Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud

by Sun Shuyun

  Xuanzang recorded that Nalanda was the very centre of learning and the biggest monastery in mediaeval India, drawing monks from China, Korea, Mongolia, Tibet and Central Asia. Originally it was a mango grove, and five hundred merchants bought it for the Buddha. After the Buddha’s death, the king of the country built Nalanda, which means ‘insatiable in giving’, in memory of the Enlightened Being. The king’s descendants continued their devotion for six generations, each adding their own temples of worship. Some of India’s greatest Buddhist masters, such as Nagarjuna, Asanga and Vasubandhu, had studied here. Santarakshita went to Tibet from Nalanda to spread Buddhism. Sariputra, the foremost disciple of the Buddha, was buried here.

  When Xuanzang arrived in Nalanda, a grand welcoming ceremony awaited him. Since setting foot in India in the winter of 628, he had been seeking out great teachers in one remote monastery after another, spending long periods learning from them and taking part in their debates. He stayed over a year in Kashmir alone, mastering Sanskrit, and some new sutras. Soon monks throughout India heard that the Chinese master was making his way through all the major monasteries in the country and the sacred sites. So when they learned that he was coming to Nalanda, two hundred monks and over a thousand lay devotees walked miles to greet him, carrying banners, umbrellas, flowers and incense. They brought him to the monastery, where all the monks assembled to receive him formally into their community.

  Then came the great moment for Xuanzang, the one he had been waiting for. After the welcoming ceremony, twenty monks took him to see the Venerable Shilabhadra, the master of Nalanda, the most eminent monk in India, and the patriarch of the Yogacara School. This was the very man he had heard so much about, whose temple he had visited in Patna, and under whom he hoped to study to clear all his doubts. Xuanzang was on his knees, with his head bowed to the ground. He kissed Shilabhadra’s feet. When Shilabhadra heard that Xuanzang had come all the way from China to learn Yogacara, he cried. Xuanzang was too shocked to ask why but he had an answer soon enough from the master’s nephew. Shilabhadra suffered from rheumatism and each time he relapsed, he was in a lot of pain. The illness had troubled him for more than twenty years and three years earlier it had become so severe that he wished to end his life by fasting.

  One night he had a dream in which he saw the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. The Bodhisattva said to him, ‘As we saw that you intend to abandon your body without any good purpose, we have come to give you some advice. You should act according to our words to propagate the Dharma and preach the Yogacara Sutra and the other books to people who have not yet heard about them. You will then gradually recover from your illness and you need not worry about it. A Chinese monk who wishes to learn the great Dharma will come to study from you. You may wait to teach him.’ He saw in Xuanzang the realization of his dream.

  Xuanzang knew he had finally found the intellectual and spiritual home he had been searching for. He tells us admission to Nalanda was competitive: a few questions by the monks at the gate sent most aspirants home; those who got a foot inside the door were grilled by the masters, who would reject four out of five. The 10,000 monks who were finally admitted were the crême de la crême. In them he found a true match for his curiosity and appetite for learning. ‘They are very distinguished and there are many hundreds whose fame has spread far and wide,’ he writes with pride. ‘From morning till night they engage in discussion; the old and the young help one another. Those who have no command of the Tripitaka, the Buddhist canon, are not respected. They are obliged to hide themselves for shame.’

  The majestic ruins of Nalanda are ten minutes’ walk from the Chinese monastery. They spread over fourteen acres, with block after block of monks’ cells, five temples and eleven monasteries laid out in a long rectangle. I could understand why Cunningham thought it was a royal palace when he first saw the mound covering them. Xuanzang’s Record revealed the truth, and it was confirmed by the excavation of a seal of red clay bearing the stamped inscription: ‘Venerable Community of Monks of the Great Vihara of Honoured Nalanda’. You would have some idea of the magnificence of the place today if you imagined four or five of the largest Oxford colleges placed side by side, and then destroyed as if by an earthquake. There is an eerie silence, no monks scurrying about, no chanting, no gongs sounding – just a few visitors lost in the immensity of its spaces. It was rightly called Mahavihara, the Great Monastery.

