Chapter 36 - Mystery-plays

How differently things turn out from what we expect! When a few months later we arrived at the Monastery of the White Conch, Tomo Géshé Rimpoché had left for a tour of his monasteries in the Darjeeling district, and by the time we got back to India, he had returned again to Sera, which people thought safe enough now -- not suspecting the terrible fate that hung over this place and the untold sufferings it would bring to the young Tulku. However, I will relate these happenings in a later chapter and confine myself first to the events nearer at hand.

Due to various reasons we stayed several months longer at Gyantse than intended, but our time was well spent and we took the opportunity to visit numerous monasteries and mountain retreats (ri-khrod, pron. 'ritö') in the nearer and farther surroundings, besides making as thorough a study of the famous Kumbum as possible within the time at our disposal (the amount of iconographic material contained in it could not have been exhausted in a lifetime!) and attending many religious ceremonies and festivals, including the famous monastic dances and mystery-plays with all their splendour of gorgeously brocaded costumes, the fantastic vivacity of their masks, their magic gestures and movements and the sonorous musical accompaniment in which the voices of divine and demoniac powers seemed to contend with each other in a vast arena of soaring mountains and monumental architecture.

I had attended similar performances at Yi-Gah Chö-Ling, Hemis, and a number of smaller places -- the most impressive at Hemis (Ladakh), where the mystery-plays continued for three days in succession and where thousands of people, who had come from near and far (many of them trekking for many days to attend the festival), camped in and around the monastery, situated in a wild mountain scenery of fantastic beauty. Here, where people in those days had not yet come in touch with the outer world, where people had never seen a vehicle on wheels, where the mere mention of railways or steamships aroused an incredulous smile, and where aeroplanes or the like had never been heard of -- it was here that one could see and participate in the feeling which these mystery-plays aroused.

They were far from being merely theatrical performances: they were the coming to life of a higher reality through magic rites, in which beings from the spiritual world were propitiated and invited to manifest themselves in the bearers of their symbols, who for the time being divested themselves of their own personality, by going through a ritual of purification and making themselves instruments and vessels of the divine powers which their masks represented. These masks, which seemed to take on a life of their own under the strong Tibetan sun and in the measured rhythmic movements of their bearers, were not only of a benevolently 'divine' nature but embodied likewise the terrible guises which those powers assumed in the outer world as well as in the human heart: the powers of death and destruction, the terrors of the great unknown, the powers of demoniacal fury and hellish illusion, of fearful spectres and sneering demons of doubt, which assail us on our way from birth to death and from death to rebirth, until we have learned to face life and death with the courage that only the compassion for our fellow-beings and insight into the true nature of phenomena can give us. Unless, we are able to recognise all these fearful and terrifying appearances as emanations of our own mind and transformations of the force that will ultimately lead us towards enlightenment we shall wander endlessly in the rounds of birth and death, as it is said in the Bardo Thödol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead).

Thus the mystery-plays of Tibet are the representations of this supernatural, or better, super-human world that manifests itself in the human soul and would overpower it if no adequate expression could he found. The mystery-plays of ancient Egypt as well as those of the Dionysian cult sprang from the same source. And just as in Greece, the theatre developed from the mystic Dionysian dances, so the Tibetan religious plays had their origin in the ritual dances of the magicians, in which symbolical gestures (mudra) and incantations (mantra) served the purpose of warding off evil and creating beneficial influences.

As with the Greeks, the performance takes place in the middle of the audience. There is no separate or elevated stage, but the plays are performed in the main courtyard of the monastery, which is generally surrounded by galleries in which the most prominent people are seated, while the others are crowded in the remaining space in the courtyard and on all the available roofs round about. The imposing architecture, the gorgeously decorated galleries and the colourful gay crowd form a natural and most beautiful setting, which is as inseparable from the dances as the architecture from the landscape and the spectators from the performers. The very fact that the latter were not separated from the spectators by a stage, but moved through and within the crowd, emphasises the oneness of spectators and performers in an experience in which the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural, the profane and the sacred, have been eliminated, so that the spectators become as much a part of the play as the actors, participating in and fully responding to the magic, mind-created reality of a higher dimension. Their expectancy and implicit faith, their spontaneous reactions and emotions, seem to create a kind of integrated consciousness, in which performers and spectators are merged and lifted up to a level of spiritual experience that otherwise would have been unattainable and inaccessible to them.

What an unforgettable sight to see the super-human figures of saints and of celestial and demoniacal beings emerge from the dark cavelike portals of the main temple, majestically descending the long flight of steps down to the courtyard, accompanied by the thundering blasts of twelve-foot-long horns and the slow rhythm of deep kettle-drums. Thousands of people who occupy every inch of ground round the open space in the centre of the courtyard, as well as the open verandas, balconies, and roofs of the adjoining buildings, hold their breath in spellbound silence. Step by step the awe-inspiring figures descend: under the multi-coloured royal umbrella Padmasambhava himself, the great apostle and master of all magic arts, followed by the various forms and incarnations which he assumed in his multifarious activities in the service of mankind: as Buddha-Śākyamuni, as king, as scholar, as Yogi, as monk, and in his terrible forms: as the subduer of demons and protector of the Sacred Law, etc. In measured dance-steps and with mystic gestures they circle the open space around the tall prayer-flag in the centre of the courtyard, while the rhythmically swelling and ebbing sounds of a full monastic orchestra mingle with the recitation of holy scriptures and prayers, invoking the blessings of Buddhas and saints and glorifying their deeds and words. Clouds of incense rise to heaven and the air vibrates with the deep voices of giant trombones and drums.

