It’s evening and I just munched on dried fruit and hazelnuts that I packed….but before eating I checked all my paperwork, and it looks suspiciously like I don’t actually have a reservation for a flight at 10:40 am on March 11. Could this be true?! It looks suspiciously like I’ll promptly get to the China Airways website and hopefully make a reservation. Eek—I’m feeling uneasy about this situation.
It is time that I describe the visit to the Potala, which incidentally is named after the Potalaka, rocky mountain that legend has it the bodhisattva of compassion lives on, whether you call that bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, Chenrezig, Quan Yin, or Kannon.
When we entered the Potala and were ascending a flight of steps, where one look at a window—very deep, like the walls must be about two feet thick—and there’s a wooden frame with no glass. I kind of doubt traditional Tibetan windows used glass—they can always close the shutters, and this isn’t mosquito country. However, it’s such a cold climate, and they have dust storms, so you’d think they’d have windows.
Anyway, on the steps, a group of three little novice monks giggled at me. They had to be younger than sixteen—like about eight or ten—but I’m thinking parents probably get them dressed up as monks in anticipation of their becoming monks at sixteen. No doubt the Chinese government doesn’t mind if this deceives tourists.
There was much climbing of stairs and you couldn’t take pictures in most places, though there were a couple places I did take pictures before noticing the sign with the No Photos symbol on it—a red circle with a line through it, in front of a black camera. This is kind of scary, since there were green uniformed Chinese soldiers all over the place. In any case, we were not at the very top roof, since it has become off limits, but we were on a roof, an area where I took some pictures of the breathtaking view. It’s usually fine to take pictures outdoors but not in. On that one occasion, a boy in a green uniform objected.
The Potala has a large courtyard where operas used to be performed with dancers wearing masks and colorful brocade costumes. High up on a balcony the Dalai Lama used to watch through a sheen red curtain. His living quarters—consisting of audience rooms, study room, libraries, meditation room and bedroom—was high up and the top of a tall and formidable whitewashed structure facing the courtyard. From the courtyard, I looked up and imagined the young Dalai Lama up there, looking down upon the courtyard. Oddly, the courtyard reminded me of the courtyard at Neuschwanstein Castle, which is a Germanic fairy tale castle King Ludwig II had built in the nineteenth century and therefore from a very different place and culture than the Potala.
We did go up and see some of the Dalai Lama’s rooms, though his bedroom is behind a closed door; presumably it still has the same furnishings as when he lived there. The “Watching room” as the balcony is called, is connected to the Audience Chamber, and it has a bright red and ornately carved stepping stool that the Dalai Lama and anyone else used in order to enter the Waiting Room. The room otherwise has the usual sumptuous brocade banners and draperies, in addition to a yellow brocade-draped wooden throne to the left, along the same wall as the stepping stool. There are long cushy-looking benches covered with patterned red, white, and yellow rugs, and some brightly painted tables in front of them.
The various Dalai Lamas didn’t all use the exact same rooms. Different Dalai Lamas had different suites, not entirely surprising given how big the place is. The seventh Dalai Lama had his own little meditation room in which a couple of the walls were mostly glass, with some red- and gold-painted carved wood around the glass. In the room, along the short wall on the right, is his meditation bench, and above it hangs a thangka. Along the long back wall is a cabinet containing gold statues, and the wall facing the bench is covered with brocade draperies.
I experienced sensory overload on a large scale at the Potala and now don’t know quite where to take this next. Oh, yes, we entered a huge prayer hall that doesn’t have the rows of red mattresses you usually see, because as my guide pointed out, “The Potala is now like a museum.” This prayer hall is on display for tourists and is no longer functional, so no monks sit on red benches to chant or play music.
I’m not sure—I think it was a different prayer hall, because I remember a bunch of people were around, but at one point I saw a monk on a bench working on something, and right behind him was a grey and orange cat,. The cat got up and scurried across the path and disappeared—clearly it wasn’t crazy about having so many people around.
