TALK: The Green Mountain College Blog

I think I failed to mention how intense the Jokhang temple is. There are pilgrims from all across the WORLD that visit there, and many of them take the time to circumambulate the temple either 1, 3, 7, 21, 28, or even 108 times because those are the Buddhist auspicious numbers. YIKES! Some of the pilgrims had pieces of stone attached to their hands, knees, and other more important areas of their bodies so that they could simply slide down on the cobble stone ground in one swoop to a completely horizontal position and essentially pray to the temple. While some stayed in the same area and did this repeatedly, others would circumambulate while doing this, which equated to a rather long day of praying, as these ones tended to need to pray three times in one location before moving along. I just can’t imagine how long it takes to circle that building in that manner.

Here's a picture of some of said pilgrims prostrating.

So. Once inside the temple, we were given a tour of the different statues there. One fascinating statue was Mailrepa’s. Mailrepa was a Tibetan dude who became fully enlightened in one lifetime (conservative Buddhists believe it takes many lifetimes and a lot of work to finally obtain enlightenment, although there are ways, albeit dangerous, to become enlightened in one life time). What was even more fascinating about Mailrepa’s story, however, is the fact that he also killed 30 people in his life, which creates a ton of bad karma, AND obtained enlightenment. Odd. The story goes that Mailrepa’s uncle was not a very nice dude, and as such, he took all the money and property away from his single mom when Mailrepa was younger. As he grew, his mother encouraged him to learn black magic to get back at his uncle, which he did. He then disguised himself and made it into one of his uncle’s parties. Using this magic, he put everyone into a trance and then killed them all. As he grew older, however, he began learning more and more about the Vajrayana path, which is the quick and dangerous Buddhist path that can lead to either enlightenment, if you do it right, or a TON of bad karma, if you do it incorrectly. Mailrepa evidently did it correctly, and was even reported to have lived in a cold cave for a period of time with a simple cotton covering, as he had mastered the art of controlling his body temperature with his mind. He is literally worshipped in Tibet because the majority of the yogi masters that are venerated there are actually Indian—the fact that Mailrepa came from Tibet makes him that much cooler.

I also neglected to mention that our tour guide, the amazing Tenmpa, hooked us up with pieces of the outfit that the Shakyamuni Buddha at the Jokhang was wearing. I guess the monks change the statue’s silk (yes, they dress a statue) every week, and give pieces of the silk to followers. Tenmpa asked for a bunch of pieces for the members of the group, and the monks were more than willing to offer them to us. I’ve got my piece chilling in my room next to what I jokingly refer to as my Buddha shrine, as I have a number of candles, miniature Buddha statues, and a Buddha incense holder, all arranged in a rather aesthetically pleasing way. It’s really cool to have a piece of the outfit of the holiest Tibetan Buddhist statue. Yeah. Pretty cool.

There was also a really neat room that was devoted to a statue of a goat at the temple—it is believed that when Songsten Gompo was trying to get the Jokhang built, he wanted to put it in the middle of a lake. Evidently, a sacred goat traveled to some mystical place to get enough dirt to fill it in. So, there’s a goat shrine. Awesome!

We also headed to the roof of the temple, which you can walk around on and get some pretty neat views.

Here's a picture of Crystal and I on Jokhang's roof. You can sort of see the Potala in the background.

There was a tiny store up there, where I picked up some postcards for some friends back home as well as a mala (sort of like the Buddhist version of rosary beads). After chilling out for a while, we left the Jokhang and headed into the center of the ancient part of Lhasa to see a traditional Thangka-making studio. To get there, we had to travel through some old school markets, which was really neat. There were all these vendors selling various everyday items such as hats or jackets or whathaveyou, but there were also people selling fresh fruits and vegetables. Although many of us were tempted to indulge in some of the juicy apples we saw, we began to realize that most of these items had been rinsed in local water, which is contaminated, and could get us mighty sick. We did figure out the trick eventually though—all you have to do is really really wash the item in bottled water, and you’ll be fine. Some guys tried this later on because they just wanted an apple! And they felt find afterwards.

They say smell is one of the strongest senses because one will remember a particular scent for years after he or she actually smelled it. This is true. I am living proof to this. As we were walking, we passed a butcher shop that had skinned legs of yak just chilling on countertops. MY GOD. I will never forget the smell of fresh yak meat in my life. I almost died. In retrospect, I’m really not sure if the smell was so disgusting because I’ve been a vegetarian for almost a year now, or if it was just that poignant a smell. It was really strong. And now, it’s time for a rant about how thankful we Americans should be about the type of meat we eat. Since they don’t have plastic or whatever over in Tibet, the meat is left out in the open, and there are flies crawling ALL OVER IT. At one of the stalls (there were several meat shops), there was a guy who was sitting there with a piece of thick string, whipping at the meat so the flies would scatter, but… still. It was. Not delicious.

