Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud

by Sun Shuyun

  Twenty of us followed our guide like a flock of sheep as she unlocked the gate of one cave after another. She made fast work of each, relating sketchy information in a bored voice. She would flash her torch at some Buddha on the ceiling or the wall and by the time I had made it out in the gloom, she had moved on to something else. I soon drifted away from the crowd and wandered into any cave that was open. Amazingly, nobody stopped me. In one cave a light had been strung up illuminating all the murals. I poked my head in further and made out a figure: a man with his back turned to me, dabbing at a giant canvas.

  He was a painter, copying the Western Paradise on the northern wall. He was well into his reproduction. The drawings had been carefully prepared in pencil with each image precisely located on a grid. He was applying colours, blue, jade green, terracotta and dark red, with occasional gold powder. Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, was sitting on a lotus blossom, flanked by two Bodhisattvas and their heavenly retinues. Infants, representing the souls of those recently reborn into paradise, danced joyously or knelt in reverence. On floors paved with precious stones, several pairs of apsaras danced gracefully to celestial music, played by an orchestra of fair ladies. In the background were lavish palaces, pagodas and pavilions under auspicious clouds. The process was laborious and precise. The copying of classic artworks by artists has a venerable history in China, as in India. It is an act of reverence, a way of becoming imbued not only with the artistic technique but also with its spirit. This man was following the tradition. When I compared his copy with the mural on the wall, I had to admit it was masterly. I wanted to ask him how long he had been working on it. I coughed to attract his attention. He turned around, looking not too unhappy about my intrusion, and just said, ‘Seven months.’

  I ventured another question. How long did he think the original painter took to decorate the whole cave?

  ‘It was done by more than one painter, perhaps three or four.’ He put down his brush. ‘You are not a painter.’

  ‘I cannot even draw a circle.’

  He laughed and told me that rarely would one painter do a whole cave, because the people who paid for it wanted to see their paradise quickly. This was a medium-sized cave and it would take three painters perhaps two or three years to decorate. I had read that food and an extra allowance of oil for cooking at the completion of their work were what the painters received for these heavenly images. It did not sound like very much recompense for such patient and detailed work, I told him.

  ‘Worse, they were not allowed to put their names on the murals,’ he said. ‘Of all the murals in all the caves, we know the name of only one painter. In one cave some years ago, scholars found the mummified body of a painter, covered with a sketch of his painting. He had died devoting his life to the depiction of paradise on earth.’ I asked him what was the hardest thing for him. ‘You can see survival is no problem for me,’ he said, pulling a face with some exaggeration. ‘But that heavenly expression on the face of the Buddha and the Bodhisattva is so elusive. It is unfathomable.’

  I suspected he was not a Buddhist. ‘Perhaps you should try to become enlightened,’ I joked.

  ‘Are you a Buddhist?’ he looked at me in surprise.

  ‘I am looking for the Buddha.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By following the footsteps of Xuanzang.’

  ‘But he went all the way to India.’

  ‘I just came back from India.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘To figure out what’s behind the Buddha’s smile,’ I replied.

  He stared at me. He was probably wondering if I was serious. ‘You know Xuanzang came here and there are murals depicting his journey to the West. Have you seen them?’

  No, I shook my head. Then I told him my problem.

  ‘Perhaps I can help you,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Can you get me special permission?’

  ‘Special permissions I don’t have, but I and my colleagues are working in several caves right now.’

  I could not believe my luck; I told him the caves I had in mind.

  ‘Just wait here. I’ll be back soon.’

  When he returned, I told him how grateful I was. He looked at the keys and rattled them uneasily. ‘These are priceless treasures. Please do not steal anything, like Stein.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind stealing one of your reproductions,’ I joked. He told me I could see them in the museum outside, where the entire murals of the ten best caves have been reproduced. Visitors could experience the total aesthetic of a cave without actually going in there. ‘The breathing from coach loads of tourists is damaging the murals. I am painting to keep people out of the caves,’ he said seriously. ‘But for the time being I’ll show you the real ones.’ We exchanged names; I will call him Hua.

