Storming Satan's Citadel? Huh?

In the comments to my last posting there was discussion about Europeans and Americans who died awful or tragic deaths in Tibetan territories. Among the names mentioned was that well-known Hoosier Albert Leroy Shelton (1875-1922). He was perhaps the first North American to stay for any time in Tibet. I was a little surprised to hear his name in this context, since he was not an explorer. He was a missionary. I have to confess that, although by Middle School I was thoroughly addicted to travel writings in general, in more recent times I find the genre tiresome and irritating by turns. And I have always studiously avoided two large bodies of Tibet-related literature: mountain climbing and missionary accounts.

My distaste for these genres generally is due, I believe, to their strong tendency to ignore the places they are in as much as possible (even while taking into account what is especially useful or obstructive to them) in pursuit of a goal that makes sense mainly to themselves. I’ve much preferred, and I do think I’m right in doing this, to work on understanding the voices coming from Tibetan-language sources. Since I’ve mainly pursued knowledge of earlier centuries, the sources that are of most use to me are most likely written, not oral.

It could go without saying that a Tibeto-logical thinker will take Tibet and its regular inhabitants as the mother lode of meaning. In general this ought to be true. However, ‘frontier’ (culture-contact) studies, diaspora studies, and postcolonial thinking, just to mention three things that spring to mind in this context, can and should complicate the picture. Forget about laboratory science for the moment. When it comes to cross-cultural studies or anthropology, it is very often the case that so-called objectivity (of an observer external to the culture being described) serves to mask a subjectivity formed and informed by the presumptions and interests of the observer’s native culture.

We won’t be so presumptuous as to claim to sort all this out at this very moment, but in general I would recommend not postmodern post-structuralist thinking, but rather Tibetan “Mind Training” or Lojong (Blo-sbyong) teachings from 12th-century Tibet...* Lojong teachers did and do know perfectly well not only how to talk about “self and other,” but also how to put their contemplations on self and other into action in everyday life (and, what is a different matter, making use of everyday events to understand themselves and others better).

(*I mentioned Dr. Thubten Jinpa’s translation of the main collection of Lojong texts in an earlier blog. I cannot recommend it highly enough.)

But then again, I wouldn’t demand that my dearly valued readers be generously open minded about Tibetan Buddhist culture only to demonstrate my own utter spite for European Catholic culture. I should perhaps offer a reminder that Catholic scholars, especially in France and Belgium, have produced some of the most interesting and sympathetic studies of Buddhism, perhaps starting already with Eugène Burnouf (1808-1852) until today. Tibeto-logician and Catholic are even now not mutually exclusive categories. Indeed, it seems in recent years that several Tibet-focused Buddhologists have discovered or recovered a faith in Catholic Christianity. Just to name a few who have made their profession of faith known in print: David Snellgrove (although he has now quit the Tibetan studies field to work on Khmer), Paul Williams (see his book listed below), and John Buescher (in a much-recommended article listed below).

But wait a minute, Where are we? Somewhere in Yunnan, Weren’t we?

Even before opening this book about the life of Maurice Tornay (1910-1949), you know exactly what to expect. No false advertising. The spoiler is right there staring you in the face in big letters on the front cover. We know from the first he’s going to die for his faith, and are reminded of it directly or indirectly on almost every page. But the thing that especially catches my eye is the name in small green letters of the subtitle, “St. Bernard.” Some may remember back in the late ’50s and early ’60s there was a kind of craze over the dogs by that name. Practically everyone I knew wanted to have one, although few could afford them or their upkeep. Their voracious appetites were as legendary as their heroism. The saint in question was Bernard of Menthon (996-1081 CE). He founded, high on a mountain pass between Switzerland and Italy, what he named the Hospice of Mont Joux, dedicated to St. Nicholas. It was only long after his death, in 1149, that it was renamed after him, Hospice of St. Bernard. For the last three centuries, more or less, St. Bernard dogs have been assisting the St. Bernard monks in their task of assisting travelers in distress. In more recent decades, better roads, more accurate travel advisories and helicopter rescue teams have alleviated much of the work of both dogs and monks. In a way, I think it’s a pity.

Young Maurice was born in a town on steep slopes not so very far from the world-renowned hospice. The slopes were so steep they say that every year they had to dig up the dirt from the bottom of the field and carry it up in boxes to the top. I don’t know about you, but I could imagine how that story might have been true, and not just one of those stories they liked to tell flat-landers traveling through. He took novice vows under the St. Bernard Fathers when he was nearly 21 years old, and spent six years in the abbey school in St. Maurice. A year and five months into his noviciate, they sent their first group of four monks to Tibet (for them this included what was actually Tibet as well as northwestern Yunnan, with its strong Tibetan cultural presence). Maurice insisted on being part of the next batch that left in February 1936. He badly wanted to do this, as he himself said, in order to achieve sanctity, and not, or not especially, because he felt the urge to convert pagans to Christianity.

Arriving in Yunnan on May 8, 1936, Maurice learned more than 7,000 Chinese characters in his first year. And he started studying Tibetan well before he departed for his assigned mission field of Yerkalo, across the Yunnan border in (since 1932) an autonomous Tibetan territory, which means it was not ruled from China as Yunnan was. Yerkalo* was a small but significant center for Christianity, established already in around 1865 by the French missionaries Biet and Desgodins.

(*Yerkalo has different names and spellings in the literature... Yakala, Yakalo, Tsakha, Tsakalo. Based on the Chinese name, Yenching or Yentsing. See Teichman's article. Prince Henry of Orleans, who stayed there for some time because of sickness — “fever and neuralgia” — spells it “Tseku.”)

In just two years he completed his studies and took ordination as a priest, in Hanoi. From now on we should call him Father Tornay. Just one month after starting Tibetan, he was told he would have to give a sermon in the language. This was meant as a joke, but he took it very seriously, and supposedly did a fine job of it, using Chinese here and there when he didn't know the Tibetan word. In this part of Yunnan, Tibetan was a very important language, even if Chinese was the official one. There were to be found there also speakers of languages here called Lutse and Lissu.* Since most of his students were Tibetan speakers, you might wonder why he studied Chinese and taught in Chinese. This is because his students, if successful, would have to continue their theological studies in Chinese-medium institutions. There were no Tibetan-medium theological schools to send them to.

(*Lissu is now usually spelled Lisu. They were a missionary success story, since today a large number of Lisu are Christians. See the Wiki entries for Lisu and for James O. Fraser. I’m not sure who the Lutse speakers were, but Prince Henry also mentions them. Any idea? I think Lutse is an older name for the Nu.)

This book emphasizes the lines of narration, and doesn’t often plunge into theological questions. At one point we do get a glimpse of the St. Bernard Fathers’ view about Tibetan Buddhism. It seems our author Robert Loup is speaking here:

“Tibetan lamaism is a particular form of Hindu Buddhism. Buddha is the creator god, source of all life, universal soul; he is surrounded by divinities who symbolize the virtues and powers of the Master. In the middle ages, the reformer Tsongkhapa enlarged the pantheon and perfected the liturgy by borrowing from the Nestorian Christian Church — which existed in western China in his time — the dualism of man inhabited by a divinity and certain external objects of worship. It is due to this borrowing that Catholic missionaries on entering a Lamaist temple cannot keep from being surprised and sadly touched by the resemblance — entirely exterior — of the ceremonies to the canonical office. These pagan monks, called to prayer three times a day by a lama blowing a sea shell, sit like tailors before their cups of tea and chant their sacred texts. There is a certain grandeur in it. And if the breath of the Holy Spirit passed over the country, suddenly transforming souls and the meaning of things, these ceremonies, some of the festivals, and many of the customs could be kept and used as a liturgy for the worship of the true God.”

First read over carefully the part that tells how “Buddha is the creator god, source of all life,” and “universal soul,” which creates a totally false depiction of Buddhist Buddhology in any of its forms (yes, I knew you were going to bring it up, but that goes as well for the All-Making King of the well-known Dzogchen scripture; here too, the very idea of creationism is regarded as the most fundamentally deluded of all delusions; see Martin’s article). Then see the irony in the statement that the resemblances in the ceremonies are “entirely exterior” when the author has already demonstrated that he doesn’t have the least clue about ideas interior to Tibetan Buddhism. The story that Tsongkhapa undertook a Nestorian-inspired reformation is a myth from beginning to end that became no truer for its regular repetition in writings by foreigners. But I don’t want to squabble about these matters right now. I would just like to underline the Christian generosity expressed in the last line, which at least would allow Tibetans to keep some aspects of their traditional culture, even to employ them in divine worship. Not all missionaries were so generous to their adversaries.

The brief section characterizing “lamaism,” as this book calls Tibetan Buddhism, is followed by a section entitled “Persecution,” which does indeed present a frightful list of Catholic priests who were slain, in several cases we would have to say butchered. Among the members of the Paris Foreign Missions Society alone, there had been seven European martyrs between 1881 and 1940. Reading carefully, you realize that the majority were killed by bandits who probably just wanted to rob their rich caravan, caring little or nothing about religion. Still, in the logic of martyrdom, all are placed at the same height on the altar for our veneration.

