Jyekundo / Yushu: a traveller’s tale

 

Transcript, with some possible errors, of the podcast at podbean

00:00:11

Hello and once again let me extend a real welcome to the listeners to this Double Dorje podcast.

00:00:18

The last couple of episodes, that's the one about the four revolting thoughts and the one that touches on the whole business of refuge, were fairly serious.

00:00:28

But amongst other things, in the trailer, I did promise you some traveller's tales, and I think it's time for one of those.

00:00:36

To be honest, the story doesn't amount to all that much, but it did mean a lot to me at the time, so I hope you might be able to share some of the feeling.

00:00:46

Firstly, forgive me for the brief interruption, but let me urge you to take a moment to like this episode to share it and tell your friends. And if you haven't already, to subscribe to the Double Dorje thank you.

00:01:02

Now we are going back some 3 decades or more.

00:01:05

I was lucky enough to go on a pilgrimage with about 20 other students of my teacher at the time, Chime Rinpoche.

00:01:15

Let's forget the run up, how we got there, what was our destination.

00:01:20

Just picture yourself in the far eastern part of Tibet in Kham, more specifically in Jyekundo, or Yushu as it is now known under its Chinese name.

00:01:32

The town of Jyekundo is of significant size, but I'm afraid I haven't got a number for you any more accurate than some tens of thousands.

00:01:40

But somehow we were there.

00:01:44

The governor's guesthouse is probably not the worst place to stay in Jyekundo.

00:01:50

The indications that we gathered from the way our whole journey had been organised were that it was probably, in fact, one of the best.

00:01:58

From what we could see, the place itself was rather less grand, although we were far too pleased to be there at all to be very worried. On each of five concrete floors was a small office where the keys were held.

00:02:13

Along the corridors, which seemed always to be wet, stood pots at regular intervals.

00:02:19

While these parts were doubtlessly receptacles for spit and nub ends, the colour and odour suggested that they may also have been pisspotts.

00:02:27

Smells, however, can mislead. It's not as if I went around actually sniffing them, let me assure you.

00:02:34

But the toilets opened directly onto the corridor with nothing but a mottled grey brown curtain for a door hanging from the lintell down about as far as waist height.

00:02:45

The toilets themselves were an interesting compromise with Western methods.

00:02:50

A row of metre high cubicles is something you could see often enough in China, but usually these had a single hole in the floor of each cubicle.

00:03:01

In this case, on the other hand, instead of one hole per cubicle, a single tiled trench ran sideways through the floor of the row of cubicles.

00:03:13

Now and again a welcome stream of water would flush through the whole trench.

00:03:19

At that stage in our journey, I had learned three Chinese characters, namely the character for man, the character for woman, and the character for Beijing.

00:03:30

The first two are very useful in a lot of circumstances.

00:03:35

Here, positioned between the door marked man and the one marked woman, there was a washroom where a galvanised electric boiler produced water that was usually really hot.

00:03:47

Its open mains breaker buzzed and sparked continuously.

00:03:52

I used to be an engineer, so it was pleasing to see that this circuit breaker was mounted on the concrete external wall. So the danger of starting a fire was in fact quite low.

00:04:04

The cheaply made, if I may say so, furnishings of the accommodation rooms had seen better days, and two wash basins stood on tubular iron stands, so that a jug of hot water could be fetched from across the corridor and used in privacy.

00:04:21

The bed linen was startlingly Chinese, printed in the glaring pinks, reds and pale blues of popular taste, but they did seem to be clean.

00:04:31

Like the circuit breaker in the toilet room, some of the light switches here were also bereft of any sort of safety cover, and at least one of our party did have a nasty experience later groping for the light switch in the middle of the night.

00:04:46

A few of our party dashed out that evening straight away to do shopping, but most of us simply got clean, rested, ate, chatted a little bit, and went to bed.

00:04:57

I did venture out briefly with a friend and walking down the main street. A small, bent, and forgive me for saying so, but grimy old woman came against us and in passing pushed some paper money into my friend's hands. We can only speculate, but it seems that the word had gone round that these strange, tall, pale eyed creatures from another world were in the entourage of an important lama visiting from far away, and that was enough to make them into a suitable object for offerings.

00:05:32

I kept the note and treasured it for some years in an envelope, but it was extremely dirty and somewhere along the line it got lost.

00:05:42

The next morning brought me one of the warmest experiences of the whole trip, which is the main part of this traveller's tale.

00:05:55

Having gone to bed early the night before, I woke up really quite early, and by 7:00 I was ready to explore.

00:06:04

I left the guest house with no more plan than to wander a little and see whatever was to be seen.

00:06:11

The main street was a style best called New Chinese, and with all goodwill can, as such, only be described as ugly.

00:06:21

I passed the cinema and walked towards the main junction next to which there is an open square used as a marketplace.

