly from the China Sea almost to the borders of Turkestan ? the effort of imagination made me sleepy and, just before sunset, my eyes closed. So I knew nothing more until the train came jerking to a halt at Kalgan, Mongolia's gateway. For the first time I was within bowshot of camel caravanseries; of butter-pomaded Mongols who washed or were washed only thrice in their lives (after birth, before marriage and after death); of crowds of men in brocaded clothes, their silks glistening beneath the grease accumulations of years; of men who were fit to challenge Cossacks to feats of daring horsemanship - riders who could loose an arrow from the back of a fast-galloping steed and hit the target as unerringly as an army instructor on the regimental shooting-range. But these things I was left to imagine, to reconstruct from my reading and from my knowledge of the Mongols in Peking. Afraid to leave the train, I lay down on the hard, wooden seat, enjoying fitful dreams with a Mongolian background.
At midnight, we reached Tat'ung, having turned southwards back into China Proper. Even after a hot June day, the night air was chilly, so I was glad to find that my room at the inn was provided with a heated k'ang. In fact, it contained very little else. One third of the room- space consisted of a bare brick floor, the rest being taken up by the low brick platform covered with singed straw matting on which I now unrolled my bedding of thinly wadded summer quilts. The only article of furniture was a foot-high table about the size of a large tea-tray placed in the middle of the k'ang for use at meals. A bowl of hot water for washing, a rather grimy perfumed towel and a potful of hot red tea were the only luxuries available that night. Being lunchless and dinnerless, I was hungry, but too tired to care much.
An hour after dawn, a lad in a shabby blue cotton gown appeared bringing a very large bowl of coarse earthenware which contained my breakfast - boiled noodles in mutton broth, flavoured with garlic, onion and pepper. Such food does not make an ideal breakfast, but I found it tasty enough to have the bowl twice replenished. My next visitor was the inn-keeper, a crop-headed, harsh-looking man dressed in jacket and trousers of patched, unwashed white cotton. He asked how long I proposed to stay.
'Just one more night,' I answered. 'And, if you will find me horses and a guide, I should like to ride over to the Yunkang rock-temples this morning.'
This was easily arranged. With my guide mounted on another horse, I rode off through low hills, passing some of the ancient and still primitive coalmines of the region. They were being worked by thin, shabby wretches with packmules. Death by heart-failure overtook man and animal alike with frightening regularity, and they were alike too in being gaunt creatures with hardly any flesh between bone and skin, alike in their lack-lustre expressions, devoid of all joy and hope. I had been told that, in this province of Shansi, after generations of misgovernment, poverty was so great that the farmers scarcely ever tasted the eggs laid by their own fowls, even though they brought in little more than a silver dollar for a hundred and twenty of them â the price of one very good city-restaurant meal.
The Yunkang caves, like those of Ajanta, have one thing in common with that very different sort of monument - the Taj Mahal, in that they are among the few places in the world which cannot possibly disappoint even the most extravagant expectations. It is now thought that Buddhism first trickled into China as far back as the second century B.C. By the time these cave temples were hewn from the living rock in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries A.D., the Indian religion was spreading like a bright flame across the face of Asia. The men who came into contact with it then were inspired with a great upsurge of the spirit comparable to that which led to the building of Europeâs loveliest cathedrals. Though Yunkang possesses fewer of those wondrous man-made caves than Ajanta, they are even more stupendous. In each cave, the principal Buddha-image (formed by cutting the rock from around it on three or four sides) is so enormous that, in at least one case, I estimated the nose alone to be twice as long as my six-foot body - perhaps much more than that, for it is difficult to judge the length of something high above one's head. The image most often photographed and reproduced in albums is one of the smallest among the principal images, easy to photograph because the cave has fallen around it; and even this one is often seen in reproductions with as many as fifty people standing on the hands and forearms without crowding. The large images are impossible to photograph as the space around them is too confined. At most, the camera can record some detail of face, limbs or body.
The staggering size of these images strikes the mind with wonder as soon as the caves are entered; but, before long, this wonder is thrust into the background by the even more astounding beauty of the sculpture, especially of the thousands of small figures surrounding the giant images. For centuries, these great statues have sat silently brooding on human sorrows, their lips touched with the faintest of compassionate smiles - but not in solitude. In each cave, walls and ceiling are a mass of intricate carvings. Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, devas, asparas, a host of spiritual beings-thousands upon thousands of them in every cave - stare down at the puny descendants of their inspired creators. Some reflect the brooding calm of the central images; others are running, leaping, flying, dancing, singing, twanging stringed instruments, blowing on horns, waving their arms, flapping their wings, making faces, rocking with laughter in so lively a manner that it is hard not to believe they are living beings petrified by a magician's spell.
I had never thought it possible that inanimate beauty could be so moving. Feeling that I had never seen anything to compare with it, I began to throw my mind back over China's other artistic achievements, wondering if the caves had some equal in other fields. I recalled Chinese architecture - grim, delicate, bizarre; paintings of rocks, mountains and waterfalls, birds, butterflies and every kind of flower; portraits of Buddhas, hermits and monks, officials, emperors and lovely women; porcelain of soft blues and greens, of brilliant reds and yellows, of crimson and ox-blood, of purest white or rainbow profusion of colour; figures of people, animals and plants in ivory, wood, jade, precious stones, silver and bronze - but there could be no end to such a list. Without attempting to think further, I concluded that even China (unless in the Tunhuang caves which I had never seen) has created nothing which exceeds the Yunkang rock-carvings in their power to evoke absolute certainty of a lovely and eternal Reality underlying the world of appearances and tantalizingly reflected by sensuous images and transient forms.
Begging my guide to leave me to myself, I wandered in and out of the caves, finding new beauties and fresh marvels each time I re-entered them. Within three hours, my mind had become so surfeited that I was glad to emerge into the open air and sit down to contemplate the simple and familiar sights of hill and sky. During the ride back to Tatâung, I realized for the first time that an excess of beauty can be as overwhelming and as wearying as over-indulgence in drink, love-making or laughter.
I was compelled to stay in Tat'ung for several days; the inn-keeper would not hear of my making the week's journey to Wu T'ai without a proper caravan or an escort of some kind. At last, a suitable caravan was assembled, a group of people who, but for the absence of women, could have inspired illustrations for a Chinese translation of the Canterbury Tales. Of the thirty or forty members of this caravan, those I recollect most vividly are a mounted Mongol Lama in a splendid robe of purple silk; an elderly and very shabby old Mongol on foot who had spent two years on the journey from his home in Northern Manchuria, begging his food and carrying nothing but the clothes on his back; and my own muleteer, a gay young man from a farm which lay directly on our route, at whose house I was to spend a very comfortable night. Most travelled on foot, using horses and mules as pack- animals, but I preferred to make the journey in primitive luxury. For a small sum I was able to hire a mule-litter - a cross between a sedan-chair and the cabin of a very small boat. The floor consisted of netting on which my luggage had been carefully spread out and topped with my bedding to act as a sort of carpet. The walls and roof comprised a cylindrical tunnel supported on a wooden frame, very much like the cabin of a Cantonese sampan. The whole contraption was firmly anchored to two long shafts which projected before and behind so that it could be slung between two mules walking in single file.
For some reason, I and the muleteer who walked beside me were selected to lead the procession, while the much more important purple-robed Lama rode last of all. In general, holy-men and merchants occupied places of honour, front and rear, while the pedlars, illiterate pilgrims, and pack-animals formed the centre of the caravan. I found the motion of my wheel-less vehicle so soothing that I passed much of the time stretched flat on my back, dozing or drowsily busy with my thoughts, except now and then when I remembered that this was a pilgrimage and shamed myself into sitting cross-legged for an hour, practising meditation. More genuine pilgrims felt obliged to go on foot; indeed, Mongols often make far longer journeys, crawling on their knees or stopping at every three paces to prostrate themselves. The rough, rock-strewn path may have jarred the feet of the mules, but the litter swung between its poles as gently as a slim boat tossed upon lightly running seas. If I got down to stretch my legs, I had to walk very slowly for fear of losing sight of the caravan plodding ponderously behind.
