The Heart of the World

by Ian Baker

  9 . Duddul Dorje discovered a scroll that Padmasambhava’s consort was said to have concealed in a cave on the northern bank of a tributary of the Po Tsangpo River. The terma, or revealed treasure-text, was entitled Self-Liberation through Hearing of the Great Blissful Land of Pemako. In it, Padmasambhava announced the conditions for opening the hidden-land: In a future age, armies will invade Tibet from east and west.

  In order to benefit the suffering Tibetans, I, Padmasambhava have prepared the hidden-lands.

  Of the many hidden valleys, the most extraordinary is the great blissful Buddha Realm of Pemako.

  Just by recalling it for only a moment opens the path to Buddhahood,

  There is no need to mention the benefit of actually going there . . .

  Many kinds of samadhi will arise spontaneously in one’s mind . . .

  The wisdom channels will open . . . .

  I, Padmasambhava, and an ocean of siddhas and dakinis as well as peaceful and wrathful deities can all be directly seen . . .

  A miraculous “power grass” grows there; whoever finds and eats this plant, even old men, will become like sixteen-year-old youths . . .

  There is a grass called tsakhakun; whoever eats this grass can have visions of various celestial realms and underworlds.

  There are hundreds of edible fruits

  And numerous grains growing spontaneously.

  10 The most extensive descriptions of beyul were unearthed in 1366 by the itinerant lama Rigdzin Godemchen during a period of anarchy and civil war preceding the collapse of the Mongol Dynasty in 1368. His revealed yellow scroll called the Outer Pass-Key to the Hidden-Lands contains route descriptions to remote sanctuaries such as Beyul Dremojong in present-day Sikkim. Like a literary treasure map, the texts also gave directions to hidden troves of gold and precious gems specifically designated to finance the expeditions. In a style common to most neyigs, Godemchen’s texts begin with apocalyptic prophecies of wars and devastation, invoking a time when Tibet will be surrounded on four sides by armies “pressing in like mountains,” and “the minds of Tibetans will be lost in enmity and discord, like small birds carried off by hawks.” The texts then shift into eulogies for the hidden sanctuaries concealed on the edges of the Tibetan plateau. Some are described as being so inaccessible that they will never be found, but for several, the scrolls offer precise directions. The way is never easy. As Padmasambhava writes: “Without concern for rain, fog, or the venomous vapors of the earth . . . head fearlessly into the gorges where valleys and forests merge!”(See Sardar-Afkhami,The Buddha’s Secret Gardens for full translation of Godemchen’s text.)

  11 In 1717 Mongol hordes again invaded central Tibet, burning and looting monasteries and killing monks and civilians alike. The carnage ultimately led to a great persecution of the Nyingmapas, the followers of Padmasambhava’s lineage, by the ascendant Gelugpa, or reformed sect supported by Tibet’s Mongol overlords. The depredations of invading armies coupled with the sectarianism within Tibetan Buddhism itself led many lamas of the old school to believe that the dark age predicted by Padmasambhava had finally come. An Italian Jesuit, Hippolyte Desideri, who lived in Lhasa from 1712 to 1727 studying Tibetan Buddhist texts, shared a similar view. Astounded by the accuracy of the prophecies that Padmasambhava had made concerning the future Mongol and Chinese invasions that had occurred during his residency, he wrote: “These are facts. Let everyone explain so abstruse a mystery according to his own feelings.”

  12 L. A. Waddell, Lhasa and Its Mysteries (New Delhi: Gaurav Publishing House, 1978; Originally published New York: Dutton & Co. 1905), p. 453.

  13 Waddell, Among the Himalayas (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1899), p. 66

  14 As early as 1854 Major Jenkins, commissioner of Assam, dispatched a traveling mendicant up the lower reaches of the Tsangpo, “but the poor fellow was speared on the frontier by savages.” (See Bailey, China-Tibet-Assam, London: Jonathan Cape, 1945, p. 7 ).

