Built onto a mountain in the middle of Lhasa is the Potala Palace, the home of the Dalai Lamas. My guidebook said not to visit it on your first day in Lhasa since you need to acclimate to the altitude, but apparently my guide had not read the book. So there I was on my first morning in Tibet climbing all 365 steps - very slowly with lots of rest stops - to visit this 1000 room palace. There are still monks living in it, but it houses the tombs of the previous Dalai Lamas and more Buddhas than I could count. Ornate does not begin to describe the inside of the palace. That is not a person in the second picture but a robe to represent one of the Dalai Lamas. There were about ten of them scattered about so I could not keep them straight.
Then we went to the Jokhang Temple, the spiritual heart of Tibet, which houses a 2,500 hundred year old statue of Buddha. I had visited several temples and shrines in China, but nothing had prepared me for this. In China, religion is mostly dead, but not so in Tibet. A parade of pilgrims walks continuously around the temple. The pilgrims are almost all Tibetan, either locals or from the surrounding countryside. Some hold beads, some hold prayer wheels, and most chant softly. This parade, called a kora, goes on all day, every day, and the pilgrims do not just walk around once. They might walk around ten or twenty times before approaching the temple.
When the pilgrims finally approach the temple, they prostrate themselves - again not once but dozens or hundreds of times. Each one has a narrow mat about the size of a yoga mat. Most wear kneepads and they have pads under their palms that are cloth on top but slippery plastic on the bottom. Each person stands and puts his hands over his head, then chest level. Then he kneels and pushes forward on the pads to prostrate himself. Then he pushes back up and repeats. And repeats. And repeats.
After parading and prostrating, the pilgrims then stand in a long queue to walk through the temple to see the many Buddhas and, in particular, the 2,500 year old Buddha. Visiting Jokhang Temple was a very interesting activity for me on the day before Yom Kippur. It is kind of amazing how many similarities there are in religious practice: bowing and prostration, parades of pilgrims, chanting prayers. Also, Buddhist holy books are placed inside prayer wheels (that look a lot like Sephardi torah covers), and the Tibetans spin the wheels to symbolically read the books.
The second story of the Jokhang Temple:
In the afternoon I went to the park opposite the Potala Palace to enjoy the view. I thought the workmen were taking down the backdrop from the National Day celebration last week.
But when I came by later, I saw that there were not taking down the backdrop but putting it up along with a set of signs.
Really? The Trans-Himalayan International Extreme Cycling Race? How far trans do they go? This is beyond extreme.
On Yom Kippur my religious education continued with visits to Norbulingka (the summer palace of the Dalai Lamas), another shrine, and the Sera Monastery. I had not realized it before but the koras (parades) are not limited to Jokhang Temple. In the morning we saw koras around Potala Palace and longer ones around the city. I kept asking my guide how all these people could walk all day. Don't they have to work? And while there were some young people, the vast majority are older. My guide shrugged and said: so if they are not Buddhists, at least they get exercise.
Although it was built in the 1950's, Norbulingka has the same ornate decor as the Potala Palace. I guess the Dalai Lama wanted to feel at home. One of the more unusual sights at Norbulingka: three horned goats. I'm not clear on the name since many of them had four horns.
The shrine that we went to had more people prostrating themselves including children and this boy, about 15 years old, who prostrated himself on each step going down.
Besides prostrating and turning prayer wheels, the people burn candles made of yak butter traditionally but maybe just regular butter today. In this cave, people brought packages of yak butter and a donation and the workers there keep 10,000 candles burning.