The Chinese peasants and pilgrims chatted and sang as they toiled along the difficult track, which led steeply uphill nearly all the way. The purple-robed Lama could be seen in the distance, solemnly telling his beads as his horse ambled forward in our wake; while the Mongol beggar-pilgrim whom we came to call 'Old Manchuria' would pour forth a stream of pidgin-Chinese to anybody who would listen to him. At nights, we slept in small wayside inns, usually lying in a row on the k'ang, about eight of us to a room -- except once when my muleteer invited me to pass a night in much greater comfort at his parents' unusually prosperous farmhouse. I learnt that the old couple had never seen a Westerner at close quarters before, but their peasant politeness was so great that they treated me exactly like a Chinese guest, refraining from any questions beyond the normal polite exchange of biographical information.
All the farm-houses and inns were built round wide courtyards, the living-rooms on two sides with cloister-like stables for the animals opposite. The food was dreadfully monotonous, consisting chiefly of potato soup, porridge made from millet, and coarse maize-bread. Eggs were a luxury seldom obtainable. So, whenever we passed through one of the little walled cities or county-towns, I used to treat all the poorer members of the caravan to a mess of boiled pork and good wheat bread, either roasted in a pan with just a touch of oil or steamed in the form of rolls or meat-filled dumplings. I had thought myself poor, but found the cost of feeding so many people almost trifling.
A day's journey was almost exactly ninety li (thirty miles),the li varying slightly in length according to the hilliness of the road, this unit being based partly on the time it takes to cover a given distance rather than upon distance alone. There were inns at every half-stage. We would get up early enough to be able to set out at dawn, rest for two or three hours in the middle of the day, and arrive just before or just after nightfall. As many of the muleteers were opium-smokers, they insisted on this long midday halt so that they would enjoy at least two hour's placid smoking after their lunch. Naturally, they also smoked in the evenings as soon as their animals had been stabled and fed. Most declared that, without opium, they could not possibly stand up to such a hard life, which may well be the truth.
Once a day, with uncanny regularity, the leader of my pair of mules would throw himself on the ground and attempt to roll over while still in harness! This caused me many bumps and bruises as well as the destruction of all the brittle articles in my luggage. Each time, the ropes would snap, the litter fall into its component parts and my luggage be tossed with me on to the road. Everybody else appeared to think this a perfectly normal hazard of the journey, but on the fourth day I grew vexed and expressed my displeasure to the patient muleteer.
'But, Laoyeh, the animal is sick.'
'Then why did you offer me a sick animal ?'
'Because I have no other, Laoyeh.'
'Then please do something about it.'
'Yes, Laoyeh.'
That evening, he borrowed a savage-looking needle as long as a crochet-hook and, before I could expostulate, jabbed it into the mule's cheek, not far from the eye. I was horrified.
'Old Father Heaven! What have you done, you-you turtleâs egg [offspring of adultery].'
'Laoyeh, I am not a turtle's egg. You told me to cure the animal. I am trying.'
He seemed astonished and hurt by my outburst, which was the first time I had spoken harshly to him.
'But it was wanton cruelty. The animal can't help being sick. It is abominable to punish a creature for being ill.'
'Laoyeh, abuse me if you like. You have the right to do that. Am I not yours till the end of the journey ? But you should not have called me a turtle's egg. The women of our village are all virtuous. Look for turtles' eggs among the offspring of city women in Peking or Taiyuan.'
'Very well, Lao Weng; you are not a turtle's egg, of course. But you are a cruel master to your animals.'
'Cruel, Laoyeh, cruel ? Are doctors who cut out kidneys and slice the livers of living men cruel ?'
I stalked off to my sleeping quarters outraged by such wanton inhumanity to the wretched mule.
The next day, Weng watched me climb into the litter without giving me his usual cheery greeting. Obviously I had wounded him as deeply as he had wounded the mule, which I thought served him right. The day passed as usual, but in the evening I noticed that the front mule was stepping out much more cheerfully than before. Neither then nor on any of the three remaining days did he pitch me to the ground or even attempt to roll. It gradually dawned on me that what I had taken for vengeful cruelty had, in fact, been a primitive sort of acupuncture. 'When I apologized to the muleteer, he told me he had acquired something of this art from a wise old man. He had learnt of twenty-one places on the animal's body, one or more of which must be punctured in accordance with whatever malady attacked it or whatever organ was affected, these places generally having no obvious relationship with the seat of the trouble. It was all very mysterious.
The Chinese have long practised this art successfully on human beings, and, as I have since heard, there are now practitioners of it in Paris and elsewhere in Europe.
On the fifth or sixth day, we came to a deep ford across a wide and swiftly flowing river. Most of the men, who apparently did not share Pekingese prudery, calmly removed all garments below the waist and waded across, pulling their unwilling animals after them. But two or three of the mules were so frightened that no amount of beating would persuade them to cross. They planted their feet squarely on the earth and obstinately refused to budge. Suddenly shabby âOld Manchuriaâ lost patience (though he had no animal of his own) and shouted:
'Turtles! Turtles! They Chinese not know how proper man do things Mongolia.'
Then, dragging off his trousers and tying them round his neck, he rushed ferociously towards the nearest reluctant mule on which he exerted such unexpected strength that the astonished, frightened animal allowed itself to be dragged into the water and goaded over to the other bank. After this loudly applauded success, the indomitable old man plunged back to our side and dragged a second mule into the water. If there were others, they followed of their own accord. Soon the whole caravan was across; but I, ashamed to remove my trousers, had to follow Purple Robe's example in being carried over on the back of the most stalwart muleteer; a man whose sinuous strength amazed me, for he was no more muscular than most other Chinese. He performed the service free of charge, reminding me of the three good meals he had had at my expense. My luggage was sodden and dripping; but, providentially, someone had had the wit to tie the bedding on to the roof of the litter, so that, at least, was dry.
But the next day, the hills had given place to real mountains and, here and there, we passed some of the numerous branches of the Great Wall; or, perhaps, they were short inner walls built to guard certain passes.
We were now approaching Wu T'ai itself. Its name means Five Peaks or, more literally, Five Terraces, referring to the five main peaks which rise from around a central plateau where most of the three hundred odd monasteries and temples are situated. The last day of the journey was mostly spent upon the ascent of an approach so steep as to be nearly perpendicular in the worst places. I had to make the tiring climb on foot, as the litter-mules could not have carried me up without hardship as well as danger to themselves and to me. At last, gasping and sweat-sodden, I reached the pass in the company of a few other stragglers. We found ourselves looking down on a sight which might have inspired the original conception of Shangri-La.
The wide, grassy plateau lay only a few hundred feet below the pass. Wild flowers grew in such extraordinary profusion that the old clichĂ© âcarpeted with flowers' seemed the most apt description possible. Here and there, nestling against the surrounding slopes or clinging to overhanging rocks were the monasteries, some large enough to house hundreds of monks, others small temples with only three or four living rooms attached. To one side of the plateau was a small hill running out like a small spur from the surrounding mountain walls. Its slopes were honey-combed with buildings, a monastery even bigger than the Lama Temple in Peking, approached by flights of steps leading from among the clustered roofs of a small town lower down and, at the foot, an exceedingly large chorten or Tibetan-style reliquary which resembled a gigantic white bottle. Somebody explained that the town was the residence of the Chinese county magistrate, the chief temporal authority; and that the monastery was the abode of the Kushog appointed by Lhasa as the spiritual ruler of all the thousands of Tibetan and Mongol lamas in the vicinity. Most of 'wu T'ai's temples had walls of faded crimson or yellow-ochre surmounted by golden-yellow tiles, once the prerogative of the Imperial Family and of divinities.
Though nearly eight thousand feet above the North China plain, the plateau is so sheltered that the vegetation reminded me of the lush south. Never, even upon the flowery slopes of the Dolomites, had I seen a sight so lovely; nor have I beheld its equal since, unless in some of the high Himalayan valleys.