  Walking on top of the blocks, some two or three storeys high and set in quadrangular courts, I wondered which cell could be Xuanzang’s. His description of the view from his cell sounds like a paradise on earth. ‘The richly adorned towers and the fairy-like turrets like pointed hilltops are congregated together. The observatories seem to be lost in the vapours of the morning, and the upper rooms tower above the clouds. From the windows one may see how the winds and the clouds change shapes, and above the soaring eaves the conjunctions of the sun and moon.’ In the early morning, he would get up to the sound of a gong and then take a bath in one of the ponds with a hundred, sometimes a thousand other monks. He meditated and prayed in his cell instead of going to the five temples because they were not big enough to hold all the monks. In the evening, children and servants carrying incense, lamps and flowers would appear in the courtyard outside his cell, and the presiding monk would chant sutras and hymns.

  I also found what the guidebook described as a lecture-hall. Nothing remained of ‘the pearl-red pillars carved and ornamented, the richly adorned balustrades, and the roofs covered with tiles that reflect the light in a thousand shades’. But it was in the lecture-halls like this one that Xuanzang mastered Sanskrit and grammar – his mission was to translate the vast canon from Sanskrit into Chinese. He believed that ‘the one who is skilled in Sanskrit may write his compositions without any ambiguity and may express himself in a most elegant manner’. His precise translations, his meticulous Record and the eloquent phrasing of his correspondence – all were proof of his love and command of this ancient language. He also acquired profound knowledge of Indian philosophy, logic, medicine, mathematics and astronomy. As to the sutras and doctrines of all the different Mahayana and Theravada schools, he went through each several times until he completely comprehended them.

  It was also in one of the lecture-halls that he conducted public debates with erudite Hindus who claimed to have a superior faith. He told one Hindu ascetic in the audience, whose body was smeared all over with ashes, that he looked like ‘a cat that has slept in the stove’. Another whose skin was all cracked and chafed from exposure reminded him of ‘a withered tree by the brook side’. ‘How can you Hindus regard these things as proofs of wisdom?’ he asked. ‘Are they not evidence of madness and folly?’ One particularly confident Brahmin hung up a notice of forty-four propositions, declaring that he would be willing to forfeit his head if anyone could refute even one of his arguments. Xuanzang took up the challenge. According to Hui Li, he refuted all of them one by one. He, of course, did not ask the defeated Brahmin to ‘forfeit his head’. Instead he insisted that the two of them engage in long conversations so that he became thoroughly familiar with the arguments of his opponents. The Brahmin was completely won over and when he left, he spread Xuanzang’s good name wherever he went.

  Xuanzang had many great teachers. One of them was a lay recluse called Jayasena who lived in the hills near Nalanda, and repeatedly refused offers of grand titles from the king. He said he had quite enough on his hands as it was and could not do a rajah’s job as well. He happily gave two years of his life to teaching Xuanzang everything he knew. But of all his mentors, Xuanzang felt most honoured to be taught by Shilabhadra, the incomparable metaphysician, who explained the Yogacara Sutra to him three times. He clarified the confusions in his Chinese disciple’s mind about Yogacara, cut through the myriad arguments of all the different schools, made clear the most abstruse points, and revealed to him new insights about the essence of the Buddha’s teachings. Xuanzang’s gratitude to his master was clear from this passage: ‘Despite m
y mediocrity, I was improved by his noble company. He led the exhausted traveller to spiritual treasure, and opened up new vistas for those who had lost their bearings. He was at the same time a vast ocean, a lofty mountain and a pillar of the edifice at the Gate of Buddhism.’

  Xuanzang had finally removed the doubts about the Yogacara Sutra that had wearied him so much, but I still could not come to grips with it – nothing exists except in the mind. How can that be? What about the Dharma or the very idea that everything in the world is the creation of the mind? Is it illusory too? If so, what is the point of understanding it since nothing is real? Why did Xuanzang risk his life to make sense of it? What is its importance in the scheme of Mahayana Buddhism? I remembered asking a monk about them in the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. He told me he could not understand Yogacara at all. Then he said, ‘If the Buddha came back to the world, perhaps he would say, “Hey monks, did I really say all these things? They are so profound, I can’t even understand them myself.” ’ I suppose for him and his fellow-monks, and most Buddhists, it is enough to try to live by the teachings of the Buddha, to pray to the Bodhisattvas for help to end their pain and suffering, not only in this life but the next one as well, and finally gain a place in the eternal bliss of the Western Paradise.

