The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume One (44 page)

December 24
. Our journey now took us through yet stranger country; there were all sorts of trees forming a dense jungle with no level spaces; a tangle of mountains with continual rain and mist. For the first time we saw banana trees, but did not know that the fruit was edible and dared not experiment. The rain poured in torrents all day, splashing up from the ground as it fell. Toward evening we found quite a nice cave with many signs that travelers had used it before. We now had nothing left except tea and a few leather bags. However, we could make a good fire and really enjoyed this meager fare. I was touched to find that Yönten had still kept a small quantity of tsampa for me. After we had eaten, Tsepa volunteered to go down to see if he could find a village where he could get some food; he and the peasant husband went off together. He said that if he could find a village that night he would return to us with supplies, but if no village was near, we were to come on next day and he would meet us on the way. About an hour after he left, we heard the report of a gun; then nothing further. We felt very anxious.

December 25
. We stayed in the cave all day and kept up our spirits by chanting as we cooked our leather; it was such a luxury to have a fire and we stayed on in the cave that night.

December 26
. With the morning light we started off and walked down the slope and as we turned uphill again we met the peasant husband carrying a large bag of tsampa. To our amazement he said that he and Tsepa had overtaken Akong Tulku’s elder brother in company with Dorje Tsering’s wife and three nuns and they had given him the tsampa to tide over our immediate needs. They told him how they had been captured by the Chinese near the backwater, but managed to escape from the headquarters where they were being held and had afterward joined up with some Kongpo peasants who were also escaping. The party had heard Tsepa’s gun the night before and had been so frightened that they had rushed away. It appeared that the gun had only been fired to scare a wild animal which seemed as if it might attack. Tsepa had sent the peasant husband back to us while he himself went up to the village on the mountainside to buy provisions. He sent us a message saying that we were to go to a cave below that place where the other party was waiting for us; he would join us there later with the food. We soon reached the cave and spent a very happy morning telling each other of our experiences. They told us that a group of them had crossed the river and the backwater and had tried to follow us; however, they had lost their way and after lying hidden in the long grass for a time they reached the village. When the Chinese discovered them, there was no fighting; all the refugees were taken prisoner and removed to a village which was a local Chinese headquarters, on the south side of the Brahmaputra. Their baggage was thoroughly searched; all the contents of their amulet boxes were thrown out and all religious books were immediately destroyed. Each person was privately questioned to find out if their stories tallied; they were asked where they came from and where they were going. Most of them said that they were trying to escape to India, though a few said that they were going on pilgrimage to that country. The lamas and leaders were separated from the rest and put under guard to be interrogated more closely. They were given the most menial work to do, such as cleaning out latrines. One of the lamas despaired and hanged himself; he had already escaped from one prison camp in Derge and this was the second time that he had been captured. As other prisoners were brought into the camp all our party were relieved to find that no members of our little group were among them; but when the Chinese could not trace Akong Tulku, Yak Tulku, or me among the senior prisoners, they thought we might be lurking disguised among the crowd, since they knew that we had been the leaders of the party; so the prisoners were checked again, especially the younger ones.

At night everyone was locked up together in a single room, but women and the less important men were allowed to go out into the village during the day: They were, however, called in for individual questioning from time to time. The Chinese would then tell them that now that Lhasa was liberated they could go there whenever they wished to, there would be no trouble on the roads; but of course there were more useful things to be done than wandering off on pilgrimages, which were indeed only superstition. The prisoners were even told that should they wish to go to India for this purpose, the Chinese administration were quite ready to let them out; however, such a journey would be exceedingly dangerous, for anyone might die of starvation or fall ill from the hot climate there.

When a rumor went round the camp that all the able-bodied refugees were shortly to be sent north to join labor camps on the other side of the Brahmaputra and that the senior people and those too old for work were to be sent to concentration camps, one of the nuns contrived to buy food for herself and Akong Tulku’s brother; she also obtained information about the best way to reach Doshong Pass. Dorje Tsering’s wife and two other nuns were also able to procure some food and all five managed to escape together. They stopped in a wood the first night and crossed the Doshong Pass the following day. Here they met the family from Kongpo who knew the country and were also making their escape, so they joined forces.

The Kongpo family were camping in a valley below our cave and the man came up to see me, bringing a jug of soup made of meat and barley which we much appreciated. He told me how he and his people had escaped: It had been very difficult to get out of their village as permits were only given to visit friends in the near neighborhood and when the visit was over the holder had to apply to the local authorities for permission to return to his own home. Having obtained the permits to leave his village, our friend and his family took the opposite direction toward the mountains to the south. A number of the villagers had wanted to do the same thing, but knowing the danger they would have to encounter in crossing the snowbound Doshong Pass, they had not dared to undertake the journey.

Some refugee lamas from Lower Kongpo were sheltering in the small monastery in the village above our cave. A monk came down with Tsepa to request me to conduct a devotional service for them as well as for the villagers. I was surprised to see him wearing a long dagger which looked somehow wrong for a monk. He was particularly friendly and invited us all to stay in the monastery. However, we felt that this village was too near Lower Kongpo and might not be a safe place for us so, seeing that one could not get to the monastery and back again that same afternoon, we stayed where we were in and around the cave. We had an excellent meal with some pork the villagers had supplied and made dumplings with their wheat flour which they also gave us. We tried the local dish of millet, but found this difficult to swallow.

