Beasts, Men and Gods/Chapter 40
THE LIVING BUDDHA
IN THE BLISSFUL GARDEN OF A THOUSAND JOYS
IN Mongolia, the country of miracles and mysteries, lives the custodian of all the mysterious and unknown, the Living Buddha, His Holiness Djebtsung Damba Hutuktu Khan or Bogdo Gheghen, Pontiff of Ta Kure. He is the incarnation of the never-dying Buddha, the representative of the unbroken, mysteriously continued line of spiritual emperors ruling since 1670, concealing in themselves the ever refining spirit of Buddha Amitabha joined with Chan-ra-zi or the "Compassionate Spirit of the Mountains." In him is everything, even the Sun Myth and the fascination of the mysterious peaks of the Himalayas, tales of the Indian pagoda, the stern majesty of the Mongolian Conquerors—Emperors of All Asia—and the ancient, hazy legends of the Chinese sages; immersion in the thoughts of the Brahmans; the severities of life of the monks of the "Virtuous Order"; the vengeance of the eternally wandering warriors, the Olets, with their Khans, Batur Hun Taigi and Gushi; the proud bequests of Jenghiz and Kublai Khan; the clerical reactionary psychology of the Lamas; the mystery of Tibetan kings beginning from Srong-Tsang Gampo; and the mercilessness of the Yellow Sect of Paspa. All the hazy history of Asia, of Mongolia, Pamir, Himalayas, Mesopotamia, Persia and China, surrounds the Living God of Urga. It is little wonder that his name is honored along the Volga, in Siberia, Arabia, between the Tigris and Euphrates, in Indo-China and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
During my stay in Urga I visited the abode of the Living Buddha several times, spoke with him and observed his life. His favorite learned Marambas gave me long accounts of him. I saw him reading horoscopes, I heard his predictions, I looked over his archives of ancient books and the manuscripts containing the lives and predictions of all the Bogdo Khans. The Lamas were very frank and open with me, because the letter of the Hutuktu of Narabanchi won for me their confidence.
The personality of the Living Buddha is double, just as everything in Lamaism is double. Clever, penetrating, energetic, he at the same time indulges in the drunkenness which has brought on blindness. When he became blind, the Lamas were thrown into a state of desperation. Some of them maintained that Bogdo Khan must be poisoned and another Incarnate Buddha set in his place; while the others pointed out the great merits of the Pontiff in the eyes of Mongolians and the followers of the Yellow Faith. They finally decided to propitiate the gods by building a great temple with a gigantic statue of Buddha. However, this did not help the Bogdo's sight but the whole incident gave him the opportunity of hurrying on to their higher life those among the Lamas who had shown too much radicalism in their proposed method of solving his problem.
He never ceases to ponder upon the cause of the church and of Mongolia and at the same time likes to indulge himself with useless trifles. He amuses himself with artillery. A retired Russian officer presented him with two old guns, for which the donor received the title of Tumbaiir Hun, that is, "Prince Dear-to-my-Heart." On holidays these cannon were fired to the great amusement of the blind man. Motor cars, gramophones, telephones, crystals, porcelains, pictures, perfumes, musical instruments, rare animals and birds; elephants, Himalayan bears, monkeys, Indian snakes and parrots—all these were in the palace of "the god" but all were soon cast aside and forgotten.
To Urga come pilgrims and presents from all the Lamaite and Buddhist world. Once the treasurer of the palace, the Honorable Balma Dorji, took me into the great hall where the presents were kept. It was a most unique museum of precious articles. Here were gathered together rare objects unknown to the museums of Europe. The treasurer, as he opened a case with a silver lock, said to me:
"These are pure gold nuggets from Bei Kem; here are black sables from Kemchick; these the miraculous deer horns; this a box sent by the Orochons and filled with precious ginseng roots and fragrant musk; this a bit of amber from the coast of the 'frozen sea' and it weighs 124 lans (about ten pounds); these are precious stones from India, fragrant zebet and carved ivory from China."