And then we made it to the Thangka shop. It was pretty cool to see how these sacred paintings were made. The actual canvas is made out of a thick cotton, which is stretched out and smoothed with a stone over a period of a couple days to get it ready. After this is done, the artist (usually a layman, as the monks are rather busy praying/chanting, traveling, or cleaning monasteries to create these… although some monks do dabble in it) carefully traces a pattern of the picture he or she wants to portray. Patterns have been created over the years because it is really bad karma to create a deity out of proportion, and no one wants bad karma. Then it is time to paint. Because the canvas is made out of cotton, one must paint this picture several times over to get it at the right color. The paint itself also takes several days to make, as it is ground down from natural minerals. The grinding process alone usually takes about 7 days, and the turquoise color we were looking at was retrieved from a mine about 4 hours away, the artist told me. YIKES.

Water and a strange form of glue is then added to the powdered materials to the paint and voila! Time to paint. Needless to say, the amount of time that goes into creating one of these traditionally made Thangkas make them rather expensive. But the good news is that the natural dies will be vibrant for centuries, compared to synthetically-created dies.

A couple people on the trip got some very nice Thangkas. As they were negotiating prices, I went outside and watched some of the locals wash their clothing. There was this small square where this fountain was located. The women were filling big buckets with water from the fountain, and then adding their soap and their clothing. They then stepped up and down on the clothing in the bucket, in a curiously spin-cycle-washing-machine-kind-of-way and rinsed. It was pretty fascinating.

We also got the opportunity to visit some artisans in their homes. There were dudes making small Buddhist statues out of metal, as well as a guy doing woodwork. In the same small square where the women were doing their laundry, there were some guys making three much larger metal statues, presumably for a temple nearby.

We also saw some local children in the area. This girl was so beautiful--I just had to take a picture of her.

We then headed back to the hotel for a period of rest and for a late lunch. After this, we went to the Drepung! Woohoo! It was probably the most beautiful monastery we visited during the entire trip, and by that I mean, it was so in the middle of nowhere and there mountains extending everywhere and tons of flowers and trees… it was just plain beautiful. The highest lama in Tibet lives here, and we were visiting not only to see the artwork and discuss the philosophy, but to also have a personal meeting with this monk and ask him any specific questions we had. Drepung is also the home to 700 monks, making it the largest monastery that is still operating in Tibet. (I must make note here that before the Cultural Revolution, 700 monks was a rather small number, but now one needs to get a special license from the Chinese government to become a monk, hence the shrinking number).

As we walked up to the actual monastery (the grounds were huge) we got the opportunity to spin tons of prayer wheels. Although we had seen them before, the entire walk up to the actual monastery was lined with prayer wheels. It was crazy.

As we toured parts of the monastery grounds, Tenmpa went up to find the highest monk to see when he would be ready to see us. Evidently, at that time, he was in the middle of a session with a group of monks, so we quietly entered the assembly room and watched the rest of their ceremonies. Once again, it was very powerful, but to some extent, even more powerful than our previous experiences. Part of the reason why was because there was one monk who circumambulated us while he was chanting with the other monks!

When this was over, the other monks left the assembly hall, but the highest lama stayed. Here's a picture of him.

He then gave us a lecture about finding the type of compassion necessary to be a Buddhist. He told us to treat every living being with the same unconditional love we felt from our mothers. As Buddhists believe in reincarnation, the theory is that everyone in the world has technically been your mother at one point. In order to repay their compassion toward you during this period of time, you must treat them with compassion. He said that treating friends with compassion was not enough, that everyone needed the best possible treatment you could give equally. He then gave advice to those who weren’t Buddhist—he said that if you can’t help someone, you should at least not hurt them.

One of the members on the trip asked what we could do for those who were not in the realms that we exist in—for example, how we could help end the suffering of those in the hungry ghost/spirit realm. The monk told us that all we could do was say the compassion mantra (om mani pad me hum) and hope that our prayers/chants/vibes will help those who are suffering. He said that this mantra enables us to simultaneously remind ourselves that we always need to be compassionate, as well as to send our compassion out to everyone equally. He explained that we as humans could do only so much for those in need. He then took and blessed all of our mala beads so that our prayers while using them would be more powerful, then gave us the transmission for the compassion mantra that he had received from his teacher, who had received it from his teacher, etc until supposedly Shakyamuni Buddha. It was awesome.

Unfortunately, after this short visit with the monk, he had to leave us. Evidently, we had visited him on a holy day, a day that was devoted to prayer. He had been in that assembly hall since 9am praying with various groups of monks from the monastery to protect all that was good in the world. It was 2:30 when we left him, and he planned on being there until nightfall. What dedication!