When Father Tornay arrived at Yerkalo, which could boast a particle of the True Cross, there were 320 Christians there. He didn’t stay long, but went on a trip with Father Lovey to Batang, about 80 miles to the north-northeast. They had particular missionary objectives in mind, since it had been ten years since a priest had visited what was once one of the main centers for evangelization. At that time it is very clear that the border between Tibetan and Chinese-ruled territories was set along the Upper Yangtse River (Tibetans call it the Drichu; ’Bri-chu). At the raft-crossing not far from Batang, there were military posts and customs houses facing each other across the river. Once they reached the Chinese side, the travelers noted with pleasure that the commander of the post was one of their own, a Christian from Szechwan (Sichuan). Thanks to Albert Shelton, Marion Duncan and others, they found not only Catholics at Batang, but also Protestants. This gave them the opportunity to hold an ecumenical service. Here in a footnote, one of the editors of the English edition, R.B. (Raphael Brown, pen name of a reference librarian at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.), relays this funny story (even if as seems likely the incident never happened, it would have to be made up in order to convey the truths it contains):

“Christian missioners like to tell this story about themselves: A Chinese of the region, when asked what was the difference between the ‘pastors’ and the ‘Fathers,’ replied: “It's simple: the pastor has a wive, does not have a beard, and does not smoke; the Father does not have a wife, has a beard and smokes like a chimney.” (p. 159)

Then begins the most puzzling and interesting part of the book, “The Economics of Lamaism.” I don’t pretend to understand it, so I won’t summarize it for you, but it’s surely important since it concerns the chain of events that led, perhaps inevitably (?), to Father Tornay’s death. The section starts out rather startlingly with the words, “Persecution of Christianity finds its real source in hatred of the truth.” The supreme confidence of these words takes a moment to sink in if it sinks in at all. The point being made is that there may be reasonings and rationales behind bad things that happen to Christians, but the real reason is because of the hatred people have for Christianity. But let’s look a little bit into the confusing rationales offered by the author for the rationales offered by the Fathers for the rationales they believed the local lamas and officials (two separate parties in the disputes) had...

“Another difficulty. The Orient does not have the same ideas as we do. For a Tibetan, and especially a lama, to sell land is not to sell it but to rent it for a number of years, to lend it, just as in Roman times the lands of the nobles or of the State were let out in tenure. From the juridical point of view, the mission is therefore always in an uncertain situation. If the lamas want to take back the lands they “sold,” the missioners may make a defense according to all their principles of justice and law, but they would only be fighting against clouds.” (p. 161)

Given what I suspect, that the just-mentioned clouds might be an illusion based on smoke and mirrors (be assured that the Tibetan language contains very unambiguous terms for selling, renting and leasing*), if anything is clear in all this it is that there was a simple dispute about land tenure, regardless of the legalities of it, that gradually escalated with the involvement of the local authorities, both lay and clerical. With permission from his superiors, Father Tornay departed on a mission to the central Tibetan government in Lhasa. Although he went in disguise, he or a member of his small Christian caravan was spotted along the way. This attempt to bypass the local authorities by appealing to Lhasa could have succeeded. The Lhasa elite would have had larger and less local concerns that would likely involve not antagonizing European powers. The party, already reduced to four, was ambushed and Father Tornay with his servant Dossy (an affectionate nickname based on 'Dominic') were shot dead. Two others, named Joan Siao and Sandjrupt, escaped to tell the story. Father Savioz went to collect the bodies. Of course I’ve simplified a great deal.

(*“They [the Naxi indigenous chiefs of the Mekong Valley] were, with the Buddhist temples, the only landowners, at a time when land could not be sold, but only rented in exchange for taxes and corvée.” Gros article, p. 4.)

At last we reach what for myself at least is the most troubling part. I would very much prefer to deny that the slayers of the Father were maroon-robed Tibetan Buddhist monks. But for this we have the testimony of Joan Siao and Sandjrupt. We cannot simply deny it on the wish that it weren’t so. I suppose we could open an inquest at The Hague, but after all these years what would be the point exactly? And who today would bear the guilt and pay the price? (I do think there is evidence that the image of Buddhist monks leaping out of the forest with rifles is not the actual story; see the article by Goré listed below.)

I feel I may well be placing my objectivity (or is that a subjectivity?) at risk in saying what I finally and anyway want to say. On May 16, 1993, Father Maurice Tornay was beatified by Pope John Paul the Second. Of course to be beatified is not quite to be made into a ‘universally accepted’ Catholic saint. Still, it means that more young people will feel inspired to follow his example.

Now the world is day after day re-experiencing both the horror and banality of martyrdom. I think I’m not alone in being thoroughly sick of it, regardless of the motives. I would hope the present religious leaders will find out how to award sanctity not to those who willingly offer up their lives to further the cause of The Church or whatever, but instead to the ones who resolve problems and bring reconciliation. Those who believe in and pursue inter-religious dialogue, or who bring warring parties together to hammer out solutions for examples. Regardless of what the Vatican may or may not do, I think we, whatever we call ourselves, ought to do our best to find inspiration among people like the Tibetan Buddhists who, not without occasional failures among them of course, have worked especially hard to pursue the ways of peace.

“...the Redemption blossoms in blood. Let us have no doubt of it! Canon Tornay's sacrifice will raise up other missionary vocations, and at the hour set by God, the hard trails into forbidden Tibet, jealously guarded by cruel hired assassins of the lamas, will have to open up to the peaceful messengers of Christ...

“...as a result of this heroic death and the void it left in the missionary ranks, several young canons at once asked permission to go to Tibet and take his place.”

Read those and these words and weep, “It seems to me that we need not theology of liberation but theology of martyrdom,” Cardinal Ratzinger.

I think it’s high time to break the vicious circles of the crusader mentality that brings on these repeat performances. We have to grow up and stop offering child sacrifices to our gods. And for gods’ sake children, stop volunteering! Storming some citadel is not a big deal, not really, but giving up old habits? Learning from old mistakes takes some actual courage.

Another even more interesting book on Yunnan from my library. It’s available online here for the asking.

°

Find out more and more:

Anonymous, “Maurice Tornay, Martyr in Tibet (1910-1949),” Oblata [Novitiate of the Oblates of the Society of St. Pius X], no. 5 (October 2007), pp. 2-3. Just press here.

John Bray, “French Catholic Missions and the Politics of China and Tibet, 1846-1865,” contained in: Helmut Krasser, et al., eds., Tibetan Studies, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna 1997), vol. 1, pp. 83-95.

John B. Buescher, “Everything Is on Fire: Tibetan Buddhism Inside Out,” Books & Culture (A Christian Review) (January-February 2008). For the internet version, look here.

Eugène Burnouf (1801-1852), Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism, tr. by Katia Buffetrille & Donald S. Lopez, Jr., University of Chicago Press (Chicago 2010).  Now people who don’t read French, or don’t read it well enough, can marvel at the accomplishments of this great Orientalist. 

Henri Cordier and J.M. Lenhart, “Tibet,” contained in: The Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company (New York 1912), vol. 14. Online version here. The very brief section on missions is extremely valuable. Where else can you learn that

“The Capuchin Francesco Orazio della Penna (b. 1681; d. at Patan in Nepal, 1745) translated into Tibetan for the neophytes Cardinal Bellarmine's Christian Doctrine and Thurlot's Treasure of Christian Doctrine. He compiled with the assistance of his confrères the first Tibetan dictionary, containing 35,000 words in Tibetan characters with corresponding Italian translation. He also translated from Tibetan into Italian History of the life and works of Shakiatuba, the restorer of Lamaism, Three roads leading to perfection, On transmigration and prayer to God (Anal. Ord. Cap., VI, Rome, 1890, 349).”

Fascinating, though, that Shakiatuba (Shākya-thub-pa, for Sanskrit Śākyamuni, 'Sage of the Śākya Clan'), a title of the historical Buddha, here becomes a restorer of Lamaism!

Auguste Desgodins (1826-1913), Dictionnaire thibétaine-latin-française par les missionnaires catholiques du Thibet (Hong Kong 1899), in 1087 pages. This Tibetan-Latin-French dictionary is a very important one in the history of Tibetan lexicography. For this dictionary, indispensible for anyone trying to translate Tibetan into Latin, as well as for his Tibetan grammar, I would say that of all the French Fathers of Yunnan, Desgodins is probably the most worthy of being admitted into the ranks of the Tibeto-logicians.

Lawrence Epstein, ed., Khams pa Histories: Visions of People, Place and Authority, Brill (Leiden 2002).

François Goré, “Les Missions tibétaines.”  Available online here. This has a section on the martyrdom of Father Tornay. Also of interest is the discussion about Madame Alexandra David-Neel, who enjoyed the hospitality of the Fathers and responded to it by publishing mean things about them in her book. This says that Father Tornay was ambushed by five armed men in the pay of the lamas of Yentsing:

“Le 11 août, Mr Tornay repassait le Choula, col frontière entre la Chine et le Tibet. Sur le versant oriental, à l'orée de la forêt, cinq hommes armés, à la solde des lamas de Yentsing, étaient embusqués, attendant le passage des voyageurs. Doci, l'un des domestiques de Mr Tornay, tomba le premier, et le missionnaire fut tué à son tour. Les deux autres domestiques, qui n'étaient sans doute pas spécialement visés, ne furent pas inquiétés et purent s'enfuir. Après le crime, les meurtriers dépouillèrent leurs victimes de tous leurs vêtements, s'emparèrent des quatre mulets et reprirent la route de Yentsing avec leur butin.”