But while those awe-inspiring figures solemnly wheel around, the almost unbearable tension and exaltation, which has gripped the spectators, is suddenly relieved by the appearance of two grotesquely grinning masks, whose bearers are aping the movements of the sacred dancers and seem to mock the Buddhas and even the terrifying Defenders of the Faith. They are weaving in and out of the solemn circle, gaping into the faces of the dancers, as if defying and ridiculing both the divine and the demoniacal powers. These, however, seem to take no notice and move on with unperturbed dignity. The effect is astonishing: far from destroying the atmosphere of wonder and sacredness, the juxtaposition of the sublime and the ridiculous rather seems to deepen the sense of reality, in which the highest and the lowest have their place and condition each other, thus giving perspective and proportion to our conception of the world and of ourselves.

By experiencing the opposite pole of reality simultaneously, we actually intensify them. They are like the counterpoints in a musical composition: they widen the amplitude of our emotional response by creating a kind of inner space through the distance of simultaneously experienced opposites. The wider the amplitude, the greater the depth or intensity of our experience. Tragedy and comedy are for ever interwoven in the events of our life, seriousness and a sense of humour do not exclude each other; on the contrary, they constitute and indicate the fullness and completeness of human experience and the capacity to see the relativity of all things and all 'truths' and especially of our own position.

The Buddha's sense of humour -- which is so evident in many of his discourses -- is closely bound up with his sense of compassion: both are born from an understanding of greater connections, from an insight into the interrelatedness of all things and all living beings and the chain reactions of cause and effect. His smile is the expression of one who can see the 'wondrous play of ignorance and knowledge' against its universal background and its deeper meaning. Only thus is it possible not to be overpowered by the misery of the world or by our own sense of righteousness that judges and condemns what is not in accordance with our own understanding and divides the world into good and bad. A man with a sense of humour cannot but be compassionate in his heart, because his sense of proportion allows him to see things in their proper perspective.

In the Tibetan mystery-plays all states of existence are present: the worlds of gods and men, of animal-headed monsters and hungry spirits, the spectres of death and annihilation and the human and super-human incarnations of love and compassion, through which all forms of existence are freed from their limitations and reunited with that greater life that encompasses all.

The struggle between the forces of light and darkness, between the divine and the demonic, between the titanic forces of decay and dissolution and the innate urge for eternal life -- this struggle is depicted both on the historical as well as on the timeless plane of the human soul. The coming of Padmasambhava and his victory over the black magicians and the host of evil spirits, whom the latter tried to appease with bloody sacrifices, both human and animal, is the main subject of the first days performance in the monasteries of the Old Schools (Nyingma, Kargyüd, and Sakya), while the Gelugpas depict the slaying of King Langdarma in the bow-and-arrow dance of the hermit, who appears in the guise of a black magician, attired in the robes and the black skull-surmounted hat of the Bön priests, as described in the historical appendix of this book.

More important, however, than the historical allusions are those related to The Ti-betan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thödol), Padmasambhava's greatest work, which makes it clear that all the gods and demons, the forces of light and darkness, are within us, and that those who want to conquer the Lord of Death will have to meet him and to recognise him in the midst of life. Then Death will appear as the revealer of the ultimate mystery of life, who under the guise of the terrible bull-headed King of Death, and accompanied by all the frightful spectres that a terrified human conscience can conjure up, slays the demon of egohood and selfishness and thus performs the only sacrifice that the Buddha recognises: the sacrifice of ones own 'ego'. The Lord of Death (yama-rāja) is none other than the Great Compassionate One, Avalokiteśvara. Thus the bloody sacrifices of the past were replaced by that of our own little self that has held us in bondage for aeons and will keep us in the unceasing rounds of birth and death until we have grown beyond it and freed ourselves from its clutches.

Padmasambhava, one of the wisest teachers of all time, thus gave a new meaning to the magic ritual that had been handed down by the Bön priests from times immemorial, when sacrifices of blood seemed to be the only way to appease the gods and the dark powers of the universe that threatened man's very existence. Now the human heart had become the stage of the universe, and instead of a living human being or an animal, the effigy of a man, made of coloured dough, was carried into the arena by skeleton-like cemetery ghouls, who performed a wild dance around it, until the Lord of Death and his frightful retinue appeared on the scene and drove them away.

And, now follows the most dramatic and significant part of the sacred dances (Forming the highlight of the second day of the mystery-play of the Old Schools): the Lord of Death, wearing the dark blue mask of a three-eyed, skull-crowned bull of frightful size and appearance -- a blood-filled skull-bowl in one hand and swinging a broadbladed battle-sword in the other -- dances with ever-quickening steps and increasing ferocity around the prostrate human figure in the centre of the courtyard, until he whirls around at such speed that his features become a mere blur and his sword a bundle of flashes. The drums accelerate their rhythm to a crescendo of thunder—and at that moment the sword strikes the effigy, dismembers it, and scatters the parts in all directions. Now a wild scramble ensues, in which the host of demons pick up the scattered parts of the effigy and, after having devoured some morsels of it, throw the remainder into the air and among the spectators, who likewise take part in the sacrificial feast.

It is difficult to give an idea of the realistic and at the same time fantastic effect of this intermingling of the natural and the supernatural. The masks -- over-life-sized and expressively stylised in form and colour -- seem to be animated in the most uncanny way and more real than the human being? who wear them or the spectators who have completely surrendered themselves to the spirit of the play. All of them participate in an experience that transcends their present state of existence and seems to lift them beyond the frontiers of death: where the gates of all the worlds and forms of rebirth are opened, and where at the same time the path that leads beyond them appears before the inner eye or is felt as an upsurge of longing towards the ultimate aim of liberation and enlightenment.

Now performers and spectators are welded into one and have both become active participants in a magic rite, which initiates them into one of the most ancient mysteries which is the origin of all religious life and the beginning of the awakening of man.