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.