Stéphane Gros, “Ritual and Politics: Missionary Encounters with Local Culture in Northwest Yunnan.”  This is the best thing I know about in English, that is, on the early history of the Catholic missionaries in northwestern Yunnan (beginning when Father Renou settled in the valley of Bonga near the Yunnan-Tibet border in 1854, the first ‘Christians’ were said to be slaves purchased from the powerful local landowner, orphans, or children bought from impoverished parents; the Christians of Bonga were expelled in 1865 and formed the core of the mission of Yerkalo, legally established only in 1887). Download the PDF here.

Adrien Launay, Histoire de la Mission du Thibet, Desclée, De Brouwer et Cie (Paris circa 1905), 2 vols. This is supposed to be the primary work on Catholic missionaries in the eastern borderlands of Tibet, although I’ve still never seen it. Some give 1902 or 1909 as its date of publication, and it seems to have been reprinted in recent years. Soon after the book came out M[artha] K. Genthe wrote a brief, unsympathetic review in Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, vol. 43, no. 7 (1911), pp. 538-9. What she says is worth quoting:

“In spite of the admiration of the personal courage and devotion of those men, the unprejudiced reader finds in every chapter of the sad story the proof of their lack of judgment and knowledge concerning the people they wished to convert, and of their entire inability to appreciate the point of view of a race like the Tibetans. While it is certain that the difficulties which stood in their way would have been too great for anybody, there is no doubt either that with an equal lack of tact and wisdom in dealing with the people and its authorities, they would have failed likewise on less hostile territory.”

Leo D. Lefebure, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s Comments on Buddhism,” Buddhist-Christian Studies, vol. 18 (1998), pp. 221-223. In a published interview of 1997, the Cardinal, now Pope, characterized Buddhism as a sort of spiritual auto-eroticism (un autoérotisme spirituel). As a groundwork for dialogue, clearly a non-starter unless accompanied by a sincerely shamefaced apology.

Donald S. Lopez Jr., “Is the Pope Catholic?”  Tricycle (Summer 1995), pp. 98-102. This is a review of Pope John Paul II's book Crossing the Threshold of Hope. It’s about inter-religious so-called understanding and some of its most glaring failures.

Donald S. Lopez Jr., “The Name,” Chapter One in Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, University of Chicago Press (Chicago 1998). Read this and understand why it is that we no longer call Tibetan Buddhism by the name “Lamaism,” any more than we call Roman Catholic Christianity by the name Papistry (Papism, Popism, Popery, etc.). We cannot ever use these labels and hope to bypass their histories of polemical usage (of course, if you are writing inter-religious polemic, please use them at will! That way we will more easily recognize your writing for what it is. You will be doing us all a favor).

Robert Loup, Martyr in Tibet: The Heroic Life and Death of Fr. Maurice Tornay, St. Bernard Missionary to Tibet, David McKay (New York 1956). Translated from the original French by Charles Davenport, there are sections written especially for this English version that were not in the French. Since it is out of print, I had to mail away for it to Steven Temple Books in Toronto, Ontario (sorry, I got there first, so you'll need to shop for it somewhere else). My hard cover copy has a price of $3.75 on the inside dust jacket, and bears the ownership stamp of Butterfly Florist in Scarboro Ontario (it still seems to be in business...). The backside of the title page, in case you have your concerns, displays the Nihil obstat and the Imprimatur of the Censor Librorum and the Archbishop of New York.

Dan Martin, “Creator God or Creator Figure?”  Lungta [an annual periodical published by the Amnye Machen Institute, McLeod Ganj, India], vol. 16 (Spring 2003), pp. 15-20. This is in a special issue edited by Roberto Vitali entitled “Cosmogony and the Origins.”

Prince Henry of Orleans, “From Yun-nan to British India,” The Geographical Journal, vol. 7, no. 3 (March 1896), pp. 300-309. This includes a useful map on p. 303.

E.H. Parker, “The Preaching of the Gospel in Tibet,” China Review, vol. 18, pp. 279-284. Among the missionaries mentioned are those named Nicholas Krick, Julius Rabin and Lewis Bernard who attempted to get to Tibet in 1849. Krick made his third entry into Tibet together with Father Augustine Boury, but they were very soon murdered. In 1855, Father Bernard and Father August Desgodins attempted, but were turned back. Father Charles Renan, disguised as a Chinese trader, made it as far as Chamdo in 1849, but was turned back after being recognized as a European. Meanwhile, back in Canton, he was appointed “Prefect Apostolic for Tibet” and set off once more, joined by Father John Charles Fage and John Baptist Goutelle. In 1854, Father Renan went to Tsarong and purchased an uncultivated valley called Bonga and built a house, chapel and vineyard there. James Leo Thomine Desmazures, in 1857, was appointed “Bishop of Sinope and Vicar-Apostolic of Tibet.” In 1863 a new Vicar Apostolic of Tibet was appointed: Joseph Chauveau. It is here, on p. 284, that Tibet is referred to as “this citadel of Satan.”

Valrae Reynolds, “The Journey to Tibet of Albert L. Shelton, 1904-1922,”  Lungta, vol. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 20-24. This entire issue of Lungta is devoted to missionary studies (primarily Protestant and American missionaries). The author was a curator at The Newark Museum, which in my opinion has the most important collection of Tibetan arts (combining fine arts with ethnographic objects) in all of the Americas. The basis of this collection was formed already in 1911 with the exhibition of objects brought from Batang region by Shelton that were then acquired by the museum.

Valrae Reynolds & Amy Heller, Catalog of the Newark Museum Tibetan Collection, Vol. 1: Introduction, The Newark Museum (Newark 1983).

Eric Teichman, “Journeys through Kam (Eastern Tibet),” The Geographical Journal, vol. 59, no. 1 (January 1922), pp. 1-16. Some marvelous photographs are included on unnumbered pages, along with a very detailed map. The “Kam” of the title is nowadays spelled Kham (exact Tibetan spelling: Khams).

Paul Williams, The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to Catholicism, T&T Clark (Edinburgh 2002). The author’s credentials from the title page: “Professor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy. Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Co-director, Centre for Buddhist Studies, University of Bristol.”

And now, for an astounding story about how Easter services were curtailed, for no apparent reason and certainly no good one, in the Catholic Church in Cizhong following the Tibetan uprising events of mid-March 2008, look here.





This book, by the “Russian Taoist doctor,” which I got for a song in a used bookshop in Bonn, once belonged to a library. When you see how many people checked it out, I think you’ll get the idea that it really is an outstanding reading experience. Don’t take my word for it.







For the most amazing photographs of Christian Yunnan, by all means look here! here! Or better yet, go to this excellent page of the Joseph Rock blogspot.

After-sermon:

SELF-RENUNCIATION
By John Angell James

SELF is the most subtle, the most stubborn, the most tenacious foe with which grace has to contend, in the soul of the believer. It lives, and works, and fights, when many other corruptions are mortified. Self is the last stronghold, the very citadel of Satan in the heart, which is reduced to the obedience of faith.

Happy New Year (This time it's for real!)

A Tibetan friend just sent me this very nice digital eCard for the Tibetan holiday known as Losar. Losar (lo-gsar or ལོ་གསར་ if you prefer) means Year New.* 

(I assume the eCard isn't under any copyright, but in any case its use in this blog is entirely non-commercial.) 

(*unmarked adjectives come after their nouns, not before like in English. Where in English you say white house, in Tibetan you say house white. Get used to it.)

Sending Losar greeting cards is a new custom, unknown to traditional Tibet. So Losar eCards are needless to say much newer still. The absence of cards and eCards was no great loss back then. Believe me, there was plenty to do with family and friends living close by.

Today's (technically last night's) new moon begins the Earth Mouse year. In 1027 CE Tibet had its first rabjung (rab-byung or རབ་འབྱུང་) year. Well, the first year of the Jovian sixty-year cycle is called the rabjung year, a direct translation of Sanskrit prabhava. Tibetans use the name of the first year of the Jovian cycle for the entire set of sixty years as well. These Jovian cycles themselves are numbered. I would like to point out an interesting thing in the first line of the eCard. The first three syllables mean "Tibetan Royal Era year" followed by the number 2135,* then the four following syllables,་that mean "rabjung mountain moon," followed by a genitive ending, and the last four syllables of the first line, "earth mouse sky-year."

(*Tibetan numbers look a little different from Arabic and Indian forms of the numbers, but work in just the same way. It has become customary in recent times to give the Royal year. But let's try and be real for a moment. Traditional chronologies are by no means in agreement about when the first Emperor ruled Tibet. Modern historians see little use in giving an entirely dubious numeric value to this event.)

