Dear Friends and Family,
I couldn't photograph what was most wondrous in Lhasa.
Instead, I found myself reminded of a scene from Minghella's
English Patient. Two of the characters enter a sandbagged Italian church, the man lights a flare and the woman swings from wall to wall, mural to mural holding the flare aloft and drinking in the paintings. The church is dark and secret and sacred and although the murals have obviously existed for centuries, the characters' sense of discovery, sense of wonder is obvious.
The feeling from that scene hit me my first morning in Lhasa as I stepped into Jokhang Temple, a place so dark that I lost my feet. This feeling was so strong that strains from Gabriel Yared's
English Patient soundtrack tickled the back of my mind. The temple, which my friend Heinrich Harrer more aptly referred to as "The Cathedral" was a few corners away from my hotel. We stepped up into a large, stone-paved public square bracketed by poles wrapped in prayer flags and rounded chimineas billowing the smoke of juniper branches. Stepping through a crowd circumambulating around the temple, a peek through the dusty window pane of a sunken rectangular building in front of the temple revealed rows of subdued silvered cups with wicks anchored in yak butter. The entrance of the temple was supported by worn wood pillars and obscured by worshippers repeatedly prostrating themselves. Some pilgrims had thick mats to hit their knees against and many had boards strapped to protect the palms of their hands. A foreigner amongst the crowd was hardly noticeable; the fervor was consuming.
My guide murmured explanations and shepherded me to a sunny side courtyard for entry. He purchased my ticket while I tried to ignore the awkward sensation caused by paid solicitousness and circled in one place. Behind the first heavy double-entry doors was an unlit hall with protector statues retreating in the gloom and more heavy doors. This time, we stepped through the raised doorway, found ourselves standing under a naked bulb and its wire, in front of a prayer hall arrayed with low benches scattered with burgundy cotton pads and three enormous Buddha statues seated amongst hanging decorative silk funnels. We turned left and proceeded from niched room of statues lit by yak lamps to another niched room of statues lit by yak lamps to yet another niched room of statues lit by yak lamps with the walls just under our left hands, the prayer hall on our right. The doorway of each niched room was draped with a locked iron lattice veil... words came from my guide's mouth... amitabha, jowo buddha, avalokitesuara, padmanatesvara... I tried to plant comprehension into my gaze while I nodded and understood nothing. I had entered a world that I knew nothing about.
The Buddhas had matte-painted royal blue hair, were elaborately costumed, and strung with white silk scarves such as the one my guide had draped on me the night previous. Between each room were more statues, not Buddhas but monk founders of sects or grand masters of different sorts or lamas, not breathing in glass cases with peeling wooden panes. Small denomination bills were fixed to the glass or stuffed underneath it. Belying the outside fervor, the temple was hushed and fairly uncrowded. I felt the only tourist ever while Tibetans moved around us, distributing bills at preferred statues, placing jagged pats of butter into candle bowls and kowtowing.
My guide didn't have to halt me in front of the Sakyamuni statue, the main Buddha of the temple. I have a genetic defect that causes me to adore jewels - and this Buddha was a stunner. He was crowned with a swirling combo of turquoise and red coral and pearls but it was the light of the five yak butter candles with thick wicks that flickered gold upon gold that halted my breath. I craned my head this way and that trying to stare at the statue without the impediment of the iron veil, attempting to fix this work of art in my mind's eye. It was almost magic. Adjectives such as beautiful or gorgeous simply weren't appropriate here.
I was rescued from my fixation by my sense of amusement when my guide told me that people come from all over Tibet to do prostrate themselves 5,000 times in front of this temple and its statue. Amused at his exaggeration -
he had to be exaggerating - I asked,
"Even you?"
"Yes."
"5,000 times???????????"
"Yes."
"How long does it take to do 5,000 bows?"
I had surprised him with this question. He stopped a calculated for a second. "About 10 hours." I scrunched my face and thought that to be about 8 bows per minute. That sounded about right. Suddenly, I believed him.