Our route across one side of the plateau led us past an unusually large Chinese-style monastery, almost the only building in sight to remind me that I was still in-China Proper, very far from Tibet and some ten days' walk from Mongolia. The other buildings gave just the reverse impression. We did not stop until we had reached the sloping town just above the giant chorten and climbed a flight of steps leading to the gateway of the monastery of P'usa Ting, seat of the Kushog Lama. A merchant in the caravan informed me that, by the terms of a treaty concluded in Manchu times between the Governments of China and Tibet, when the latter was only a nominal dependency, the Lhasa-nominated Kushog was still entitled to exercise control over the monastic population of Tibetans and Mongols. His authority was much like that of a mediaeval cardinal - a Prince of the Church. However, the relatively few black-gowned, bare-headed Chinese monks did not have to submit to the Tibetan Kushog's authority, being responsible to their own abbots and, in case of crime, to the county magistrate. For Republican China recognized no religious authority except, to some extent, that of the religious leaders among their Mongol and Tibetan subjects, who might otherwise have rebelled. Incidentally, I learnt during the last lap of the journey that there was a local Living Buddha who, as an individual, did not command much respect in any quarter. Having been declared an Incarnation, he was forever a Living Buddha; but, as the role did not suit his tastes, he preferred to wear Western clothes; to associate with the local Chinese officials who sarcastically eulogized him as an 'advanced' type of Mongol; and to use his revenue as a Living Buddha for the enjoyment of the usual delights of a rich man in Northern and Central Asia - horses, women, wine, opium, cards and mahjong, together with whatever more eccentric or individual delights happened to please him.
The P'usa Ting Monastery crowning the small hill to which the little township clung was approached by long flights of white steps and built on a series of terraces. To either side of the steps were the shops of the craftsmen, all Chinese, who fashioned all sorts of Tibetan-style ritualistic objects of silk, silver, copper, gold and semi-precious stones, besides painting holy pictures and inscribing banners and charms in one, two or three languages-Chinese, Tibetan and Mongol. Some even added the nearly obsolete Manchu characters, explaining that four gives a more balanced effect to a work of art than three. The enormous monastery was encircled by a blood-red wall, the colour faded, chipped and peeling. On the lower terraces stood the principal halls of ceremony which, inside and out, were so magnificent and in such a glittering state of preservation that I have never, either before or since, seen any magnificence to compare with them. I felt that the sight of them gave me an accurate picture of what the Forbidden City must have looked like in the days of Ch'ien Lung or K'ang Hsi, the greatest of the Manchu Emperors. (I have since heard that both the Japanese and the Chinese Communists so pillaged and destroyed these temples that they are no longer recognizable. However, the present policy of the Peking Government is to make lavish concessions to the religious susceptibilities of the minority peoples of China, so it may well be that some degree of restoration has now been carried out.)
The topmost terrace was occupied by the Kushog's own apartments. My quarters were in the principal guest-block just below those of His Holiness. My room was both spacious and richly decorated. The k'ang, big enough for eight people, was spread with fine, gaily coloured Tibetan carpets and surrounded on three sides by a frieze depicting in brilliant colours various aspects of Tibetan life, both in this world and some others. The k'ang which, though large, occupied only about a quarter of the room, was provided with numerous small tables of carved wood covered with-gold and green lacquer. The rest of the room had a red tiled floor and a profusion of Chinese-style furniture decorated in the Tibetan manner. (In such connections, the word âTibetanâ is more or less a synonym for âMongolianâ, as the decorative arts of the two races hardly differ.) Once more I was reminded of the Manchu Emperors. What I had seen of the Forbidden City and of the Summer Palace near Peking made it certain that even the Emperors and their consorts would not have regarded such a room as unworthy of forming part of their private apartments. It was a delicious pleasure to feel that, for a little while, I could enjoy some of the imperial splendour which, elsewhere in China and perhaps everywhere in the Far East except Lhasa, has completely vanished, or else been retained only in the form of palace museums. The similarity to the Forbidden city was no accident, for most of the .architectural and sumptuary privileges of Chinese royalty had been bestowed upon the principal Lamas and Living Buddhas of Tibet and Mongolia, partly in accordance with the old Manchu policy of wooing the two races into a state of willing and largely formal submission, and partly because the Manchu Imperial House observed the Lamaist Faith.
I was made welcome by two very elegant lamas, whom I discovered to be illiterate Chinese selected for their efficiency as butlers. Perhaps 'butler' is an unkind word to use. In effect, their duties were somewhere between those of a Reverend Receiver of Guests and of upper servants in charge of the large monastery staff, who might be laymen or monks. Their precise duty towards me was that of deputy hosts, and hosts I shall call them. Both were dressed in splendid dragon-embroidered robes-the first I had ever seen except at the theatre or at fancy-dress parties. I think the senior eunuchs and officials at the Manchu Court used to dress in exactly the same way, apart from the extraordinary lacquer hats worn by my hosts which looked un-Chinese, rather like coloured versions of the stiff hats formerly worn in Korea. Their manners and bearing were faultless, regal enough for them- to have passed muster as senior mandarins in the old days, so long as they were not called upon to read or write ! Certainly there was nothing ludicrous about them.
When I arrived at P'usa Ting, I told Wang Lama and Ma Lama that I would be able to accept their hospitality for a few weeks at the most. Later, news came from Peking to the effect that the students would not return to work until Chiang Kai-Shek had altered his policy of allowing the Japanese to gobble mouthful after mouthful of Chinese territory without resistance. On hearing this I foresaw that my stay might be extended for several months. Though sick at heart at the thought of China's sufferings, I was delighted at the prospect of staying so long in such surroundings, for I discovered that Wu Tâai was one of those rare places where Asia had remained wholly Asian, being unadulterated by any Western influence whatsoever. It was just the kind of place in which I had always desired to live; and, if my funds had been inexhaustible, I doubt if I could ever have brought myself to turn my back on so much beauty-at least until the invading Japanese came to drag me away by force. As it was, my funds were exhausted long before I began to think of leaving it, so I was forced to borrow from friends who providentially arrived from Tientsin. As to the precious guru-to-chela teaching which I hoped to find there, I received what seemed at the time disappointingly little; but it was probably as much as I was then in a fit condition to receive; and, in any case Wu T'ai offered me many other gifts, some of them hard to define, yet none the less valuable for their subtlety. At the very least, the spiritual side of my nature, which had long been weakened by Pekingâs spiritually (as opposed to aesthetically) enervating climate, was daily-refreshed by the winds which blew across the plateau carrying the perfume of incense and wood-fires to the nostrils, and singing of the great central Asian plains beyond, where the world was either very old or very fresh and young. As soon as I had passed the stage of lying about on magnificent carpets and luxuriating in the princely comfort and splendour of my surroundings, which contrasted so strangely with the hardships of the journey, I began exploring the various neighbouring temples.
One of my first visits was to the little Mani Bhadra Monastery which provided lodgings for the poorer sort of Mongol pilgrim. 'Old Manchuria' called specially to take me over there, hinting mysteriously that I should be welcomed by 'an old friend'. Much intrigued, I gladly accompanied the old fellow whose prowess at the ford had won so much admiration. I loved him for his big heart, his strong limbs, contempt of hardship and body-shaking laugh. The immaculate lamas, Wang and Ma, were shocked by his ragged appearance and had been most unwilling to let him sully the regal splendour of my chamber; but gorgeous priests, wayside brigands, recalcitrant mules, blood-drinking demons and Chinese soldiers were all one to 'Old Manchuria". He had just pushed past Their Magnificences and burst into my room roaring with gusty nomad mirth.
The 'old friend' awaiting me at Mani Bhadra was, to my immense surprise, no other than the 'shaman' who had performed for me in Peking. He was lodging there during the building of his new temple and far too busy supervising the builders (all of them Mongols working voluntarily for the glory of the Faith rather than men chosen for their skill) to be able to spare any time disclosing some of Wu T'ai's inner mysteries to me. Besides, within a few days he intended to go off on another fund-collecting tour, this time to get money for the gold, silver, lacquer, porcelain and fine woods to be used for the new templeâs interior; but meanwhile he seemed very happy indeed to see me.
In his beautifully appointed cell, there was excellent salted tea churned with fresh goatâs butter and drunk from porcelain cups with silver filigree lids and turquoise-studded silver saucers. Alas, when I had taken leave from this busy man, 'Old Manchuria' insisted on my tasting some of his own hospitality. Again it took the form of salted buttered tea, but this time it had been prepared with hair-impregnated rancid camelâs butter, bluish black and doubtless many months old. Still worse, out of deference to my 'soft Chinese habits of cleanliness', He took a really filthy old cup and licked the inside clean with his tongue before pouring in the smelly tea ! Etiquette required that I quaff several cupfuls. I managed it by taking each at a single gulp like nasty medicine, so as not to have to savour it to the full; but this made him suppose that I was thirsty and cupful followed cupful !