We explored many rooms that contained rows and rows of gold statues, in some cases very large ones, bigger than life-size. One enormous tall-ceilinged room contained huge gold stupas covered with jewels; these were the tombs of the Dalai Lamas. Mixed in with the stupas were gold statues and little gold three-dimensional mandalas. When you see photos of the Potala’s façade, the gold roofs mark the location of the Dalai Lamas’ tombs.
At some point, we passed a closed red door a couple feet from a series of five closed red doors in a row, with the usual big round knockers; these were doors to the fifth Dalai Lama’s tomb, which are only opened on Losar, the Tibetan New Year, when countless Tibetans line up to go through the Potala. A long line of pilgrims, whom Gyantzing explained all come from the same village, entered the corridor at about the same time we did. I watched as a couple people stepped out of the line in order to peak through the red double doors that were open a crack. One guy followed them and actually pushed the door slightly more open. Several pilgrims were excited by this and moved toward the door; they all came across as simple and harmless country people.
The pilgrim’s overzealous curiosity inspired the ire of an authority figure, a guy in plain clothes, who marched up to the crowd and shooed them away from the door. He was followed by a mean boy in a green uniform who barked at the crowd and ushered them forward, and even took off a glove and slapped a pilgrim’s shoulder with it. Although that was nothing compared to the torture that I’ve read Tibetans experience, it was still shocking enough to leave me staring with my mouth hanging open. I rather suspect sheer power-tripping malice is the primary reason the authorities don’t want pilgrims to enter certain parts of the Potala, including the very top of the roof. I can understand not wanting people to take photos because the camera flash over time damages artwork.
Finally, we entered the fifth Dalai Lama’s tomb through a different door. The statues were enormous—the usual bodhisattvas and Shakyamuni statues. The stupa itself is covered with ornament and contains the fifth Dalai Lama’s ashes and relics. It was absolutely enormous, like a stupa that you expect to see outdoors, but it was gold encrusted with jewels rather than made of whitewashed earth. Typical Tibetan style, the big bulbous part had a curved window with a very old statue behind it, and another and much smaller Buddha statue sat in a niche in the base.
At some point, we passed through a corridor with, on our left, a glass-walled room with excessively long cabinets containing Buddhist statues not only from Tibet but from several countries, including Nepal, India, and Thailand. One of the cabinets contained a bunch of little reliquary stupas from Thailand. Most of the statues in this room were small, like those anyone might have at home. Some were six hundred years old.
We walked down a dark corridor, and around a corner, on the left, was a meditation cave that belonged to an early Dalai Lama—I’m tempted to say the first, but more likely the fifth or seventh. It had statues—big statues—of Tsongkapa and his Chinese and Nepalese wives, the two princesses responsible for bringing Buddhism to Tibet. The walls were dark grey and, since it was a cave, uneven and bumpy. The room also housed various bodhisattvas, such as Manjushri. At some point, the room was (oddly) used as a kitchen, and there’s a circular metal stove to the right, in front of the statues. The cooks had thought it was auspicious to cook there.
When we stepped outdoors into the sunlight, we were at the back of the Potala and had many stairs to gradually climb down. The stairs were white and fortunately included a low wall to the right, low enough that you could rest your arm on it and admire the scenery. The walls of this part of the Potala were white. From the stairs, I occasionally stopped to admire the view and usually took a picture. The sky was a vast and extremely bright blue. I could hear surreal music that sounded rather like New Age music sung by a woman, and I thought it added a dreaminess to the atmosphere.
I asked, “Is there a concert?” Gyantzing said, “It’s music for people who are exercising.”
I looked down below and could see a park in which there were indeed people exercising, and at least one of them was spinning a large strange white disk. A few feet further away, I noticed a lake, and in the center of it was an island with a small square temple with an elaborate curving roof. Gyantzing explained that this was the Naga Temple in Lukhang Lake, which is inside Lukhang Park and behind the Potala. The island struck me as a very appropriate location for a Naga Temple, since nagas are snake deities.