  ‘Why don’t we start at the beginning,’ he suggested, leading the way and fingering one key after another until he came to the one he wanted. ‘Let me show you some of the early caves. Xuanzang must have seen them. And anyway, they’re my personal favourites.’

  It was only a short walk to the first one. Hua turned his torch on the wall, illuminating a burst of colour and form. The paintings were very simple, almost modern, with slightly stylized figures, emphasized by blocks of bold colours. The skin tones of the figures had oxidized to a charcoal grey. ‘Don’t they look like Picassos?’ he said. ‘I feel much happier copying these. I don’t feel imprisoned by the detail like in the Tang figures. With those you have to spend months just doing the jewellery. These are really liberating.’

  ‘Now let me take you to our greatest treasure,’ Hua said excitedly. We emerged from the cave into bright sunlight, and climbed up to the second storey from the corridor in front of the caves. ‘Your monk could not have missed this. It was finished in 642 just before he came here. I think this cave has the finest of all the murals.’

  Cave 220 was small, but its murals were indeed very special. ‘I know I said I prefer the simple ones, but this is the Tang style at its very best. See the heavenly face of the Amitabha Buddha.’ He pointed to the centre of the mural on the northern wall. ‘And look at this dancer.’ His finger moved further down the wall. ‘She looks as if she could come off the painting and start dancing for you. They can’t be by local painters. The men who painted them must have come from Chang’an, the capital. This is the most beautiful Western Paradise in the Mogao Caves, and the best preserved.’

  I had to agree. The scenery was so vivid, the figures so alive, the palaces so magnificent, and the composition so harmonious. The Eastern Paradise on the opposite wall was equally astonishing. ‘This was the destination the donor of the cave had in mind for his families,’ Hua said, pointing to a row of men painted on the entrance wall.

  All six men were wearing the same official robe of the imperial administration, a garment of dark colour and a hat with fins sticking out above both ears. They were standing there with the contented expression of men contemplating the paradise they had created on earth. From the inscription next to the portraits, we know that the donor, Zhai Fengda, was a high official in the local government in the tenth century. His great-great-grandfather had commissioned the cave as a family temple and had it decorated with the most popular murals. ‘But Zhai’s children or grandchildren could not maintain the family temple. Others took over. There was no shortage of big donors in Dunhuang in those days,’ Hua said, leading me to a corner where there were four layers of painting. ‘It was only after peeling off the later works that the splendid commission by the Zhai family was revealed.’

  On the two walls next to the entrance were murals of Vimalakirti discussing the Dharma with Wenshu, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. Originally Vimalakirti was an Indian ascetic and highly unconventional – he visited prostitutes and gamblers in order to teach them Buddhism. But in China we demurred at his questionable background and made him a Confucian scholar complete with wife and children. The Chinese liked him because he combined wisdom with worldly life – just what
the rich and powerful donors aspired to. He was debating a most profound point with Bodhisattva Wenshu: non-duality, a concept which Xuanzang would have studied and understood well. Everything is relative, changeable, even the Dharma. Without dirt, there is no cleanliness, without laymen, there are no monks, without suffering, there is no enlightenment. Affliction and enlightenment are the same thing, just one thought apart. Once one realizes this, one has achieved the highest wisdom in Buddhism, which is beyond language, beyond concept, beyond any teaching. One could only smile, and sit in silent contemplation, which was just what Vimalakirti and Wenshu did at the end of their debate. The debate was so penetrating, even the emperor was listening to the discussion with his large retinue of ministers at the feet of the Bodhisattva.

  ‘That could be Emperor Taizong himself, with his ministers, the very people Xuanzang was shortly to meet,’ Hua said. ‘Xuanzang is probably pondering how he can get the emperor to listen to his preaching, to support him and Buddhism.’