Just behind the Mani Bhadra was a cave with a shallow depression in the floor containing water sacred to Samandabhadra Bodhisattva (Pâu Hsien, Personification of Divine Action). It was said to have healing powers and to be of mysterious origin. I watched several scores of pilgrims fill their earthen bottles there, yet the water level never decreased, though the pool was very shallow, quite transparent and without any visible means of ingress - apparently there was neither hole nor spring. Eastern places of pilgrimage abound in such small mysteries, some manifestly due to natural phenomena, others much harder to explain, like the Bodhisattva Lights which I was to see later. My Mongol host procured a large, earthen bottle and, filling it at the sacred spring, handed it to me, with many ceremonious marks of esteem, as a remedy against future ills. It was touching to see the delight of these old beggar pilgrims ('Manchuria' and his friends) in being for once the donors of a gift instead of its recipients. In gratitude I assured 'Old Manchuria' that I should be very firm with Their Magnificences if ever they should bar his way to my table when he cared to grace it. Shaking with laughter, he cried:
'Good, good. They Chinese-Mongols; they not Mongol-Mongols. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Chinese-Mongols! Very funny! Yes, no ?'
From this and other incidents, I gathered that the contempt of the warrior nomads for their highly sophisticated but more sedentary neighbours south of the Wall has not changed since the days of Genghis Khan.
Another session of buttered tea followed our return from the cave, during which I told 'Old Manchuria' how, on the previous afternoon, two Mongol strangers had walked up to me in the street, demanded a cigarette each, and marched away without a word of thanks. I asked if he thought they were some sort of highwaymen who enjoyed this form of swaggering. The old fellow grinned uncomfortably, but hastened to defend his countrymen in his halting Chinese, by saying: 'Say "Thank you, thank you" â Chinese way. Give, take â Mongol way. Mongols all brothers. You things me; me things you. You sleep me tent; I eat you bread. "Thank you, thank you" - not good, not brother-talk. Just give, just take.' This explanation reminded me of something the innkeeper at Tat'ung had said contemptuously about Mongols:
'Our Chinese merchants find the Mongols too easy. Tell one of them that a Japanese ashtray is a Han dynasty mirror and he'll believe you. Though he may wonder why he can't see his face in it, he will not doubt your word. On the other hand, if a Mongol (except those accursed horse-dealers) tells you his nag is sound in four legs, why then, so it will prove to be. A stupid people !'
I was beginning to understand why so many Europeans in Peking were such fanatical Mongol-lovers. I saw that Mongols - gay, swaggering, robed in filthy, oily, lice-ridden splendour of silk and satin, straightforward, brave, kind, generous, incredibly 'handy' â have many virtues to compensate for the filth of years and the stink of rancid butter oozing from hair, clothes, unwashed bodies and breath. And their virtues are almost exactly complementary to those of the Chinese; so Peking's superlative elegance and refinement sometimes gives birth to a longing for the bluff heartiness of the Steppes.
On my way back to P'usa Ting that afternoon, l stopped among the crowd filling the precincts of the great white chorten. Mostly they were Mongol pilgrims, both rich and poor. A stream of them were circumambulating the chorten's base, muttering a never-ending string of invocations, some telling their beads, others with right arms extended so as to preserve the momentum of the great tubular prayer-cylinders encircling it. A richly clad Mongol layman, with an enormous circular fur hat cocked rakishly on one side to display the yellow satin crown, stood languidly staring at me with a half smile upon his lips, as though he would-like me to talk to him. When we had chatted for a while, I asked:
'What exactly is the purpose of these prayer-wheels?'
He looked as much taken aback as an English villager would be if questioned as to the purpose of church bells !
âHave you not heard, Hsiensheng, that the sacred writings in these wheels are written on one thousand and eighty feet of the finest yellow silk ?'
He seemed to think that this was explanation enough.
âReally ? Magnificent ! But, I mean, are invocations offered in this way efficacious ?'
âIndeed, why not ? How else could all these illiterates repeat more than a few of them ? This way, they offer by turning what they would recite if they could. Their heartâs wish is the same - to honour the Three Precious Ones.'
'I see. But I've noticed even learned lamas twisting small hand-wheels in the same way.'
'Of course. To each man a single mouth. How else could any of us get through all the recitations we should like to offer in a lifetime ?'
âAnd you, Sir ?â Noticing some insignia of nobility on his costume I used a Chinese honorific for minor royalties. For answer, he plunged his hand into the pouch-like fold of his orange silk- gown which protruded over a bronze silk sash, and brought out a lovely prayer-wheel of silver and white cloisonnĂ©. With the merest flick of his wrist, he set it rotating smoothly like the flywheel of an engine and stood waiting for my reaction with a quizzical smile.
âWhat a lovely thing!' I exclaimed spontaneously, forgetting all about 'You things me; me things you', and so found myself in an embarrassing position. Though he immediately offered me the wheel, he could have had no desire that I should take it, yet I had to be exceedingly careful in refusing it not to give the impression of scorning either the gift or its owner. Somehow or other, I did manage this without causing the bright black eyes to lose their lazy smile.
The circumambulators were not the only active worshippers in sight. Farther away from the chorten, nearer the outer wall of the precincts, were numerous devotees, both men and women, each with a broad seven-foot plank extending from just in front of his feet in the direction of the chorten, the farther end raised a few inches from the ground. These people apparently possessed unlimited energy, for they were performing the strenuous 'grand prostration' several hundred or a thousand times in succession and without a moment's intermission. First the hands were placed palm to palm above the head and brought slowly down to the level of the heart; then the devotee would stoop right down and grasp the two sides of his plank just in front of his feet; after that, the whole body would shoot forwards, the hands running along the edge of the plank from bottom to top, until the devotee was lying flat on his stomach with legs outstretched behind him and hands in front like a swimmer. The final movement consisted of raising the joined palms above the head again while the body remained prone, after which the devotee curled up like a caterpillar, rose to his feet and lifted his joined palms for the next prostration. With each of these separate movements a particular mantra was muttered and, if the mind were properly concentrated as well, then body, speech and mind merged into a single rhythm of pure veneration for the Buddha-Dharma represented by the chorten. Whereas a hundred and eight prostrations of this kind would leave me, even in my youthful days, almost too weak to stand, Mongols of both sexes and-all ages often perform one thousand and eighty prostrations at a time!
Everybody I met there seemed very willing to talk and to welcome my interest in their affairs. A Chinese craftsman among the bystanders provided me with some facts about the chorten.
'As you doubtless know already, Hsiensheng, Wu T'ai is the principal earthly dwelling of Manjushri Bodhisattva (Wen Shu, personification of Divine Wisdom). We Chinese hold that there are nine sacred mountains, five Taoist and four Buddhist, of which 'Wu Tâai is one. But to these Mongols and Tibetans, Wu T'ai is a place so sacred that merely to come here and circumambulate the chorten one thousand and eighty times ensures rebirth into a state many times nearer Nirvana than could otherwise be attained in this life. There is said to be a relic of the Buddha in the chorten, but whether the chorten was built for the relic or whether the relic was brought here for the chorten l do not know. Chiefly, the chorten forms a central place of worship where even the most illiterate pilgrims to this mountain may consumate their pilgrimage.'
