|
Location: Amritsar, Punjab, North India
The Golden Temple, the cornerstone of the Sikh faith
in Amritsar, resembles the Kabbah in Mecca, the Golden
Shrine in Kyoto, and the Taj Mahal in Agra: blinding white
marble, inlaid with black stones, surrounds a lake and a central
shrine covered in over 100 kilos of pure gold, that glitters
fiercely as people come to walk around it, clockwise, to worship.
Nearly destroyed in the siege of the temple complex 20 years
ago, the damage has been repaired, but Sikh pride has only
been strengthened. Blending Hinduism and Islamic elements,
the religion is open to all, preaches equality between men
and women, and has no caste distinctions in its ranks.
Sikh pilgrims come to Varanasi-like Amritsar to bathe in
the pool that surrounds the temple, watched over by fierce
looking, spear-gripping guards. They stand around, eagle eyed,
watching you carefully to see that your head is adequately
covered, your shoes are off and your head is respectfully
lowered. Overlooking the crowds is an Airtell cell phone advertisement,
reminding everyone to, ‘Express Yourself!’
Still, it is one of the most moving, and profound, religious
buildings you can visit.
All around you are Sikhs from New Jersey, London and Hong
Kong, returning home to visit the temple that had so nearly
been destroyed. The old people wear scraps of red and blue
to cover their heads, while their children, eager to set themselves
apart from their country cousins, wear baseball hats embroidered
with Chicago Bulls and Nike logos.
Free food is also served to all visitors, just outside the
temple grounds. All are welcome, even non Sikhs, and it’s
considered extremely rude not to eat there when you visit
the Golden Temple. People praying there continually point
it out to you in case you forget, and once there, you take
a metal cup, plate and spoon then wait in carefully arranged
rows where attendants come around to serve you flatbread,
white rice and dhal.
The proper way to receive the flatbread is with outstretched
hands, like a beggar. As they walk past you stick out your
hand, and plop! Down drops flatbread into them.
After I had received the bread, and the rice and dhal, it
was a little disconcerting being the center of attention,
as the 500+ people eating with me had all swiveled their necks
around to see if I was dipping the bread right into the dhal,
to carefully check if I was using the spoon correctly, and
whether I was drinking the water I had been given.
On the way out, a huge turbaned Sikh, with beard down to
his waist, six foot six at least, and armed with two huge
silver swords, smiled at me as he saw me walking out of the
communal hall, so central to his faith. Before I had time
to even breathe in, he had crushed me in a great bear hug,
and lifted me off the ground.
‘How do you feel here?’ he asked me after I had
gotten my breath back, the question that had followed me doggedly
during my entire time in India.
‘Great,’ I nodded. ‘You live here, in Amritsar?’
I asked.
‘No, Queens. New York. Security guard.’
Was Dharmsala just another franchise of Nirvana, Inc, where
people came from near and far to soak up and tank up on spiritualism
and religion, and nothing more?
As I got off the bus from Amritsar, it seemed just that,
a town perched high on a spur of the lower Himalayas, decked
out with the usual round of internet cafes, banana pancake
breakfast joints, bhang lassis (marijuana shakes) on the menu,
Tibetan massage, cooking, meditation, thanka painting and
enlightenment courses, and crowds of pirate pants wearing,
Nepali cotton bag toting members of The Tribe, the blurred
international-set of travelers that pounded the place’s
pavement (or lack there of) in search of either spiritual
sustenance or a natural high trekking in some of the world’s
highest mountains.
But beyond The Tribe, I found Dharmsala to be so much deeper:
friendly Tibetan monks eager to practice their English, lively
Tibetan grandmothers who wore broad smiles at any time of
the day, whole Tibetan families running shops and businesses
and always ready to say hello, and finally, His Holiness,
The Dalai Lama himself, who had lived here for 45 years with
his government in exile.
Over 70 years old, he keeps a very active schedule of preaching
and teaching, and I learned there was a specially scheduled
one going on while I was in Dharmasala. (February is also
a big month for lectures).
Everywhere I went in the town, people were talking about
it: The Teaching. Sixteen tour buses of Taiwanese Buddhists
were in town, and after giving a hefty donation to the Tibetan
cause, had been granted a 10 day lecture series by his Holiness.
It was open to the public as well, the English translation
of which was broadcast on local radio.
‘Oh, I’m just waiting for my friend,’ a British
woman told the waiter in the restaurant primly, as he tried
to take her order. A few minutes later she checked her watch
and stood up to go. ‘Ill be back, after the second Teaching,’
she said cryptically, the man nodding his head in understanding,
like in some spy movie.
‘Do you know what time it is?’ asked an Aussie
girl, even though I wasn’t wearing a watch.
‘8.15,’ I told her, remembering the clock I had
seen on the wall where I had just gotten breakfast.
‘Oh,’ she slurred, ‘my holy man told me it
was 11 o’clock,’ she laughed, as though this was
hysterical.
‘Are you here for The Teachings, too?’
As I walked to the temple, following the crowds down the
hill, I saw a lady who had been on my bus from Amritsar walking
along in front of me, conversing in rapid fire Korean with
the stray dogs that lived in the town. She was feeding them
rice paper snacks that she tossed like birdseed from a bag
in her backpack, but they refused to eat them, and they were
getting more and more aggressive, looking for meat, anything
more substantial than flimsy crackers. This made her furious,
and she slapped her thighs in disgust setting forth more angry
Korean bursts that left the dogs more perplexed, wary of this
mad woman, and still hungry.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said to me kindly when she recognized
my face. ‘You go to the Teachings, now?’
At 8.15 the lecture started, and though no one is allowed
to see the Dalai Lama inside the temple, crowds gathered outside
to listen, prostrating themselves on the floor in front of
the monastery as they lifted their clasped hands to their
heads, face and hearts.