  Hua was right: this must have been pressing on Xuanzang’s mind. He was deeply moved by the flourishing of Buddhism in Dunhuang. If only this could happen in the whole of China, he thought. To achieve that, he must win the support of the emperor. In fact, as he would notice, the most splendid Mogao Caves had been patronized by the local rulers. Naturally they had left their portraits on the walls like Zhai Fengda or the King of Khotan – tiny images in some obscure corner to start with, but later they were to become bigger and bigger, eclipsing even the Bodhisattvas. Vanity overtook piety. It was just as well that Xuanzang never saw the eighth-century excesses of the ruling local families. They portrayed their entire retinues on the lower walls of the caves, complete with horses and banners flying, flaunting their wealth, power and prestige. The earthly show had squeezed the heavenly host upstairs. Still, without their support, Buddhism could not flourish. Travelling around India, Xuanzang had witnessed the decline of the Dharma in the land of the Buddha; to revive it, and propagate it throughout China – he saw the purpose of his journey even more clearly in the caves of Mogao.

  These two caves had only whetted my appetite. I went on to see a dozen of what Hua thought were the best for my purposes. I was completely bowled over. Looking at the murals of the life of the Buddha – his renunciation, his searching, his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, his first preaching and his nirvana – I kept thinking how they must have reminded Xuanzang of his pilgrimage to the holy places. And the mural of merchants being ambushed by bandits in Cave 45 would no doubt bring back memories of his own experience of being robbed five times and once almost losing his life at the hands of bandits. Here on the wall, the frightened merchants were at a loss what to do; while they were desperately looking for a place to hide, their heavily loaded donkeys took flight and a camel stumbled over a precipice. The merchants prayed earnestly to the Bodhisattvas, as Xuanzang had done, and the bandits were repelled. They reloaded their goods and set off again on the journey home. But even bandits were thought to be capable of embracing Buddhism. Just as Xuanzang persuaded the robbers in Peshawar to give up their trade, in Cave 285, five hundred bandits were depicted receiving enlightenment after hearing the preaching of the Bodhisattva Guanyin.

  The heavenly abodes of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are always enlivened with vignettes from real life, giving us a window on the world of Xuanzang’s time, and before and after. I saw a farmer and his family leading horses into a stable in their clean and comfortable courtyard, shaded by weeping willows and surrounded by lush green fields. In a walled city guarded by watchtowers, a monk was instructing his two disciples, while an official was hearing petitions from a line of supplicants. The famous Mount Wutai, the worldly abode of the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, was packed with grand temples and monasteries. Pilgrimages, royal processions, religious ceremonies, weddings, funerals, wars, commercial transactions, women putting on their make-up, men brushing their teeth and children playing with dogs and cats – every aspect of life is recorded in colourful, vivid detail, still fresh, evocative and powerful after all this time. I told Hua that many of the scenes were so familiar they could be happening in the villages and towns I had passed through on my journey. I had the sensation that I was no longer just following Xuanzang’s footsteps and reading his Record but actually inhabiting the world he lived in.

  ‘Just wait till this afternoon when you see the cave with the painting of him in it!’ Hua said.

  We left the caves and gingerly made our way down the steep stairs. Hua invited me for lunch in the Academy canteen, but I declined. I was keen to take some photos, and I was aware how quickly the day could pass. I asked him if he could join me later near the big Buddha at the centre of the site. After he was gone, I stood surveying the scene in front of me, my hand against my brow for shade against the full blast of the sun. The heat seemed to dissolve people, trees and caves into separate units, hard and transparent, like the residue of evaporated liquid. Perhaps I would be lucky and have the whole place to myself. But in another second my hopes were dashed. Beyond the railing that bars the entrance, and directly opposite the big Buddha, I saw a group of Tibetans. They were alternately standing up and lying down, prostrating themselves, inching slowly towards the Buddha.

  I had no idea how long they had been doing this, but I could see sweat running down their weathered faces in thick rivulets, and their long maroon coats were dusty from flinging themselves on the ground; the covers on their hands were shiny. They were poor men who had travelled far to fulfil a promise made many years ago. I suppose this is more what Xuanzang would have seen – the faithful coming here to pray. The caves were not just beautiful things to admire, nor were they merely offerings to ensure their donors’ entry into heaven, they were living temples meant as places of worship.