My informant, though a Chinese, was a devout follower of the Vajrayana and loved to lavish his decorative gifts upon the embellishment of the temples. Obligingly he climbed the great steps with me and took me to see some of the work he had helped to complete in the Great Hall of P'usa Ting. The sweeping roof of yellow-glazed tiles, the colonnade of elaborately decorated scarlet pillars and the crimson walls made it almost a replica of one of the halls of state in the Forbidden City, except that it was in a much better state of repair. The fresh lacquer shone like molten bronze still glowing from the furnace; and the appointments of the interior were the richest I have ever seen before or since. The ceiling of carven panels blazed with multi-coloured stylistic designs; the tremendous pillars (formed of tree-trunks carried there from over a thousand miles to the south-west) were wrapped in gorgeous Lhasa carpets, the altar furnishings were of precious metals and fine porcelains; long, silken banners hung from the ceiling, beautifully embroidered with texts in Tibetan, Mongol and Chinese; and the principal statue of the Bodhisattva carrying his Sword of Wisdom was plated with, if not made of, pure gold. It glittered like a network of diamonds, reflecting the tiny points of flame from more than a hundred votive lamps. On a subsidiary altar were receptacles piled with heavy pieces of jewelry, the offerings of Mongol and Tibetan pilgrims - necklaces, bangles, brooches, large ear-ornaments, belt-clasps, buckles, weapon-holders and archery rings, all these being mostly of gold or silver inset with jade, turquoise, coral and other brilliant stones. I wondered how often these receptacles were emptied into the treasury, and I marvelled at the simple sincerity of the Mongols who themselves lived in tents or primitive shacks, keeping for their own use the barest necessities of life. Such generosity may, from one point of view, appear misplaced; but who can fail to be moved by its sublimity ?
A Lama explained to me once that the donors of these offerings gain merit in two ways - a little because their gifts help to supply the monasteries with the means required for their upkeep; much on account of the spirit of relinquishment involved, the degree of merit accruing from a gift being proportionate to the relative degree of sacrifice involved - exactly as in the biblical story of the widow's mite.
(Incidentally, the belief that the gift itself matters much more than what is done with it accounts for the scarcity of organized charities in Buddhist countries, which now causes some of the younger Asian Buddhists to reflect; yet in Burma and Siam, even today, many more people are willing to devote money to the building of unnecessary temples in places where temples abound, than to the upkeep of hospitals, schools and clinics.)
In the Second Hall, rites were being performed when we entered but the Chinese craftsman could not explain their significance. The booming of Tibetan horns, ten or fifteen feet long, the wail of flutes, the crash of drums and cymbals accompanied by voices which seemed to come from deep down inside the stomachs of the worshippers, produced an effect at once harsh and magical - harsh in the sense that such music is by no means sweet, magical in that devotees sustained by the powerful wings of those elemental sounds can rise easily into a state of inner tranquillity and arrest the karma-forming processes of conceptual thought.
A few days later, I attended the opening ceremony of 'Wu Tâaiâs annual Holy Week. Thousands of Mongol pilgrims, with a sprinkling of Central Asians and Tibetans, took part. All men, and all dressed in crimson ceremonial kasa [togas], they sat cross legged in long, evenly spaced rows, facing inwards towards a central lane running east-west across the Great Court [a quadrangle very much larger than Trinity Great Court, Cambridge]. At one end of this lane sat the enthroned Kushog, robed from head to foot in cloth of gold, surrounded by colourful ecclesiastical dignitaries from each of the great monasteries. The rites opened with the same eerie music and chanting as that just described, but with upwards of a thousand people taking part in the chanting and with horns so long that each required six or eight children to hold it in position ! This time the wild music reminded me of the more sombre sounds of Nature - the rumbling of thunder or of a distant waterfall, the crash of a gathering avalanche or, perhaps, of cannon shot echoing among embattled heights. When the chanting had drawn to a close, there followed a 'theological' debate. The combatants, who leapt up from among the crowd and ran to the High Lama's dais, swayed their bodies and stamped their feet, striking their left palms with their right hands in what looked like a ritual dance, meanwhile bellowing forth questions and arguments at the tops of their voices. There were elders who trumpeted like bulls and even a few child contestants who had not yet lost their boyish treble. Every speaker received an attentive hearing from the huge assembly which now and then broke silence to roar applause, yelling with joy or laughing their splendid nomad belly-laughs. I wondered if the mediaeval debates at Oxford or Paris had had points in common with this one.
As I knew hardly a word of Mongol, I spent much of the time gazing about me. Crowded against the walls of the Great Court were many ladies, some with a fantastic hair-arrangement imitative of the magnificent horns of a mountain ram. I reflected that, just as the Manchus, who owed an empire to their horses, used to have the sleeves of their official robes cut to resemble horses' hoofs and to wear their hair braided into a 'horse's tail', so did these Mongols pay tribute to the flocks which provided them with so much-meat, butter, milk, cheese, garments, skin-tents, blankets, belts, straps, water-skins and many other daily necessities.
Just then, my 'shaman' appeared, having apparently delayed his departure for the sake of the festival. He swaggered up to the rostrum and attacked the venerable Master of the Debate so successfully that the audience rolled where they sat in paroxysms of laughter. Even the defeated Master was forced to join in, and from the outer circle of women came peal after peal of shrill mirth. I would have given much to understand! The combination of deep religious feeling with merriment and homely simplicity is always attractive. The Mongols who conduct their religious debates in this way and the Thais who bring picnic lunches to eat upon the floor of the temple seem to me more truly 'religious' than the hushed, sanctimonious worshippers I had grown used to during my boyhood. During the days which followed, I began to seek out various Lamas who had been recommended to me for one reason or another, but my ignorance of Tibetan and Mongolian created a barrier which, in most cases, was difficult to overcome. My deepest inspiration came from the simple Mongol pilgrims who inspired me with the belief that learning and scholarship are by no means essential to the truly religious life or to gaining freedom from the Wheel. On this mountain dedicated to Divine Wisdom, I learnt that such Wisdom must be sought for in silence and not at all by discursive thought. As one Lama expressed it, 'First purify the temple of your body by expelling all extraneous thought; next, rest in perfect silence with all the doors and windows of that body-temple wide open and, with deep longing in your heart, silently invite the Stream of Wisdom to pour in.'
Another Lama to whom I went to pay my respects at about this time asked me if I found wu T'ai beautiful, which led to my asking him the place of beauty in the process of Enlightenment. 'Does not the cultivation of dispassion,' I asked, 'require that we withdraw from beauty as much as from ugliness, and do not the sutras teach that beauty may be an impediment to Truth ?'
'How wrong you are,' he answered frankly. 'Beauty is an impediment only when we desire its exclusive possession. But the contemplation of natural loveliness - mountains, forests, waterfalls, and the right contemplation of works of art do not excite any longings for hampering possessions, or any lusts. Rather they reflect the silent, shining perfection of Nirvana. We of the Vajrayana learn to seek Nirvana in samsara; it is the beauty all around us here which makes us so sure that Nirvana surrounds us now. When the Third Eye (the eye of the spirit) is opened, you will not seek Nirvana elsewhere than in your own heart and own surroundings. The joy of beholding the scarlet and gold of sunrise or the multi-coloured carpet of flowers on this sacred plateau is of the same order as the joy of the Ultimate Oneness, though it be only a reflection of a reflectionâs reflection. When you go back to the city and find ugliness around you, place flowers or jades in your house to remind you of the beauty which awaits the opening of your spirit's eye.'
Of course the ordinary Mongol pilgrims did not understand things thus. To the more simple-minded among them, the Personification of Wisdom had become another god, a process analogous to the deification of Sophe among certain Byzantine sects - yet even this development deserves more than the scornful shoulder-shrug with which some Western scholars have reacted to it. For Buddhists, Divine Wisdom has nothing to do with factual knowledge or book-learning. Prajna is that intuitive knowledge of Reality which lies far above the level of conceptual thought; indeed it is interrupted and blocked out by conceptual thought. It follows that one-pointed meditation on Prajna, whether conceived of in the abstract or as a deity, is more likely to lead to Prajna's realization than any careful analytical study of the sutras or any amount of discursive meditation to discover whether Prajna is a substance, a state, or otherwise. The latter type of 'scientific' meditation cuts the mind into many compartments and makes access of Intuitive Wisdom impossible. Thus, there are teachers who claim that direct approach to truth comes more easily to the illiterate or semi-illiterate than to the scholar, the former having less mental sediment to dispose of.
