by John Avedon
Monday morning, January 15. At nine o’clock the Dalai Lama leaves the Tibetan monastery. Thirty-five police clear the route through Bodh Gaya’s single ramshackle street, an unspecified number of plainclothes security converging around the entourage like sullen, obtrusive dependents recognizable only by their misshapen Western jackets worn over white dhotis. Walking rapidly, the Dalai Lama enters the temple’s grounds by a gate in the western wall. Here, he slows his pace, and with Bikku Jagat beside him, circumambulates the precincts along the widest and highest path, descending to pray in the shrine room. His offerings made, he follows the base by the shortest path, walking toward the Bodhi Tree. On the lawn beneath it, all 4,000 Tibetans have gathered. Compressed in tight, uneven ranks, monks and nuns to the front, the crowd rolls between the islands of reliquaries all the way back to the stone gate and its giant bell by which the Dalai Lama first entered. Beneath them, the ground is a patchwork of hundreds of small rugs and blankets. There are no aisles. Anyone who thinks he might leave has stayed at the edge. The rest are jammed knee to knee, making room only for a few young monks to hand out wallet-sized yellow booklets containing prayers written by the Dalai Lama, addressed to the protective deities of Tibet, for an improvement in conditions there.
The last monks, yellow robes flung quickly across their shoulders, find their places just as the Dalai Lama rounds the corner. The first to see him, they rise immediately, followed by the people behind. Palms together at his chest, back slightly bent, the Dalai Lama acknowledges the welcome with a smile. He stops before a resplendent six-foot throne, draped in yellow, red and gold brocade. Taking his shoes off and then prostrating, he mounts and seats himself on a small white pillow, placing his monk’s bag on the table to his right. The foliage of the tree extends in a beautiful green canopy overhead. Squares of thin gold leaf along its four branching trunks, peeled by the weather, flutter so that much of the lower tree sparkles. Above them hundreds of multicolored flags and pennants have been rigged by pilgrims from all over the world and the tree appears as though dressed for a regatta.
The crowd’s own prostrations done, the Dalai Lama begins to rapidly recite the Heart Sutra. Seated in the second row beside a scarf-draped microphone, the chant master picks up the prayer and is joined by the entire assembly. Two minutes later the lightning recitation concludes with three loud hand claps, performed to symbolically clear away obstructions to perceiving form and emptiness as one: the subject of the sutra and basis of Buddhist philosophy. Following further preliminaries, the Dalai Lama takes up his teaching, based on a popular text by Thogmey Zangpo, a famous fourteenth-century lama.
For five days, four hours each morning, Tenzin Gyatso describes the major practices on the path to enlightenment. His constant theme is that the essence of a Buddhist life lies in a person’s own effort to purify the mind. By replacing its coarse, deluded states such as anger, attachment and ignorance with their opposites: patience, equanimity and wisdom, a lasting internal happiness can be achieved, independent of external conditions. His words are set against a backdrop shared by all the listeners, depicting the universe and man’s role within it, from a rational humanistic view—the non-theistic Buddhist ethos so similar, despite its Eastern doctrine, to the secular thought of the modern world.
The Buddha described the cosmos as an infinite number of world systems forming, disintegrating and re-forming with neither beginning nor end. Within the worlds, he maintained, living beings undergo repeated birth, death and rebirth based on their innate misconception of reality. All creatures conceive things to exist independently, in and of themselves, he said, whereas, in truth, nothing is self-originated; phenomena arise in dependence on causes and conditions. This interdependence he called emptiness—specifically, the lack of an ultimate self. When the mind realizes that it is empty of such a substantial identity and exists merely in the manner of an illusion, freedom from the uncontrolled process of material incarnation, known as cyclic existence or samsara, is obtained. Such is the liberation of an arhat or saint. Once achieved, it is possible to expand consciousness to the omniscient state of Buddhahood, the simultaneous cognizance of all things throughout time and space together with their empty mode of being. Such wisdom is required for the purpose of leading other beings to liberation, the motivation underlying all Mahayana Buddhist practice. During the twenty eons for which our world system will endure, said the Buddha, a thousand universal or teaching Buddhas will appear to show the way to enlightenment. He described himself as the fourth. Between them, however, both high-level Bodhisattvas and Buddhas will continue to project emanation or form bodies. According to the Mahayanist interpretation, Sakyamuni Buddha himself was just such a projection. As the Dalai Lama explained, “We always look at Lord Buddha from two aspects. One as a normal, though exceptional human being, the other as an emanation body appearing simultaneously in a hundred million worlds of our galaxy to teach the Dharma. Of course, we don’t directly know what type of person he was, but if you put the abstract theories aside and consider the essence of what he said, the whole teaching comes down to one point: love and kindness. This is his message. Not a single word promotes hatred or some kind of holy war. Such things are never mentioned. So, you see, I find it very good. Whether we can practice the teachings or not, that is the question.”
