Layers of sounds hammer upon the ear spread selves away rich
roaring bark (spurs values) menaces bishop (Distances)
Image yards. Bogus is this freight!
Gate measure stransound gone taxi Water whumps in can and
fills softer, softer, gone of hearing.
Dog is crazy angry barkleap fighting any wires.
Gone basket of foliage
Bangs on an old bucket. Inutile [useless]!
Motorbike argues with some slops. Taxicry downhill in small
city. Outcry!
Disarms v. chords.
Image yards spread wide open
Eye tracks work their way everywhere.
Mountain winds can harm voice.
Sensation neutral low four o’clock tone is general. Must call
a nun on the telephone.
Two bad cheers for the small sun: burning a little
life sunstorm: is not yet overcloudy winter!
Send aid ideas to dissolve heaps—to spread their freight.
November 21, 1968
Anatomy of nice thought rot. No use isolating consciousness and then feeding it, exacerbating it. The ruse of nourishing the self with ideas of self-dissolution. The “perfectly safe” consciousness, put on a diet of select thoughts, poisons itself. The exposed consciousness is in less trouble. It relaxes. Is free in fresh air. Is perhaps a little dirtied—but normal or more normal. Less garbage. Select garbage, luxury garbage is the worst poison.
Man tortured by telephone (below thin floor). Cries louder and louder, until he screams high “hellos” that fly beyond Kanchenjunga. Gasps. Despairing cockcrows. Yelps. Hound yells. Pursues a distant fading voice. Over far wires speeds the crazed hound, pleading for help, challenging the victim to turn around and come back. Falls off the wire in despair. lelephone, chair, desk, office, whole hotel, all come crashing to the ground.
Wrote the card to Milosz this morning, sitting in hot sun. Cards to Sr. Thérèse Lentfoehr, John and Rena Niles, Tom Jerry Smith. Letter to Richard Chi. And one to Nyanaponika Thera.
Mass of the Presentation at Loreto Convent. I hoarsely uttered a homily. Voice gone. Cold still bad. Woke up several times in the night coughing. Double whiskies in the warm drawing room no help. The German Consul from Dacca had better luck with grog; we had a discussion and comparison of the respective value of Indian and German rum. His cold is better. As for me, in the long run I must conclude the Jesuit remedies have failed. As Mother Lucovina said, while I was eating breakfast after Mass, “It must run its course.” The old deaf sister inquired whether my week had been consoling or if it had been “the mountain of myrrh.”
My interest in Buddhism has disturbed some of the Catholics, clergy and religious. They wonder what there can be in it. I met the bishop in the dark, Gothic bishop’s house last night, Eric Benjamin—he is Nepalese—very nice, a good bishop; alert, straight, concerned about his people and working hard for them, particularly since “the disaster.” He hoped I would talk to the nuns, and plans are being made for this on Saturday.
There has been continuous firing all morning of an automatic rifle in the deep valley northeast of here. I looked down toward the sound. Tiny houses clinging to the slope. Further up I discern a quiet, isolated gompa. The shots are from some hidden lair of the army.
I finished Murti at Mini. Also all I intend to read of Conze’s Buddhist Thought in India, and Dr. [T: Y] Pemba’s novel Idols by the Path. It is interesting, full of violence, but probably gives a fair idea of Tibet before and after the Chinese takeover. And of Tibetans in this part of India.
“And the ice and the upper radiance of snow are brilliant with timeless immunity from the flux and warmth of life. Overhead they transcend all life, all the soft, moist fire of the blood. So that a man must needs live under the radiance of his own negation.”70
November 22, 1968. Darjeeling
When you begin each day by describing the look of the same mountain, you are living in the grip of delusion. Today the peak of Kanchenjunga was hidden by massive clouds, but the lower attendant peaks stood out all the more beautiful and noble in their own right. If Kanchenjunga were not there they would all be great mountains on their own. At the end of the line I noticed one that seemed to have had its top cut off, and as I had not noticed anything before I concluded that this beheading had taken place during the night.
When you begin each day by giving small Indian coins to Tibetan beggars with prayer wheels and to the old faceless lady from Lhasa, you are simply entrenching your own position in the wheel of birth and death.
