“In the Shadow of the Buddha: One Man’s Journey in Tibet” was launched last night at Richard Gere’s Bedord Post Inn. The Westchester Buddhist Center graciously hosted the event where fifty people attended the slide show and book discussion. I was pleased that Richard Gere, who wrote the foreword to the book, came for the event.
I was able to thank Richard for his support for the book project and for my non-profit organization, NEKORPA, by giving him a framed print of the hand drawn map of Tibet that is in the book.
The drawings in the four corners of this map are of the pilgrimage sites found in "In the Shadow of the Buddha": which are the Jokhang Cathedral in Lhasa, the Enlightenment Stupa of Tertön Sogyal at Nyagar, Kalzang Monastery in Nyarong, and the Cave That Delights the Senses at Tsadra Rinchen Drak near Palpung in Eastern Tibet.
The spiritual geography of the map developed over the years of pilgrimage in Tibet. And the first part of the journey I wrote about in the early part of the “In the Shadow of the Buddha”:
---
When I came to Kalzang Monastery, One-Eye Wangde held the keys to the iron padlocks on the door to the dusty library on the top floor of the temple. As we walked to the temple library, I held his bony elbow as his curved knuckles gripped a cane. Ascending a leaning stairwell, we lit two candles to illuminate the room. The library consists of the hundreds of woodblocks stored in shelves that reach the ceiling with enough space for pilgrims to walk underneath. The aging One-Eye Wangde told me that I was the first “long-nose,” or Westerner, ever to visit this inner sanctum of the temple at Kalzang—permission was granted likely because of the letter from Sogyal Rinpoche I continued to carry.
One-Eye Wangde arranged for a copy of Tertön Sogyal’s hagiography from the woodblocks, directing three younger novices to print the book manually on handmade paper. One novice traveled by horse for four hours to collect the paper from Chagdud Monastery. Another monk ground ink powder by hand and then mixed it with the nearby holy spring water, adding a dash of gold out of respect for the story the ink would tell. It took an additional two days for the monks to print the manuscript and a half day to dry the text in the mountain sunlight before binding the elongated sheets of paper between thin wood slats, secured with a leather strap.
While I waited for the book, every morning I went to One-Eye Wangde’s one-room, wood-cabin hermitage. A plastic sheet had been nailed around the window for insulation, casting a mellow bluish light against the walls, thick with soot from the dung-fire stove. He sat on what served both as his bed and his meditation cubicle. There was a small bookshelf with volumes read hundreds of times over and a dented tea thermos. Only prayer broke his days of silence. One-Eye Wangde had a toughness about him that seemed to welcome discomfort.
One-Eye Wangde had his own copy of the hagiography, oil-and dirt-stained at the top edges from use. He chanted the entire text, offering me the traditional oral transmission where the disciple hears the text directly from his teacher, just as his teacher had given it to him, so the continuity of blessing is secured.
Upon my return to Nepal with the text, I turned to two British scholar-friends in France and Kathmandu to help extrapolate Tertön Sogyal’s travels across the Tibetan Plateau from the mystical verses, prophetic statements, and cryptic dreams. Although the text purportedly narrates Tertön Sogyal’s life, locating him in a specific time and place in a chronological sense was a difficult task. Over the course of the next years, my English friends and I spoke to elderly lamas in Tibet, Nepal, and India. We tried to unlock the meaning of various passages, and researched different biographies of the XIII Dalai Lama and other spiritual luminaries who spent time with Tertön Sogyal. In my room in Kathmandu, I had a map on my wall of present-day Tibet. I highlighted Tertön Sogyal’s apparent travels on foot and on horseback, and in dreams, across Tibet, and into China. I made tentative itineraries and plans to travel along the same caravan routes, and circled with a red marker the locations where his most significant revelations and visions occurred. Most places had no road to them. I eventually came away with a cartographer’s sketch of the Tibetan Plateau crisscrossed by Tertön Sogyal’s life of nonstop movement. I now had a map to guide me—but of course, the map is not the territory.
------
Prints of the map are available to generous donors to Nekorpa. Contact me at info@nekorpa.org for more information. All proceeds support the work of Nekorpa, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting sacred pilgrimage sites around the world. Please visit www.nekorpa.org to learn about the projects, or email info@nekorpa.org.