The Dalai Lama’s personal sense of the Buddha remained somewhat distant during his years in Tibet. On arriving in India, however, an affinity for the founder of his religion, akin to the feelings he had long held for Tibetan saints, began to grow. “During a discourse I recently delivered on the Wisdom of Emptiness Sutra,” he recounted, “I became quite sure that when the Buddha was preaching this text I myself was one of the poor Indians listening on the fringes of the crowd. Although one of the lowest human beings in the society, yet I made some kind of connection with the Buddha during his time. It could be a baseless thought, and for a monk, you see, such a claim is very dangerous, but in the present moment, as I carry out some activity in serving Buddha’s teaching, I feel there must be a cause. That is my reason.”
The belief that past lives produce the present, just as the present does the future, lies at the heart of Buddhism as a practitioner’s faith. “There are many logical proofs for rebirth,” continued the Dalai Lama. “Fundamentally, though, we believe that a child’s consciousness cannot come from his or her parents in the same way the body does. The mind is formless, mere illumination and knowing. Because of this, matter cannot act as its substantial cause. Only a previous moment of consciousness can serve as the first cause of a mind, in this case, that of a former life. Among some people I know, when a more subtle level of consciousness is produced in meditation, they are clearly able to remember seven hundred, eight hundred, a thousand years back.” It is the karmic seeds, the residues of one’s actions dwelling in the mind, that shape one life from another. As the Dalai Lama concluded, “One’s actions in life are never wasted. In the future their karmic imprints will meet with the appropriate conditions and bear fruit. And in the present, you will never encounter the effects of actions you have not previously done yourself. For this reason, one’s fate is entirely on one’s own shoulders.”
For the Tibetans, a stark proof of karma’s inviolability appears by midweek. Word has spread of the pilgrims’ presence, bringing hundreds of beggars into Bodh Gaya. Whoever walks from the monastery to the Mahabodhi Temple is accosted by up to twenty howling women and children clutching their clothes, moaning, “Baba, Baba.” (“Father, Father.”) They appear to be suffering unendurable pain, as, so the first maxim of begging goes, the more pitiful the plea, the greater the chance of its success. In Bihar, begging is a vocation—specifically, a performing art. An incredible sequence of shrieks, groans and hysterical gestures, ending in maimed hands holding robes out for donations, whirls around the streets. During peak begging hours, while the pilgrims are coming and going from the teachings, it seems that Bodh Gaya is a battleground. If a pilgrim fails to heed his accosters, tugging esca
lates into hard pokes and louder shrieks, set up to alert more barefoot, bedraggled children and their shriveled mothers to descend in a reinforcing swarm and prevent escape. But the biggest mistake is to stop. Those who do, much less give money, are trampled by scores of beggars rushing from all directions. Their only hope lies in fighting their way free or, as most do, throwing money high into the air, so the beggars scatter to collect it.
By late in the week the situation changes. So many beggars have arrived that, ironically, most have been forced to give up the fight. Competition has become counterproductive. Instead, they have seated themselves down the long approach to the temple’s entrance, backs to the compound wall, tin bowls before them. Even day care has been organized: groups of skeletal children are kept by single mothers at regular intervals. Here they sit and play with pebbles, pick lice from one another, laugh, fight and cry for succor when a crescendo of moans rolls down the line signaling the arrival of a potential donor. Content with this arrangement, the Tibetans come ready with small change and walk the full distance dropping a coin into as many bowls as possible. In this manner most manage to earn enough for a single meal of rice and dhal to share with their children, before sleeping the night, huddled together for warmth, in alleys on the outskirts of town. In 1943, the Great Bengal Famine, one of the worst of the century, killed three million people in Bihar and adjacent Bengal. Though chronic malnutrition is more the problem now, the potential for mass death from hunger alone seems ever-present.