00:06:29

Looking across the square, you can see the badly damaged Sakya monastery which overlooks the town from high on a nearby hill.

00:06:39

Behind the square I could see some older parts of the town, so I took that direction and soon found myself climbing narrow paths with no paving whatsoever, And with water trickling down the middle.

00:06:53

The doorways of the brown walled houses were decorated with prayer flags under which brown dogs lay sleeping on the brown earth, warmed by the morning sun.

00:07:04

A man, of some kind of middle age was standing outside his door and as a client passed him, we went through that sort of stranger's recognition procedure that starts with something like a blank stare. Then a curious stare followed by a slight smile, and if that's reciprocated, you finally get to big smiles.

00:07:25

I continued to climb and I soon realised that this guy, whoever he was, was following close behind me.

00:07:32

Mistakenly I thought that he was following just to see what the long nosed person was going to do, and since he made no attempt to speak, I decided after a minute or two to make it easy by sitting down on a rock and using a bit of exaggerated play acting to communicate that I was out of breath.

00:07:54

We were at quite a high altitude, although I can't remember the figure, so that wouldn't be surprising.

00:08:00

By now he had been joined by a friend, and the two of them stood in front of me watching.

00:08:07

I had my mala, my string of Buddhist beads, around my wrist, and I could see that he had noticed it.

00:08:15

In fact, he bent forward to examine it. The only things that are essential for a mala are the beads, but usually a number of other things are strung on it. Most commonly, a mala has 2 short strings, each of which has 10 little rings that slide up and down, and a larger ornament at the end of each.

00:08:35

The ornament can be in the form of a lotus, and very often, rather than a lotus, it's shaped as a vajra on one string and as a bell on the other.

00:08:45

With the first you can count 10 rounds of the mala, and with the second, you can multiply the count again by 10, and in that way, count up to 10,000 recitations. If that's not enough, it's also possible, and actually quite common, to use a little clip that can be moved from 1 bead to the next each time the second counter is full.

00:09:07

That means it is moved once every 10,000 mantras and because there are notionally 100 beads on the mala, you can count up to 1,000,000 in that way before you have to make a little note saying I've done a million.

00:09:24

I unwound the mala from my wrist and held it out, and as he fingered these small pieces of silver work, it must have become clear to him that this wasn't just some string of beads worn by some kind of hippie. That's assuming he had a concept of a hippie. It really was a Buddhist mala.

00:09:41

It follows from that that the pale eyed stranger – me – was in all probability actually a Buddhist.

00:09:48

How amazing.

00:09:50

Reading his thoughts in his face, I held the mala up and counted off a few beads while reciting"Om Mani Peme Hung".

00:09:57

The two men smiled at each other and said something which can only have been, “Look this weird guy is even reciting the mani.”

00:10:06

Now, it isn't very difficult to know the mani – it’s only six syllables after all. So, seeing as how I was encouraged by their response, I began the long mantra of Dorje Sempa.

00:10:18

This is known as the 100 syllable mantra, and it's probably the best known of the longer mantras.

00:10:25

It's used in purification practises, we in fact say 100,000 of them as part of the preliminary practises that I've mentioned in other episodes.

00:10:36

Their smiles told me that they were now convinced that I really was a Buddhist.

00:10:41

My new friend, if I can call him that, pointed up the hill saying something in a questioning tone about “khorwa”, which means going round and round.

00:10:51

I thought he was asking me if I was going up to circumambulate the Sakya monastery, on the rather more distant hill, and I tried to explain that it would be too far for me.

00:11:04

As luck would have it, I failed to communicate that.

00:11:08

Nevertheless, the three of us carried on walking up the hill.

00:11:12

After a minute, my acquaintance recited the first few syllables of the long mantra.

00:11:17

I responded with a few more, then it was his turn, my turn, and we finished reciting together.

00:11:26

The three of us kept going up and round a few more corners between the low single-storey houses.

00:11:33

I had the impression that they were mainly made of mud and stones, and in most cases it was only possible to see an outer wall with a single door opening surrounding what I supposed was some kind of a courtyard and various living and storage quarters letting into that.

00:11:52

I have read relatively recently that, to all intents and purposes, every single one of those houses collapsed during a big earthquake of 2010. So I think myself lucky to have even briefly seen it from the outside.

00:12:08

In due course, we came to a point where I now understood what he had meant by khorwa.

00:12:14

We'd come to a small lhakhang, that is some kind of temple. Literally it means “god house”.

00:12:22

It can also refer to a shrine room.

00:12:25

It was being circled clockwise, of course, by probably 50 or even more Tibetans and my two companions were in fact on their way to join this morning devotion.

00:12:38

The building itself was, at a guess based on hazy memory, maybe 20 metres square.

00:12:46

It was dark red, with a verandah to the front looking over the valley, I joined the walkers.