Now I can hear you saying, What the heck is this mountain moon about? Well, interesting that you ask, grasshopper. At least since the 10th century (if not as appears likely much earlier) when the Kalacakra ('Wheel of Time') Tantra made its debut in India, there has been a custom, mainly in works on calculation and chronology, to use words in place of numbers. I call them numeric code-words. Mountain means 7. Why? Because there are 7 circles of mountains in traditional Abhidharma cosmology. Moon means 1. That's because the earth only has one moon. (Clearly, the system was not invented on Jupiter.) Why were code-words used instead of numbers? I don't know. It was an Indian tradition that Tibetans kept on following.

But then that would seem to translate into the number '71', wouldn't it? Wrong! When you make use of numeric code-words, the numbers are always (and I mean always) read from right to left. Mountain moon means 17. And why 17? you're thinking.

Ah! We are now in the 17th rabjung. Let's see. Well, the first rabjung started with the rabjung year, or Earth Hare year, that corresponds to 1027.* A lot happened in that year. Naropa is said to have died in India. The Kadampa teacher Potowa was born... But most relevant for us right now is the fact that the Kalacakra tantra was for the very first time translated, together with its most important commentary named Vimalaprabha, from Sanskrit into Tibetan language.

(*Csoma de Kőrös, a Hungarian traveler-scholar who is sometimes called the first Tibetologist, thought the first year of the first rabjung had begun in the year 1026. That's why for a few generations after him Tibetan dates when 'translated' were off by one year. Of course, even today Tibetan dates, when translated, may well be a year off because people fail to take into account the only partial overlap between the 'years' of the two calendrical systems.)

Herein lies a mystery. The number 60 is very important in Kalacakra. Kalacakra time measurement includes not only 60-year cycles, but there are actually 60 hours in a day. Uh huh, right, that means Kalacakra hours were only 24 minutes long, just enough for the TV sitcom after subtracting the time taken up by commercials; but yes, due to the degeneration of time, by now that might be more like 15 minutes for the commercials.

The Kalacakra itself lists Sanskrit names for each of the 60 years in the cycle. It does *not* name them for the animals and elements as Tibetans do. The truth is that Tibetans (just like their neighbors) most usually made use of the simpler 12-year animal cycle of years already in the middle of the 7th century or so. It might seem that they adjusted their customary 12-year cycle to conform with the Kalacakra by combining the 12 animals with the 5 elements. (But this would not be true. In fact, the earliest known use of a Jovian cycle or "sexagenary" date in Tibetan would be the Iron Ox year in the Sino-Tibetan Peace Treaty of 821-822 CE; see Uray's article for more about this.) The five elements were, perhaps surprising to some, not the five elements as known to the Greeks and Indians: earth, water, fire, air, ether. Instead, they used the five elements as known to China: fire, earth, iron, water, wood. When combined with the 12 animals, each element is repeated twice.

To illustrate this last point, the first year of the rabjung is the Fire Hare. The years that follow the Fire Hare are, in order: Earth Dragon, Earth Snake, Iron Horse, Iron Sheep, Water Monkey, Water Hen, Wood Dog, Wood Pig, Fire Mouse, Fire Ox, Earth Tiger, Earth Hare... You get the idea, I guess and hope. (You might have noticed that I've ignored the minor complication of the gender elements here.)

This year is 2008 CE, so 981 years have passed since 1027 CE. 981 divided by 60 equals 16.35, which puts us well into the 17th set of 60. In fact we are now entering into the 22nd year of the 17th rabjung, which started about this time of year in 1987 CE. The Sanskritic name of this year, according to the Kalacakra system, is Sarvadharin, which is Kun-'dzin when translated into Tibetan. It means Holder of All, which might be considered as an epithet of Shiva. Tibetans hardly ever make use of these Sanskritic year names, although they are sometimes encountered in the colophons of Tibetan books.

Now whether I've bored you to tears, or not, with all those numbers and calculations, I feel like I should say something about what I think Losar means to Tibetans. That's truly difficult, but why not give it a try... I'd say that if you know what Christmas means to most North Americans of Christian background, then you might start to understand just how important Losar is to Tibetans. Of course, the Tibetan observances are very much different. There is no Christmas tree with bulbs and tinsel, and wrapped gifts beneath. Still, the stacks of Kabtsé* on the altar along with the pot of freshly growing grass and the sheep's head made of porcelain mean every bit as much to the Tibetan soul as the Christmas tree to most Christians. Family. Togetherness. Warmth. Prosperity. Abundance. Food. Fun. All that and more.

Kabtsé

(*Kabtsé is a kind of deep-fried bread, twisted into various pretzel-like shapes. The stacked-up plates, called derkha [sder-kha or སྡེར་ཁ་] are usually further decorated with colorful objects, especially hard candies, which adds to the 'Christmas tree' illusion. One of my favorite fried bread shapes is the bongui amchog (bong-bu'i a-mchog or བོང་བུའི་ཨ་མཆོག), a name that translates as 'donkey ears.' These make me think of Haman's ears, eaten during the Israeli (and Jewish) holiday of Purim. Well, differences aside, at least it is another kind of pastry 'ear' eaten during a particular festivity.

Hamantaschen

The object depicted in the eCard is called the Droso Chemar (gro so phye mar). It is a box (called a bo ['bo]) with a wooden divider in the center, and two wooden 'tags', one sticking up on each side. Both sides are filled to overflowing (perhaps overly clearly symbolizing or demonstrating abundance). If you visit a Tibetan friend on Losar, which I hope you will, you might be immediately invited to take from the box a pinch of chemar (phye mar), that means a slightly buttered flour (I think some people add sugar), which you toss in the air and shout Tashi Deleg! (bkra-shis bde-legs), a phrase you will probably hear a lot during the days of Losar, and not all that much in other parts of the year. You'll also almost certainly be offered a beaker or bowl of chang (chang), a bittersweet beer traditional to Tibet since the beginning of time, which when good, as it often is, has a slight lemony taste that lingers on your tongue. The beer vessel and your beaker will both be decorated with a generous dab of butter, which as you all know from experience is a symbol of wealth and nourishment, even if you like me should be doing your best to eliminate it from your diet. Don't be surprised if you discover big white splatches of chemar all over your clothing. It happens. This is a very good thing.

I don't want to speak too much about the gambling and drinking and partying that goes on, and on, starting on the second day of Losar. Or too much about other things both seriously meaningful and fun, like dressing up in your best new clothes, hanging up strings of multicolored Wind Horse flags (rlung-rta), feasting on 'Nine Soup' dumplings with special gifts hidden inside (dgu-thug),* visiting temples, burning juniper incense (bsang) on the mountainside, and the like. Did I mention dancing? Yes, I guess I did.

(*The hidden objects are omens for what will happen to the person who happens to get them during the following year, although they may not be taken entirely seriously, but all in good fun. Here are the objects according to my understanding: The person getting a dumpling containing paper will be bookish and good in school (or a victim of theft?); wood means being like a poor man walking with a stick (or lucky enough to travel); a pebble means a lifespan as lasting as diamond; salt is cleverness and fame; wool is for disease (or new clothing?); and cayenne pepper for a temperamental personality or a 'sharp tongue.' Charcoal of course means you will have 'dark thoughts.' Onion means you will have body odor. I guess that last one might be a result of eating it. There have to be nine. Did I miss something? Yes, I guess I did.)

Oh well, all that was just therapy for myself, isolated as I am in a place in the world without any Tibetan community. Please do send a comment to let me know how you celebrated Losar this year, and don't neglect to tell me and everyone else what it means to you. Correct my misunderstandings. This is one subject about which truly every single Tibetan is the ultimate expert, your best Tibetologist. Losar is something so good that it just keeps on going for many people. Although surely an exception, I met one Tibetan man who was still partying non-stop into the month of May. I'm thinking this was, is and would be just way too much of a good thing.



Read more!

Last year Phayul news site had a very nice article about Losar by Phayul correspondent Phurbu Thinley (Phur-bu-phrin-las), which you can find here.

I think this is certainly one of the the best things there is on the subject on the entire internet. Highly recommended. But see also Tsepak Rigzin's (Tshe-dpag-rig-'dzin) article "Losar" posted at Tibettalk. Or if like me you prefer to read it in print, try Tsepak Rigzin, Festivals of Tibet, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (Dharamsala 1993), pp. 1-8. For an account of Losar observances with real photographs from pre-invasion Tibet, including an unforgettable shot of a rope-sliding demonstration about to take place with the Potala as the backdrop, see Hugh Richardson, Ceremonies of the Lhasa Year, Serindia (London 1993), pp. 11-22.

For more examples of numeric code-words derived from the Kalacakra, look here. And thanks to the strange ways inherent in synchronicity and interdependent origination, on Wednesday, February 06, 2008, PSz of Thor-bu blog made a list of Sanskrit numeric code-words (go here and scroll down past the mysterious ruins until you get to them).

If just for fun you would like to hear somebody's idea about what your Tibetan birth-year means for your personality, etc., look here.*

n

(*Beware! Tibetan prognostics are often anything but reassuring.)

Here is a lovely little essay about Tibetan astroscience* by one of it's leading 20th-century practitioners, Professor Jampa Gyaltsen Dagthon (1939-1997).

(*Tibetan rtsis, which is translated 'astroscience', 

actually means 'calculation' in general, and includes 

mathematics, astrology and astronomy, among other matters.)