As if to show one ray of hope, a demonstration marches through Bodh Gaya. Cutting into the midst of the human wreckage outside the temple, 200 Indian students and farmers angrily shake their fists behind snare drums and a phalanx of red flags, demanding more government aid for Bihar. “There is bound to be a revolution,” says the Dalai Lama, commenting on the prevailing conditions, “but, at the same time, there will always be suffering. Inevitably beings will meet with the effects of unfavorable actions they have previously committed. Also, the very aggregates of a human mind and body have, as their actual nature, suffering. They serve as a basis for suffering, and as long as one has them one is susceptible to suffering. From a deep point of view, while we Tibetans don’t have our independence and are living in someone else’s country, we are subject to a certain type of suffering, but when we return to Tibet and gain our independence, then there will be other types of suffering. So, you see, this is just the way it is. You might think that I’m pessimistic, but I am not. This is the Buddhist realism. This is how, through Buddhist teaching and advice, we handle situations. These sorts of thoughts make one stronger, more active. It is not at all a case of losing one’s strength of will when faced with the pervasive nature of suffering.”
Tibet’s cause is never far from the pilgrims’ thought. Each day’s teaching concludes with prayers for those under Chinese occupation, followed by a dedication of the merit gained to the speedy end of their suffering. Only by building up a store of collective merit or good karma through overcoming their own delusions, the Tibetans believe, can the situation resolve itself favorably. Thus, by midweek, a glut of devotion is underway. Each afternoon and evening thousands circumambulate the temple and tree, prostrating, reciting mantras, lighting candles and burning incense. Masses of offerings have been assembled at the Bodhi Tree’s base: stacks of bread five feet high by four wide, baskets of bananas, apples and oranges, cookies, candies, money and flowers, bowls of saffron water and foot-high tormas or conical cakes, decorated with sculpted butter. The wires connecting the Dalai Lama’s microphone to loudspeakers around the garden are draped with clusters of red, yellow and green cords, hung to absorb blessings and later to be worn around the neck. An endless stream of silhouettes sweeps along the highest path, outlined by the sky behind it; the short trail resembles a whirlpool, the great stone edifice churned into the heavens by the herd at its feet. In the prostration houses by the temple’s entrance and tank, men and women, stripped to their undershirts exert themselves for hours, their effort interrupted only by one another’s jokes. Children run, laughing and playing, between those seated in meditation on the lawns, and as the sun sets daily, the sanctuary is illuminated by thousands of tiny bright flames. Every inch of the temple’s lower edge, the various small shrines and much of the three pathways are set aglow, a platform for butter lamps looking like a galaxy of light descended to earth. Clouds of incense billow through the treetops. A brilliant half moon floats just above the temple’s pinnacle.
On one day, the entire Kangyur is read out loud—all 108 volumes of the Buddha’s word. The monks have brought the monastery’s massive clothbound edition on a wooden cart to a stone offering table beneath the Bodhi Tree. From here the yellow volumes are handed out to groups seated in circles on the grass. With a text open in the center of a circle, each person takes a page and begins to read out loud as rapidly as possible. A wild cacophony erupts all over the precincts, but in a mere two hours every word the Buddha is known to have uttered is heard once more in the world.
