His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Pilgrimage
Today His Holiness the Dalai Lama was in Houston. I didn’t go and couldn’t listen to the streaming audio of his talks at 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. I had classes to teach (this is the last week of classes before exams), and I have already had the astonishing privilege of sitting just ten rows away from him when he talked in Durban, South Africa in–oh, I guess 1997 or so. But by remarkable coincidence, my rental of Werner Herzog’s film called Wheel of Time (about a pilgrimage and ceremonies led by the Dalai Lama in 2002), arrived in today’s mail, as did a letter from a prisoner who had just had an argument with a fellow inmate about whether it is right to call any living being “His Holiness.” So the day has been a weave of thoughts, memories, and impressions centered on the man who calls himself “a simple monk who keeps his vows.”
I think I’ve already written about that South African encounter with the Dalai Lama on this blog, but I can’t find it. It’s a pleasure to remember it, and each time I re-member, it’s a little different from the other times, so here I go again. He talked, as he always does, about what he hopes: that governments will practice peace; that people will be kind to each other and respectful of the planet; that the gap between rich and poor will shrink as those who have more give voluntarily to those who have less. His delivery is genuine, and there is, yes, a radiant humility about him that makes these extravagant hopes seem reasonable. However during the question-and-answer period after his talk, someone asked if it is true that he is the reincarnation of the historical Buddha.
I can’t imagine that was the first time anyone ever asked that question, but the Dalai Lama found it hilarious. He laughed, and his translator laughed, and he had to lean on the podium and wipe tears of laughter from his eyes. Finally he pulled himself together and said, “I don’t know.” Chuckling. “Some people say I am. Some people believe I am. All I know is that I am a simple monk who keeps his vows.” He paused and gazed at the crowd in smiling silence, and then he mused, as if he were in a quiet room talking to one good friend over a cup of tea, “We all live by vows. Sometimes we live by vows we don’t even know we have made. Is good to be conscious of the vows we live by. It can be helpful to ask yourself what vows you live by, yes?”
Since then I have repeatedly asked myself what vows I live by, with different results each time. I need only to look at the way I live to see the unconscious vows I live by. I have made conscious vows I wanted to live by, stars to steer by: like taking time to dance each day, like not beating up on myself for perceived failures, like pausing each night to write down the gifts of that day, like treating each person I meet as if they are the most important person on earth. No sooner do I make vows than I forget them. Examining my vows, or trying to remember what the last ones were, has become a frequent fantasy, rather like the “What would I do if money were not an issue” fantasy, or the “If I only had six months left to live” fantasy.
I was struck by the similarity of the Dalai Lama’s answer to that South African question and his answer to a question put to him by Werner Herzog in The Wheel of Time. Herzog films endless streams of humanity pouring into Bodh Gaya for the Kalachakra ceremony of 2002, and he cuts from that pilgrimage to a related pilgrimage around Mt. Kailash, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims circumambulate the mountain and climb on foot (or on their knees) over passes 19,000 feet high. Jump cut to an interview with the Dalai Lama, and Herzog’s question: “Do you think Mt. Kailash is the center of the universe?” The Dalai Lama laughs for a while, and then he answers, “I don’t know. Maybe each country thinks it has the center of the universe. Each person thinks he is the center of the universe. Even me, to me it seems I am the center of the universe. And you. Maybe it seems to you that you are the center of the universe.” More laughter.
I was glad to be watching those pilgrimages on film in the peace and quiet of my apartment and not being there in that press of human flesh and hunger and excrement, not being there in the cold and the wind, not being there in the great heat of those kitchens, cooking for thousands. Herzog takes his time with the film. There’s a loooooong shot of a couple making their way around Mt. Kailash doing prostrations: two steps and then bow, kneel, lie flat on the ground, kneel, bow, stand, take two steps and then bow…. Cut to tents flapping in the wind. Cut to a long shot of the mountain and hundreds of people trudging slowly around it. Back to the couple, now crossing a rocky stream: hop to one stone and then another, then bow, gather the clothing up so it doesn’t get wet, kneel on the rocks, bend over (impossible to lie flat) and touch the head to another stone, gather the clothing again, kneel, stand, hop to the next stone…. This is not the Buddhism that calls to me, but it is powerful to see that testament of faith.
I think about Santiago de Compostela and Finisterre last summer, the pilgrims who had come on foot as they entered the cathedral or reached the lighthouse at the end of the world. They were tired, but they had done all they could do. They had kept a vow. They had finished something. I think about the pilgrims I saw in Lourdes in 1979: the “holiness” was not in the place. The holiness was in the people who brought their hopes and plans and faith to the place. The holiness was in the journey of the people to the place. There must be great relief in knowing that at least for a moment, you have done all you could do. You have arrived. And then you pack your bags and go back to your life and mess things up again.
My friend Tom, in jail in Huntsville, is someone I’ve “known” for four years but never met. We began writing to each other when I had a project linking prisoners, as writing mentors, to college students in my first-year composition courses. The prisoners were an unpaid cadre of mail-order tutors who had more time to read and respond to my students’ essays than I did. They would write letters to my students suggesting improvements, and the students would receive the prisoners’ advice, work on their drafts, and then hand in improved essays to me for grading. Tom writes:
“I’ve been involved with a Christian meditation group here on the Ellis Unit. We recently watched a video of the Dalai Lama and Father Lawrence at a conference in England. One of our newest group members left after only watching ten or fifteen minutes of the tape. He told me later that he had a problem with any religion that reveres a mortal with terms like ‘His Holiness,’ be it the Pope or the Dalai Lama. I had invited this guy to our group because he has been drove up behind family problems, and I thought if he learned to meditate, he might relax. Apparently his family is not the only thing that has him drove up.”
Where is that “holiness,” if it exists at all? The Dalai Lama is a remarkable man, no matter what we call him. The holiness he seems to embody is not something he claims. He only claims to be a simple monk who keeps his vows. He emanates a force-field of kindness. He moves people, whether they are Buddhists or not. He presides over incredibly elaborate rituals, but he doesn’t claim to “believe” in the rituals except as useful metaphors. He holds the place for those who do believe, and at the same time he welcomes unbelievers to an ethics of kindness and respect. How bad can any system be, if it leads people to behave with graciousness toward themselves and each other? Maybe the Dalai Lama seems to be a “holy” man because so many people expect holiness of him, or because so many people bring their own holiness to him, lay it at his feet, project it upon him. Those two people crossing the mountain passes two steps at a time….
Tags: Books and Movies, Buddhism, Dalai Lama
Kendall
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