December 27
. Some of our party had bought roast corn from the villagers, which we nibbled throughout the day; unfortunately we had not realized that it would swell up inside us and this, followed by a meal of fat pork, gave us all severe stomachaches, so that none of us were able to sleep that night. However, we were all feeling comforted, for we thought that this part of the country was too wild and unproductive to be of much interest to the Communists. A year later, however, the Chinese occupied these frontier regions, including this part.

December 28
. The Kongpo refugees remained in the vicinity, while we resumed our journey. There are a great many holy mountains in this district which is called Pemakö; Guru Padmasambhava used to meditate in its caves and Tibetans have often come here as hermits and pilgrims to practice meditation.

There were many small villages dotted about and we passed through wild valleys and crossed streams by very primitive bamboo bridges. That night we camped on the bank of a stream.

December 29
. Today it was very hard going, for our way led up and down slopes covered with large rocks; in some cases rough steps had been hewn, in others, it was the old story of narrow nitches cut in the rock faces. There were trees and undergrowth everywhere and we could not see anything of the country around us. To add to our discomfort it was raining very hard and we were wet through before we could stop for the night.

December 30
. In one of the villages which we passed we stopped to rest and some of the villagers, who appeared to be very poor, welcomed us bringing small rice cakes cooked in oil as well as a local beer also made from rice; as the drink was fermented we were unable to accept it and this rather upset their sense of hospitality. We were much interested when one of the peasants took us up the hill to show us how he grew his corn. This required immense labor, for there were only small patches among the rocks on the mountainside where it could be sown, and it was always in danger of being eaten by the many wild animals about the place; to protect it he had built small well-thatched sheds from where he could keep watch against them. We spent the night on a little hill where there was water.

December 31
. When we woke up in the morning we could see our next objective, a village high up on the slopes on the other side of the river. We crossed this by a slender bamboo bridge and, beyond it, found ourselves on steep hard ground. There were no rocks, but footholds had been cut on the stony surface in a zigzag pattern to make the climb easier. As we went farther up we could see the Brahmaputra again, now on its southwestward course: The ranges on its south side looked very beautiful with patches of cloud and little groups of houses dotted about. These foothills of the Himalayas have a continual rainfall and everything looked wonderfully green. We could not recognize most of the plants here for they were utterly different from those which grow in East Tibet. We later learned that this is the best time for traveling, for in the winter there are no snakes nor leeches about. Our climb was very arduous and from the time that we had crossed the river there was no water to be had anywhere until we reached a village called Pedong late in the afternoon. I had sent a messenger ahead of the party to ask if we could be given accommodation for a couple of weeks; when we arrived we received a warm welcome and were able to rent rooms in various houses.

I, together with my attendant, Yönten, Tsepa and his wife, and the peasant family stayed in the headman’s house; our host gave me his best room and that evening he himself cooked our meal. Some of the dishes were made of stewed leather, which is largely eaten in this area; being now nicely cooked with spices and vegetables I did not even realize that it was leather. For drink he gave us an alcoholic liquor made from wheat and, when I asked for tea, he told me that no water was available that night and that this drink would be good for us after our long journey, since we must be worn out and in need of rest. As monks do not touch alcohol we did not drink it, however, and pretended that the soup had been enough to quench our thirst, which disappointed our host. He was a very gentle and friendly man anxious to help us in every way; moreover he knew Tibetan and acted as interpreter to all our party, for the villagers only spoke the local dialect.

January 1
. I took a walk in the country outside the village and was shocked to see some little boys hunting birds which they took home and roasted in their kitchens. When I spoke about this to our host he said it was difficult to stop people from doing it as it was the custom. Akong Tulku and Yak Tulku had had the same experience as ourselves in refusing the alcoholic drink, but after we had walked around together and seen for ourselves the scarcity of water, we understood the position better, for the villagers had to walk a long way down to the valley and then dig a hole, into which water would slowly trickle. This work was generally done by the women. The villagers’ chief industry was very fine and artistic basketwork colored with beautiful vegetable dyes.

During the following days I had many talks with the local people; they considered themselves to be Buddhists, though all this area still showed traces of the ancient Bön religion. There were temples in the villages, but the priests in charge were singularly lax; they had never received any training, and the way to celebrate the rites had merely been handed on orally from father to son. They were all married and led more or less worldly lives. For the devotional ceremonies, the fathers of the household and their sons joined with the priest in charge, while the women and children looked on, and these assemblies generally included the serving of alcoholic drinks to all by the women. Though this part of the country had been considered holy since the eighth century, latterly pilgrims who came to meditate in the neighboring caves rarely went near the small villages so that the indigenous people seldom had any contact with instructed Buddhists.

In the eighth century when Buddhism first began to spread into Tibet practices such as the worship of nature spirits and the animal sacrifices of the Bön religion were forbidden and many Bönpo adherents emigrated to the outlying regions of the Himalayas, both to the Pemakö district and to parts of Nepal, for they could not go to India which at that time was largely Buddhist. However, after Buddhism had become universal in Tibet the inhabitants of the Pemakö area took shelter under the name of Buddhism, though still practicing some of the Bön rites. On the other hand in the eastern province of Kyungpo the people still call themselves Bönpos, though their practice is Buddhist in effect; they are known as “White Bönpos.”

In 1950 Düdjom Rinpoche, a renowned teacher of the Nyingma order or “order of the ancients” came to Pemakö. He had already established a monastery in Upper Kongpo and wished to found a second one here with a good library, his chief object being to train monks so that they might instruct the local people in the real teachings of Buddhism; in their isolation they had sadly lapsed and reform was necessary. Among other things he introduced cows, so that the villagers need not be solely dependant on hunting wild animals for food. He knew the local dialect and could mix with and teach the people himself.