Scattered on lonely peaks and precipitous slopes, or dotting the fair, sun-warmed plateau were shrines and temples to Manjushri (Wisdom) without number. Generally he was depicted in his benign form as a compassionate being whose smile belied the ferocity of the blue lion he bestrode or the menace of his upraised Sword of Wisdom. Sometimes, he appeared as a lovely youth - symbol of eternal spring; but occasionally he could be seen in wrathful form as the blue-bodied, bull-headed, thousand-armed Yamantaka ringed by a circlet of blue flames and dancing on a bed of corpses. I do not remember the significance of this symbolism. Christian missionaries, on seeing such figures in Buddhist temples, find in them a justification of their belief that the 'heathen' are ruled by fear; but in this they err; for, though in all Buddhist countries terrible monsters, demons and Raksha can be seen in the temples, Buddhists are never taught to fear them. In some cases they represent the powers of evil which, having been converted to Buddhism, now hold the office of Guardians of the Holy Dharma; in other cases, the beings themselves are held to be divine, but their hideous, ferocious forms symbolize Buddhism's hostility towards the impersonal forces of ignorance and evil (the two are really synonymous) and they are never in any single case regarded as hostile to living beings. That would be impossible, for Buddhism teaches that the worst 'sinner' is a poor, sad creature deluded by his ignorance of Truth, and therefore to be pitied rather than hated or despised. In the case of Yamantaka, though I do not remember the significance of the symbolism in detail, I know that the wrathful forms of the various Bodhisattvas in general symbolize the perfection of Truth which, lying beyond all duality on the plane of the One Mind, is beyond good and evil, beauty or ugliness; hence symbolism only in terms of beauty and tranquillity would imply the exaltation of the part at the expense of the whole. The lesson to be learnt from the wrathful and peaceful aspects of the Bodhisattvas is that beauty and ugliness are ultimately one, or rather that both of them vanish when perfection is achieved. This must be so, for light is inconceivable without dark; therefore, if Ultimate Perfection contains the one, it must also contain the other, whereas its own perfection raises it above both.
Before Wu T'ai's innumerable altars, incense and butter-lamps burnt day and night. Some of the pilgrims spent as much as five years on the return journey, travelling on foot from the farthest reaches of Mongolia's deserts and the uttermost confines of Tibet's wilderness of snow to lay their offerings upon these altars. The deep religious satisfaction of the multitudes, twirling their prayer-wheels, clicking their rosaries, bowing themselves to the earth, chanting sutras and intoning invocations before the shrines has probably had no counter- part in the West since mediaeval times. Such boundless sincerity soon put me to shame when I reflected on my own coldly intellectual and sceptical approach to Truth. Wu T'ai taught me that doctrine matters little, that faith, sincerity and a burning desire for Enlightenment provide us with more than nine-tenths of the equipment we need for the journey to Nirvana.
One day, the lamas Wang and Ma suggested that I pay a visit to the Venerable Neng Hai, Abbot of the great Chinese monastery I had passed on my way across the plateau to P'usa Ting - a very Jewel of Wisdom, they called him. I took their advice, but rather unwillingly, as my visits to Wu T'ai's greatest men had previously been disappointing and left me with a strong prejudice in favour of the lesser known Teachers there. For example, my visit to the Kushog Lama (possibly ill-timed) had been a very formal and unproductive affair. Affably, but rather absent-mindedly, accepting a ceremonial scarf from my hands, he had condescended to return it by draping it around my neck with his own illustrious fingers. A good beginning, except that nothing much followed. A few formal words of welcome, a blessing, somebody signalling that it was time to leave - that was all. As for my visit to the Living Buddha, that had been very much worse. A plump youth with a face almost as colourless as his Western-style suit of Shantung silk, he scarcely bothered to look up at me from the photographs he was studying with two Chinese officials from the magistrate's yamen. At the moment when I rose to kneeling position from the ritual prostration, he suddenly laughed in my face as though I were a performing ape, thereby providing me with the only instance of discourtesy from a man of high degree which I encountered during seventeen years in China!
'Aha, what have we here ? A European Buddhist ? Very nice, very nice indeed. May I press you to a glass of Buddha-nectar ?' He waved his hand towards a half-empty brandy bottle standing on the table next to the photographs. 'No ? Aha. Then to what else am I indebted for the honour of your â er - your etcetera, etcetera - you know what I mean ?'
The Chinese officials were staring woodenly at the tablecloth, laughter in their eyes, lips firmly compressed lest they, too, be guilty of unmerited discourtesy.
'I came to offer my respects,' I answered coldly. 'Having done so, I ask permission to retire.â
'Granted, granted,' he cried petulantly, clearly stung by my tone and perhaps afraid that his Chinese companions considered him too boorish. 'You may go. We â er - are attending to important affairs. I thank you.'
'With great deliberation, I repeated the triple prostration as elaborately as I could, forcing myself to concentrate on the teaching: 'Bowing to the Robe, you bow to the Buddha, not to the poor, naked wretch it conceals.'
'With these two episodes in mind, I approached the Chinese monastery scarcely expecting that the Abbot of so grand a place would have much time to spare for me. In general, I had found Mongols and Tibetans more spiritual than the Chinese. Ergo, in a place where the Tibetan Kushog had been briefly courteous but uninterested in me and the Mongolian Living Buddha positively insulting, it seemed unlikely that the leading Chinese Abbot would take me to his bosom merely because I was a co-religionist from the outermost rim of the world. I had yet to learn that the Venerable Neng Hai fully deserved his reputation as scholar and saint.
Neng Hai had spent many years in the Tibetan and Mongolian borderlands, chiefly in the Chinese province of Kokonor (Ch'ing Hai, the Blue Sea or Lake) where the three cultures blend. He was now attempting a compromise between Lamaism and Chinese Buddhism, incorporating the salient features of both. Symbolically, he wore robes of Lamaistic yellow-ochre cut in the Chinese fashion with butterfly-wing sleeves. His monastery, Kuangchi Moup'ang, was outwardly like any other important Chinese monastery, but included a subsidiary Great Hall where initiates practised the higher branches of Vajrayana meditation and rites. My first meeting with him came near to confirming my worst fears. He was scarcely more cordial than the Kushog Lama had been, but in this case the reason was too obvious for me to feel hurt. He had just returned to his sleeping place after delivering a two-hour sermon and, not being of strong physique, was naturally tired. Seated cross-legged on his couch, he accepted my prostrations and offered me a little earthenware plaque of the Bodhisattva Manjushri which he suspended from my neck by a blue ribbon. After that I was free to go, partly because he was really tired and partly, as he told me later, because he took me for one of the countless pilgrims who used to come to him for no other purpose than to be able to include him among the 'sights' seen on Wu Tâai. During subsequent meetings, he became very warm towards me and to this circumstance I owe much of my knowledge of the Vajrayana.
One day I asked him: 'Your Reverence, will you tell me why you, brought up as a Master of Zen, now prefer to instruct your disciples through the medium of the Vajrayana ? Such cases must be very rare.â
Yes, rare,' he replied, 'for few of our Chinese monks know enough, of the Vajrayana to appreciate its great value. As for your question, I can answer it best in symbolic language. Regardless of sect, or even of religion, we must symbolize the Ultimate Perfection as a calm and shining void, whereas Samsara is a vast whirlpool of shifting forms. Some regard them as separate and seek to pass from the âlowerâ into the 'higher'; others, accepting their oneness in theory, strive to realize it in fact. Symbolically, we may imagine an enormous circle, pure and motionless in the centre, turgid and violently disturbed at the outer rim, but without any definite boundary line between the stillness at the heart and the violent motion at the circumference. There are, so to speak, various intervening states. As the Taoists have said, the One becomes two (positive and negative); the two, eight; the eight, sixty-four; the sixty-four, myriads of transient entities. Visualize, therefore, pure spirit at the centre, from which spring certain major forces of tremendous power; visualize these forces as dividing and subdividing towards the circumference, and subdividing yet again and again until the myriads of 'separateâ objects result. Visualize these main, secondary, tertiary and lesser forces as the Transformers which, mutually interacting, produce all that is - myriads and myriads of ever-changing entities. You may, for reasons I shall not go into now, visualize the centre as pure white; from this radiate the four main Transformers in the form of flames - green, yellow, blue and red respectively; and with smaller flames issuing in turn from them, coloured in intermediate hues. As we go towards the circumference, the flames get ever more numerous by subdivision and, of course, smaller and less clearly defined, until at last they merge into the outer whirling chaos - mud-coloured, smoke-coloured, unclear, murky.