We were admiring the Bhutanese swords and daggers at Dr. Pemba’s house. Fr. Curmi was there, too. The beauty of a great heavy dagger. Mrs. Pemba said she had oiled it a little. I slid it back into its sheath. Pictures of Bhutan. Mrs. Pemba is Bhutanese, a wonderful person with a life and substantiality and strength such as one no longer sees in cities. Her laugh is marvelous; she explodes with delight over little things, and is full of humor. So is Pemba, who is more sophisticated. He is, I think, the first Tibetan M.D.—from Lhasa?—well, he practiced there, having trained at University College Hospital in London. He had a lot of tales about J. B. S. Haldane, whom he admires greatly.
Dr. Pemba admires Chatral Rinpoche, too. He says he is very humble. He laughs about Chatral’s unconventional clothes. Chatral puts all the money he gets into building, improving, and ornamenting various gompas on the mountainsides around Ghoom.
Most interesting of all: there have been eight hermits making the three-year retreat at Chatral’s place. They have just finished and eight others have started. There is a long waiting list. When we were there the other day one of the monks was laying the foundation for anew hermit cell.
Dr. Pemba was called in to attend to the ruined knee of one of the retreatants. He had gone into the long retreat with a bad knee and it had become progressively worse with a tubercular condition that by then was horrible. Yet he did not want to see a doctor because he feared he would be pulled out and sent to the hospital. He was within a few months of ending his retreat. Dr. Pemba asked him why he withdrew like this instead of going out and helping others, and he replied that everyone had a different thing to do; most people needed to help others, but some needed to seek a very rare attainment which could only be found in solitude. Such attainment was good not only for the monk himself but improved the whole world. Anyway Dr. Pemba fixed him up so he could finish his retreat. The hermits on retreat see no one but their master (who gives them something to meditate on each day) and the brother who brings them food. The life is now a “little easier” in the sense that they are allowed to leave their unheated cells and walk around in a courtyard, but without seeing anyone.
When we left Pemba’s there were no lights on the pitch-dark steps and in the streets. A small Bhutanese servant boy lights our way down the long flight of steps to the road. Then we go on in the dark. Past the big old guildhall-type place, now roaring and singing crazily with a movie going on inside. Big dark building afflicted with a disease, possessed by giant voices, amplified gunfire, and the flarulence of electronic symphony. Bam Bam Bam Ro-o-oar! A chest of pent-up Tibetan mountain demons booming in the night? No, nothing so respectable. No real thunders. Only a storm of jail-breaking Anzacs71 running amok within the secure compass of four walls and a box office.
As we make our way through the dark, past the dimness of the Shangri-La Restaurant, through the emptiness of the big square, Fr. Curmi told of problems in his Nepalese parish: feuds, strains, and now two families ready to war with each other over a knocked-up teen-age girl.
November 24, 1968. The 24th Sunday after Pentecost
On Friday I said the Mass of St. Cecilia in the bishop’s chapel. And yesterday the Mass of Our Lady, with the new Eucharistic prayer IV, in Latin, which is very fine. A quiet chapel with a Bunna-teak altar. But this morning there was no one around, the bishop’s house was locked up and I couldn’t get in. I leave at 11:30 for Kurseong and may be able to
say Mass at the Jesuit scholasticate there.
Under the entry porch at the bishop’s house there are many flowers in pots and on stands. And two sets of red buffalo horns. The motorcycle is absent. The door is locked and though I press the white bell button five, six times, I never hear anything ring. I walk around to the back. The back door is locked. I start up the hill, soon meeting a young man who salutes me as if he knows me. Perhaps one of the seminarians I spoke to the other day. I ask him about somewhere to say Mass, but he doesn’t seem to understand. I decide not to go down to the Loreto Convent, their chapel being also a parish church and indeed a cathedral, and arrangements made for Sunday Masses. Don’t interfere. Wait till Kurseong.
Yesterday, a visit to Kalu Rinpoche at his hermit center at Sonada. He is a small, thin man with a strange concavity at the temples as if his skull had been pressed in by huge thumbs. Soft-spoken like all of them, he kept fingering his rosary, and patiently answered my many questions on the hermit retreat.