  But in Xuanzang’s view, a Buddhist should penetrate the nature of things. Without that knowledge, our mind will be polluted by ignorance, which is the root cause of our suffering. If a doctor does not know the real cause of a disease, he will not cure the patient. If we are ignorant of the ultimate character of reality, we will continue to live in illusion and suffer. So understanding things as they really are is essential to Buddhism.

  I thought I might find some monks in the New Nalanda Mahavihara to answer my questions. It sounded the perfect place for my enquiries. According to the brochure I had picked up in the monastery, the New Mahavihara is a residential centre of education of international importance on the lines of the ancient Vihara. It aimed to spread the Dharma and Indian culture as it once had done so successfully: ‘Even at present, the very name of Nalanda is a living source of inspiration and people are anxious to see Nalanda restored to its pristine glory.’

  It was in an idyllic spot, facing the ancient ruins across the Nalanda River, but a little less imposing than the brochure had led me to expect. It was a two-storey white bungalow, which would fit in one rectangular court of the old Nalanda. In the entrance hall I found two men chatting desultorily, one sitting behind a bare desk, the other leaning against a windowsill. A young monk in a maroon robe was standing close by, listening quietly. They seemed startled to see a visitor. I raised my hands palm to palm and muttered namaste in the traditional Indian greeting. The monk reciprocated and introduced me first to the man at the desk, Dr Singh, head of Ancient Indian and Asian Studies, and then to his colleague Dr Mishra, the head of the Department of Philosophy. He himself was called Nayaka, and came from Burma. Dr Singh asked how they could help me. I showed him the brochure, saying I was interested to find out more about their teaching.

  He laughed, passing the brochure to Dr Mishra without even a glance: ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t believe a word of it. How many teaching staff does it say we have?’

  ‘Twelve,’ replied his colleague.

  ‘The other ten must be djinns because we are the only teachers here.’ Seeing the puzzlement on my face, Dr Singh slowed down. ‘Djinns are spirits, invisible to mere mortals. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could teach Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit, or the other languages? It would certainly do some good to the 120 monks we have here. They are attracted by the fame of the old Nalanda and have come from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, Japan and Burma. But we are wasting their time.’ Dr Singh gave Nayaka a gentle, almost paternal glance, when he finished his barrage. Then he asked for tea for all of us.

  Slowly I began to understand Dr Singh’s anger and frustration. It was very much a Bihari problem, a perfect illustration of how the state is run. By decree of the Bihar government, the Chairman of their Board of Management is His Excellency, the Governor of Bihar. No decisions, big or small, could be reached without the chairman’s approval. But His Excellency had been so busy that for the past eighteen months he could not attend any of the board meetings. As a result, the lion’s share of the academic budget had to be returned to the central government, unspent for two years in a row. ‘The money could have solved all our problems – staff shortage, broken computer, rundown building and scholarships for monks from the really poor countries like Burma. Yet nothing is done. Such is the madness.’ He threw up his hands.

  I really was keen to talk to Dr Mishra about Yogacara, the school of Buddhism that Xuanzang embraced and studied under Silabadhra, here in Nalanda. But he said it was not his speciality – as I was later to discover, few people feel they understand it completely. It appealed to Xuanzang because of his desire to understand the very nature of experience and reality. He was to write a whole book about it and establish a Chinese school of Yogacara, or Faxiang, when he returned to China. Yogacara has a complete theory of what we can know and what exists, and it describes three levels of our knowledge. One is our ordinary everyday perception of the material world, with subjects and objects, people and rocks and rivers – but this is illusory. As the Diamond Sutra says:

  This fleeting world is like

  A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,

  A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

  A flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.

