Many Monasteries

Day six in Tibet, and I'm still not monasteried out. Despite the shared iconography, monks in red and saffron robes, stupas, assembly halls, and butter lamps, each one stands out with its own personality. Ganden, perches two thousand feet above the valley below. Almost entirely rebuilt after being shelled to rubble by the Chinese, it looks like every Hollywood home for powerful Tibetan mystics -- think Batman Begins without the snow (though it has that too for much of the year). With the crowds of Lhasa left thankfully behind, Ganden gave me the first chance to really savor the over-stimulation of colorful wall paintings, golden Buddhas dressed in many layers, decorative ribbon circles hanging from the ceiling, and altars heaped with small bills, fruits, and prepackaged cups of jello with fruit. Walking the Kora around the mountain behind Ganden provided stunning views of valleys ribboned with ice blue rivers, green barley terraces, deep high-altitude (14,000 ft) blue skies hung with still white clouds, and mountain peaks in all directions. Squeezing through a hole in the rock along the way, I was reborn.

At Gyantze, with it's tiered Kumbum featuring 73 chapels and 100,000 images of the Buddha, three different sects co-exist in harmony. Walking clockwise circles around each successive level of the Kumbum, peering into the chapels to be met with images of wild eyed protector demons wreathed in flames or the peaceful face of one of Buddha's many forms, I began to grasp the power in the repetition of iconography and ritual that seems to be a central part of Buddhist worship.

Tashilhunpo, seat of the Panchen Lamas, brings you face to face with the Chinese efforts to interfere with Tibetan religion over the past decades. I should amend my previous post after doing a bit more reading -- while the 10th Panchen Lama, a cute chubby-faced guy with smiling eyes, was indeed picked by the Chinese government, the atrocities of 1959 turned him around and his criticism of China earned him 14 years in jail. So the ubiquitous photos of him at monasteries throughout the country tell a story whose meaning may largely be in the eye of the beholder. The current 11th, however, is unambiguous - China keeps the first-identified Lama imprisoned and the second, chosen at the government's command, kept tightly under wraps in Beijing. His picture, while largely absent from other monasteries, was all around Tashilhunpo.

One thing that unifies all of these monasteries (and the others I've passed over here) is the devotion of the pilgrims and the diversity of their ages. Many many parents bring their children, praying together at the altars, leaving small bills, and filling lamps with ghee. Adults bring aging parents, helping them up and down the steep steps. Outside of Poland, I haven't seen evidence of this level of religious commitment anywhere else I've traveled. Tomorrow we head off to smaller and smaller towns. Two nights from now, I should go to sleep with images of Everest etched in my eyes. Then to the Nepali boarder and into yet another land.