Chapter 48 - The Lama Of Phiyang

Hardly has we returned to our Lhakhangs when the Dzongpön of Rudok arrived, accompanied by the Abbot of the Sakya Gompa of Phiyang. They reached Tsaparang in the evening, and the next morning the Phiyang Lama came up to the Red Temple just after we had finished our pūjā and were about to start our work. The Lama, an elderly man with a friendly face, fringed by a thin while beard, immediately impressed us as a person of sincere goodwill and religious devotion. His outward simplicity, his natural yet dignified tearing, and his quiet way of speaking made us instinctively feel that we had nothing to fear from him and that his questions were born of genuine religious interest and not from any motive of distrust. Sitting down in the warm sun outside the Red Temple, he immediately engaged me in a religious talk. After enquiring to which Chö-lug (sect or tradition) we belonged, he revealed that he himself -- though being the head of a Sakya Gompa -- was a follower of the Kargyüd and Nyingina traditions. I told him of our Kargyüd Guru as well as of Tomo Géshé Rimpoché, whereupon he said: `What does it matter what school one follows, as there is only one thing that really matters: the practice of meditation. Then he quoted a verse expressing these thoughts, which began with the words: Without meditation [ sgom] there is no Dharma [ chos], and wherever the Dharma is found, there is also meditation.

I felt strangely elated in the presence of this old man, who was sitting humbly with us on the bare ground before the entrance of the temple, clad in his unassuming travelling robes, which did not distinguish him from the poorest Trapa. There was no curiosity in his talk; he was not interested in personal questions, from where we came and where we went from here or what we did, but only in matters of spiritual life and, most of all, in meditationa] practice. I could see that he was a man of great learning, but one who had left behind him the ambitions of mere scholarship, because he had realised the essence of the Buddha's message in his own life.

For the first time we did not feel sorry to interrupt our work, because since leaving our Guru's monasteries in Southern Tibet, we had not met anybody of real spiritual attainment, which like the natural perfume of a flower makes itself known unobtrusively and quietly, pervading its surroundings, irrespective of whether people pay attention to it or not. We could not say why, but Phiyang Lama's presence radiated such peace that all our troubles and anxieties seemed to be blown away; our race against time, which had kept us in perpetual tension, had suddenly stopped and we felt happy and contented, as if time had ceased to exist. Nothing seemed to matter as long as we were in Phiyang Lamas presence, and we only wished that he could stay longer with us. But he told us that he was on his way to India on a pilgrimage to the holy places and that he had accepted the Dzongpön of Rudoks invitation to travel in his company only as long as they were following the same direction.

After we had returned from the temples in the company of Phiyang Lama, the Dzongpön joined us in our little hut, and since he was quite a pleasant young man, lively and full of eagerness to hear of our travels and especially of all the society people of Central Tibet whom we had met in various places, I took out the photographs of our friends and acquaintances, many of whom were known to him. He was particularly interested in the photos of young ladies, and Li had some difficulty in dissuading him from keeping some of them, by explaining that she had no right to pass them on to others without having the permission of the persons concerned. Phiyang Lama was amused by the young man's enthusiasm, but he did not spoil his fun in any way, seeing how much the Dzongpön enjoyed talking about people and places of which he had pleasant remembrances and which he sorely missed in his far-off outpost at Rudok, not far from the Pangong Lake.

What a contrast between these two people: the gay young-man about town and the quiet old sage! Yet they seemed to make good travelling companions: the young one by his good-natured jollity, the old one by his tolerant understanding of human nature and his unshakable equanimity.

They were leaving the following day, and when Phiyang Lama came to say goodbye to us, we felt genuinely sorry. In order to express our feelings in a more tangible way; we wanted to present him with a beautiful reproduction of the famous Sarnath Buddha (of the sixth century A.D.), which we had brought with us as a special gift for some high Lama, with whom we might come in touch on our journey. But to our surprise the Rimpoché declined our gift in all kindness, and we felt that his words were sincere and true, when he said: `I thank you for your kindness, but I really do not need any outward picture of the Enlightened One, because the Buddha is ever present in my heart'. And then he blessed us and took his leave.

We suddenly felt a strange sense of loneliness, as if somebody whom we had known for long, somebody who was deeply connected with our own life, had left us. If it had not been for our work, we might have asked his permission to accompany him on his pilgrimage, little did we know that our wish would be fulfilled in a manner we could not have dreamt of and which confirmed our first impression: that we had met a man with unusual spiritual attainments and the capacity as well as the will to transmit them to others.