At first he was evasive about it and talked of Mahayana in general until he was apparently satisfied and said I had the “true Mahayana spirit.” Then he went on in more detail. There are sixteen hermits, fifteen men and one woman, now in the three-year retreat at his place. They are not admitted to the retreat until after their fundamental monastic fonnation. They are examined by him on their capacity to undertake the retreat, and each case is decided on its own merits.
The three-year period is divided into various stages: first, one with a great deal of active praying, with many genuflections and prostrations and mantras counted in lakhs [100,000] on the rosary. Then prayers and prostrations before the Buddha image must be accompanied by meditation. They are in addition to the ordinary daily puja of the monks. The puja is done in private. The hennits do nothing in common. They see only their guru, the cook who dishes out their food, and the doctor, if they are ill, They use a Tibetan doctor for small things, a “modern” doctor for serious complaints.
During this active prayer there is much attention to taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Renouncing all sin. Meditation on hell and death. An offering of unbloody sacrifice, a round silver dish (I saw one) full of barley and rice, representing the world and all good things in it, offered in praise and thanks. Emphasis on compassion and unselfishness. The hermit’s retreat is not for his own salvation but for that of all sentient beings. Much contemplation of guardian deities, the nice ones and the terrible.
This initial period goes on for four months and is followed by another of proximate preparation for an initiation, after which the hermit spends about two years, the remainder of his retreat, in the higher dzogchen contemplation. The translation was not clear, but I think Karlu said that in this period there was more emphasis on contemplation of “terrifying deities.” Jimpa Rinpoche, my translator, had by now become sensitive about the “terrifying deities” and tended to giggle when they were mentioned; so some things got lost in his translation.
The hermit’s day begins about 2 or 3 A.M. He gets some tea about 5, a meal about 11. All go to collect their food, it is not brought secretly to their cells. At this time they see each other but don’t talk probably. They can walk outside the cells. Is firewood provided?
Khempo Kalu Rinpoche invited me to come and make this hermit retreat at his place or, failing that, to write to him with my questions. That was very kind of him. With my reaction to this climate at its best and with the noise of the Indian radio in a cottage across the road from the hermitage, I guess it’s still Alaska or California or Kentucky for me.
Kalu Rinpoche gave me three pictures of deities, printed in black and white outline, colored by him, quite touching.
Harold lalbott and I briefly discussed the possibility of getting Sonam Kazi or someone to set up a good Tibetan meditation center in America, perhaps in New Mexico, in some indirect connection with Christ in the Desert. Harold left this morning for Bagdogra, Calcutta, Delhi, and Dharamsala. He has been extremely helpful and generous; he paid my bill at the Windamere and shared all kinds of time, ideas, information, and help.
My cold is not yet cured. Because of it I’ll be glad to get out of Darjeeling. The weather has been “perfect” these last days, but has not helped. It’s one of the most stubborn colds I have ever had. I reflect that where I really caught it was Calcutta, and it was the same cold that landed Peter Dunne in the hospital after the Temple of Understanding Conference. I still have it, with a headache. I do not especially look forward to Kurseong where I am to talk to the Jesuit scholastics. I spoke at St. Joseph’s, North Point, to the fathers and brothers, and at Loreto Convent to the communities of Loreto and Bethany. There were more Indians and Nepalese among the latter. I was consoled by the intent faces of the Nepalese who seemed to respond even more than all the others to what I tried to say about prayer. But they all responded and I got the impression of a great hunger for encouragement and instruction about the life of prayer and meditation. At St. Joseph’s I talked about dialogue with Buddhists and many seemed interested, but I wonder if it was worthwhile, or if they were interested for the right reasons-hard to say.
After the Loreto talk I came back in the lightless streets. But there was some light from Victoria Hospital and some light from the new moon. Two women were screaming abuse at each other in the dark, in one of the “apartments.” And two men on the road above listening with interest.
Harold and I had a farewell party, sitting in my room.