Here is a useful chart of the Tibetan and CE correspondences covering 1027 through 2046.

Géza Uray, ‘The Earliest Evidence of the Use of the Chinese Sexagenary Cycle in Tibetan.’ Contained in: Louis Ligeti, ed., Tibetan and Buddhist Studies Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Alexander Csoma de Körös, Akadémiai Kiadó (Budapest), pp. 341-360.

There are quite a few technical writings on astroscience (besides the article by Uray you see here), and its sub-branch of chronology. I'll list them for you some other time. There's a lion in my library that requires my immediate attention. Now where did I leave those tweezers?




I apologize that many of the links in this old blog have expired. You should have read it sooner.

One Side Makes You Larger & One Side Makes You Small

Happy New Year according to the foreign calendar system. During that last month of 2007 I must’ve been napping. That would explain why I didn't notice that Tibeto-logic had been awarded the prestigious White Rabbit Award, vying and tying for first place with PSz of Thor-bu blog, which can be accessed via my sidebar (just look up and to your right). It is possible this particular White Rabbit Award (there have been many as you may know from a quick & simple Schmoogle) has never been given before, which would make it all the more unique and special now wouldn’t it? Have a look here right now if you want to.

I’m not sure which if any of the above bunnies might be Tibeto, and which Thor-bu, but anyway I’d like to imagine (from my pov, natch’) that Tibeto is the one in the center looking into it’s own reflection below the ground level, looking for all intents and purposes like the white rabbit that took Alice down the rabbit hole. This provokes a possible question, which is, Did (and do) the White Rabbits, including their weblog namesakes, lead into a world of greater delusions, into a kind of psychotropic fog-b[l]og of ego-centered fantasies, or might they to the contrary point the way through a world of alternative/alternating delusions like meditation can do? I think the question is very important, but I will defer to the Rinpoche’s thugs-dam divinations on this one.

The Rinpoche, with whom I’m not personally or even impersonally acquainted by the way, does bring up an interesting position, one not his own but one often held by modern western Buddhist-inspired meditators. It can and sometimes does go something like this: Learning can have no good effect. It only serves to make the learned proud, and pride is after all the greatest obstacle to the spiritual life. There could really be truth in this. The 4th-century Desert Fathers and Mothers of Syria, Judaea, Gaza and Egypt thought so. (It’s been said Jerome became a scholar just because he was a failure as a desert hermit...) You can also find some somehow somewhat similar echoings of this position among meditation-focused Buddhist thinkers in Tibet’s past. One of my favorites is from Pagmodrupa, a Kagyüpa two generations after the much more famous Milarepa. He says,

The learned scholars cut away the veils of words with words and establish the objects of knowing... Make forests into pens, oceans into ink, land into paper, and still there would be no end to their writing. Yogins do not establish external objectivities; they establish the mind. The mind established, its objects establish themselves.

Although I shan’t spill much ink over the issue, the forests of pens, the oceans of ink, etc, being well known to Indian writers, are not original with Pagmodrupa. Clearly, for Pagmodrupa, meditation held primacy over other things one might do as a Buddhist.

And he wasn't alone. Listen carefully to something his contemporary Zhang Yudragpa said,

Religious people in these bad times of the present
have little of the inner discipline that comes from study.
Even those who are learned in societies of words
have not realized their significances.
In the future, their proud contentions will increase.
The revered Lamas of the accomplishment transmission
pursued meanings and became accomplished.
Permanently renouncing such things as pride,
understanding meanings was the only skill
in scriptural authority and reasoning they required.

Scriptural Buddhology (or Buddhalogical philology) was not for these early Kagyüpa teachers an end in itself. It could (and I emphasize could) have negative consequences on its practitioners by making them focus or fixate on matters not exactly conducive to Enlightenment, or by making them overly concerned with the reactions of their peers, as does often happen in the academy, even to the point of thinking this kind of competition is the only game there is. But I think even seasoned meditators will have to admit that some kinds of knowledge can be helpful. Everybody knows how inspiring reading can be at times, especially slow and meditative reading of something edifying (by ‘edifying’ I mean something that holds out the promise of bringing out your better side). True, some kinds of book knowledge may not be helpful, but still there’s no reason they would have to get in the way of anything. Relax, they’re just knowable objects, more and less well known, more and less well observed, more and less well described, after all. And differing points of view about how they all might fit together. Relax. Like they say, A little knowledge can be a noxious thing. It could make your head swell up real large, as if you had just received a much coveted prize. Well, yeah, but on the other hand, a little knowledge can be totally innocuous. Like the ones your mother gives you that don’t do anything at all. No need to ask Alice.



Afterquotes:
Amma Syncletica said,

There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.

This same Desert Mother also said,

Just as a treasure that is exposed loses its value, so a virtue which is known vanishes; just as wax melts when it is near fire, so the soul is destroyed by praise and loses all the results of its labor.

Langritangpa said,

I will train [myself] to take the defeat upon myself
And offer the victory to others.

This last quote is from the best translation into English from Tibetan ever made, Thupten Jinpa's Englishing of Shönu Gyalchok & Könchok Gyaltsen's compilation Mind Training: The Great Collection, Wisdom (Boston 2006), page 277. This next quote is from somewhere else:

The fact is that even though any sentient being can be enlightened, there is one minor exception: scholars. That is the one thing that really will stand in the way forever of making any progress towards enlightenment. So whatever you do, don’t become a scholar. In fact, scholarship is so dangerous that you shouldn't even read anything by scholars or listen to them speak. More than that, you should earn as much merit as possible by telling everyone you know never to listen to anything that scholars say. Dayamati, aka Richard Hayes (1992).

Artist: Niccolò Antonio Colantonio, b. ca. 1420 CE.
Notice the concentration with which the learned scholar removes
the thorn causing so much aggravation to the patient lion.

Greetings Tibeto-logicians Everywhere

With all those light burning holidays — Kwanzaa, Hannukah, the Birthday of Tsongkhapa, the traditional Christian Saturnalia, and cold weather — fast approaching for we the peoples of the northern hemisphere of our tilting and spinning top-like globe, I thought it might be fun to answer, as if you had really asked me, the perplexing question that I probably only imagine is burning brightly in your minds, which is, Didn’t Jesus Himself visit Tibet during his gap years? Somebody found His secret biography in a monastery in Leh, right? Didn’t they find His tomb in Srinagar? Well, true, the idea of Jesus traveling in Tibet is ubiquitous in internet sites. Just try Schmoogling "Jesus in Tibet," but come right back here when you’re done. Let’s have a look at only one very important source of this idea, just to gauge its validity as a source of historical information. It could be instructive, I suppose, but not too instructive, I hope.

Reverend Levi H. Dowling (1844-1911), of Indianapolis, Indiana, was the revealer of The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, in which Jesus traveled to Lassa (meaning Lhasa) in Tibet and met up with some interesting people we might suppose to have been Tibetan Buddhists there. I would just like to call to your attention, valued reader, that this would have been long before the time of the legendary Tibetan Emperor Lha Totori Nyentsen, when the Dharma first descended on Tibet from the sky.

Here is the beginning of chapter 36 of the Aquarian Gospel:

“IN Lassa of Tibet there was a master’s temple, rich in manuscripts of ancient lore. 
2) The Indian sage had read these manuscripts, and he revealed to Jesus many of the secret lessons they contained; but Jesus wished to read them for himself. 
3) Now, Meng-tse, greatest sage of all the farther East, was in this temple of Tibet. 
4) The path across Emodus heights was difficult; but Jesus started on his way, and Vidyapati sent with him a trusted guide. 
5) And Vidyapati sent a message to Meng-tse, in which he told about the Hebrew sage, and spoke for him a welcome by the temple priests. 
6) Now, after many days, and perils great, the guide and Jesus reached the Lassa temple in Tibet. 
7) And Meng-tse opened wide the temple doors, and all the priests and masters gave a welcome to the Hebrew sage. 
8) And Jesus had access to all the sacred manuscripts, and, with the help of Meng-tse, read them all. 
9) And Meng-tse often talked with Jesus of the coming age, and of the sacred service best adapted to the people of the age. 
10) In Lassa Jesus did not teach. When he finished all his studies in the temple schools he journeyed toward the West. In many villages he tarried for a time and taught. 
11) At last he reached the pass, and in the Ladak city, Leh, he was received with favor by the monks, the merchants, and the men of low estate. 
12) And in the monastery he abode, and taught; and then he sought the common people in the marts of trade; and there he taught. 
13) Not far away a woman lived, whose infant son was sick nigh unto death.”

Levi must have gotten the name of the Emodus Mountains from Megasthenes. We don’t know about it otherwise.

“The races which we may enumerate without being tedious, from the chain of Emodus, of which a spur is called Imaus (meaning in the native tongue snowy*), are the Isari, Cosyri, Izgi, and on the hills the Chisiotosagi, and the Brachmauae, a name comprising many tribes, among which are the Maccocalingae.” (This was taken from here).

*That Megasthenes can say that Imaus contains the local word for ‘snowy’ certainly reminds of Tibetan Gangchen (Gangs-can), ‘snowy,’ which translates Sanskrit Himavant.