  There are different versions of this illusory world in Yogacara; in some, the things we see and feel are there but are impermanent; in the most extreme version, which Xuanzang espoused himself, the material world does not exist. All we have is the second level of knowledge, an ever-changing flow of feelings, sensations, volitions, consciousness – though Yogacara gives a complicated explanation of how we can have shared experiences, as if there was a real world out there.

  This second level of knowledge, our experience, really does exist. If it did not, there would be nothing at all. In fact Yogacara came into being in the midst of fierce philosophical debates in India in the fourth century AD, with some claiming that nothing existed at all – Yogacara opposed this ‘nothingness’ doctrine, but because of its emphasis on the mind, it was known as Cittamatra, or ‘Mind-only’. And beyond the second level, there is a third, perfected knowledge, achieved by intense meditation – Yogacara means the ‘practice of meditation’. This is really the essence of the Buddha’s discovery in his enlightenment: it is seeing beyond the misleading world of subjects and objects, people and things, and understanding the true nature of reality. It is the Self in relation to the things of this world which causes the desires and passions that give rise to suffering. The Buddha taught that the Self does not exist as the fixed entity we believe it to be; we have to abandon our attachment to it. Once we train our minds so that we genuinely live this detachment, we achieve liberation – complete equanimity, and release from the torrent of samsara, the cycle of birth and rebirth.

  I felt really thwarted not to be able to discuss these questions with anyone in Nalanda. There was so much I did not understand. If our experiences exist, surely they have to have a body to exist in? Then how could Xuanzang deny that things like bodies had a real existence? Especially after all the hardships he suffered on his epic journey, his near-death in the desert, his hunger strike, the avalanche. He seemed to me to have had some very real encounters with a very real world. But perhaps I am one of those pragmatic Chinese who find philosophies like Yogacara too abstruse, too complicated. We have always been that way. Certainly Yogacara was not destined to last very long in China even with Xuanzang’s advocacy; its decline began barely twenty years after his death. I felt like a child in a maze with this philosophy, this school of Buddhism that Xuanzang gave his life to, and I was sad to be defeated by it. I simply could not get inside his mind.

  It was early evening when I said goodbye to Dr Mishra and Dr Singh. They said I must not miss t
he Xuanzang Memorial Hall and told me how to get there. I walked with Yogendra along the river to a small lake. A path lined with willow trees zigzagged across it on a causeway and then through a young forest. For a minute, I thought I was in a Chinese landscape, searching for a secluded monastery. The sun was warm, the reeds were dancing in the breeze; washer-women were spreading their colourful clothes on the stones; there were children leading goats through the fields, and other women carrying loads of dry sticks on their heads; two fishing boats were bringing in their catch. I wondered if this was the life Xuanzang saw when he took a stroll out of the monastic complex. The surrounding villages had been endowed by successive Indian kings for the upkeep of Nalanda. In Xuanzang’s time, two hundred households made daily deliveries of rice, butter and milk to the monastery, and then cooked, washed, cleaned, provided medicine for and waited on its 10,000 monks. Xuanzang had a daily ration of 120 betel leaves for chewing, 20 betel nuts, 20 cardamoms, an ounce of camphor and one and a half pounds of rice. He did not have to collect the ration himself – in recognition of his distinction, he had ten servants looking after him, instead of the usual two, so that he could devote himself exclusively to study and the progress of the mind.

  The gate of the compound was locked and Yogendra had to bang on the door for quite a while before a man opened it. When he saw my face, he knew I was a Chinese. He smiled and led us in. The compound was empty, the size of a football pitch, with half a dozen cows grazing the grass. At the far end of it stood the magnificent Memorial Hall. ‘It is just like the temples you see in China,’ I exclaimed to Yogendra.

  When the keeper unlocked the door, a strong smell of paint hit me. Ladders, barrels and construction materials were piled high to the ceiling, as if the craftsmen had just finished building it. It was actually completed in the late 1950s when India and China were still enjoying their honeymoon. Not long after came the border war of 1962 and the hall remained closed for decades. ‘Now our president is going to visit China, and we will have a VIP delegation from China in return,’ said the keeper enthusiastically. ‘They are going to decorate the hall with wall hangings painted by Chinese and Indian artists. There will be the master himself and the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. In the centre we will put a sculpture of the master.’