You are meant to feel great on top of the world. But I feel very little on the rooftop of the world, the Tibetan plateau. Definitely not so great. Rather all too inconsequential. Simply because I am swirling in a sea of vastness, trying to find my axis in the universe, spinning out of limit and losing my moorings. For as the flight from Beijing touches down at Yushu airport, you realise that no matter how high humans may reimagine their future, they can never be a patch on the immensity of Creation around them.
Mind you, the low oxygen levels at 15,000 ft could make you a bit light-headed and hallucinogenic. But I feel drunk, soaking in the vistas of the most beautiful part of the Tibetan highlands, by lungfuls, gulpfuls, earfuls and eyefuls. The rippling and grassy mountains encircle the airstrip, like wise men looking down at a matador battling the elements. They change colour as I turn my head, the drifting clouds spotting them with daubs of purple, the white sun determined to shine through a torn puff of the cottony cumulus, scorching the grassland into a golden yellow. The contrasts and combinations are almost Roerichian.
We hit the well-paved road, leaving the rebuilt town of Yushu far behind, an example of the gargantuan Chinese development machine that has transformed landscapes and histories in this part of the world but has fallen short of stealing its heart and soul. For the Buddhist culture survives here as an absolution and remission of all human sins. And greed.
We are headed to Nangchen county in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, which is part of China’s Qinghai province bordering Tibet. This was once a part of Kham, the old Tibetan kingdom. Though Nangchen is remote and underdeveloped, it has one of the highest percentages of Tibetan people, who survive the odds, driven by faith and karma, and hope for some dignity, even if it happens beyond their lifetimes.
Nangchen was one of the five independent kingdoms of eastern Tibet and expanded over all of modern day Yushu. The king of Nangchen ruled this region until the early 1960s. During the Kham rebellion from 1956 to 1959, he sent out several platoons of soldiers on horseback to defend his people against the Cultural Revolution.
The king may have died but the spirit has not. So all over Nangchen, monasteries, chortens, prayer flags and monks continue to hold a torch to enlightenment and have remained apolitical about their other concerns. With scanty resources — grasslands yield precious little other than root vegetables, barley and some fruits scratchy power and water supplies, grazing the yak and baking bread, the Tibetans here have made peace with their reality and short lifespans. Yet they are not fatalistic, lighting the incense to The Great One.
We are following the trail of the Ashokan stupa, restored and revived by followers of the Drukpa lineage of Buddhism, led by His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa. It was done over three years with the help of a Chinese Government-recognised charitable trust and sponsors, an indication that both India and China are willing to take a small step of faith in keeping their vexatious border issues at abeyance in matters cultural.
The stupa had made news in 2012 for being a milestone of the Mauryan emperor’s propagation and spread of Buddhism, and emerging as a cultural frontier of his peace mission beyond borders. Today, the Drukpas have ensured that Ashoka is seen as the first ambassador and propagator of Buddhism around the world, including China, a doer Indian first.
China has, of late, used the propagation and the pan-Asian spread of Buddhism as a tool of its soft diplomacy. The Drukpas, with their emphasis on trans-Himalayan Buddhism, seva and a mission to transform lives and environment, have rescued and reinstated the Ashokan legacy. Of harmonising the world. And that we still have it in us to walk in the Buddha’s footsteps.
The fact that India and China are willing to have cooperative exchanges as part of soft or cultural diplomacy may seem accommodative and a positive effort to bridge differences. Between the lines, however, the Government’s efforts to push Buddhism by tracing commonality of roots indicate a subtle and smart move to steal a march over China, which is increasingly positing itself as the sole disseminator of Buddhist faith in the far-east and southeast Asia.
China may appear ‘godless’ but is using cultural heritage as a massive diplomatic tool to woo its contiguous neighbours. By not confining itself to the Tibetan Buddhist school of the Dalai lama, a bristly, prickly issue for the Chinese, and promoting the pan-Asian link of Himalayan Buddhism of other sects, India is giving an activist push to its cultural contiguity with neighbours and reviving the Ashokan legacy of Buddhism beyond borders.
There’s a reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi sat in meditation at Bodh Gaya, sent saplings of the Bodhi tree to East and Southeast Asian nations, harped on the Buddhist links between Gujarat and China when President Xi Jinping visited Ahmedabad and pushed multi-nation seminars, scholarly exchanges, workshops and exhibitions on the subject.
By projecting India as the true cradle of Buddhism, linking its core values to the principles of democracy and defining its tenets a “call to assume universal responsibility of mankind,” from environment to equality, Modi wants India to reclaim its legacy as a civilisational fountainhead and by extension making it a pragmatic partnership tool with the prosperous East and the Southeast. By stringing them together to a spiritual source of 2,500 years ago, India is now keen for a relationship that seems bigger and wider than the mere need for economic growth.