  15 See L. A. Waddell, “The Falls of the Tsangpo (San-pu), and the Identity of that River with the Brahmaputra,” The Geographical Journal, vol. V, no. 3 (London: Edward Stanton, 1895), p. 254: As regards the still unsettled question of the identity of the Tibetan Tsang-po with the Brahmaputra, I have seen no reference, in the bulky publications on the subject, to the evidence afforded by etymology. Now, it is interesting to note that the Tibetan word Ts’ang-pu is the literal equivalent of the Sanskrit Brahmaputra, and means “the son of Brahma.” And a curious Tibetan legend associates Brahmaputra with the Tsang-po river near Lhasa. The legend relates how the son of Khri-srong-deutsan, who reigned about 750 a.d., was drowned in the river, and the king ordered that the river at that spot should receive a certain number of lashes daily, as a punishment for its crime. After a time the spirit of the river, unable to endure any longer such an unjust punishment, appeared before the king in the form of Brahmaputra, and besought the king to cast a piece of wood into the river. On this being done, the wood was immediately carried off downstream. In this way the river-spirit showed that the water which drowned the prince had long since passed on, and that the water at the spot was wholly innocent of the offence for which it was being whipped.

  But as Hindu mythological names, such as Brahma, were unknown to the Tibetans before the reign of Srong-tsan-gam-po in the seventh century, a.d., it is practically certain that this interpretation of the Tibetan word, as synonymous with the Indian god Brahma, is of much more modern date, and is, I think, due to the Lamas, like the Brahmans in regard to many of the vernacular river-names of India, having twisted the native name so as to give it a mythological meaning.

  For the common Tibetan name for the river is Tsang-po, not Ts’ang-pu, and it means “the pure one,” which is a common title of rivers in general, and evidently denoting the well-known character of all great rivers to purify themselves quickly from organic contamination. And this river, as the largest river of central Tibet, is called “The Tsang-po” par excellence; just as the Ganges and many other great rivers are known to the natives simply as “the river” . . .

  Still, it is remarkable to find that the etymology of this river is so near to that of Brahmaputra, and that its root is certainly cognate with that of Brahma. And in an indigenous work on the geography of Tibet, [bsTonpahi-sbyin-bdag-byung-ts’ub, by gLong-rdol Lama, an author who is identified by some with . . . Ngag-wang Lo-zang Gyat’so—the fifth of the so-called Grand Lamas of Lhasa] written about two hundred years ago, the author writes that “the rivers of U-Tsang (i.e. Central and Western Tibet), on uniting, discharge into the Lohita . . .” The Lohita is, of course, a classic Indian name for the Brahmaputra river.

  16 Report on the Explorations of Explorer K-P 1880-89 in Sikkim, Bhutan, and Tibet (Dehra Dun: Office of the Trigonometrical Branch, Survey of India, 1889), p. 15.

  17 John Whitehead, Far Frontiers: People and Events in North-Eastern India 1857-1947 (London: British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, 1989), p. 146.

  18 Sir Thomas Holdich, Tibet, The Mysterious (New Delhi: M.C. Mittal Inter-India Publications, 1983; first published London: Alston Rivers, Ltd., 1906), p. 219.

  19 In 1898, Lieutenant Colonel Waddell summed up the British government’s interest in Tibet: This mysterious land has at the present time a very special interest for us. . . . Its gold-mines, which are probably the richest in the world, should alone make it of commercial importance. . . . Much of the country, however, is habitable and has many promising resources undeveloped. And with an English protectorate over Tibet, replacing the shadowy Chinese suzerainty over that country . . . and secured within the English “sphere of interest,” England would not only prevent a possible Russian wedge being imposed between her Indian, Burmese and Chinese possessions, but she would consolidate her position from the Indian ocean to the N
orthern Pacific, and gain thereby the paramount position throughout Asia.

  20 Holdich, Tibet, the Mysterious, p. 336. Holdich also recognized the obstacles presented by the hostile tribes on the Tibetan frontier: These tribes who bar the way are neither Tibetan nor Assamese; their origin and ethnographical extraction is conjectural, and they are in social ethics, in manners and customs, amongst the most irreclaimable savages in the world. We have no influence with Abors and Mishmis; Tibetan priesthood does not touch them, or affect them in any way. The Christian missionary cannot reach them. They are but half-clothed aborigines of those jungles which they infest, and which they are determined to keep to themselves. Above all they are profoundly impressed with the notion that we are afraid of them . . . these savages dance their war dances on their own wild hills and proclaim to the mountains that we dare not cross their frontier. Such action on their part is, of itself, no reason for our interference, but there may be other reasons of which they know nothing which may finally make it imperative that we should move freely through their country. . . . Possibly it will not be long before such action is recognized as essential to the progress of Indian trade.