He showed the exhibits and talked of them for a long time and evidently enjoyed the telling. And really it was wonderful! Before my eyes lay the bundles of rare furs; white beaver, black sables, white, blue and black fox and black panthers; small beautifully carved tortoise shell boxes containing hatyks ten or fifteen yards long, woven from Indian silk as fine as the webs of the spider; small bags made of golden thread filled with pearls, the presents of Indian Rajahs; precious rings with sapphires and rubies from China and India; big pieces of jade, rough diamonds; ivory tusks ornamented with gold, pearls and precious stones; bright clothes sewn with gold and silver thread; walrus tusks carved in bas-relief by the primitive artists on the shores of the Behring Sea; and much more that one cannot recall or recount. In a separate room stood the cases with the statues of Buddha, made of gold, silver, bronze, ivory, coral, mother of pearl and from a rare colored and fragrant species of wood.
"You know when conquerors come into a country where the gods are honored, they break the images and throw them down. So it was more than three hundred years ago when the Kalmucks went into Tibet and the same was repeated in Peking when the European troops looted the place in 1900. But do you know why this is done? Take one of the statues and examine it."
I picked up one nearest the edge, a wooden Buddha, and began examining it. Inside something was loose and rattled.
"Do you hear it?" the Lama asked. "These are precious stones and bits of gold, the entrails of the god. This is the reason why the conquerors at once break up the statues of the gods. Many famous precious stones have appeared from the interior of the statues of the gods in India, Babylon and China."
Some rooms were devoted to the library, where manuscripts and volumes of different epochs in different languages and with many diverse themes fill the shelves. Some of them are mouldering or pulverizing away and the Lamas cover these now with a solution which partially solidifies like a jelly to protect what remains from the ravages of the air. There also we saw tablets of clay with the cuneiform inscriptions, evidently from Babylonia; Chinese, Indian and Tibetan books shelved beside those of Mongolia; tomes of the ancient pure Buddhism; books of the "Red Caps" or corrupt Buddhism; books of the "Yellow" or Lamaite Buddhism; books of traditions, legends and parables. Groups of Lamas were perusing, studying and copying these books, preserving and spreading the ancient wisdom for their successors.
One department is devoted to the mysterious books on magic, the historical lives and works of all the thirty-one Living Buddhas, with the bulls of the Dalai Lama, of the Pontiff from Tashi Lumpo, of the Hutuktu of Utai in China, of the Pandita Gheghen of Dolo Nor in Inner Mongolia and of the Hundred Chinese Wise Men. Only the Bogdo Hutuktu and Maramba Ta-Rimpo-Cha can enter this room of mysterious lore. The keys to it rest with the seals of the Living Buddha and the ruby ring of Jenghiz Khan ornamented with the sign of the swastika in the chest in the private study of the Bogdo.
The person of His Holiness is surrounded by five thousand Lamas. They are divided into many ranks from simple servants to the "Councillors of God," of which latter the Government consists. Among these Councillors are all the four Khans of Mongolia and the five highest Princes.
Of all the Lamas there are three classes of peculiar interest, about which the Living Buddha himself told me when I visited him with Djam Bolon.
"The God" sorrowfully mourned over the demoralized and sumptuous life led by the Lamas which decreased rapidly the number of fortune tellers and clairvoyants among their ranks, saying of it:
"If the Jahantsi and Narabanchi monasteries had not preserved their strict regime and rules, Ta Kure would have been left without prophets and fortune tellers. Barun Abaga Nar, Dorchiul-Jurdok and the other holy Lamas who had the power of seeing that which is hidden from the sight of the common people have gone with the blessing of the gods."