Outside the temple, the sacred and mundane mix effortlessly. Sweater selling is brisk and business percolates in every corner of the tent city; an elephant is led through, its owner selling rides. The tea stalls are filled with avid conversation; scores help the monks to prepare noodle soup, cooked in giant outdoor cauldrons. Through it all, people’s lips move in constant recitation of prayer. As is the Tibetan habit, between their own words or while listening to others, men and women continue to quietly recite mantras, spinning the beads of their rosaries, held nonchalantly from their right hands. The only tension comes on the day the Dalai Lama offers personal blessings in the main hall of the monastery. Though other occasions in Bodh Gaya and elsewhere have seen up to a hundred thousand so blessed, one at a time, the line still seems endless. Hundreds wait quietly holding white katas, dressed in their finest clothes, their expressions progressively more subdued until, ushered off the top of the stairs and into the monastery, where the Dalai Lama stands in front of a towering golden image of Maitreya, the Buddha-to-come, a look of awe mixed with panic overcomes them. Directed through a gamut of monks, their heads bow and backs bend ever lower. Then, suddenly, as they come before the radiant smile of the Dalai Lama himself, their apprehension at being in the presence of the living incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion melts, replaced by childlike joy. The Dalai Lama, though, is not affected by the reverence shown him. Unhurriedly he holds people’s hands, names their children, blows gently on the foreheads of the ill, blesses scriptures, containers of water and bunches of silk protection cords and frequently stops the line either to ask questions or to answer requests for personal advice. In an audience held for 200 Westerners he dispenses with Tibetan protocol altogether, sitting on a cushion among travelers from a dozen nations, answering their questions on Buddhism and insisting, at the end of the meeting, on shaking all of their hands and asking where they come from. The spread of Buddhism, as Bikku Jagat points out, has grown to the degree that, after the Tibetans, the largest groups arriving in Bodh Gaya are not Asian but Western. This year the Westerners are particularly enthusiastic because for the first time a two-day vow-taking will be translated into English under the Bodhi Tree itself. Daily, they have been meeting in the Ghandi Vihar, a vacant building on the edge of town provisioned, as a famine reserve, with heavy sacks of corn stamped: “Furnished by the People of the United States of America. Not to Be Sold or Exchanged.” Most are in their late twenties and thirties, many having come to India in the migrations of the 1960s and stayed on, labeling themselves “Dharma freaks.” A number are monks or nuns, among whom are some who have undergone the rigorous dialectical training of the monastic colleges, earning respect from Tibetans, who at first were skeptical of their conversion. “In the beginning Westerners were attracted to Eastern religions because it was like going on a mental vacation,” commented the Dalai Lama. “Then, after some time, they became interested in studying more seriously, in delving deeper. In general, religion has no boun
daries. If it helps people, that is sufficient, but in Buddhism, for any who practice, it is not enough just to have faith. You must examine with reason. The Buddha said, ‘Monks and scholars should accept my word, not out of respect, but upon analyzing it as a goldsmith analyzes gold, by cutting, melting, scraping and rubbing it.’ Only that which cannot be damaged by reasoning should be considered definitive. After ascertaining the truth, one should then have faith, but that isn’t a blind faith leading you into a chasm.”
At the end of the third day’s talk the Dalai Lama wraps the pages of his text back in their red silk cover and says, speaking evenly into the microphone, “This morning I received word that my mother died. There’s no need to feel sad. But if some of you have the time and no other engagements, perhaps you might recite some mantras for her beneath the Bodhi Tree this afternoon.” The crowd is visibly affected. The Gyalyum Chenmo, or Great Mother, was a pillar of Tibetan society. One of the last major links to the Tibet of the past, she was particularly revered as the mother of three incarnate lamas. “When I heard that my mother had died,” the Dalai Lama recounted later, “it was a real experience for me. A good chance. The idea of death and the length of a human lifespan struck me more. But I wasn’t sad; I accepted it. I’d done a divination before I left Dharamsala which indicated that the end would be very soon, and I had visited her. When I saw my mother, I clearly told her, ‘We all have to die; there’s no place to hide. Not only you, everyone has to go that way.’ You see, among religious-minded people one can talk openly about such things. With others, even though you know that he or she is about to die, still you must pretend they are healthy. So I told my mother, ‘You are old. Sooner or later you have to die. At the last minute the most important thing is to have no attachment. Your only attachment should be to Chenrezi. Then there is no reason to worry.’ She accepted my advice calmly and later I was informed that up until the very end she expressed concern for those around her, thanked them for caring for her and told Dr. Yeshi Dhonden that she was sorry to have given him so much trouble with her illness. So you see, these things are very nice; an expression of the Buddha’s teaching. In fact, one of the purposes of practicing Dharma is that, when the last moment comes, the person who disappears has prepared himself, and those close by also understand the laws of nature and are not worried. The opposite is usually the case. We don’t even talk about death. We pretend that we are going to remain here forever and then when death occurs, we only cry, which cannot help a thing. Anyway, although I am supposed to be one of her prominent sons, I had no special dreams or signs,” he concluded, laughing. “I recited some mantras, said some prayers, and nothing more. I am quite sure that she will take a good rebirth.”