  21 Whitehead, Far Frontiers, p. 165.

  22 Quoted in Charles Allen, A Mountain in Tibet, p. 169.

  23 A. Bentnick, “The Abor Expedition: Geographical Results,” Geographical Journal 41 (1913): 97-114. Quoted in Ken Storm, “The Exploration of the Tsangpo Gorges: The Quest for a Waterfall,” in Frank Kingdon Ward, Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges (reprint) (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2001), p. 40.

  24 Originally known simply as Peak XV, the mountain which Tibetans knew as Jomolungma, Goddess, Mother of the World, lay beyond British jurisdiction and was trigonometrically measured in 1852 from a ridge above Darjeeling (more than 100 miles away). In 1856 the mountain was renamed after Sir Colonel George Everest, the former Surveyor-General of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India.

  25 At its greatest geographical extent in the years following World War I maps of the British Empire were often centered 40 degrees west of Greenwich, allowing the colony of Australia to be shown twice. The Mercator projections made Canada look far larger than the United States and in many maps only British parts of Antarctica were shown. British territories were shown in red and the popular saying “The sun never sets on the British Empire” implied immortality.

  26 Holdich, Tibet, The Mysterious, p. 219.

  27 Bailey, No Passport to Tibet, pp. 25-6 .

  28 Clear Light: A Guide to the Hidden-Land of Pemako from Three Roots Wish-Fulfilling Jewel offered spells and incantations to overcome obstructions as well as practical advice for dealing with snakes and insect bites and rituals for appeasing the local guardian spirits. To locate Pemako’s innermost secret center was not a matter of crashing through the wilderness. Following the directives of the scrolls, pilgrims painted mantras on their ritual hand-drums as well as on green prayer flags to pacify the nearly incessant rain and snow. As the terma stipulated: “Search for the hidden places like a worm, moving slowly and steadily along the earth. Then stalk them like a wild beast—a leopard or a tiger—without any fear.”

  29 Bailey learned more about local history and the prophecies that had led pilgrims to settle in this “promised land.” In the early 1800s, Monpas from eastern Bhutan and the region of Monyul, in what is now Arunachal Pradesh, had followed mystical texts similar to those that had urged Jedrung and his fellow Khampas into the territory of the Chulikata Mishmis. Pemako’s innermost sanctuary was not located on any map and the descriptions in the neyigs were often ambiguous and contradictory. Each lama who opened the way was ultimately guided by visions that illuminated the guidebooks’ cryptic accounts. While Jedrung and his fellow Khampas had looked southeast for the lost paradise, only to be turned back by hostile tribes, the Monpas had headed north up the Tsangpo River toward its innermost gorges, driving the original Lopa inhabitants southward into the jungles of Assam. Despite extraordinary efforts the coveted paradise failed to materialize for any of its seekers. Doubting only their own merit, the Monpas, Khampas, and Pobas who had converged in these wild valleys determined that the time had not yet come for the door to open. Following injunctions outlined in the prophecies, they built temples in the jungles and performed elaborate offertory rites to local spirit-protectors, waiting in this verdant world in hopes that the route would one day be revealed. The rajah of Powo had assisted the Monpas in their war against Pemako’s tribal inhabitants. Once the area was settled, the Pobas lay claim to the entire region and extracted taxes both from the new arrivals as well as from the remaining Lopas. Over time, the Lopas assimilated many aspects of Monpa and Tibetan culture, often adopting their style of dress, language, and Buddhist beliefs. The Lopas who had been pushed across the border into Assam continued to mount raids on the new settlers. As Bailey noted on page 3 of his Report on an Exploration on the North-East Frontier in 1913 (Simla: Government Monotype Press, 1914): For many years the southern border between the Poba territory and that of the independent Abors or Lopas remained undefined and, as is usual with these people, the frontier villages remained in a perpetual state of war. About the year 1905 the Abors raided up the valley and burned the village of Hangjo below Rinchenpung and penetrated as far as Giling. Up to this time the Pobas had allowed the frontier villages to settle their accounts with the Abors as best they could, but they now became alarmed and sent troops into Pemako to help their subjects on the frontier. The Pobas defeated the Abors and forced them to recognize a frontier line. They built a dzong, or fort, near Jido which they called Kala Yong Dzong and posted an official there.