We then left the assembly hall and wandered a bit more about the monastery grounds. We found a little bit of shade and had a rather large lecture/discussion about compassion. Jim offered his own opinion on the matter of compassion that I found particularly noteworthy as well as worth sharing. He said that although it may be difficult for many of us to feel the type of compassion the monk was describing for absolutely everyone in the world, if we could treat just one person with absolute selflessness, although it won’t bring us to enlightenment, it is certainly a step in the path. He discussed relationships and the dynamic they can have. It is often difficult to walk that line of giving and receiving, of knowing that you are treating your significant other well but not to the point where he or she is taking advantage of you. What if we could find the compassion to give absolutely everything of ourselves to another person without even caring what little we are left with? Is that possible? Is that right? It most certainly is Buddhist.
Here’s a picture of the area we were in while discussing these issues.

After our lecture/discussion, we continued on, and got the opportunity to see a really cool statue of Maitreya, the future Buddha. It was one of the nicest statues we had seen of this Buddha. We also got the opportunity to meet a Swiss monk who was taking a tour of all the Tibetan Buddhist temples he could before he returned to India. What many people don’t realize is that Tibetan Buddhism is so conservative it won’t accept people from the West as monks. Fortunately, however, many Buddhist sects in India will permit this, which was how this monk got into it. It was fun to talk with him for a bit, and we ended up giving him a ride to his next stop later because it was on our way. We then made our way to their actual assembly hall—evidently the first one we had been to was just for smaller groups, and this one was for when all the monks wanted to chant together. It was GIGANTIC. All the other assembly halls we had seen were ants compared to this one. Just huge! We also got to see their kitchen, which was also pretty big, and the pots that they cooked their stews in. I swear I could have fit into one of those pots if I really tried. That’s how big they were.

As we were going around, we lost a couple members of our group because some of the pilgrims visiting the monastery wanted to take a picture. This one girl, Hali, was such a huge hit wherever we went because she had naturally blonde hair. Seriously, EVERYONE wanted her to stop so they could get a picture with her. Pretty great. But because they were stopped, they lost the group, and ended up wandering around the monastery grounds alone. They eventually bumped into an English-speaking monk, who had actually taught himself English using tapes and stuff. CRAZY. He told them that he was planning on trying to translate as much as he could of the original Buddhist scriptures—aka Shakyamuni’s 84,000 teachings, which are mostly in Sanskrit or have been translated into Tibetan—into English so that the entire world could read them. That’s awesome! Since he couldn’t find our group, he eventually just took them around the rest of the monastery grounds on his own, and we caught up with them right before we left. What a neat experience that must have been.

On our way back to dinner, we also stopped by shortly at a carpet making studio and got the opportunity to watch some Tibetan women weave carpets as they sang traditional Tibetan songs. Not only were the carpets absolutely beautiful, but the workers were insanely good at what they were doing. Some of us got short video clips of them working, but since their hands were moving so quickly, they were just blurs on the screen!

We then went to the Crazy Yak Restaurant for some traditional Tibetan song and dance as well as some good food. One of the unfortunate (or perhaps fortunate?) parts of eating at buffets in a foreign country is that sometimes you get what you’re not exactly looking for when piling your plate with food. There’s this type of food called a mo-mo that is essentially a pastry of some kind filled with something. I got a bunch of what I thought were potato mo-mos, but evidently, a yak mo-mo got in there and this vegetarian accidentally took a huge bite of some not-so-tasty yak meat. At least I can say I’ve tried it, right? Hahaha. And then we got to see some traditional Tibetan dance. It was a really unique experience. The grand finale was definitely the best performance all night. It involved four dudes dressed up as yaks (two to each yak outfit, so there were two yaks all together). There was also another guy who was pretending to train the yaks. When he whistled and did certain hand movements, they would do something cool. At one point, the yaks rolled over, which must have taken a lot of practice, considering the stage was so small and there were two men in that costume who had to work simultaneously to successfully roll over. The yaks eventually wandered into the audience—one of them was hiding underneath our table! It was so delightful.

After dinner, we headed to this big square across from the Potala Palace to wait for nightfall. The government has recently put in some cool lighting on the palace at night, so a group of us wanted to take pictures of it. As we were waiting, a few pictures were taken of the locals.

This kid is having so much fun because he’s wearing what I can only describe as squeaky shoes. Rather than having the shoes that light up when one walks around, the Chinese and Tibetans have shoes that squeak when you walk. Consequently, this boy was having a ball running around in circles and hearing his shoes squeak.

A group of us also bumped into a monk who was also waiting for the lighting of the palace. He could speak a rough sort of English, so they had an interesting conversation with him as well.

And this is where we waited for the big event.

As night was falling, we all were surprised by a large water fountain show, which just randomly started in the middle of the square. I’m uncertain if this is a regular event or not, as some of the locals got soaked because they were over the fountains when they started. Basically, some patriotic Chinese music started playing and the fountains of water would spray at different angles to the beat of the music and to the flashing colored lights that were shining on the water. It was a rather entertaining experience. I was curious as to how the timing was done so perfectly, too. We then got a bunch of pictures of the Potala at night, and made our ways back to the hotel.

And that concludes our (long!!!) adventures of the fifth day.