  I watched the Tibetans for quite a while until they stood up for the last time, and with their hands pressed together uttered a silent prayer. Then they started chatting volubly and gathered to leave. Maybe they couldn’t afford the tickets, I speculated. Maybe they didn’t need to see the murals. They were pilgrims; all they wanted was to pay their respects to this holy place. As they walked away into the distance, my thoughts followed them. I had now seen Bezeklik, Qizil and Ajanta, the major Buddhist caves on the Silk Road that Xuanzang had visited in their prime. Much had faded or vanished, which made Mogao even more precious. I saw the power of faith; I saw beauty; I saw the river of history. But Mogao was still a monument. For them, it was a living embodiment of their faith.

  The Tibetan pilgrims set me thinking about my grandmother. She would have loved it here. She could have seen for herself all the important stories and messages in the sutras she could not read. She would have particularly liked the murals illustrating the Lotus Sutra. Here the Bodhisattva Guanyin was shown saving merchants lost in the desert and at sea, people trapped in burning houses, soldiers wounded in battle and a man whose head was on the guillotine. Surely the almighty Bodhisattva could have solved her problems, and delivered her to the Western Paradise? She would have taken the mural of the paradise as the real thing, where suffering was unheard of, where no one was sick, where all that was desired would be granted and where she would be reunited with her children and husband and live happily ever after.

  For all her wishes to be granted, Grandmother would have offered incense sticks before she prostrated. Then she would start praying. A tenth-century prayer I read by an old woman from the Dunhuang manuscripts reminded me so much of Grandmother:

  I offer this incense to announce the misfortunes that rain down upon me as fast as lightning … I beg that my prayer will reach the ears of the Star God Rahu, and that he will force the hundred demons that beset me to go far away, that he will strengthen the power of the good spirits, let my illnesses fade away day after day, year after year. I entreat him for happiness and blessing, for the end of my misfortunes and for pardon of my sins.

  I wanted to offer a prayer for her, but the words did not come.

  When Hua returned from his lu
nch, with a bottle of water and a steamed bun for me, we headed straight for Cave 103. It is a small one, with the usual layout and decorations in Cave 220, except that the Eastern Paradise does not occupy the entire northern wall. To the right of the paradise is a small oblong mural, the one I had been so looking forward to seeing. It starts at the top with Xuanzang saying goodbye to his host under an Indian pavilion. Then among the undulating green mountains of the Pamirs, he and his companions can be seen travelling, making slow progress. A Sogdian, with a bushy beard and floppy hat, is leading the white elephant laden with a heavy sack, presumably full of sutras and statues. Xuanzang follows on his white horse, wrapped in a long cloak to keep warm and wearing a monk’s hat. As he tells us, the upland plains of the Pamirs were surrounded by snowy mountains, and ‘the climate was cold and the winds blew constantly’. Close behind our pilgrim are two servants walking. The scene is harmonious and peaceful, with no indication of the disaster to come when they were attacked by the band of robbers. The next scene portrays him giving thanks for his safe arrival.

  What fascinated me was not just the painting itself but also the date it was painted, barely a hundred years after Xuanzang returned to China. Because of his epic journey, Xuanzang was already legendary in his own time, and soon appeared on the walls of the Mogao Caves, alongside the Buddha, Bodhisattvas and heavenly kings, worshipped by the faithful and inspiring them to follow his example. They did just that. The dramas, the adventures, the exotic tastes and customs, the wonders of India, so vividly described in his Record and Hui Li’s biography, created almost a mania in China for India. More Chinese monks left for India in the forty years after Xuanzang’s return than during any other time. Many never made it; others loved India so much they decided to settle there; those who came back received heroes’ welcomes and encouraged more of the faithful to follow in their footsteps. This fervour continued unabated for at least three hundred years. A delight of the Dunhuang documents is fragments of Xuanzang’s Record of the Western Regions. What is more, on the back of one page, the monk wrote down his name and the name of his monastery in northern China. He must have been so impressed by Xuanzang that he bought the book and used it to guide his own pilgrimage. For some reason, he did not travel on after his arrival in Dunhuang, and the guidebook was stored in the secret chamber.