To Death and Back, Presented by Dr. Nigel Spivey

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Farewell to Lhasa from the Top of Genpala, Excerpt, from Three Years in Tibet
by Shramana Ekai Kawaguchi

FAREWELL TO LHASA FROM THE TOP OF GENPALA.

While speaking of Genpala I recollect an amusing story which I will here relate. There is in the house of a rich man in Nepāl a Tibetan servant of the name of Penba-pun-tso, who accompanied his master on one occasion on a pilgrimage to Lhasa. There were several other Tibetans in the company. Now, whereas in Nepāl food is cheap and plentiful and every one gets enough, that is not the case in Lhasa. There, the Lama gets a good meal with meats of various kinds, vermicelli, and eggs; but the ordinary layman has to be contented with parched barley flour—not unmixed with sand and grit—put in a bowl with tea and eaten. And often there is not enough even of that. The pilgrims cannot always get all they require, and many lose strength, while all lose flesh.

At last the pilgrimage was over, all the noteworthy Lamas had been visited, and the party of Nepālese, on their way home, reached the summit of Mount Genpala. With one accord they all turned round to take a last farewell of the Holy City. “We are indeed fortunate,” they murmured, “to have been allowed to accomplish this pilgrimage, and we pray (here they shed tears of pious fervor) that we may deserve to be re-born in the Holy Land of Buddha.”

But Penba-pun-tso refused to join them in their prayers. He deliberately turned his back on the Holy City, and took no pains to conceal his disgust at the behavior of his companions.

“How joyful it is, brethren,” he replied to their remonstrances, “to have left behind Lhasa, the hateful abode of hungry demons and evil spirits. My prayer is that I may never have occasion to see the place again.”

“You are very hard on Lhasa,” they said.

“Not a bit of it,” was the reply. “I am only honest; that’s all. In my master’s house in Nepāl I get plenty of food—good rice, with no sand in it. Why should I call Lhasa the Holy City—a place where the greedy Lamas are the only men who get enough to eat?”

Penba’s pious companions were much shocked at his outspoken heresies. But Penba did not mind their threats.

“I may be punished for what I have said,” he calmly remarked; “but all the same I am glad not to have been born in Lhasa. The devils of the Holy City may punish me if they like.”

There is a great deal of truth in what the man said. Lhasa swarms with beggars and paupers, and may truly be called the City of hungry devils.

There are even to be found in Lhasa professional mendicants who are also usurious money-lenders. These men as a rule starve themselves in order to save a little money, which they conceal in some secret place underground and then lend out at exorbitant rates of interest. When they die, their secret hoard is lost, until some one some day digs it up by chance, when it is presented as treasure-trove to the priests of Sera or to those of the Ganden or Rebon Temples. Can these men, who starve themselves in order to make a little additional gain, be called anything but hungry devils? Truly, I can witness that Lhasa is the abode of these hungry spirits, and that the Lamas are flesh-eating ogres.

Penba-pun-tso, whose story thus amused me as I climbed over the steeps of Genpala, is still living at Nyallam on the borders of Nepāl and Tibet. I cannot say that I fully share his feelings against Lhasa, which I know as well probably as he does; but it is indeed a city in which wheat and tares grow together, a very few noble Bodhisattvas dwelling in the midst of many extortionate demons. It is my earnest desire to return some day to the Holy City and there work for the important object of bringing together into living unity the Buddhism of Japan and Tibet.