THE ROAD lESS TRAVEllED
lynn Dipam is one of the many Drukpa volunteers who take off from their regular work lives and pursue the Drukpa mission with dedication and a warm smile with no expectation of reward or blessings. She puts us through a five-minute crash course on high altitude behaviour (this is higher than ladakh, so), even advising us to sip and not gulp water.
And then we streak down the terrain, the breathtaking variety of which stuns us by the bend. At first the road ravels out, flattening out on either side, meadows and grasslands stretching out on all sides like a magic carpet, the wind roaring into hungry nothingness, the mountains tapering out in the horizon, their barber-trimmed greens a distant haze. The long-haired yaks, foraging in the wild, who a moment ago seemed like friendly co-existants in the earthly plane, disappear suddenly.
We could have leapt off the edge of the earth but the mountains, they close in from both sides again, this time craggy and sinuous, sandstone and limestone ridges taking on a snakeskin effect. This is where the rains are silent, prayer flags and the Padmasambhava’s eyes painted on ancient rockfaces reminding us of the grace that’s needed in this hostile terrain.
And then, almost miraculously, the road opens up to a wide, pleasant valley, again ringed by the cresting highlands, snow-tipped in the distance, faraway clouds portending menace of a rain and hail. But it is sunny here, across the mountain stream that snakes its way along the valley floor, sparse human settlements making an appearance and wild flowers nodding their heads in sudden bursts of happiness. That’s the essence of mystic life here, surrender to the forces that be and transcend ephemerality with the true light of consciousness. Even the lone raven soaring above knows that, with nobody for company.
Nangchen is often considered as the home of the yogi, having metaphorically ascended the terrestrial and spiritually at home with the divine. We arrive at the guest house closest to the stupa, just outside Nangchen town, eager hands and volunteers ready to envelope us with their warmth. We get a hearty meal and hot water and are promptly told to acclimatise ourselves in our rooms.
The local Tibetans, some of whom are returnees from Delhi’s Majnu Ka Tila, tell us to lie down and forget bathing. A sponge bath is ideal in these rarefied conditions; you conserve oxygen. A bath in divine dew, sunshine, herbal soup, joss-stick smoke or incense (in short, nothing to do with a shower) is a Tibetan tradition for health and longevity. We sample the five-taste dew, a soup prepared with cypress and azalea leaves and three kinds of medicinal herbs. It is boiled and the steam produced provides the smoke for bathers. Tibetans believe this helps blood circulation and the kidney.
Then there is the saviour called hot yak milk and butter tea. Despite privations, these people manage to find meaning in even the simplest of actions. The men go about sorting our luggage as the women warm up pots of tea, a song on their lips. Tibetans are excellent singers and dancers, which has got them the moniker of a “Sea of Dances and Songs.”
UNVEIlING OF THE STUPA
It is a sunny and windy day as we drive up to the stupa, a milk-white hemisphere dotted with gold-plated mini stupas and flanked by a huge statue of Amitabha Buddha on its left. Amid chanting of mantras, the wisps of incense, fluttering flags, the guru emerges — a bright spot of yellow sun from the maroon swathe of devotees.
Surrounded by a huge international congregation and local officials, His Holiness formally inaugurates the stupa, believed to have been more than 2,000 years old and containing a relic of the Buddha. Significantly the stupa is fronted by the remains of an original rock edict which elaborates its features. The stupa itself houses many excavated sculpted stones that establish its archaeological veracity.
An Ashokan pillar also looms large against a blue sky, a transcreated one, which brings the Indian link to the fore, seen by many as an exception and a cultural coup of sorts in mainland China, particularly in the highlands of the Tibetan plateau.
Speaking on the occasion, His Holiness says, “The meaning of the stupa is to represent Buddha dharma. Ashoka was the biggest Indian Buddhist emperor and the key contributor to the spread of Buddhism internationally.” He even promises to preserve and forward Ashoka’s legacy. “If any significant and symbolic legacy of Ashoka is found anywhere, I will be glad to restore it. The time has come to forward his work.”
Disconnecting himself from any politics of religion a question that is bound to come up in any Indo-China discussion the Gyalwang Drukpa reasons, “Religions are always misunderstood, misinterpreted and defended in a sectarian way. Buddhists should not be fanatic about religiosity.”
This stupa is important in the context of historicity. Ashoka’s emissaries, his own son and daughter included, travelled far and wide to spread Buddhism, and had erected 19 such Ashokan stupas in China, all of which are recorded in Tang dynasty history. A temple in Ashoka’s name in Ningbo indicates that he was an influential character in the history of China as a disseminator of Buddhism.
