A Fugitive, A Monk, An Evasdropper, And A Statue (Chapter Three And Chapter Four)

Episode 7 

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(Continued from Chapter One and Chapter Two)


Chapter Three： An Eavesdropper

"I heard you talking while sleeping last night"

A Building built on the cliff inside Sera Monastery

I asked Aurelie what I said during the sleep ,she told me that I was talking like delivering a speech to a room of nobody,..........well, one unintended audience.

Mornings in Lhasa definitely reminded me of mornings in Dublin: rainy, windy, and a little bit cool even in summer. The sun would normally come out late at around 9 o'clock, as time in Tibet is in reality 2 hours behind every single clock around the city. To be honest, I didn't really want to wake up, if we weren't going to Sera Monastery.

A Building Inside Sera Monastery

There was only one foreseeable reason why we, or any tourist would go to Sera Monastery: to watch the monks debating. Technically every single monastery in Tibet has such tradition. Sera Monastery just happened to be one ginormous institute which allowed outsiders to watch them during peak tourist hours.

The Main Chapel at Sera Monastery

Sera Monastery was almost identical to Drepung Monastery. Both places had grand architectures and marvelous statues (also, lots of security cameras). Tibetan Buddhist chapels were mostly very dim, and lightbulbs were installed to help monks and tourists to explore through the dark channels in between the statues. The walls and the ceilings inside the chapels were covered with sticky, black colored grease as a result of the burning of butter lamps for hundreds of years. Some of the demon statues were said to dislike any light. These statues were purposely put at corners where the weak light of the butter lamps couldn't reach. Now "thanks to" the lightbulbs, everyone can see the faces of these scary demons, which weren't supposed to be seen by anyone at all. To solve this problem, the monks at the monastery decided to wrap the faces of the demons with white cloth so the faces of the demons could be covered. To be honest, I didn't think it fit the overall ambience of the chapel at all.

A Survallence Camera and the Main Chapel

Among hundreds of the statues at Sera Monastery, there was a giant Buddha of Wisdom / Manjushri sitting in the main chapel. The head of the Manjushri titled towards the wall right beside it. Our tour guide told us that the reason why the Buddha would tilt his head was because the famous debate yard was actually located right behind the wall. It symbolized that when the monks were debating about the truth of the nature according to Buddhist thoughts, the great Manjushri would listen and judge every word of them. 

A Mandala at Sera Monastery. Mandalas are graphs depicting the Buddhist understanding of what the universe looks like

Once we entered the courtyard, our tour guide told us that he and the driver would meet us outside about half an hour later. He said that the government forbid tour guides from listening to the debate. One of his colleagues even got apprehended because of that.  As the guides exited, the monks made their entrance in their iconic Tibetan red robes.

Debating Monks Entering The Courtyard. The Board Indicated That People Couldn't Take Pictures With Cameras. However Cellphones Were Allowed For Photography Purposes

During the debate, monks who were trying to make a point stood and acted out to the defending monks sitting on the ground. I could not understand anything they said or did. The debating scene seemed to be nothing more than a show to me. All I heard or saw were the attacking monks clapping and dancing around, while the defending monks, who were mostly older and in senior ranks, laughing at them and occasionally throwing out a question or two. When half an hour passed, our group made our way out. 

Once outside the courtyard, I saw our tour guide crouching down on a high step with a couple of other tour guides. While waiting for other group mates, our guide told us that one of their colleagues was questioned by the police just two days ago for staying too long inside the courtyard. He said that there were many monks in monasteries across Tibet who were in fact eyes and ears of the government, overseeing the day to day life in every single monastery. Many younger monks, according to our guide, were "brainwashed" by the government to challenge the older monks in some aspects Buddhist ideology that are incoherent with the Communist Party guidelines.  The debating ground provided the best stage for such actions to happen............

A Monk Debating

The Debate Continues

The Monk Got A Point

The Monk Was Ready To Make His Point

The Monk Made His Point To The Senior Monks Sitting On The Ground

Monks Debating

Whether what our tour guide told us was really happening or not, I felt like it was just like the various versions of the life stories of Tsangyang Gyasto. 

Sera Monastery

 But if it was indeed happening, it's really a dreadful thing to know. 

View Of The Potala Palace From Sera Monastery

Chapter Four： A Statue

The bell chimed, the monks chanted, the pilgrims prostrated, and we entered the Jokhang Temple.

Jokhang Temple

Aurelie and Val from our tour group already had white khatas on their hands. We slowly moved with the rest of the crowd inside the holiest chapel in Tibetan Buddhism in a clockwise fashion. While there were other things to see at the Jokhang Temple, the title of the biggest attraction belonged to only one thing: The statue of a 12 year-old Buddha. 

Colorful Exteriors Of The Jokhang Temple

When Gautama Siddhartha was still alive in 5th century BCE, he himself oversaw the construction of three statues of himself: a statue of him at 8 years old, a statue of him at 12 years old, and a statue of him at 25 years old. He blessed all three statues and claimed that seeing these statues would be the same as seeing himself. Thousands of years later, these statues became the reason for millions of Tibetan Buddhists to walk on the path of pilgrimage every day in every year, and in every weather condition. 