2
2
We parted at the hotel for a lunch break. From the hotel, I went to the little shop that sells bottled water, and I bought four more bottles (two of which I’ve already finished—it’s 8:25 am as I’m writing this). I took the bottles, along with the bag of postcards and a little book that I picked up at the Potala, up to my hotel room and dropped some stuff off. I also removed my extra shirt and used the bathroom. I walked from the hotel down the street in the direction of the Jokhang and turned left at the first corner. If I had been headed for the Jokhang, I would have turned right. The narrow street contained many little shops and merchant’s booths and in some cases wagons containing bananas that a merchant was selling, but I wasn’t seeing restaurants.
I saw a woman with a long table on which she served ramen noodles from a heaping huge bowl. In Tibet, Muslim women wear black snoods, and this ramen chef wore such a black lace snood under a sunhat. I walked up to her table and pointed to first the bowl of noodles and then the jar of red chili. She took a little bowl, plopped a heaping serving of noodles into it, then mixed in soy sauce and chili sauce and handed it to me, along with packaged wooden chopsticks. I sat down, opened up the chopsticks and started eating under the fascinated and amused eyes of three children who’d sat down on the bench by me. If nothing else, my eating left-handed may have fascinated them.
The cook wasn’t impressed with my method of scooping up noodles that were covered with the hot sauce and then scooping up dry noodles; she picked up my bowl and mixed the sauce up thoroughly, so that there were no dry noodles. If I had been eating spicy Indian food, I could have eaten from a bowl of bland yogurt and munched on bread or pappadums. Instead, I had nothing to alternate with the hot sauce. I plowed my way through and observed the stinging of my dry lips and sniffed because I didn’t want to blow my nose at the table.
The cook, I observed, opened a canister and placed some strange white stuff into another customer’s bowl of noodles; it was thin, squarish slithers with tiny holes, and I suspected it was fish, since the slick yellow stuff she also chopped up and put in the bowl was fish. She noticed me watching and put two squares of the holey white stuff into my bowl—I ate it, mixing with the noodles and sauce, not wanting to offend but simultaneously appalled that I was probably eating fish for the first time since 1994. While my scruples were damaged, I simultaneously remembered Shantum’s explanation that the Mindfulness Trainings, or five precepts, are guidelines rather than vows. Oh how the mighty have fallen; this is far worse than using the Worst Toilet in India. The strange white stuff had no taste and didn’t gross me out as I would have expected from fish—I was thinking it was either bread or fish, but in hindsight it may have been tofu. Scentless, tasteless, and white; it would be wonderful if it really was tofu. At some point she also noticed the condition of my nose and gave me a piece of toilet paper with which to blow it, which, amused, I did.
While I was eating and making a spectacle of myself (because, incidentally, Lhasa is a place to gawk and be gawked at), I noticed a white juniper stove in which offerings of juniper were burning. I then noticed the colorful and ornate doorway to a small white temple. This was behind the noodle stand. I also noticed, to my amusement, that I was practically next door to a real indoor restaurant that even had its name in English. After I emptied my bowl, except for some red liquid at the bottom, I pulled a fifty yuan bill out of my wallet, and the cook pointed at a ten yuan bill, so I gave her that and she handed me back the fifty. So I think I got a filling meal for a few pennies.
I got up and headed for the little temple, to be accosted by numerous beggars. I wouldn’t give any of them money, since I didn’t want to start a riot, and I kept walking toward the prayer wheels. As a young-looking ragged male beggar approached me on the right, I held my water bottle slightly out, and he took it out of my hand. This struck me as very funny and I suppressed a laugh. The bottle in fact only contained about two inches of water.
I walked the few more steps into the temple and spun the two-foot-tall gold prayer wheels with gusto; the temple contained a concise line of the wheels. I then joined the crowd of pilgrims circumambulating around an Avalokiteshvara shrine that seemed tiny after my morning at the Potala. But it was still quite ornate: the bodhisattva wore a gold crown incrusted with turquoise and coral. I circumambulated three times—this involved being pushed by fervently murmuring pilgrims through a narrow and darkish corridor. I then headed back out and down the street to the hotel, where I used the Internet for half an hour.
No comments:
Post a Comment