China has used the cultural contiguity of the historical Silk Route countries to extend its soft diplomacy, emerge as crusader of the dissemination of neo-Buddhism and couch its economic and political overlordship of the region.
The fact that Nangchen was a prosperous centre of trading and learning of the Ashokan empire and the Chinese endorsement of this legacy shows that perhaps accommodation is now a keystone of diplomacy.
The stupa is protected by Mahakala, who also figures in Hinduism as a protector deity. It houses five million mini stupas made by local villagers over three years, 150,000 Mani stones and 160,000 engraved stone tripitakas. It has a mandala of Avalokiteswara or Shiva. The five levels of the stupas embody the five eras of Buddhism. Each of the 500 mini stupas adorning the exterior hemisphere has a story to tell. The topmost one is the first ever stupa you will ever find anywhere. The second layer stupa is from India.
In short, the structure documents the stupa-making history of the Buddhist world by incorporating all its key architectural elements. Valued at over $20 million, the gold-encrusted stupa is a shell which hides the original stupa in a glass chamber inside it. And in the Indian tradition of calendar art, the life of the Buddha is represented in murals encircling the glass.
Most of the Ashokan edicts and stupas in China were denuded during the Cultural Revolution or collapsed due to human negligence. The Nangchen stupa was also a casualty as locals used foundation rocks to make their homes. Some old-timers recalled a spherical earth mould while the process of piecing together the structure revealed a stone pillar recording the history of the stupa. It disappeared later though. The devout saved whatever little they could of the stupa by covering it up with small Buddha statuettes.
The Drukpa followers, who have held on to their identity in eastern Tibet as pursuants of a philosophy of philanthropy rather than religion and have resisted Tibetan Buddhism fearing political takeovers, took up the task of restoring the stupa. They asked their spiritual master, the late Trulshik Adeu Rinpoche, to fulfil their wish. He compiled a brief history of the stupa after studying relics and ruins and even drew up a draft design. However, he could not finish the project which Gwalyang Drukpa took up with help from his Asian devotees, such as the lim family of the Genting group of Malaysia.
A FAITH INTACT
It’s a sea of teary-eyed people, waiting for the blessings of the Gyalwang Drukpa. He sprinkles water as his blessings. Visually, this area seems to be dominated by the Karmapa of the Karma Kagyu sect, though if you go into homes, you will find the Dalai lama locked away in chests and rosaries hidden beneath the folds.
Oppressive times call for desperate measures. Yet the Gyalwang Drukpa, whose hair was cut by the Dalai lama himself, draws in crowds from near and far, the sick, the elderly, women and children. Unpoliced and unhindered. They line up the steps of the monastic quarters, braving cold and wind, only for a chance to look at his eyes. The guru is revered as a reincarnation of the 12th century Indian saint Naropa, who in turn was believed to be a reincarnation of Avalokiteswara or Shiva himself.
The sentient spiritual leader can see himself through life cycles. And makes transit look easy. One of his disciples tells us how he even remembers being in his mother’s womb and calming the elemental forces from announcing his birth. A great soul comes to earth with protectors and heralds and whatever the story may be, we are taken aback by the grey clouds menacing across the horizon, speed-chasing the sun out of their way and drenching us with sleet by late evening. In the middle of nowhere, trapped in a sudden turn of weather, we feel the sharp pinch of the extraordinary and the power of divinity.
Although His Holiness visited Nangchen in his present life as a pilgrim, people got drawn to him. Many followers believe that he was a profound teacher in many of his previous lives and preached among Nangchen royals and their subjects.
Most Buddhist masters usually leave a letter of their reincarnated selves with an inner circle to be read out after his death. The great Adeu Rinpoche, who single-handedly passed on the Drukpa teachings orally, left one such note, saying he would be reborn as the youngest son of his most illustrious disciple and nephew, the Trulshik Satrul Rinpoche. Pema Chogyal, whom the Gyalwang Drukpa recognised and enthroned as the reborn Adeu, also brought the elements with him. The hospital where he was born caught fire while the delivery room was untouched, as if the fiery Mahakala was girding him with his power.
Mysteriously, the light goes out when we meet the guru in his small room but his warmth and smile enlighten us in the dark. “Only good action rather than prayer can lead to your growth and deliverance.” Simple, short yet the brutal truth that slaps us as hard as the hail on our backs. Away from the diverting demands of maya, in this remote land, atop an elemental theatre of the universe, the reason for being is not dramatic but basic. I bow down to the Norbu, a self-arising rock with Om Mani Padme Hum inscribed on it. I have been blessed to know what I needed to know. Nothing before. Or after.