Monasteries, Monks and Mountains

Tibet Day 2

Very full day today.  Woke up with a headache, thanks to the altitude.  Advil and lots of water cleared it up for most of the day, although its back again now so I just took some more advil. 

We started the day with a home visit to a local family here in Lhasa.  It was really neat to be inside a Tibetan home and to see how they live.  They served us a variety of Tibetan snacks, along with barley beer and yak butter tea, the Tibetan specialty.  The women in the family do beautiful traditional crafts creating aprons, purses, and lots of other gorgeous fabric items.  We saw their beautiful home temple, which is a whole separate room in their house and unbelievably ornate and well adorned.  They've even got a stack of Buddhist scriptures in there - this is a serious home temple.  Its adorned with the tangkas for which Tibet is famous, as well Buddha statues, pictures of the Dalai Lama and their local lama, a large incense burner etc.  

After we left their home we went to a local carpet weaving workshop where we saw how the yak wool rugs are made.  We watched a couple of women weaving the rugs while singing Tibetan folk songs!  Then we went to the Tibetan museum, which has a wonderful display of artifacts from Tibet's history.   There is an entire gallery devoted to tangkas and they've got tangkas going back hundreds of years.  It is a real feast for the eyes.  I was fascinated by the tangkas from the 17th century that were used by physicians showing the human body and its anatomy.  They knew quite a lot about the body and had a pretty extensive traditional medicinal art centuries ago.  

After we left the museum we went to a restaurant near our hotel for lunch.  It was my favorite meal so far, largely because it tasted decidedly Indian!  Tibet is close to India, and, given that the Dalai Lama's Dharamsala is really a "little Tibet" in India there is considerable Indian influence in Tibet.  The food was really excellent, with curries, dal, naan bread, something that looked like an egg roll but tasted totally Indian in terms of flavors and spices, and then we had deep fried apples for dessert.   We're getting a lot of yak meat, which is their beef.  It tastes very good so we're not complaining.  

We then had about 15 minutes to "rest" before we headed out to the Sera Monastery and the Papunkga Monastery, both of which are just outside Lhasa up in the mountains a little way.  Sera Monastery is one of the three largest monasteries in Tibet, which was built in 1419.  Its a pretty extensive complex, now housing only 400 monks, down from the 5500 who used to live there.  Since 2008, the Chinese government has refused to issue permits to allow the monasteries to recruit and enroll new young monks, as was the custom for centuries, when families would send at least one of their sons to the monastery at about the age of 6.  In the modern era, with the one child policy imposed by China and the restriction on permits to enroll new monks, the monasteries are shrinking dramatically.  The Chinese government wants to reduce the size of the monasteries because they see the monks as threats to their political power in Tibet.  

At the monastery we toured the library where the scriptures are housed.  That was amazing, as the scriptures are carved onto long wooden blocks and each block is labeled as to what it is and they are all lined up on shelves that go from floor to ceiling.  When they want to read a particular scripture, a monk takes the wood block down and paints it with ink and prints the sutra on paper.  

After the library we toured the Assembly Hall, where the monks gather daily for their chanting prayer services.  The hall is enormous and bedecked with tangkas and statues of the Buddha.  Rows and rows of prayer cushions many with the signature "yellow hats" line the main hall.  Yak butter oil candles burn all over the place.  Its really stunning.  

Then we went to see the kitchen which is really huge and impressive although certainly not modern!  After that we went to the open air square in the monastery complex where the monks were engaged in their daily debate ritual.  The senior/teacher monks drill the younger student monks on the principles of Buddhist philosophy.  The teacher has one or two students sitting in front of him and asks a question which they must answer. If they are wrong he claps his hand right over their head in front of their face and chastises them.  Its all very dramatic and ritualistic.  It goes on for hours every afternoon, being a significant part of a monk's education.  Makes being "called on" in law school look like child's play, truly!  I video'd a part of it because you need to hear the sound of all the talking, yelling and slapping that is going on - the din is quite remarkable!!  I've included some pics of the debating monks with this post.

After that we left Sera Monastery and drove further up the mountain to a very small, very old monastery, Papungka Monastery, which is used more as a hermitage than a living and teaching monastery.  Its right on the hillside of the mountain, and the few monks that are there live in a small dwelling.  There is also a hermitage way up the mountain in which a couple of monks seclude themselves for 2-3 years at a time.  We were delighted to see yaks up there grazing on the grounds!  The grounds of this monastery also have many stupas, and the special building from which "sky burials" take place.  In Tibetan Buddhism, when someone dies, there are a number of ceremonies that take place immediately after death for a couple of days.  Then the body is taken up to the top of the mountain and someone specially trained (their version of funeral directors!) literally chops the body in pieces and offers it to the vultures.  This is because the Tibetans believe that the human body is merely a vessel for the soul to be used in a given lifetime and when the soul departs the body can be returned to the universe as food for other living creatures.  Apparently, these "sky burials" take place every morning and seem to be a significant source of food for the vultures!  After the vultures are done, there are only bones left, which are then cremated and the ash is mixed with special sand and other minerals to create Buddha statues which are then placed outside around the monastery grounds. Our guide described this ritual with considerable reverence, but it was obvious that some of the group were rather shocked and appalled at the description of this practice!!

It was really thrilling to be up on the mountain with beautiful views of Lhasa all around us.  The landscape is truly breathtaking. And although the temperature was only in the mid-70s, by the time we were up there it felt very hot in the sun because the air is so clear and so thin that the sun's rays really get through!

When we returned from all these activities we only had barely half and hour before dinner.  Then after dinner I hit the local market to get my shopping done. I wandered up a local street near the temple and it was not a tourist street, but one populated by the locals.  It was great fun to see the Tibetan families milling about and children playing and to see the shops where they shop as opposed to the tourist shops on the main strip.

Tomorrow we are to see the Potala Palace.  I'm hoping I'll be able to make it up the 360 steps.  Ordinarily that wouldn't be an issue, but I've noticed today that I'm much more easily winded at this altitude than is usual for me, so we'll just have to see.  The guide warned us that there are always folks who don't make it because of the altitude problem, particularly in cases like ours where we've only been here a couple of days and haven't really had time to fully acclimate.  So I'll see what happens!

I've included pics of the Assembly Hall at the Sera Monastery, the monks in their debating ritual, and some shots from up on the mountain at Papungka Monastery with the beautiful scenery and the yaks!