  Although the colony in Mipi paid no tax to Po Me (Powo), the latter considered them as their subjects and paid the Mishmis for the land on which the Tibetans had settled. The price was twenty-five swords, twenty-five ax handles, two loads of salt, four rolls of woolen cloth, and two Tibetan chubas, or woolen coats.

  30 Two years earlier, in 1911, Chinese forces had burned Showa to the ground and decapitated all but the two queens and a fourteen-year-old princess.

  31 Sir Richard Burton. Life, I, p. 258. Quoted in Fawn M. Brodie, The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967), p. 141.

  32 Henry Morton Stanley, African Notebook of 1876 (quoted in Brodie, The Devil Drives).

  33 George Seaver, David Livingstone: His Life and Letters (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 583, 594.

  34 Patrick French, Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (London: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 362. Younghusband later reflected humorously on his civilization’s mania for appropriation. On a journey to Italy to see the pope he wrote to his daughter Eileen that he had “discovered a brand new lake between Rome and Florence which no European had ever seen before—because no one ever looks out of the window. . . . It was a great find. I could not find out what the natives call it. I shall call it Lake Eileeno.”

  35 Following his return from Tibet, Bailey headed a British delegation to Tashkent in central Asia, where he served undercover as a secret agent. In these closing years of World War I, Bailey perfected the Pundits’ penchant for disguise. So complete was his cover that Bolshevik revolutionaries eventually recruited him to search for an elusive British spy who was no other than Bailey himself.

  36 The text had been revealed by Jatsun Nyingpo (1585-1656) and was entitled Sadhana for Clearing the Obstacles for Entering the Hidden Land of Pemako. It prescribed ritual smoke offerings made with the flesh of snakes, fish, and birds to clear obstacles on the path. One recipe involved mixing plant resin, sulfur, and white mustard seeds with the meat of a raven or an owl.

  37 In the early Buddhist Tantras, pilgrimage centered on shaktipithas, or places of power associated with the initiate’s mystical anatomy. Based on the Tantric vision
that the body is a microcosm of the entire universe, the external pithas associated with the chakras and body parts of a cosmic goddess were held to correspond to vital points in the practitioner’s own subtle physiology. By practicing at these sites, adepts sought to free the currents of vital energy called lung that flow through the body’s subtle meridians, or tsa, thus aligning themselves with universal energy currents and progressing toward enlightenment. The locations of the pithas were the antithesis of common ideas of paradise. Charnel grounds and wild jungles frequented by predatory beasts and flesh-eating dakinis offered a more potent context for retrieving repressed contents of the psyche and overcoming the bonds of fear and attachment.

  38 Herbert Guenther, The Life and Teachings of Naropa (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 26.

  39 Ibid., pp. 42, 77.

  PART TWO: THE GORGE

  1 . According to Chinese satellite calculations, the “Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon” is 17,800 feet deep and 310.2 miles long with extensive rapids where water flows at up to 53 miles an hour.

  2 . The malevolent demoness known as the Srinmo was seen as encompassing the entirety of Tibet, a devouring female representing the disowned energies of a warrior culture. With the Jokhang representing a stake through her heart, twelve additional temples were constructed at the corners of three concentric squares spreading out across the Tibetan landscape. The first four immobilized her shoulders and hips, while the next square pinned down her elbows and knees. Four others temples in Tibet’s outermost frontiers held down her feet and hands. The monastery at Puchu Serkyi Lhakhang in Kongpo, which Kingdon Ward visited in 1924, secures her right elbow.