See also chapter 56 of the Aquarian Gospel for the Reverend’s account of the international conference of seven sages held in Alexandria:

“6) Now, Alexandria was the center of the world's best thought, and here in Philo's home the sages met. 
7) From China came Meng-tse; from India Vidyapati came; from Persia Kaspar came; and from Assyria Ashbina came; from Greece Apollo came; Matheno was the Egyptian sage, and Philo was the chief of Hebrew thought.”

Vidyāpati is a fine Indian name meaning ‘Lord of Knowledge,’ but I fear the Reverend really may have intended the “cuckoo of Maithili,” a 15th century author of love songs. Of course I can’t be entirely sure of it.

Matheno is obviously Manetho. The transposition of consonants (or vowels) is a common way to disguise who it is you really mean, or what your source was (it can still work given the way Google works).

Meng-tse reflects better the Chinese than does the Latinized Mencius with which most of those who were educated in Euro-America are more familiar. Of course there are chronological problems. Mencius had been dead for centuries when Jesus was born. Manetho lived in 3rd century BCE.

Kaspar is very probably Gaspar, the Persian among the Three Wise Men, who have no names at all in the Bible, although they do have names on the famous mosaics of Ravenna in Italy. 

Or is he Caspar the Friendly Ghost of American cartoon fame? The idea suffers cruelly from the fact that this particular Caspar was never explicitly associated with Iran, and as if that were not enough there is one huge and pesky chronological conundrum.

Philo is the very well known philosopher of exactly that name, who was indeed a native son of Alexandria, one who happily married Athens to Jerusalem in his thinking. Unlike most of the other attendees, he actually was a near contemporary of Jesus.

Until today I had always believed Apollo was a god and never even imagined he might be a human sage. I stand corrected.

Ashbina is a bit of a mystery, although I’m thinking it could be related to the Aśvins maybe. But they weren’t Assyrians, now were they? Believe what you want. But let’s try and keep it believable. Holiday cheers!

An afterthought

Gideon Jasper Richard Ouseley (1835-1906 CE) was an interesting contemporary of Rev. L. Dowling and N. Notovich. I don’t believe the three of them have ever been considered as a group, although I think they should be, at least as regards the Jesus + Tibet connection. Ouseley was a Lisbon-born Irish cleric, became a priest in 1870 in the Catholic Apostolic Church, although eventually excommunicated. He waged a life-long crusade for universal abstinence from meat, tobacco and alcohol. What is more relevant and to the point here, he claimed to have obtained, in 1881, through spiritistic means, meaning dreams and visions, the original document behind the Four Gospels. This came to him in the form of an Aramaic manuscript that had been placed for safekeeping in a Tibetan monastery by Essenes (note that, in books published in the 1880's — the heydey of the early Theosophical Society — Arthur Lillie had already argued that Jesus was *really* an Essene, and that the Essenes were *really* Buddhists). Ouseley himself never claimed to have traveled to Tibet, and neither did his Jesus. He called this visionary document The Gospel of the Holy Twelve, The Gospel of the Nazarenes, among still other names. This new Gospel "expounds the doctrines of Christ on universal compassion, vegetarianism and kindness to animals (involving abolition of animal sacrifices)." It was published in 1904. He wrote several other books, which seem not to be so well known, including one on cosmic rays, auras, and healing with colors. He was closely associated with the anti-vivisectionist and occultist writers Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. Ouseley, Dowling and Notovich may have had quite different motives. Dowling’s Jesus traveled to Tibet with a mission to read his way through a library and to learn from Meng-tse some updated rites suited to modern times. Notovich, of Russian Orthodox background, wanting his story to be believed, denied having any motives, but at times you can see his ‘rationalism’ slipping through, in his expressions of doubt about the resurrection of Jesus and the like. Ouseley’s Jesus never went to Tibet. It was His original and uncorrupted gospel — one that has Jesus preaching Ouseley’s pet ideas — that went there. In general all three wanted to ‘document’ a new truth about Jesus and/or the teachings of Jesus by recovering texts from a safe place, one generally deemed inaccessible, which to their minds meant Tibet (both Tibet and Ladakh in the case of Notovich). All three — and Lillie, too (although he is renowned for opposing the Theosophical Society) — supply, each in his way, a counter-narrative to the usual accounts of Christian origins. If only for that reason they were bound to persuade some of their readers, to whom it mattered not at all that the author-revealers knew next to nothing about Tibet. Neither did it matter that the ‘mysteries’ they located there have hardly anything at all to do with the real mysteries (not to mention beauties, inspirations, truths) to be found there, while having very much to do with broad religio-cultural arguments then (and, OK, now) raging in and among Euro-American minds.



See and hear and read more:

John Buescher, Jesus in Tibet, and Other Tales from the Dawn of the Aquarian Age. Search for it at www.thdl.org, since my connection is unreliable at the moment. This is a video version of a lecture given in honor of the retirement of Prof. Jeffrey Hopkins. This is your best place to find out more about the lives and wives of Levi H. Dowling. The Reverend Dowling was actually living in L.A., and not in Indianapolis as I suggested above, having long left Indiana behind along with his minister's work with The Church of Christ, when he "transcribed" the Aquarian Gospel. Also fascinating to learn that he had an associate in L.A. named Frederick Oliver who channeled an entity who called himself "Phylos the Tibetan." This is wonderful news.

Levi H. Dowling, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, first published in 1908. Online versions are everywhere.

Arthur Lillie (b. 1831), Buddhism in Christendom, or, Jesus, the Essene, first published in 1887. A PDF of the original publication may be downloaded without charge here.

The Lost Years of Jesus. Look here, where you will find a useful timeline, as well as some alternatives to the alternative views. Don't miss Jesus with long blonde hair, headband, shepherd crook and Torah scrolls hiking amidst the yaks. 21st-century imaginary art at its best.

The Lost Years of Jesus: Was Jesus in Tibet? A brief clip produced by EVTV, including hugely entertaining interviews with Glenn Kimball, author of Hidden Stories of the Childhood of Jesus, and with John Hogue, author of Messiahs: Visions & Prophecies. It might be findable if you search.

K, The Missing Gospel. The whole Jesus-in-Tibet (& Kashmir) myth picked over and reified through digital effects in a forthcoming indie movie. The announcement for this just-linked low-budget production was already nominated for "Worst News of the Week" back in September. A factoid movie for your factoid people could spell box-office success, unfortunately.

The Gospel of the Nazarenes, translated from the original Aramaic
 by Rev. Gideon Jasper Richard Ouseley M.A. Press here.

Charles Francis Potter, The Lost Years of Jesus Revealed. I read this book as a young person and was very impressed by it. I wonder what could have happened to my copy? Any idea about that, Kim? Jerry?

Robert M. Price, Jesus in Tibet: A Modern Myth, The Fourth R, vol. 14, no. 3 (May 2001).

Sam van Schaik, Christianity in Early Tibet. Found at the blogsite "Early Tibet." Press here.

Tibet Talk (Blog), The Lost Years of Jesus in Tibet. This appears not to exist on the internet any longer. I searched for it recently and failed to find it.

Geza Vermes, Who's Who in the Age of Jesus, Penguin Reference Library (London 2005).



The photos were taken in Ravenna, Italy, in 2007. The glowing alabaster windows are from the tomb of Empress Galla Placidia (ca. 388-450 CE), erected in about 435 CE. The mosaic of the Three Wise Men is from Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, originally a church of the Arian "heretics" built in about 500 CE. The Arians followed the theology of the Alexandrian Arius (ca. 250-336). He had a subordinationist view of Christ's divinity, a view roundly condemned at the infamous Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. That's why, in the mosaics that follow, nothing remains of the "heretic" saints but their hands (look closely at the next-to-last pillar and see if you can spot one, or look here), their bodies replaced by curtains.

Tibet's Nasreddin? Touching on Uncle Tompa's Elusive Historicity

If you haven’t seen the 2005 Hollywood movie “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World,” that's OK. I haven’t either. From what I hear, if only the movie had been a better one, it could have justified the snow flurry of overheated discussion, based on its title alone, that played prelude to its unwelcome release. To cram a long involved argument into a 21st-century soundbyte, No, you don't have to look all that hard. And, yes, for those harboring the least bit of doubt there is, and has been, plenty of humor in the Middle East, as could be known from the stories collected in the 13th century by Bar Hebraeus, as well as from the hilarious stories of the trials and exploits of Nasreddin.

On an ordinary day I would never feel so foolhardy as to try to define comedy or humor (yes, OK, if Aristotle’s treatise had only survived the library conflagration in The Name of the Rose we would better know how to deal with this and so many other serious problems). As a younger person luckily not, or not yet, an Aristotelian like the rest of us courageously put it, tragedy shows us life is complete crap and my, isn’t that awful, but comedy shows us life is complete crap and my, isn’t that funny... But, anyway, what you see in many of these Nasreddin stories is a quite ordinary train of commonsense logic (or a very ‘ordinary’ unfolding of events) that goes haywire in some way or another. It gets capped by a logical consequence (or unexpected turn) that you just didn't see coming. You see the conventional as indeed mere empty convention. It falls out of the space in your mind it once occupied so securely. This 'hits' you as funny. In these stories Nasreddin plays either the fool — the fool who could prove somehow nevertheless wise — or the cunning trickster. In our very act of laughter he finds complete vindication for his [1] naivety or [2] deceit as the case may be (or [1+2] feigned naivety, a combination of the two, sometimes a justifiable understanding).