The Buddha wasn't properly fixed in my mind before we walked on... more rooms, more iron curtains, more glass cases, more murals. And then, a staircase. I carefully picked my way up the stairs and as I tried to hide my rapid loss of breath, we emerged to bright light and a roofed bank of windows that turned out to provide daylight to the prayer hall below. Beyond the windows were gilded great prayer scripture flags - that are actually better described by calling them big gold things with bells hanging from them. I could and did photograph the courtyard prostrating as well as the Potala not far in the distance. I stepped behind a pillar to picture a Chinese soldier on a neighboring roof with a machine gun slung across his chest. The strength of my visceral reaction to the soldier's presence surprised me... and my mind's eye instantly produced protesters
interspersed with burgundy-clad monks, throwing rocks amongst tear gas. Suddenly sad despite the sunlight, we returned to the temple below and when my guide made to leave, I insisted on a second slow lap around. There was so much to see, too much to absorb.
The Cathedral, Jokhang Temple, was my favorite sight in Lhasa. Two mornings later, during my "free acclimation day", I returned to the temple. Without my guide nor opportune timing, I had to step around the line of pilgrims that snaked far out the temple. Now thoroughly trained in Confucian regard, my chin automatically dropped in front of the elderly and this respect was noted by others with smiles. The queued pilgrims clutched painted thermoses of melted butter and bills of money. Lined up were elderly in traditional dress, adults of all ages in Western-style dress, and many children. The iron lattices had been unlocked and people crunched themselves to enter the temple's statued rooms. I myself did not enter the rooms. Instead, I found a corner to watch a monk clean and fill the candles in front of the main Buddha - which held less magic for me without the candlelight. Kids were bored by the time their parents reached this part of the temple and were interested in me. A young girl taught me the words for banana and apple - which I promptly forgot - while a monk plucked a purple bunch of globular grapes off an offering pile and placed them in the cupped hands of a boy who couldn't have been more than three years old. The boy's face lit - and stayed lit - as he carried the grapes to his father, who placed the grapes in a baseball cap, took the little boy's hand, and walked away. I missed the Buddha's candlelight - but that little boy's joy in a bunch of grapes was the day's magic.
**
That first afternoon, we climbed into the Toyota and drove East to park at the base of the rock hills, near the second largest monastery in Tibet. Weeks later, my recollection of Sera Monastery is not as vivid as Jokhang, but in my journal I noted that yak butter smeared the floors. A monk greeted me in front of "Twienty-one Taras" (female Buddhas?) and said to me, "I love America." And that a few minutes after the monk, two Tibetan woman laughed, not unkindly, and called to my guide that I am fat. Two young boys follow near my guide's and my heels and comment (in Tibetan) that they want to play, charcoal smears on each of their noses. There are paintings in the mountain hills behind the monastery.
During our drive throughout the city, it was rare to loose sight of Chinese soldiers. And during our return to the city, we stop at an ATM in front of the Bank of China. The banks in China won't take my debit card as a credit card - and it took repeated, painful, well-timed trips to the ATM in order for me to pay cash for my tour. That night, I didn't stray far from my hotel but in my journal I irritatedly wrote that the one thing I wish China would control are the pedestrian crossings. Drivers don't stop at red lights and beep at you if you happen to be in the crosswalk, even if you have a walk sign. But this was a futile wish. Crossing the street in central China was no easier.
**
The next day, I went to the Potala Palace. Chinese Security took away my sunscreen and left me wondering: how do you vandalize something with sun cream? My guide patiently let me catch my breath as we ascended stone stairs while describing Potala to me as a
medieval castle where people came from the hills to live during the winter, the gates were locked at night, and the Dalai Lama lived in just a few rooms, whose outside walls were painted gold. Potala is gigantic and in its heyday as the seat of the Tibetan government and winter home of the Dalai Lama, must've been bustling and lively to the point that I couldn't imagine why the Dalai Lama would be lonely or need to escape to a second summer palace. But Harrer gave me a better idea of why the 14th Dalai Lama loved the summer residence...
I [Harrer] had already noticeed that all guests at parties hid themselves when the figure of the Dalai Lama appeared walking on the flat roof of the palace. [The Dalai Lama's elder brother] gave me a rather touching explanation of this. The young God possessed a number of excellent telescopes and field glasses and it amused him to watch the life and doings of his subjects in town. For him the Potala was a golden prison. He spent many hours daily praying and studying in the dark palace rooms. He had little free time and few pleasures. When the guests at a merry party felt themselves looked at, they vanished as soon as possible from the field of vision. They did not want to sadden the heart of the young ruler, who could never hope to enjoy such distractions.