Have I failed in my solemn tourist duty of perpetual motion by not going to Kalimpong? Or even to the old Ghoom monastery, a “sight”? Not even getting out to take a photo of the shiny little new one just by the road to Darjeeling? To go to Kalimpong would take most of the day, now that the bridge is out, and one would have to spend the night there.
To go to Sikkim, I find, one needs a permit from Delhi-I am going to be smart and get one here in Darjeeling-and again it takes hours by roundabout roads to get there since “the disaster.”
No answer from the Queen of Bhutan. (“Well you know,” said our friend, “she has her family problems.”)
No special interest, after all, in Katmandu. Literally everybody here seems to be either coming from Katmandu or going there. All the hippies at the Calcutta meeting were keyed up about it. The Mim Tea Estate, a couple of miles from the Nepal border, full of Nepalese, run by a Nepalese, seemed to me to be good enough as far as Nepal is concerned, at least this time. Maybe later in January?
My mind turns to Ceylon, Thailand, Indonesia. I want to see something else. I have seen the mountains and the gompas.
Out there this morning the Natu-la Pass stood out clear in the distance, and I have seen the road winding up to it out of Gangtok, in Sikkim. Hundreds of little children were running through the dirty main street of Ghoom. Women were taking advantage of the sun to wash their hair. Sitting in the sun combing one another’s hair. Or delousing the children.
Have I failed in my solemn duty as tourist by not taking a photo of a woman of Ghoom, sitting by the roadside, delousing the head of her eight-year-old son?
In Calcutta there has been a Marxist riot led by Maoist students. They burned [Robert] McNamara in effigy and set fire to buses. Tomorrow I will be there.
Kanchenjunga has been hidden tor three days. I will probably not see it again.
Kurseong.
True, Kanchenjunga was hidden as we drove out from Darjeeling. The lower peaks were visible but the higher peak itself was lost in a great snow-cloud. Some of the blanks were visible in a dim room of shadow and snow. I looked back as we swung into Ghoom, and that was the end of it.
Outside of the window of a Jesuit scripture scholar’s cell, which has been loaned to me for the night, there is a brilliant and somber fiery sunset amid low blue clouds. The scholasticate here at Kurseong is high up on the mountain and looks far out over the Ganges plain. The school has an excellent library. I wanted to dip into Fr. De Smet’s thesis on the theological ideas in Sankaracharya, but did no
t get a chance. I read a few songs of Tukaram, the greatest Marathi poet, and some Sufis; there was no time for more.
Tukaram lived in Maharashtra (the region around Bombay) from 1598 to 1650—within two years of being an exact contemporary of Descartes. He was ordained by Chaitanya in a dream and began teaching. He was ordered by some brahmins to throw his books in the river. He did so and went into a seventeen-day fast and meditation, after which the river returned his books to him.
Said Mass in a private oratory during the afternoon of Sunday-better than Darjeeling.
Sankirtana is the Indian term for singing the names and exploits of the Lord in the company of the saints. “To join the Lord in his sports (lilas).”
In his preface to a book by the Abbé [Jules] Monchanin, a Frenchman who became a hermit on the banks of the sacred river Cauvery in South India, Pierre Emmanuel writes of vocation: “Qu’est-ce qu’une vocation? Un appel, et une réponse. Cette definition ne nous tient pas quitte: concevoir l’appel de Dieu comme l’ordre exprès d’accomplir une tâche, certes ce n’est pas toujours faux, mats ce n’est vnti qu ’après une lengue élaboration intérieure aù il arrive que rien de tel ne soit perçu. I l arrive aussi que l’ordre mûrisse avec l’être qui devra l’accomplir: qu’il soit en quelque sorte cet être même, parvenu à maturité. Enfin, mûrir peut être une mystérieuse façon de mourir, pour qu ’avec la mort commence la tâche…. Il faut qu ’ily ait un choix vertigineux, une déhiucence définitive par quoi se déchire la certitude qu’il a conquise d’être appelé. Ce qui—comme on dit, et le mot id est juste—consacre une vocation et l’élève à la hauteur du sacrifice qu ’elle devient, c ’est une rupture avec l’ordre apparent de l’être, avec sa maturité formelle ou son efficacité visible.
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 35
