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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToIvazPWs44
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkBr4PqL-2Y
Got woken up by a call on the room phone. It was mounted in the bathroom of all places. Turns out my parents' room doesn't have hot water or a working toilet. So much for Xiongbala (I need to remember what this refers to; I guess I didn't play Uncharted 2 closely enough, which is where all my Tibetan mythos is coming from).
I do a very light workout to see if I can handle it, even after about 2 days at high altitude. It's a bit dizzying, but I feel fine. After I shower, I hand the bathroom over to my parents.
We pile into the Landcruiser and head out to what I consider THE image of Lhasa, the Potala palace. Constructed in stages since the 7th century, it's perched on a hill that makes a perfect landmark. When you're actually in the city, though, it doesn't stand out that much from the surrounding buildings. I can even see it from out my hotel room window, as one panaromic phoot shows. Still, it's a very striking monument to the history of Buddhism in Tibet.
Tsenam leads us through the outside and inside of Potala, explaining the significance of various rooms and relics. I have a lot more to say accompanying each photo. Potala was built by the 5th Dalai Lama, who acquired political power over Tibet, in addition to the Dalai Lama's role as spiritual leader. It was built on top of the King's Cave, one of the earliest religious sites in Tibet. Many of the rooms were once reserved strictly for the Dalai Lama's use. In one hallway, I looked out a window overlooking a square in front of the Palace. I asked Tsenam about what had been there before it had been a square. Tsenam said that the green pond to the left had always been there, and the square used to be a grassy park for people to enjoy. He also said that this was the window through which the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama would look out as a child, newly chosen as the Dalai Lama, and envy the children playing in the park. He said it was a great struggle for him to learn at such a young age to set upon a path to enlightenment. Admittedly, it's odd that a place that has such special religious significance is opened up to the public. The more holy parts of the palace don't allow photography, which is at once a shame and a proper measure of respect. Sights that haven't been committed to film include the golden tombs of several of the past Dalai Lamas, the biggest of which bears 3700 kg of gold inlaid onto the sarcophagus. That thing also has thousands of precious gems, the most unusual of which is a pearl harvested from the brain of an elephant. That tomb is known as Zamling Gyanchik, the Sole Ornament of the World. In one of the courtyards within the no-photography area, I found a very small cat sunning itself. It obviously was not afraid of people. I petted it for a bit, and it even jumped onto my crouched leg. It weighned next to nothing. I got pictures of some other stray cats, though. They seem to be treated pretty well by Tibetans.
We then went to a second major temple, the Jokang temple. Tsekam distinguished between temple and monastery in the following way -- a monastery is a place where many many monks live and learn. They train toward earning degrees in various aspects of the religion. A temple doesn't offer learning and instead operates ceremonies and rituals. The Jokang temple was the first entrance of Buddhism into Tibet, some time in the 7th century. The founder of the temple also started the (and bear with my transcription of a Tibetan tour guide's English name for something) Niuma sect of Buddhism. The Tibetan king at the time had enough sway to do two things: he sent a priest to India to study Sanskrit and to develop a written Tibetan language. After 9 years, the priest mastered Sanskrit and devised an alphabet and accompanying written language. This strengthened the bond among the various states in Tibet, who could now all mutually understand each other via the written language. I have no eye for it, but it seems pretty clear to me that the Tibetan and Sanskrit alphabets are similar. The second thing that was accomplished was that one of the greatest relics in Buddhism was gifted to Tibet and transported to the Jokang temple. It's a 2300 year old statue of the Buddha. It's been at Jokang for over 1400 years. Throngs of practicing Tibetan Buddhists were in line through the temple as we toured it. They went into each special chapel and gave offerings of money and candle butter. The candle butter they carried in jugs or thermoses. I wish I had pictures but again, not allowed. Each chapel or room had altars where one could pour the butter into a vat. Several wicks would draw up the wax and burn. Some of the butter would settle and wax up. I saw one monk tending to an altar, scraping up strips of wax and shoveling into a bucket. I guess it's recycled somehow. The reverence these Buddhist pilgrims showed on this site was amazing. While it is not a very big religion, Buddhism's history is rich and its roots are very deep in cultures across Asia. It's fascinating to me what differences exist in mindset between Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. Even within Tibetan Buddhism, there are the aforementioned sects. Each sect has its own particular teachings. The last sect, the Gilupa, was conceived by the teacher to the first Dalai Lama. This man had spent time in each of the 4 existing sects, and synthesized a new school, which is also know as the Yellow-haired sect (though Gilupa monks often wear red caps). It's a bit unusual that even now, there are 5 practicing sects with their minor variations in thought, but all of them revere the Dalai Lama, whose position of spiritual authority is an institution maintained by the Gilupa.