Finally the Sera Monastery houses 600 monks, down from its glory days of over 5,000 monks. Anyone can be a monk which involves studying all day. After ten years or more, if you pass a test, you can become a lama. At Sera Monastery, they have a "debate" every afternoon at 3 that is open to the public in which the monks discuss theology and philosophy. There is also a Buddha here that the people line up to bow to. They bring their small children with them and a monk puts a smudge from the yak butter burning lamp on each child's nose. This makes the children sleep better, behave better, and seems to cure all illnesses, too.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the debate was cancelled today and I got to see an unusual event. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were painting and whitewashing the monastery using the most primitive methods that I could imagine. The people, who are all volunteers, ranged in age from teenagers to the elderly. The white wash was mixed in huge vats by combining crushed white rocks with water and minerals Everything was carried up the mountain (the monastery is on the side of a mountain) by hand - one sack of sand, one pail of water - at a time. Then people would take a bucket of the mixture and throw it at the walls. Whitewash was everywhere - on the walls, the windows, the ground, the volunteers' clothes. I saw a few monks giving directions but mostly it seemed like organized bedlam ... and everyone seemed very happy.
In the last picture, the man in the makeshift sling is painting the window trim black with real paint. I guess that is why they can throw the whitewash everywhere.
Lunch at the monastery was yak noodle soup and milk tea and all of the painters took breaks to eat.
I saw very few face masks in China as the air quality was fine, but a lot of people wear them here, not just the painters. The air is mountain clear here, but apparently, people wear face masks because of the wind and cold, and after a while it just becomes a habit. Most people wear western clothes, but a few of the women wear modified traditional clothes - a striped apron over a long skirt.
By the way, it is fine to take pictures of people here, even in religious practice, and people take my picture, too. But you are absolutely forbidden to take pictures of the police, military, or any police or military vehicles.
I had a long discussion with my guide about heaven and hell, buddhas and gods. I could not understand the relationship between buddhas and gods, and that Dantean ghost city I had gone to in Fengdu made the Buddhist and Christian heaven and hell sound very similar. But according to my guide, the gods (God?) and heaven and hell are all part of the same cycle. Even when you go to (Buddhist) heaven or hell, you are still reincarnated, although I was not clear on when. Only when you break the cycle and become enlightened do you become a buddha. It is not that Buddha is higher or lower than a god; Buddha is completely outside the cycle of man, gods, heaven, and hell.
My guide used the word karma in the popular sense that Jews use the word mitzvah. I kept asking why people did things like a kora or prostration and he said it was to get karma. One kora might get you one karma but on a holy day it might get you ten, so more people did koras on holy days. Oh. Also, he explained that there are two types of Buddhism. I can't remember their names but Tibetan Buddhism focuses on the betterment and enlightenment of all sentient beings while in the other Buddhism, individuals seek enlightenment. Needless to say, Tibetan Buddhism is a higher level.
So back to my Yom Kippur musings ... The Potala Palace reminded me a lot of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre forty years ago before it became so commercialized. You could just wander around the various rooms, all incredibly ornate with incense and figurines everywhere. The neighborhoods around the shrines in Lhasa reminded me of the Old City of Jerusalem, again forty years ago. There are pilgrims here but virtually no tourists, so the shops cater to the pilgrims.
The Buddhists carry prayer beads; sure look like rosaries. The monks study books in monasteries and can become lamas; sure sounds like studying for smichah in a yeshiva. A smudge on a child's nose; sounds like Ash Wednesday. The koras (parades): I happened to be at the Chartres cathedral several years ago watching thousands of Frenchmen complete a three day pilgrimage from Paris. Not to mention the hajj to Mecca and Jews visiting the Kotel. The Buddhists have a million buddhas that I can't keep straight and people pray to different buddhas; hmmm ... sounds a lot like the Catholic saints that I can't keep straight. Why do you put your palms together fingers up to pray in so many religions? Why do people in all religions prostrate themselves? Of course the Buddhists and the Moslems, but also the Jews saying aleinu today. Every religion that I know has one or more holy books and people chant from them. Buddhism has a lot of holy places like holy mountains and holy lakes. I can't quite wrap my mind around the concept, but is it different from a Catholic shrine or the kabba or the kotel?
So, very appropriately I think, I spent Yom Kippur contemplating religious practice and theology. At one point, and I can't even remember how we got there, my guide agreed that many religious practices are very similar. The only thing that matters, he said, is compassion. I can't argue with that.
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