Now, a Zen adept (and some of other, sects, other faiths) seeks to leap from the muddy whirlpools straight into the pure white, radiant stillness at the centre. This can be done and has been done, but it is an extraordinary feat of which few are capable. Most of us do well to aim first at a more modest result. The Sages of the Vajrayana have, through Enlightenment, been able to make a detailed study of the intermediate forces and the Main Transformers nearer the heart of the circle. (With patience, faith and pertinacity, you may discover them for yourself.) They have even learnt to harness these transforming forces and they have handed down to their disciples methods for harnessing the force or forces suited to each one individually. By concentrating upon a force selected by your teacher and harnessing it according to his instructions, you will gain much power - power which all too many adepts foolishly misuse to perform vain "miracles". But you must use this power to penetrate more deeply into the circle, to come in contact with the secondary and even with the primary forces; these, being Transformers of tremendous power, will sweep you towards the Centre; in this very life, they will transform your Samsaric surroundings into Nirvana itself. Thus will you achieve what you may not be strong enough to achieve by the more direct method of Zen, unless you are one of those for whom Zen is the best way of all.
'As evidence of the truth of all this, consider how many men of different faiths have wrought marvels and achieved sainthood through the power of their God or gods, all attained through fervent prayer and contemplation. What is that God but another name for the Centre, those gods but other names for the Transformers ? Names are unimportant. Have you not met Buddhists groping in the outer darkness and Muslims or Christians whose faces shine with Truth ? Just as many Mongols here regard Manjushri as a god, rather than the personification of Divine Wisdom, so do Christians mistake the Divine Forces for angels, the Centre for God; yet what does it matter ? All prayers, rites and methods of concentration which open up the inner man must bring forth the inner Light, whereon their purpose is achieved. I am a Vajrayanist only because I conceive, rightly or wrongly, that the Vajrayana Sages have mapped the road more completely and better understood the methods of harnessing the Transformers than people of most other sects and faiths. I have met Christian missionaries at Kokonor who are laughable in their ignorance; I have also met two missionaries of the Heavenly Lord (Catholic) Sect who are fully Enlightened Bodhisattvas! Let those Buddhists who are still lost in darkness kneel before them in all humility.
'Truth, as you have known for a long, long time, resides only in the innermost depths of your own being; but there are many layers of truth and many paths to approach Ultimate Truth. The Vajrayana possesses knowledge of more than a thousand of those paths (which are yet the One Path). Other teachers know of one, two or three. So it is to the Vajrayana Sage you must go, if you would learn which of those many paths is exactly suited to you. If you prove worthy, such a teacher will render up to you the keys for unlocking each of the great gates of brass which bar the way to Everlasting Truth.â
So saying, he paused and stared at me in silence for what seemed many minutes. Then he asked me certain questions concerning my initiation at the hands of the Dorje Rimpoche. When I had answered as best I could, he exclaimed with a sigh :
'Such a wonderful opportunity lost! How very sad that you were too young and ignorant to benefit !' Several similarly enigmatic remarks followed, until finally he said:
'Yet the seed once planted cannot die. 'Water it diligently and it will surely sprout. How could you have been so foolish as to arrive late for that Grand Initiation ? In the first part, which you missed, lay something of priceless value to you. Your karma is the strangest admixture of good and evil. Ah well, rest tranquil in the knowledge that, when the time comes, the Greenness will be there !â
'Greenness ?'
'Yes, the colour of the trees, the colour of the Northern Region.â
'I don't understand, Your Reverence.â
But he had walked away, leaving me with an enigma not to be resolved for many years.
Staying in Neng Hai's monastery were a doctor and a banker, two good friends of mine from Tientsin. Though both were wealthy men and likely to bestow large gifts in return for the hospitality they enjoyed, they were entertained in a manner infinitely spartan compared with the luxury I enjoyed at Pâusa Ting. The food was strictly vegetarian, the sleeping rooms as simple as could be, the taking of wine, even by visitors, strictly forbidden. The contrast between the two monasteries was significant. Chinese Buddhism, with the partial exception of Zen, places emphasis on the renunciation of the world - this doctrine being a necessary corrective for the Chinese attachment to physical ease and comfort. Tibetan Buddhism, 'catering' for the spartan Tibetans and Mongols, teaches the realization, of Nirvana through Samsara or âseeking Truth through lifeâ. Though Tibet has its hermits like Milarepa (who cut his trousers into covers for nose and fingers, claiming that if the sexual organ needs concealment, the same must be true of fingers and nose, since one protuberance cannot be more or less vile than another), the Vajrayana on the whole prefers the method of accepting life's glitter, rather-than withdrawing from it, since a properly controlled study of baubles is more likely to lead to personal conviction of their worthlessness than the method of turning away from them and believing them worthless. This doctrine can be safely practised by the wise anywhere, and even by the majority of people in those countries where material comfort is still far too rare and slight to be overwhelming as it has become in the modern West and, to a lesser extent, in the cities of China. Hence the spartan simplicity of Chinese monastery guest-rooms as compared with the splendour of the richer Tibetan monasteries.
On the day of my first visit to Neng Hai, my Tientsin friends, Dr Chang and Mr Li, walked back to P'usa Ting with me, as they were due to bestow offerings upon the pilgrims assembled for Holy Week. Once more I took my place in the outermost row of the crimson-togaed Mongols seated in the Great Court. The long opening invocation was chanted as usual; I had by this time learnt that it was associated with the offering of a mandala - a complicated pattern of precious stones laid upon a mound of rice by the officiating Lama. It represented the whole universe, including sun, moon, earth and stars, together with all precious things therein contained. The words of the invocation include some more or less to this effect. 'If the whole universe were mine, with its limitless wealth of beauty, I would offer all of it without exception, as a token of my boundless respect for the Holy Dharma, well knowing that even such an offering is far from worthy of an object thus sublime.' In other words, even the glory of sun and moon fades before the brilliance of transcendental Wisdom, Enlightenment, Reality !
My Chinese friends were both dressed in dark silks which formed a striking contrast with the glittering garments of the senior Lamas and the Kushog's robe of cloth-of-gold. After saluting the Kushog and extolling the merits of the assembled pilgrims, who had endured such hardships among burning deserts and dizzy mountains in order to do honour to the Bodhisattva Manjushri upon the sacred mountain, they each handed a sack of silver coins to a gaily dressed attendant. Thereupon, the two attendants moved up and down the long ranks of seated pilgrims, placing five mou (half a silver dollar) in the hands of each. Such a gift was at that time equal to the price of four or five simple meals; the total must have amounted to several thousand dollars. Spiritual refreshment followed. More brightly clad attendants appeared, each carrying a tall, silver vessel decked with peacocks' feathers and sacred kusa grass. The pilgrims cupped their hands in turn, receiving a few drops of holy water from the spout of the vessel, of which they sipped one part and placed the remainder upon their heads.
'What is this holy water ?â I asked an elderly Chinese-speaking Mongol on my left.
'This holy water first is water. First, people take to temple as offering of purity. Then it symbolized what people gave up. Now brought from temple for us, it symbolizes merit come back to us. Two Chinese pilgrims make big merit by our help. We receive gifts, so they can get merit. Now we gain merit, for helping them get their merit.â
My informant's Chinese was far from good, but I think that this more or less renders his meaning. His words contained an idea quite new to me; namely that, though it may be more blessed to give than to receive, yet he who receives confers a favour upon the giver ! The more I thought about it, the more I found this idea acceptable.
After the close of the ceremony, I rejoined my two friends and arranged with them to go upon a tour of the five sacred peaks as soon as Holy Week should be over. Meanwhile, I particularly enjoyed the spectacular events occurring on the last two days of that festival. On the penultimate day, a grand religious dance was held. As with the other public festivals, it took place in the Great Court; but, this time, everybody except the performers was crowded in a densely packed circle, men, women and children all mixed together and forming a kaleidoscopic mass of shifting colours. Close inspection revealed that the silk and satin brocades were covered with grease-stains and every other sort of grimy discolouration, while hair faces glistened with butter and sweat. From a little distance, the crowd looked elegant enough to grace an imperial reception, so rich-looking their furs,
silks and heavy jewelry. Presently the Kushog arrived, accompanied by the usual scintillating throng, together with the Chinese civil authorities in their drab, postman-like official uniforms, and the Living Buddha, dressed in a suit of sharkskin. His Holinessâs boredom was manifest, his smile sardonic and condescending; but to the Mongols he was every inch a Living Buddha, an incarnation of divinity. Though they all knew of his loose manner of living, their veneration for him was unimpaired, unless in the privacy of their own hearts. I imagine that this provides a close analogy with the veneration accorded by mediaeval Europe to the most loose-living of popes.