Finally, in the afternoon, we went to Norbulingkha, an administrative site used by the Dalai Lamas. Basically, each Dalai Lama has what amounts to an office building he would use in the summer. There are trees and flower gardens all around, giving Norbulingkha a more pleasant atmosphere for the summer weather. The rooms belonging to the 13th and 14th Dalai Lamas were the most interesting. They both received gifts from a modern world, including horse carriages, vacuum tube radios, chandeliers, and a tiger (now stuffed and mounted). I thought the site would have been way more fascinating if there had been more pictures of these later Dalai Lamas using their offices.
Some miscellaneous notes that don't fit the narrative above:
- Tibetan incense is much more herbal and woody than what I'm used to. It didn't bother me as much as I thought it might, but it cast a choking, pervasive scent to everywhere we went. I think if I didn't have a completely dry sinus from the weather, it wouldn't have bothered me at all.
- The Jokang temple was built on, according to legend, the heart of a giant demoness. Converting evil into good is a common theme in Buddhism, and so astrologers advised the king to build the temple on this demon heart, and in doing so, transmute the evil emanating from it into good. Some of the other major Tibetan religious sites are built on this demoness' other joints. The effect in total is that her evil is locked in place, and as a side effect, Tibet is freed of earthquakes.
- Once Jokang was established, the city of Lhasa (which means God's land in Tibetan) was formed around it, which still feels true today Once we exited the temple, we took a 10 minute through some tightly knotted streets packed with shops back to the Xiongbala Hotel. Each shop had a sign that inadvertantly conformed to a standard:
- I saw a Tshirt for sale that I thought Ryan would have appreciated. It had pictures of yaks and read "Yak yak yak yak Tibet" I couldn't find one in VT colors, though.
- Around Jokang is a very heavily Tibetan area of the city. Here is where People's Army soldiers keep the most careful watch. In the square in front of the temple itself, 4 soldiers stand watch on each side and a squad of 5 patrol around the square. All are body-armored and carry shotguns or rifles. This was something added in 2008 after the anti-Han riots in various parts of Tibet. I don't think there's much tension in the air from this, but it's still a sore thumb for an otherwise very peaceful place.
- In 1959, the Dalai Lama and his administration was exiled from Tibet. He was chosen at the age of 5 in 1940, so he was 24 at the time and had been Dalai Lama for almost 20 years. The damage the Communist government has caused is two-fold -- 1) the disruption of a fully-functioning spiritual leadership for Tibetans and Buddhists around the world and 2) destruction of religious sites during the Cultural Revolution. (By the way, Potala is a place that was not greatly damaged by the PLA's initial 1951 liberation or afterwards. Even in China, everyone knows that liberation is a euphemism for dominion). Anyways, many temples were mostly or completely destroyed. Knowing destruction was on the way, many monks and lay people smuggled out relics from various temples that lay in the warpath. One monk managed to hide the body of the 4th Dalai Lama in his home for the 10 year duration of the Cultural Revolution. Others hid fragments of the bomb bodies of the other early Lamas. There is a "all-in-one tomb" that inters those pieces together. Thousands of small artifacts that include gifts from India and other visiting Buddhist parties have been given back to the survining temples over time. Even so, it must feel horrible to have lost so many of the originals. Even worse, I think, is question hovering over the continuance of the Dalai Lama. I mean to ask Tsenam in private what will happen when the 14th Dalai Lama dies. Will Tibetan ex-pats in India be allowed to build him a tomb and have it shipped into Jokang temple? Is there ever hope that the Dalai Lama will be allowed to return to Potala to resume his administration? I think that would be one of the strongest concessions the Communist goverment could make. It might really hurt non-Tibetan tourism, since Potala would be closed to the public once again.
- Traditional Tibetan prayer offerings can be plain, like water, butter, or flour. Money is a relatively modern thing, I think. The greatest gift one can make is the following: buying gold which monks at Jokang will use to restore to perfection the statue of Buddha.
- The greatest relic in Buddhism is the Buddha's teeth, which is housed in a temple in India.
Couple of language notes:
- Tibet is not a word in Tibetan. It's like China, a term made up by foreigners at some point. The Chinese name for Tibet is Xizang, the Western Trove. Tibetans call the place Bod. Zang is the shorthand in Chinese refering to anything Tibetan.
- While there's a lot of overlap in phonology between Tibetan and Chinese, making it easy for me to pronounce Tibetan words that are recited to me, it's hard to avoid putting accents on syllables. I'm pretty sure Tibetan is not a toned language. In fact, it seems to be less stressed compared to English, which makes it hard for me to remember how to say a word. Like the phrase for goodbye -- taxi delek -- as far as I can tell only the first syllable has much stress on it. The rest are spoken very softly.
- many of the transliterations between Tibetan and Chinese fall prey to a poor Chinese ear for r/l, n/l. For example Nurbulingkha is transliterated as Luo bu lin ka. And Tsenam is transliterated as Ci lang.
I'm pushing food commentary to the pictures. It wasn't a big day in food compared to the sightseeing.
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