But regardless of what got it started, when the laughter trails off we may start to wonder, Who was that Nasreddin really? Are there clues in the tales themselves? Can we piece history out of these folksy fictions? Here things start to get messy and interesting for the historian who takes her (or yeah, well, that’s right, his!) job seriously. In the old days it was generally assumed that he must have lived in the neighborhood, wherever that might've been. Cypriots thought he lived in Cyprus, Croatians in Croatia, Persians in Persia etc. Nowadays, at least since about 1990, Turkish scholars have shown industry in making sure the rest of us believe the story that he lived in Turkey. Not that there is anything especially unbelievable in this, just that the evidence seems rather flimsy and debatable. What does seem sure is that stories in his name became progressively more and more popular in the vast domains of the Ottoman rulers (historic map here), and that the first literary mentions of his name date from 15th and 16th centuries. Just because a few of the stories associate him with Timur (Tamerlane, 1336-1405), some want to say he lived in the 14th century. There are those who see no problem at all in using information from the stories, which after all are from practically everywhere in space and time, as a key to localizing him. Some even point to a tomb with his name on it, with the (A.H.) Hijra date of his death written backward (supposedly as a joke: H.A., H.A.). Aha! After turning the numbers around and translating into the (CE) Common Era date, we get 1383, or 1384.

Right now it isn’t my purpose to say much of anything about the historical Nasreddin. I’m writing because I recently came across a couple of intriguing sources of information that could have to do with the historical identity of Tibet’s counterpart to Nasreddin, Uncle Tompa. The two comic folk-heroes might at first blush look different just because so many of the Uncle Tompa stories are unabashedly eros-tinged and at times obscene-to-pornographic, but then it has been said that the Nasreddin stories were cleaned up (expurgated) in the editing and publishing processes (see Karabas 1990). A few Uncle Tompa (A-khu Ston-pa) stories, like “Uncle Tompa Sleeps with a Virgin,” may be enjoyed after a simple Schmoogle search, but really, you have no choice but to beg, buy or borrow Rinjing Dorje, Tales of Uncle Tompa: The Legendary Rascal of Tibet, Station Hill Arts (Barrytown 1997). Otherwise how could you possibly read that all-time favorite, “Uncle Tompa Sells Penises at the Nunnery”?

A survey of 53 Amdo-born Tibetan college students in Xining (see Stuart et al. 1999) revealed that every single one of them had heard Uncle Tompa stories, although most students denied the stories had anything sexual about them. Were their teachers there in the room? Afanti came in second, with 33 students. Afanti who? you may be asking. Afanti is of course Effendi, a common title in the Ottoman period, and one title among others that have been attached to the name of Nasreddin. Afanti, in this case, simply is Nasreddin. This may seem somewhat surprising, provoking further questions. Granted that the Muslim population of Amdo (now called Qinghai) has much increased in recent decades, still it is the case that this region has been a ‘contact zone’ between Tibetan and Islamic cultures for 600 years and more (for a good sense of the historical ‘frontier’ culture of Amdo, read Nietupski's book). Could it be that stories have passed through this route, perhaps substituting the name of one with the other, as we know happened in the history of Nasreddin stories in other parts of the world? (I’m thinking especially of Iranian Juha stories that turned into Nasr al-Din stories, as discussed in Marzolph’s 1995 article, but I imagine this is only the tip of the iceberg.) I won’t pursue this very historical quest today, just to suggest it as a possible way to go if you feel inclined to test it out. The two sets of stories ought to be closely compared someday.

The credit for first detecting a historical person behind the Uncle stories must go to Rasé Könchog Gyatso Rinpoche. I don’t have this author’s article on the subject on hand, sorry to say, but here is a brief suggestive paragraph from his huge book on the history of the Drigung Kagyü School:

“Uncle Tompa was born to the family of the Kyura [a most important hereditary clan for the Drigung Kagyü, the clan of its founder], and went to be at the side of the Dharma Lord,* becoming his Heart Son. He led a yogic life, circling the nations [traveling aimlessly], and did difficult ascetic practices and the like, in all that he did benefiting others. Even today one may see the ruins of the place where he did his practices in the lower valley of Para (Spa-ra),** a place particularly praised by the Chennga [Rinpoché]. Proceeding out of events in his own life, these very famous ‘Tales of Uncle Tompa’ have originated, it would seem.”

*The title Dharma Lord (Chos-rje) we may know from context to mean the 4th abbot of Drigung Monastery, Chennga Dragpa Jungné (Spyan-snga Grags-pa-'byung-gnas), one of the main disciples of the founder of the Drigung Kagyü, Jigten Gönpo.  

**The Sarat Chandra Das dictionary says Spa-ra is name of a village northwest of Lhasa.

The works of Chennga have recently been published, so I had a look there, and was intrigued to find two works explicitly written for his sake.

Uncle Tompa's teacher Chennga Dragpa Jungné

Before saying something about them, I would like to point out one interesting thing that otherwise might be overlooked. If it is true that the ‘original’ Uncle Tompa was a disciple of the Chennga, that means he probably lived from around 1200-1275. His adult life would have fallen within the time of Mongol power over the greater part of Eurasia, including Tibet. In particular, it is known that the early Ilkhan rulers, with their main capital at Tabriz (today in extreme northwestern Iran just a short distance from Turkey), had very strong Buddhist tendencies, and invited teachers called Bakshis, among them some of Tibetan origins. Although research continues of course, we do not know the personal names of any of these Tibetan Bakshis. Still, it is quite certain they would have been Drigung Kagyüpas (or possibly Pagdru Kagyüpas), since the western Mongol rulers served as their patrons. In short, some of Uncle Tompa's fellow Drigungpas were living in the heart of the Middle East. I’m not saying we ought to make a lot out of it at this moment, just to keep it in mind.

In one of the two works, a letter, the teacher acknowledges receipt of earlier and later offerings sent to him, including books and pieces of turquoise. He says,

"Now in response your old father, your teacher, sends this letter.

Give up ordinary impermanent compounded things.
Be sure of death, the way of all beings that are born.
Pass your days and nights in even-toned meditation
on the sky-like nature of nondual mind proper..."

Together with these and other words of advice, he sent two woolen robes.

The other work has words of advice for the spiritual life, with an obvious and strong emphasis on renunciation. Just to give a sample in hasty translation, this is the initial part immediately following the opening homage verse:

The joys and enjoyments that may be found in sangsara and nirvana
we wish to have, but following in their train are the faults,
and all the faults of sangsara go back to a fundamental stupidity.
Of all things that ought to be given up, this stupidity is supreme.

Stupidity's antidote is interdependent origination.
Since each interdependent thing, taken singularly, is impermanent,
you must abandon the stupidity of extreme views like eternalism and nihilism.

When the interdependent things are taken by twos, you have cause and result.
So give up the stupidity that confounds cause and result,
not wanting to see results in virtuous and non-virtuous karma.

The advice continues in like vein, with dual emphases on the renunciation of worldly frivolities and on the Buddhist view of relativity, which says that all things are interdependently originated. Renunciation and relativity are tightly interrelated, mutually reinforcing.

In closing, the Chennga addresses his disciple, “For my only son, Uncle Tompa, a supreme personage born from the family of the glorious Drigungpa Jigten Gönpo, a yogi of fine unerring meditative realization...”

Looking at these two texts, thinking of this as the ‘original’ Uncle Tompa, I'm left wondering how one Uncle could have developed into the other. And that’s a funny situation to get trapped into. Maybe you can figure out how that happened? If so, help me out! What am I missing, people?




Read more:

Chennga Dragpa Jungné (Spyan-snga Grags-pa-'byung-gnas, 1175-1255), The Collected Works (gsung-bum) of Grags-pa-'byung-gnas: A Chief Disciple of the Skyob-pa 'Jig-rten-gsum-mgon, ed. by H.H. Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang, Drikung Kagyu Publications (Delhi 2002). The two titles of interest here are on pp. 250-254: Precepts on Giving up [the Vicious Circle of] Sangsara Granted to Uncle Tompa (A-khu Ston-pa-la Gnang-ba'i 'Khor-ba Spong-ba'i Gdams-pa), and on pp. 567-569, A Letter Sent to My Dear Son Uncle Tompa (Gces-pa'i Bu Sdug A-khu Ston-pa-la Springs-pa).

Drigung Könchog Gyatso ('Bri-gung Dkon-mchog-rgya-mtsho, b. 1968), 'Bri-gung Chos-'byung, Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 2004), in 783 pages. A history of the Drigung Kagyü School of Tibetan Buddhism. The author is identical to Ra-se Dkon-mchog-rgya-mtsho (below). The passage translated above looks like this in the original: a khu ston pa ni / 'bri gung du skyu ra'i rigs las bltams shing chos rje'i zhabs la gtugs pas thugs sras su gyur / rnal 'byor gyis spyod pas / rgyal khams bskor zhing brtul zhugs spyod pa ci yang bskyangs te gzhan phan cher mdzad / spa ra'i mdor sgrub pa mdzad pa'i shul da lta'ang mchis shing spyan sngas kyang bsngags brjod che / nyid kyi mdzad pa las 'phros nas a khu ston pa'i sgrung zhes grags che ba 'di nyid byung bar snang ngo.