A Painting of The Buddha. It Was Once Plated With Gold. During The Cultural Revolution, The Gold Was Scratched Off By The Red Guards

A Restored Painting Of The Buddha

When the Princess of Nepal and the Princess of China married King Songtsen Gampo, they brought along two very special items from their respective countries: The 8 - year old Buddha statue, which came with the Nepali Princess, and the 12 - year old Buddha statue, which came with the Chinese Princess. The 8- year old Buddha was stored at the Ramoche Temple about 1 kilometer away, and was badly damaged during the infamous Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. The 12-year old statue, which was considered much more precious and prestigious, fortunately remained intact from all sorts of crisis throughout history. It is now located right inside the Jokhang Temple. 

A Mandala On The Ceiling Of A Corridor At The Jokhang Temple

Without the 12-year old Buddha statue, Jokhang Temple definitely wouldn't become the most sacred destination for all Tibetan pilgrims. In the long queue, everyone was in order. Suddenly the door to the statue chapel opened up, but the statue wasn't the first thing I saw. A couple of Tibetans, who looked like some powerful government people were already in front of the gate, waiting for their turn to dedicate their white khatas to the statues. The khatas these people were holding weren't that different from everyone else's. It was just everyone else had to wait till these people to finish so the monastery would let the others in. After the government people left, everyone else was allowed to enter the chapel one or two at a time. 

Rooms Inside The Jokhang Temple

It was Aurelie and Val's turn. They went into the chapel together, but I couldn't see them from the place where I stood. But instead, I got a chance to peek at the holy Buddha statue: A golden young prince sat on his throne with a huge crown right on his head.  When Aurelie came out, I asked her about the experience in there. She told me that it was just all mesmerizing.

The Dharma Wheel On The Roof Of The Jokhang Temple

After seeing the interior of the temple we visited the rooftop terrace, where we enjoyed some great views of the Potala Palace. Then I asked our guide about the 25 year - old Buddha statue, which apparently wasn't in Lhasa.

Potala Palace From The Rooftop Terrace Of The Jokhang Temple

"The 25 year - old Buddha statue is somewhere in Southern India. It's a bit different from the two we have here in Lhasa. When the Buddha was 8 and 12 years old, he was still the prince of his father's kingdom. That's why the 8-year old, as well as the 12-year old statue you just saw wore crowns on their heads. When the Buddha was 25-year old, he had already seen the suffering of the world and became the enlightened one. Therefore the 25-year old Buddha didn't have a crown on his head."

Jokhang Temple Courtyard

As we were leaving the temple, I saw a cat in the courtyard walking around amid people's amazement. The cat, however, seemed to  ignore the crowd and traversed through the spaces where humans yielded to it like how old time citizens were forced to yield their ways for the royal carriage. 

The Cat

At night, I once again climbed to the rooftop terrace of our hotel to see the city at night for one more time before we headed out the next morning. Cheryl was there too. Together we looked at some of the Lhasa's most famous landmarks and took some night shots of the city.  After she returned to her room, I was all alone by myself.

The mysterious 25 year - old Buddha statue for some reason popped up in my mind . I looked the statue up on the mobile internet, but I couldn't gather any information on it. What was it like?  Why did people know so little about it, if it was one of the only three statues in the world that was blessed by the Buddha himself?

Then somewhere in the ocean of thoughts I saw the cat at Jokhang Temple, walking like the king of the world in a crowd full of curious human beings.  I also saw the 8 year-old and 12-year old Buddha statues, depicting a young prince who had great power but knew very little of the outside world.

The Dharma Wheel

All of sudden, it all came together.

I realized that the cat was no different from the 8 year-old Buddha and the 12 - year old Buddha: they were nonetheless a part of the endless reincarnating world where the suffering would never stop. If the prince never became the Buddha, he would probably be a cat in the next life if he lived as a relatively decent human being. The cat, meanwhile, might be a great conqueror who didn't put the happiness of his people as his top priority....Reincarnation would go on and on, and suffering would go on and on.

But the prince became enlightened. He gave up the crown his father passed down to him - as he knew that no king in the material world shall rule forever. Because the Buddha was already enlightened by age 25, probably there wasn't any need for the Buddha himself to bless a material statue that itself symbolized enlightenment. Yet enlightenment is the gate to another world that had no suffering.

I concluded that 25 year-old Buddha statue probably didn't exist, at least not in this world. It only supposed to exist in a suffer free world where millions of Tibetan Buddhists had always wanted to go themselves.

Mandalas

Could that be the explanation? Why did many Tibetans still firmly believed that the 25 year-old statue was somewhere in India, when there was no supporting evidence on the internet? 

Before I could even answer these questions, I began to wonder what really happened to the Sixth Dalai Lama. Did he survive? Or did he die? The world knows his poems better than himself, but why is that?............................

I took another look at the Potala Palace, realizing that some things would forever be there physically, whereas some others became only legends.

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Tsangyang Gyatso got off the carriage. He had never been to the place that was right in front of his eyes. The grass was green, the water was blue, and the sky was big enough that someone could fill a thousand Potala Palaces up there. He was in awe of what he saw.

All of sudden he felt a shock. He thought something penetrated through his body. However, there were no sign of pain. He looked down at his body, there was a big empty hole on his chest. He was puzzled by what he saw, and decided to take another look.

This time, he saw nothing, not even his own body.

He slowly closed his eyes, and the only thing he could feel at that moment was freedom.

(The End)