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FROM THE CITY OF THE DJINNS as the writer William Dalrymple explains very well in his Nine Lives. In search of the sacred in today's India, To get to this place it takes up to twelve hours of travel by bus. , but not in the normal ones, however there is joy –no one explains it– even if it breaks down at two in the morning, how it happened to us, that we ended up having tea and eating something. We have finally arrived, and we see a small part of Everest, el Gaurisankar, to which so many people have climbed, a name that the Chinese would later change to The Bright or White Bride of Shiva. Before uploading, the Sherpa people ask for permission, which does not surprise us because it is worth being surrounded by Tibetan monks and nuns and the occasional beggar.
TIBETAN BUDDHISM IS OFTEN DEFINED AS TANTRIC, although despite being true, deserves several nuances. Buddhism that was introduced to the Tibetan court during the 7th and 8th centuries AD. It wasn't tantric at all.. We had to wait for the tantric master Padmasambhava to arrive in Tibet., which would later occupy a prominent place in Tibetan consciousness. The basic concern was to establish the monastic dynasty. From the 8th century, Buddhism had to confront indigenous religious practices. It was the Nyngma sect, of Mahayana Buddhism, who promoted the idea of compassion for all human beings. That is one of the reasons why the Sherpas developed a social structure –less rigid than the caste divisions common among Hindu Nepalese–. That tradition over the years, taught them that some of the mountains that towered over their heads and that we are seeing from Dharamsala, They were the homes of the gods and had to be respected, without interference.
Sherpas never attempted to climb Mount Everest (8.850 metros) nor to the great peaks of Khumbu, until a constant avalanche of hunters numbering eight thousand have turned mountaineering into a profitable business. But that's another topic…
THE CITY HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED by the many refugees fleeing oppression in Tibet by China. ¿Where is the Buddha? They have been arriving since 1960 being welcomed here and elsewhere by the Government of India. We see that most of the Tibetans now live in Mcleod ganj. At three in the morning we moved there, to the heart of Dharamshala. A large city welcomes us where a huge bazaar gives us the impression of being in a Western department store where the spiritual and the material mix.. They have created temples, monasteries, convents and meditation centers. Over the years they have been able to establish in a place, abandoned by the British at the time, a place where many families get ahead and do not want to lose a culture: the Tibetan.
Sara has left medicine and has been living in India for five years, tells us: “The Dalai Lama has come here and, how can you contemplate, in this area what many understand as Buddhism, its mountains and its nestled houses we can say that they have not been left by the hands of the Buddha". Maybe you're right. Everything revolves around the Dalai Lama, o, Such a Blade. Outside Tibet, His Holiness has known –according to some–, present a philosophy of life, much better than if I were in Tibet. For his people, the Dalai Lama is a manifestation of his patron saint, a lord of Mercy and Compassion returned to earth to guide them along the path of enlightenment. Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit missionary who spent five years in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, at the beginning of the 18th century, wrote: “Tibetans love the Dalai Lama because he has become a man many times.”, taking upon himself the deprivation and misery that affects fragile humanity, decrepit and mortal”
Before the Communist Revolution 1949, when Tibet was an isolated region dominated by monasteries and whose inhabitants were mostly serfs and slaves, and 6 July 1935, within a peasant family from the small town of Takster, northwest of Tibet, Jentsun Jamphel Ngwang Losang Yeshi Tenzin Gyatso was born and at the age of two he was recognized as the reincarnation of Thupten Gyatso (1876-1933), therefore, the reincarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of Compassion. We see photos and more photos of him along our path, It's morning and we have to hurry because in India it soon gets dark, at six in the afternoon you can see absolutely nothing. We enter the main Temple, Absolutely, we see images of Shakyamuni Buddha and a Tibetan monk studying some Sutras, offerings of the devotees: cookie packets, fruits, we turn the prayer flags over and over. After, although we are not buddhists, We pay homage to the Buddha and the devotees beat the wheels behind the temple again and again. When taking photos we don't know how to do it, ¿how?, ¿how we do it?, ¿where to?
“THE BUDDHIST PRAYER MILLS that you can see –they explain to us–, They consist of a cylinder with a strip of paper that has a religious text written on it.. Believers spin and spin these cylinders in monasteries, as they happen so that the prayers come to life. Mantras and other types of prayers are reproduced on the prayer flags. "The aim is for the wind to carry that message to the four cardinal points.". After this tour, we finally find the residence of the Dalai Lama, surrounded by banners where we can read: “Freedom for Tibet”. Here some renowned scientists meet with the God-King to talk about spirituality and science, Well, as they have commented on many occasions: “If something about science and Buddhist spirituality did not add up, we would have to investigate”. There are many emails that reach us, reporting a situation. In the streets we see how many monks are on hunger strike and others cut their hair as a sign of denunciation., does anyone care. Suddenly a group of journalists are there to broadcast the news. Tibet again, photos and more photos, We see on the walls and in the background some beautiful mountains like we had not seen until now. Next to a big bazaar, we found the office, Secretariat in Tibet, where they offer us all the information about the situation in Tibet, many photos of the 17th Karmapa and the Dalai Lama. Some scholars think there is a lot of misinformation. For the teacher, H. Sadadhatissa: “The Buddha's teaching revolves around the problem of human suffering. Buddha taught suffering (dukkha) and the liberation of dukkha”. But, We see pages and pages where they remind us of their horrible history.. ¿How can we understand that historical Buddha who spoke of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism with all this?