The late Dungkar Rinpoche's dictionary (entirely in Tibetan), pp. 726-727, tells about an actor popular in the 1940's named Lobzang Tsering (who died in around 1970), generally known under the name Uncle Tompa because he somehow resembled him in his story-telling abilities. Oddly, Dungkar Rinpoche neglected to include an entry for Uncle Tompa himself. It's interesting that the actor is mentioned, too, in R.A. Stein, Tibetan Civilization, Stanford University Press (Stanford 1972), p. 155: "Not long ago at Lhasa again, there was a famous jester with a talent for singing, a sort of ballad-monger, who could venture political satires without risking punishment. He was known by the nickname 'Aku Tömpa', thus being likened to one of those waggish saints we have discussed."

Ananda Hopkins, Chaucer and the Fabliau, transcript of lecture for the Medieval to Renaissance Literature course, University of Warwick (Autumn 2005). Download the PDF here. Try this blog, also.

Seyfi Karabas, The Use of Eroticism in Nasreddin Hoca Anecdotes, Western Folklore, vol. 49, no. 3 (July 1990), pp. 299-305.

Lucile Vartanian Kirwan, Armenian Stories of Hodja, California Folklore Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1943), pp. 27-29.

Ulrich Marzolph, Molla Nasr al-Din in Persia, Iranian Studies, vol. 28, nos. 3-4 (Summer 1995), pp. 157-174.

Paul Kocot Nietupski, Labrang: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery at the Crossroads of Four Civilizations, Snow Lion (Ithaca 1999).

Rasé Könchog Gyatso (Ra-se Dkon-mchog-rgya-mtsho), A-khu Ston-pa'i 'Byung-bar Thog-ma'i Bsam-gzhigs, Gangs-ljongs Rig-gnas, vol. 30, no. 2 (1996), pp. 92-96. I haven't actually seen this article and have little hope of seeing it in the near future. The title means something like 'Preliminary Considerations on the Emergence of Uncle Tompa.'

Kevin Stuart, Kun-mchog-dge-legs, and Dpal-ldan-bkra-shis, Tibetan Tricksters, Asian Folklore Studies, vol. 58, no. 1 (1999), pp. 5-30. Download in PDF format here.
Tibetan trickster figures mentioned here include A-tsi-byi'u-mgo,* Ston-pa Shes-rab, Rdzun-khro-lo, Nyi-chos-bzang-po, 'Brug-pa Kun-legs and Ge-sar among still others.
*'Ouchy Birdy Head.' This name may have originally meant a throwing stone shaped like a bird head, with a beak-like protrusion[s]... It won't sound so funny when one is coming right at you. The figure of Ston-pa Shes-rab is probably based on a purposeful mispronunciation of Ston-pa Gshen-rab, the Teacher of the Bon religion.

Karl D. Uitti, Fabliau and Comic Tale, contained in: Joseph R. Strayer, ed., Dictionary of the Middle Ages, Charles Scribner's Sons (New York 1984), vol. 4, pp. 574-7.

The Warburg Institute in London recently held a conference about Tibetan-Islamic historical relations, and a volume of papers will be published before long. Their website has a very good bibliography on the subject.

Pangsa Monastery Closure Report

The Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy has just today made a news release, not yet verified by other sources, about the closing of a monastery in Tibet by the authorities. The name of the monastery is Pangsa.

I have no way of knowing if their information about the monastery closure is accurate, although I imagine it is, just because it fits in with the general patterns of the current PRC psyche war against His Holiness the Dalai Lama (whom they often call, with irritating breeziness, and of course disrespect, simply "Dalai," as if that were enough).

I am not a journalist, but as a historian I have some serious problems with what they say about Pangsa Monastery and its relics. First let me quote a paragraph from the news report verbatim. Then I will state my problems with the distortion of 'history' that it presents.

"Pangsa Monastery belongs to the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. The monastery's chief relic is a mummified reliquary body of the highly realized Yogi Jampal Gyatso. Je Tsongapa Chenpo (1357-1419), the exalted master and the founder of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism brought the holy reliquary statue of Yogi Jampal Gyatso from his birthplace, Tsonga in Amdo Province along with him when he came to Lhasa, during the 14th century. Since then the reliquary statue of Yogi was housed in the Pangsa Monastery as a chief relic."

The word that is here translated as 'Yogi' is Togden (Rtogs-ldan), which in modern times is most likely to refer to Drugpa Kagyü lay practitioners, who wear their long hair up in a topknot rather in the style of Hindu sadhus. I doubt if this modern usage of the term was current in the 15th century, however, and would prefer to translate Togden simply as '[Spiritually] Realized One.' Togden Jampal Gyatso's dates are 1356 through 1428. Of course, these dates immediately present us with a problem. If Tsongkhapa (which is who they mean by "Je Tsongapa Chenpo") died in 1419, and Jampal Gyatso died in 1428, then how could Tsongkhapa have brought his relics with him when he came to Central Tibet from his Amdo homeland of Tsongkha, an event which occurred in 1373-1374? This is clearly impossible.

In fact, we may know from the biography of Jampal Gyatso that he, like Tsongkhapa, was a native of Tsongkha, and like Tsongkhapa he traveled to Central Tibet in or around the year 1373. Rather like the younger Tsongkhapa, he also traveled to a large number of different monasteries of different traditions rather than studying in only one. He eventually became one of Tsongkhapa's main disciples, and accompanied him on meditation retreats in caves or in improvised grass huts. During these retreats, Jampal Gyatso was given the nickname 'Juniper Berry' (Shug-'bru-ba) because he lived for 3 years on a diet of pills made primarily of juniper berries (not generally considered edible, although some European ethnic cuisines use them for spice).

The most important event from traditional perspective, Tsongkhapa gave especially secret 'Cutting' practices to the very limited group of retreatants, and to Jampal Gyatso alone he gave the Emanation Volume (Sprul-pa'i Glegs-bam), a miraculous book. It's very content and nature are an enormous mystery. Some say that it disappeared into the divine realms at some point and no longer exists. Some say it never really existed as a physical book, but was a miraculous apparition made of light. I recently heard rumors that a copy of it had been found in Bhutan, so Who knows? The gift of this book marked the beginning of the main esoteric current of the Gelugpa School known either as the Genden Nyengyü or the Ensa Nyengyü, which continues still today, although it may be impossible to find out too much about it. The very name Nyengyü means it is 'whispered from mouth to ear.' It is said that it is not normally taught to more than one person at a time. So I wish you luck locating that person.

Later on the abbot of Pangsa Monastery (Spang-sa) invited him, and he stayed in the Rosehip Valley (Se-ba Rong) close to Pangsa. Pangsa had been founded originally in the decades surrounding the year 1200 by a student of the Kadampa teacher Se Chilbupa (Se Spyil-bu-pa). He meditated for a very long time, accomplishing visions of Manjushri. News of his sanctity spread throughout Tibet, and many people found their way to his hermitage to seek his guidance. Before he passed away in his 73rd year, he passed on the teachings of the Emanation Volume to his own disciple Baso Chökyi Gyaltsen. After his death, the residents of Pangsa placed his remains inside a golden reliquary.

I hope the people at TCHRD will not take this criticism badly. I do not intend to pick on them in particular, or even on journalism in general. Bad history can be found everywhere. Most of us know from experience that the most usual place to find it is in the history books.



Read more:

The absolutely best thing to read, in English, about the life of Jampal Gyatso is this: Janice D. Willis, Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Transmission, Wisdom (Boston 1995), pp. 32-40.

Pangsa Monastery has been rebuilt following its destruction in the Cultural Revolution, and probably never had a very large number of monks. It is located northeast of Lhasa, on the way to Drigung Monastery.

For more on Pangsa Monastery, check the Knowledge Base at TBRC (Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center) by searching for "Spang sa" or look directly here. Here we can learn that in 1959 there were 30 monks staying there.

Does History Matter?

I’ve never posted a video on a blog before, but I’m so eager to have you hear Tsering Shakya, one of the best of the historians of 20th-century Tibet, give his carefully considered thoughts about history in general and Tibetan history writing in particular, that I’m willing to make the attempt. I’m not a modernist historian myself, as you may know, but I like to keep an open mind, and avoid stumbling over too many self-imposed boundaries. Be sure to set aside about an hour and a half, assuming your connection speed is good.

Actually, I give up on the whole video posting idea, which doesn’t seem to be working all that well for me. At times like these I wish one of my nephews was here for consultation.


Just press HERE.


One interesting thing, among many, that Tsering Shakya says is this: It is unlikely that the scholars who produced these [history] texts [in past centuries] would have ever imagined that the existence of Tibet would be questioned. At last someone has pronounced these words of truth. I would have said “extremely unlikely.”