It was eerie watching the monsoon clouds crash into the hills
while his voice trailed off into the forest of pine trees
behind the complex, thinking how much his people in Tibet
would give if he was able to lecture directly from Potola
Palace, his ancestral home.
When the lecture was over, he made his way back to his residence.
Suddenly the 300 Tibetans, many of whom where dressed in traditional
clothing and draped in chunky turquoise jewelry, sank to the
ground as though in the presence of a King, and it was impossible
not to be moved as the tears flowed down their cheeks and
their hands clasped over their heads.
I was lucky to be standing right where he swept down the
staircase, and was one of the few people he shook hands with
before he stepped into his tan colored Suzuki SUV. He smiled
at me through the glass and pressed his hands together. I
bent, smiled back, and briefly felt like Richard Gere.
The rest of the day I spent meeting some of the other residents
of Dharmsala, all of whom had skipped The Teachings that day,
perhaps because they didn’t need any, or maybe because
they had already had been filling their heads with enough
teachings of their own.
Some were posted on the walls:
‘My Fellow Dharma Brothers and Sisters,
I implore you to please read the Golden Light of Sutra 1,000
times in the next 24 hours, to alleviate the violence, pain
and suffering in Iraq. Our positive energy flowing from India
will therefore will immediately reduce the suffering there.’
‘If anyone is catching the train to Delhi from Pathankot
tomorrow, and wants to share a taxi to the train station,
please contact Tenzin Chorghi, the (very tall) American nun
formerly known as Sharon.’
“Looking for someone who answers to the name of Xi.
Of former British nationality, has been living in India for
7 years. Please contact Rinpoche Smith at the Shangrila Hotel.’
The rest, however, were strictly off the wall:
‘How long more will you be traveling in India?”
I asked a French girl as we watched the parade of monks and
nuns go back to their monasteries after The Teachings.
She scratched her head and said,’ I dunno, my passport
expired three months ago…’
An Israeli grandmother of twelve had decided to stay in India
forever.
‘It will never change,’ she added happily, ‘and
I will never leave,’ as she knitted a hideous purple
scarf at the foot of a waterfall, just outside of Dharmsala.
‘Why should I go back, where my children can, how you
Americans say, put me in a home?’
‘But where do you plan to go?’
‘Everywhere. Everything is possible in India. Look, even
the Dalai Lama is here, who will be next?’ as though
she expected the Pope to relocate to the Subcontinent.
‘Have you been to Kerala, the south?’
‘No, not yet. I keep being distracted. I don’t know,
the spiritual energy keeps pulling me north,’ she said
with a straight face, ‘like a magnet. I’ve never
been south of Delhi.’
A Spanish girl in a café leaned over to me and pointed
to a word in her Ayurvedic Massage Handbook. ‘What does
this word mean?’ she asked dreamily, as she pointed to
the word ‘hibernate.’ When I told her what it meant,
she smiled, thanked me, and returned to her manual.
‘How long have you been here?” I asked the blonde
curly haired Dutch girl who sold me her ticket to Manali,
because her new Tibetan boyfriend was now taking her to Srinagar,
Kashmir, for the Peace Festival there, and she was off the
next morning to cling to the back of his motorbike for three
days.
‘Oh, about a month.’
‘You are here for studying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you been to the Dalai Lama’s for his Teachings
each day?’
‘I went, the first day, and it was very interesting,
don’t get me wrong, but once I’d seen him, well,
that was enough.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘But since
then, I’ve been …so busy.’
‘With what?’
‘Classes,’ she said vaguely, as though she were
trying to remember exactly what she had been in the classes
for. ‘One was for Water Therapy. We sat in circles, drinking
water, for hours, and were told of the healing power it had
on the body, the importance of drinking enough water each
day, and the spiritual dangers of not drinking enough.’
‘I think that’s called dehydration.’
‘Oh no, it was developed over thousands of years, this
Water Therapy.’
‘How much was the course?’
‘’2,000 Rupees.’
Sod enlightenment and trekking, I’m here for the food,’
scoffed an Irishman and his mates on the terrace of a restaurant
run entirely by 12-year-old school kids on summer holiday,
who were in India for nine months and who couldn’t stop
dreaming of all the western food they had eaten in Kathmandu.
A Canadian woman with long blonde hair was talking to an Aussie
girl working at a Tibetan bookstore, perched in a pine forest
high above Dharmsala, in the Tushita Meditation Center blessed
by the Dalai Lama.
‘Can you tell me the four noble truths?’ she asked
her new friend.
‘Uhhh….no, not all of them,’ the Aussie girl
replied sheepishly after she could remember just two, though
she had been studying the religion for nine years and spoke
nearly fluent Tibetan.
‘Did you get The Teaching His Holiness gave yesterday?’
the Canadian women went on, unperturbed.
‘What, the one about women’s bodies being disgusting?’
‘Yes,’ the Canadian Girl sighed, running her hands
through her hair in frustration. I’m having so many conflicts
here. I’m thinking I should go home, leave this place.
I mean, its no good to the other students in the class when
I am so confused.’
‘I think it was a metaphor for male monks to reduce their
desires,’ her new friend offered, hoping to calm her
recently acquired, and increasingly agitated, friend.
Canadian Girl nodded her head violently. ‘I know, I know.
I am, like, devoted to more than one species, in this lifetime,
you know, and I don’t know how the Dalai Lama, who doesn’t
have a vagina, can sit there and tell me, a woman, who has
a vagina, that its evil. I mean come on, women, with their
cycles, are connected to the earth…’ |
Travel Writers: Daring Dave Pt 4: Golden Temples & Dalai
Lamas by Dave Lowe