This map was hand-illustrated by Jocelyn Slack, and is printed on on Canson Montval Aquarelle 310 paper, and are signed and numbered.
Thanks again to everyone for reading the hardback copy, and now the paperback edition!!
I was able to thank Richard for his support for the book project and for my non-profit organization, NEKORPA, by giving him a framed print of the hand drawn map of Tibet that is in the book.
The drawings in the four corners of this map are of the pilgrimage sites found in "In the Shadow of the Buddha": which are the Jokhang Cathedral in Lhasa, the Enlightenment Stupa of Tertön Sogyal at Nyagar, Kalzang Monastery in Nyarong, and the Cave That Delights the Senses at Tsadra Rinchen Drak near Palpung in Eastern Tibet.
The spiritual geography of the map developed over the years of pilgrimage in Tibet. And the first part of the journey I wrote about in the early part of the “In the Shadow of the Buddha”:
---
When I came to Kalzang Monastery, One-Eye Wangde held the keys to the iron padlocks on the door to the dusty library on the top floor of the temple. As we walked to the temple library, I held his bony elbow as his curved knuckles gripped a cane. Ascending a leaning stairwell, we lit two candles to illuminate the room. The library consists of the hundreds of woodblocks stored in shelves that reach the ceiling with enough space for pilgrims to walk underneath. The aging One-Eye Wangde told me that I was the first “long-nose,” or Westerner, ever to visit this inner sanctum of the temple at Kalzang—permission was granted likely because of the letter from Sogyal Rinpoche I continued to carry.
One-Eye Wangde arranged for a copy of Tertön Sogyal’s hagiography from the woodblocks, directing three younger novices to print the book manually on handmade paper. One novice traveled by horse for four hours to collect the paper from Chagdud Monastery. Another monk ground ink powder by hand and then mixed it with the nearby holy spring water, adding a dash of gold out of respect for the story the ink would tell. It took an additional two days for the monks to print the manuscript and a half day to dry the text in the mountain sunlight before binding the elongated sheets of paper between thin wood slats, secured with a leather strap.
While I waited for the book, every morning I went to One-Eye Wangde’s one-room, wood-cabin hermitage. A plastic sheet had been nailed around the window for insulation, casting a mellow bluish light against the walls, thick with soot from the dung-fire stove. He sat on what served both as his bed and his meditation cubicle. There was a small bookshelf with volumes read hundreds of times over and a dented tea thermos. Only prayer broke his days of silence. One-Eye Wangde had a toughness about him that seemed to welcome discomfort.
One-Eye Wangde had his own copy of the hagiography, oil-and dirt-stained at the top edges from use. He chanted the entire text, offering me the traditional oral transmission where the disciple hears the text directly from his teacher, just as his teacher had given it to him, so the continuity of blessing is secured.
Upon my return to Nepal with the text, I turned to two British scholar-friends in France and Kathmandu to help extrapolate Tertön Sogyal’s travels across the Tibetan Plateau from the mystical verses, prophetic statements, and cryptic dreams. Although the text purportedly narrates Tertön Sogyal’s life, locating him in a specific time and place in a chronological sense was a difficult task. Over the course of the next years, my English friends and I spoke to elderly lamas in Tibet, Nepal, and India. We tried to unlock the meaning of various passages, and researched different biographies of the XIII Dalai Lama and other spiritual luminaries who spent time with Tertön Sogyal. In my room in Kathmandu, I had a map on my wall of present-day Tibet. I highlighted Tertön Sogyal’s apparent travels on foot and on horseback, and in dreams, across Tibet, and into China. I made tentative itineraries and plans to travel along the same caravan routes, and circled with a red marker the locations where his most significant revelations and visions occurred. Most places had no road to them. I eventually came away with a cartographer’s sketch of the Tibetan Plateau crisscrossed by Tertön Sogyal’s life of nonstop movement. I now had a map to guide me—but of course, the map is not the territory.
------
Prints of the map are available to generous donors to Nekorpa. Contact me at info@nekorpa.org for more information. All proceeds support the work of Nekorpa, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting sacred pilgrimage sites around the world. Please visit www.nekorpa.org to learn about the projects, or email info@nekorpa.org.
This map was hand-illustrated by Jocelyn Slack, and is printed on on Canson Montval Aquarelle 310 paper, and are signed and numbered.
Thanks again to everyone for reading the hardback copy, and now the paperback edition!!