This class of Lamas is a very important one, because every important personage visiting the monasteries at Urga is shown to the Lama Tzuren or fortune teller without the knowledge of the visitor for the study of his destiny and fate, which are then communicated to the Bogdo Hutuktu, so that with these facts in his possession the Bogdo knows in what way to treat his guest and what policy to follow toward him. The Tzurens are mostly old men, skinny, exhausted and severe ascetics. But I have met some who were young, almost boys. They were the Hubilgan, "incarnate gods," the future Hutuktus and Gheghens of the various Mongolian monasteries.
The second class is the doctors or "Ta Lama." They observe the actions of plants and certain products from animals upon people, preserve Tibetan medicines and cures, and study anatomy very carefully but without making use of vivisection and the scalpel. They are skilful bone setters, masseurs and great connoisseurs of hypnotism and animal magnetism.
The third class is the highest rank of doctors, consisting chiefly of Tibetans and Kalmucks—poisoners. They may be said to be "doctors of political medicine." They live by themselves, apart from any associates, and are the great silent weapon in the hands of the Living Buddha. I was informed that a large portion of them are dumb. I saw one such doctor,—the very person who poisoned the Chinese physician sent by the Chinese Emperor from Peking to "liquidate" the Living Buddha,—a small white old fellow with a deeply wrinkled face, a curl of white hairs on his chin and with vivacious eyes that were ever shifting inquiringly about him. Whenever he comes to a monastery, the local "god" ceases to eat and drink in fear of the activities of this Mongolian Locusta. But even this cannot save the condemned, for a poisoned cap or shirt or boots, or a rosary, a bridle, books or religious articles soaked in a poisonous solution will surely accomplish the object of the Bogdo-Khan.
The deepest esteem and religious faithfulness surround the blind Pontiff. Before him all fall on their faces. Khans and Hutuktus approach him on their knees. Everything about him is dark, full of Oriental antiquity. The drunken blind man, listening to the banal arias of the gramophone or shaking his servants with an electric current from his dynamo, the ferocious old fellow poisoning his political enemies, the Lama keeping his people in darkness and deceiving them with his prophecies and fortune telling,—he is, however, not an entirely ordinary man.
One day we sat in the room of the Bogdo and Prince Djam Bolon translated to him my story of the Great War. The old fellow was listening very carefully but suddenly opened his eyes widely and began to give attention to some sounds coming in from outside the room. His face became reverent, supplicant and frightened.
"The Gods call me," he whispered and slowly moved into his private shrine, where he prayed loudly about two hours, kneeling immobile as a statue. His prayer consists of conversation with the invisible gods, to whose questions he himself gave the answers. He came out of the shrine pale and exhausted but pleased and happy. It was his personal prayer. During the regular temple service he did not participate in the prayers, for then he is "God." Sitting on his throne, he is carried and placed on the altar and there prayed to by the Lamas and the people. He only receives the prayers, hopes, tears, woe and desperation of the people, immobilely gazing into space with his sharp and bright but blind eyes. At various times in the service the Lamas robe him in different vestments, combinations of yellow and red, and change his caps. The service always finishes at the solemn moment when the Living Buddha with the tiara on his head pronounces the pontifical blessing upon the congregation, turning his face to all four cardinal points of the compass and finally stretching out his hands toward the northwest, that is, to Europe, whither in the belief of the Yellow Faith must travel the teachings of the wise Buddha.
After earnest prayers or long temple services the Pontiff seems very deeply shaken and often calls his secretaries and dictates his visions and prophecies, always very complicated and unaccompanied by his deductions.
Sometimes with the words "Their souls are communicating," he puts on his white robes and goes to pray in his shrine. Then all the gates of the palace are shut and all the Lamas are sunk in solemn, mystic fear; all are praying, telling their rosaries and whispering the orison: "Oml Mani padme Hung!" or turning the prayer wheels with their prayers or exorcisings; the fortune tellers read their horoscopes; the clairvoyants write out their visions; while Marambas search the ancient books for explanations of the words of the Living Buddha.