My guide told me that Potala, in a smaller incarnation, was originally built in the 7th century by the King Songtsen Gampo, who married a Buddhist Princess from Nepal plus a Buddhist Princess from China and then, probably hen-pecked, converted to Buddhism. But it was the 5th Dalai Lama in 1645 that conceived of and began building the palace as it is today: approximately 13 stories high atop a hill, containing over 1,000 rooms. But my guide forgot to tell me the best part of Potala's story:
when the 5th Dalai Lama suddenly died and there became the danger that the work could never be completed, but the Regent, who could not count on the people's loyalty to himself to finish this formidable work, withheld the news of His Holinesses death. It was first announced that he had withdrawn himself from the world for meditation. This deception was continued for 10 years until the Palace was finished.
Harrer ended his description of the Potala by commenting that, "Today when one looks at this unique building, we can understand and excuse the fraud that made its completion possible." I whole-heartedly agreed.
Lonely Planet called the Potala, which officially is a Chinese Museum, an empty shell. But I thought that its formidable presence gives Tibetans a tangible to cling to in this uncertain world. As I walked through the veritable warren of rooms on display, I was accompanied by pilgrims, well fortified, with butter. I happily walked up stairs, up ladders, past murals, around statues, past the 14th Dalai Lama's throne, past more murals, past the 7th Dalai Lama's throne, down some stairs, etc. I was awed by an enormous stupa which contains the remains of the 5th Dalai Lama. The stupa is 49 feet high, built of wood and coated with 8000 pounds of solid gold and studded with thousands, literally many thousands of pearls and jewels. And, because the successive Dalai Lamas couldn't ask for less, the sight of many other stupas followed, each covered in gold and jewels. I was awed by the literal wealth displayed on these stupas. I had thought Tibet materially poor; another false idea bit the dust.
Despite the stupas, I quickly came to feel that Jokhang, not the Potala, was the most wondrous place of Tibetan Buddhism. But I had a merry time touring Potala anyway. I was greeted by many Tibetans, pleased to meet an American. One of the male cleaners wore a baseball cap from "Marysville, WA" - and I couldn't resist the opportunity to explain my connection to Marysville. This caused the man much amusement and he told the next successive men to enter the astrology room that I in about his hat, pulling it off for each explanation. This caused me and the men friendly merriment. Another man, seated in a nook in front of a series of giant statues, had a sleeping kitten curled in his lap. I reached out to touch its furry head and remarked to the guy,
"Cute." But then worrying that the man would feel deprived of my admiration, I qualified, "I mean you are cute - but so is the kitten." He laughed and turned to share my comments with the people around him.
Apparently news of my merriment traveled amongst tour guides because at the bottom of the palace stairs, both my guide and our driver were waiting for me. And my guide seemed puzzled, pleased and a little proud of his tour subject being remarkable.
**
Our last visit was to the summer palace and park of the Dalai Lamas, Norbulingka. Although the word palace seems an exaggeration, it is a pleasant place with gorgeous flower gardens. There was little evidence of Norbulingka's past but as Catriona Bass wrote in her memoir
Inside the Treasure House: A Time in Tibet,
...when the Dalai Lama left Tibet from Norbulingka on the 12th of March, 1959... over 100,000 Tibetans had surrounded the Norbulingka to protect the Dalai Lama from what they thought was an attempt to kidnap him. He had been invited to a cultural performance at the Chinese Army camp. But he had been told to come without his usual contingent of soldiers. Convinced this was a trap, the Tibetans refused to allow anyone in or out of the Norbulingka. On the night of the 12th, however, the Dalai Lama, disguised as a layman, slipped through the crowds to begin his flight to India. The Norbulingka was shelled after he left, and in the fighting that followed, tens of thousands of people died. 87,000 were wiped out before October of the following year, according to Chinese documents.
**
So, now you see that I couldn't photograph what was most wondrous in Lhasa. Probably to protect the cultural artifacts. But it occurred to me during my 1000th urge to sneak a picture in Potala, that the no photography rule was also to ensure that the tourists actually leave Lhasa. If I, and others like me, were allowed to use our cameras, I'd probably still be in Lhasa begging, "One more picture, please???"
Laura
PS: Thanks to
http://images.inmagine.com/img/iconotec/icn146/icn146017.jpg for the pic of Jokhang's Sakyamuni.
Dear Family and Friends,
Buddha... right there waiting for me.
Autumn in Tibet.
A nice lake. 
Valley.
Ok, yes. Tashilhunpo Monastery hardly resembles Disneyland.
Be devious?????
Eyes of Buddha. 
A Tibetan traffic jam!