00:12:53

At the back of the building there was a row of prayer wheels and to the side a mass of mani stones over which hundreds of prayer flags were hanging.

00:13:04

Dogs were asleep in most of the available hollows in the mud road.

00:13:09

A few times round, the building gave time for me, this brown haired stranger, to be assessed, discussed and accepted.

00:13:20

He looked funny. He couldn't speak Tibetan, and he seemed a little bit lost, but otherwise he seemed to be OK.

00:13:28

As I came one more time round to the front, some of the women started gesturing to me that I should go up the veranda steps where a rather older woman led me to the curtained door.

00:13:41

She did 3 prostrations at the step, which is normal when approaching or entering a shrine.

00:13:47

I'm not sure if I was actually watched to see if I would do the same, but she did very much seem pleased when I did, giving me a two handed thumbs up. The thumbs up gesture is obviously one that's gone right round the world. And then in through the curtain.

00:14:05

The contents of the dim interior of this lhakhang gave me some surprise.

00:14:11

The whole building is in the first place, a housing for the biggest prayer wheel I had ever seen.

00:14:19

Each of its handles had ropes attached so that at busy times 30 or 40 people could squeeze in and help to turn it.

00:14:28

There was no space on any of the side walls that wasn't hung with thangkas, paintings of various forms of the Buddha.

00:14:35

While opposite the door behind the wheel, the wall was given over to an altar.

00:14:42

The central figure was a striking Guru Rinpoche, at least twice life-size, possibly a bit more.

00:14:49

And he was flanked by figures of Chenrezi on his right and white Tara on his left, each of which were maybe one-and-a-half times life size.

00:14:59

Guru Rinpoche is said to have brought Buddhism to Tibet, although that is a bit of an oversimplification.

00:15:08

By the late 8th century, in western counting, of course, there had already been quite a bit of Buddhist activity.

00:15:14

The king of the time, Trisong Detsen, was a Buddhist and had invited important teachers such as Santarakshita to help establish the Dharma in his country.

00:15:26

A monastery was being built at Samye.

00:15:29

A rather impressive centre in Scotland, Samy Ling is named after it.

00:15:35

There were, however, at that time in Tibet difficulties and Santarakshita suggested that the best way forward would be to invite the famous Padmasambhava, noted amongst other things, for his magical powers, to be asked to come.

00:15:50

It was he who dispelled the difficulties, clearing the way for Tibet to become such a stronghold of the dharma in the centuries to follow. Since then he has been known as Guru Rinpoche, the Precious Guru.

00:16:04

Not to get too involved in technicalities, one can say that Chenrezig and Tara are forms of the Buddha, Chenrezig emphasising compassion and Tara emphasising active help.

00:16:17

Her white form is particularly associated with long life.

00:16:23

To one side of these, there was a monk sitting with a flask of water.

00:16:27

I turned the wheel and muttered happily for maybe 20 minutes until at 8:00, nearly everybody left, so I thought I'd better do the same. I had no idea at all what rules, if any, a person such as myself would be expected to follow, although I now suspect that it would have been perfectly fine if I'd stayed on.

00:16:47

But when in Jyekundo, doing as the Jyekundo people do seemed to be a good bet.

00:16:55

Outside, it was now dogs’ breakfast time, so I made my way down to the guest house to get some breakfast for myself.

00:17:03

Later in the morning, four of us pilgrims from the West went back, and I think we all felt the same joy at being able to join in this exercise. By that I mean that it was religious in the simple sense, having more to do with experiencing beauty, devotion and inspiration in a concrete and natural way, rather than with philosophy or theory.

00:17:29

Later, when Ato Rinpoche, whose sad death I had to report a few episodes ago, saw pictures of this lhakhang, he recognised the spot straight away. He told us that it was called Mani Nama, and it was considered to be a very important shrine.

00:17:49

He told us how they would take a horse ride to visit it for the day and have a picnic.

00:17:55

Since then I have learnt that Mani Dunkhor is another name for the place, but I don't know the spelling.

00:18:03

At first sight, it looks like it might well mean “Mani – seven times round.

00:18:08

The mani would refer to the wheel, and it's possible that it was filled with many many printed mantras.

00:18:15

But I don't really have any idea what Dunkhor might mean – perhaps seven times round, but that's a wild guess.

00:18:24

So there's my traveller's tale and that's the end of today's episode.

00:18:28

If you enjoyed it, please like, subscribe and tell your friends – and keep turning the wheel.

00:18:35

Bye.

Words or phrases you might want to look up:

Sakya

Mala

Vajra

Yushu

Jyekundo

Mani-Dunkhor

Trisong Detsen

Śāntarakṣita

 

#Buddhism #Vajrayana #Tibet #DoubleDorje #Yushu #Jyekundo #lama #mantra #meditation #nyingma #kagyu #Refuge #Bodhicitta