THE MONASTIC ORDERS absorbed almost a 20 % of the Tibetan population among monks and hermits, that writing system from a northern Indian alphabet of the 7th century and which in turn derives from the Sanskrit writing system, is being lost. “And it was as a result of a dispute, when Tibet practically broke off relations with China between 1915 and 1945, It had a Government and maintained relations with several foreign countries” –explains Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk translator of the Dalai Lama and son of the late Jean Francois Revel–, "in 1949 They militarily invaded Tibet starting from the east, specifically in the Kham region. And over time it became clear that they were going to conquer Tibet” And near the Namgyal monastery and sponsored Jetsun Pema, hermana del Dalai Lama, We find one of the convents where, according to the latest figures, there are 180 tibetan nuns. It is the Geden Choeling Buddhist Education Society, created in 1973, Under the supervision of the Department of Culture and Religion of the Tibetan Government in exile we have been able to speak with teachers who have come to do exchanges in education and other fields.. For the Tibetologist and author of several books, Iñaki Preciado Idoeta, who has been living in Tibet for years.
“The Chinese do not put any impediment to practicing their religion. The point is that the Chinese authorities do not even want to hear about independence. When we talk about a problem, What we are doing is talking about a political problem and not a religious one., therein lies the question” In the distance we see an image that repeats itself a thousand times: the Gazelles and the Dharma Wheel which are ubiquitous symbols commemorating Shakyamuni's first sermon.
The Tibetan deities that we find everywhere are divided into two categories, those that have been inherited from India, on the one hand, and the indigenous gods and demons, for another. The pantheon of Indian origin includes Buddha Sakyamuni and his saints and disciples, the disciples, the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the mahayana. We have to think that many tantric deities have belonged to different tantric cycles. These deities have the same rank, but they differ in appearance. The monasteries contain a large number of bronze images of deities, gold or stucco, and they are painted on the walls, o, on canvas (thangka). Although its people are fervent Buddhists, They present a clear predisposition towards mysterious powers and divination. They preserve popular beliefs inherited from pre-Buddhist times. It is as if the city of Lhasa had moved here over time.
THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF THE INSTITUTION of reincarnated lamas dates back to the 13th century, when Karma Pakshi (1203-1283), the second of the Gyelwang Karmapa, announced his reincarnation and this was confirmed by his successor on the hierarchical throne of the school, Karma Kagyu, Rangchung Dorje (1284-1339) who, in turn, preannounced his future incarnation. ¿In how many lives can they be reincarnated?? The doctrine of reincarnated lamas, tulkus, recognizes that a lama can manifest or incarnate, through a master lineage –disciple and can do it in five or even more different individuals: in correspondence with the five aspects of the allegorical entity of the lamas: the corporal, the mental, the verbal, that of his virtues, and that of his charismatic action–. “As I say –says Iñaki–, there is religious freedom, not politics. In the area where I lived, What is Eastern Tibet?, In these vast regions there is total freedom. Everyone who wants to become a nun or monk can do so without any impediment., and where I live, with a population that may be around two thousand inhabitants, Well, there are about eighty monks who also collaborate in the different activities.”.
¿And the great lamas? Symbology exists in all traditions and in Tibetan Buddhism it is no exception.. They all practice and profess the values of Buddhism, but in their daily lives they remain pragmatic, those faces weathered by years seem to speak alone, those mothers with their children in their arms… “As we can see, reincarnation is one of the easiest doctrines to accept.”. When we talk about a prominent God, that really doesn't make sense. ¿Where is God?” Iñaki Preciado wonders. While a boy with crippled legs and a big smile looks at us and explains to the travelers which bus they have to take and how they will be served., but ¿what will he think? They believe that the land of Tibet is inhabited by a number of gods, spirits and demons that live in different places.
Archayra Migmar Tserin was born in Tibet and when he was eight years old he had to leave. The communist repression pushed him to leave Lhasa with his father and ,since the year 96, lives in Mallorca. “In Tibet we cannot study. I did a university cycle at the University of Benares and when it comes to talking about Teachers in our culture we always think that they are the manifestation of the Buddha of Compassion. As for the Dalai Lama, I think he has two parts., one policy and another spiritual. What can happen is that the next one only has the spiritual part” Maybe everything described is the answer to the initial question, ¿How is it possible that the Dalai Lama's brothers were from the CIA??