I am not one of those who dismiss the Tibetan belief in Living Buddhas or Divine Incarnations as mere nonsense. I prefer to think that the Lamas entrusted with the task of discovering such an incarnation from among children born soon after the decease of his predecessor, may sometimes err. In any case, it was quite impossible for me to believe in the divinity of Wu T'ai's Living Buddha, who was very well known for a dissolute mode of life and for scorning his sacred duties quite openly. On the other hand, to a firm believer in the reincarnation of all living creatures, there is nothing incredible in the claim that certain very holy persons can choose where they will be reincarnated and that they can be identified by their old followers after rebirth. 'Living Buddha' would seem to be something of a misnomer, except perhaps in two or three cases. The phrase 'Sacred Incarnation' would be less susceptible to misinterpretation.
Of the dancing, my Chinese friends and I could understand only the general theme. The chief dancers, masked and fantastically garbed, were divided into two main groups - the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil, each with its own range of costumes and each with dance-movements peculiar to itself or to the sub-groups into which it was divided. The characters included Bodhisattvas, gods, heroes, warriors, kings and lamas on the one hand; ghosts, witches, skeletons, spirits, demons, magicians and so on formed the other group. Minor characters, such as birds, animals and monsters, seemed to be attached to both parties. Curiously the skeletons (boys dressed in black costumes, adorned with bones crudely painted across them in white and wearing skull-masks) had enormous male sexual organs attached to them - a survival from pre-Buddhist days, no doubt; but why should skeletons be thus distinguished ?
The dancing, like the accompanying music, was exciting, bizarre, fantastic, macabre, now and then tensely thrilling, but never in my judgement even remotely beautiful. On the whole, I preferred the Forces of Evil; for, when the arena was given over to that horrid company, there was a kind of truth expressed. I mean that the groups of gyrating, contorted, hideously grimacing monsters did succeed in giving an impression of living evil; while by no stretch of imagination could the stately, sword-wielding Virtuous Ones be thought to mirror, however distortedly, the grave inevitability of ultimate justice, or the peaceful triumphs of such gentle virtues as benevolence, pity and compassion. Besides, it was tiresome to see the smug-faced Virtuous Ones gain such easy victories over the recognizable symbols of folly and vice. I had heard it said that such dances stemmed from a pre-Buddhist period when 'primitive' men, finding themselves at the mercy of Nature's terrible forces, were by no means convinced of the ultimate triumph of good; so perhaps the easy victories gained by the Virtuous Ones were added by later choreographers with tongue in cheek.
The dancing, though splendidly colourful, was entirely eclipsed by the events of the following day. Early in the morning, a magnificent procession set out from P'usa Ting and followed the traditionally serpentine route to another of the principal monasteries. According to ancient custom, the Kushog Lama and all his followers were obliged to pay this visit of state every year. With the passing of centuries, the procession and attendant rites had become more and more elaborate. Even the producers of such magnificent spectacles as Henry V or Quo Vadis, The Ten Commandments and so on might be excused for goggling at the display I was fortunate enough to behold that day. The procession equalled a Roman Triumph in scale and probably surpassed it in the lavishness of equipment and paraphernalia. I doubt if the most skilful pen could do justice to it and I am very sure that I can at most give some vague notion of its splendour.
All the morning I stood on a little knoll and watched the two-mile- long procession approach and recede, winding its way across the flower-spangled plateau. The gorgeous, scintillating splendour of men and bedecked animals, their jewels, precious metals, silks and brocades gleaming in the sun, robbed the wild flowers of their colours, stole the blue from the sky and the crimson or ochre from the monastery walls.
First came a group of grave, satin-clad beings on white steeds with silver-chain harness and embroidered saddle-cloths. They were followed by a rainbow-coloured troupe of musicians, the trumpeters with eight gaily dressed children marching before each to support their prodigiously long instruments, which thundered continuously. Immediately after these musicians came the Bodhisattva's palanquin, its silken curtains parted so that the golden statue shone like fire in the August sun and lightning seemed to flash from the blade of the enormous Sword of Wisdom. The procession of riders and footmen which followed stretched almost two miles to the rear, the great dignitaries and their followers from each of 'Wu Tai's three hundred monasteries having laid aside their ecclesiastical togas for gay costumes exactly like those worn thirty years before by the mandarins and eunuchs taking part in solemn ceremonies before the Throne of the Son of Heaven. Even the costumes of lamas Wang and Ma (too junior in the hierarchy to take part in the procession) would have seemed drab in such a throng. Almost at the end of the procession came the Kushog on foot, his immediate attendants bearing those ancient symbols of royalty or divinity, a ten-foot gilded pole supporting a golden fan and a many-tiered ceremonial umbrella of white and gold. His face was entirely hidden by a fringe of golden tassels falling forward from his headdress; from a little distance, he looked less like a human being than an animated image entirely covered by plates of gold. So much pomp and splendour was hard to reconcile with the gently austere doctrine of Gautama Buddha; as a spectacle, the procession has never in my experience been equalled.
The traditional route twisted and turned so that the procession would pass through the outer domains of numerous intervening monasteries and enable the various abbots to pay their respects. In each place, a portable altar had been raised, surrounded by dignitaries who lighted incense and candles as the procession drew near. Twice they performed the triple prostration, first to welcome the palanquin of the Bodhisattva and again to pay respects to the Kushog. The latter was preceded by two resplendent figures bearing long poles to which was attached a horizontal silken banner or curtain, of which the lower edge was only some three feet above the ground, so that the whole formed a moving screen for His Holiness. As he approached, individuals would spring from the ranks of spectators lining both sides of the route, hurl themselves under this screen and then roll hurriedly out of the way of the oncoming Lama. There was a degree of skill in this exercise, for to have touched the banner with one's head would have brought upon one the bystanders' scorn and to have collided with the Kushog would have been so destructive of his majestic dignity as to amount to a kind of sacrilege. Just as I was picturing such an unfortunate collision in my mind, my legs unexpectedly started carrying me forward and, almost as though somebody else had willed it, I found myself flopping to the ground beneath the curtain and then rolling vigorously away as the golden shoes approached. My feelings at that moment were those of a car driver whose vehicle suddenly skids out of control. I have often pondered that curious little event and tried to account for it, but always in vain. I supposed I must have desired to do it just for fun and that I was in too much haste for the desire to register properly in my mind, but even this explanation seems very odd.
When the procession had passed, I sat down on the little knoll from which I had witnessed its approach and waited for it to return. Meanwhile I reflected upon my enormous good fortune. Except in Lhasa and perhaps one or two other Tibetan cities, such grandeur cannot be seen in the world today, unless in its synthetic Hollywood form; for pageantry on a vast scale has vanished from the earth. In many countries the totality of all the colourful experiences of a lifetime might not amount to half what I had seen in a space of less than two hours. The days of emperors, kings and princes have gone; their descendants have vanished from the earth or else retain the merest shadow of their forefathers' glory. Even in places where majestic pageantry still exists, as in the Vatican, those taking part seem to be in fancy dress on account of the drab modern clothes of the spectators. Fortunate indeed was I to have beheld during the late thirties of this century a spectacle which perhaps equalled in splendour the progress of the great Ch'ien Lung on his way to sacrifice at the Altar of Heaven, or one of the solemn processions of the mediaeval Church, or the enthronement of some world-conquering monarch such as Alexander. Not only was the procession itself the very acme of gorgeous splendour, but the lovely, flower-decked plateau, the green and purple mountains beyond, the brightly coloured buildings of a score of monasteries and the gay ornaments and costumes of the spectators all combined to provide a harmonious background only somewhat less splendid than the writhing rainbow-hued 'dragon' winding its way across the sacred ground.
Alas, soon after, Wu T'ai was destined to be a battlefield. There, Japanese fought Chinese and Communists fought the Kuomintang Government. It grieves me beyond words to contemplate how many of her former glories might possibly remain ?
