Chapter Seventeen: Visitors from East and West
During the months that I was lecturing at the College of Psychic Science and developing my friendship with Terry Delamare I was occupied in a number of other ways too. Besides running the Vihara, visiting provincial Buddhist groups, and editing two Buddhist magazines (one of them published from Calcutta), I met, and spent time with, people I had known in Kalimpong, or who had been to see me there. I also had one of the strangest experiences in my life, led three meditation retreats at Biddulph Old Hall, the last of which Terry attended, and ordained one person as an eight-precept lay Buddhist the first time I had ordained anyone in England.
Kesang Dorje was the younger daughter of Raja S.T. Dorje of Bhutan and his Sikkimese wife Rani Chuni, sister of the then Maharaja of Sikkim.Our acquaintance dated from 1950, when we met at her parents house on the outskirts of Kalimpong, shortly after my arrival in the town. A few years later she married the King of Bhutan, Jigme Dorje Wangchuk. Apparently the union was not a happy one. At least there were serious tensions within it. The Dorje family was the second most powerful family in Bhutan, and reputedly even wealthier than the royal family itself, and the marriage between Kesang and the young ruler had been arranged, it was said, in order to consolidate the family's influence in the kingdom. Kesangs eldest brother Jigme Dorje, whom I had also known, was the (non-elected) Prime Minister of Bhutan, while her astute sister Tashi sometimes represented Bhutan in its dealings with the Indian Central Government in New Delhi. Jigme had been assassinated a year ago, when I was still in Kalimpong, and I well remembered the sensation the news of his death had caused throughout the surrounding area and the rumours to which it had given rise. One rumour attributed the assassination to a Nepalese whose brother Jigme Dorje had shot the previous year; another, to friends and supporters of the King acting, perhaps, with the connivance of the King himself. Whatever the truth may have been, Bhutan was for months in a state of turmoil and Kesang, finding herself in an increasingly difficult position, had for a time taken refuge in Calcutta. Now she was in London and had asked Christmas Humphreys to arrange a private memorial service on the anniversary of her brothers death and Toby, as he usually did on such occasions, had invited me to conduct the ceremony.
Whether by accident or design, however, he had omitted to tell Kesang this, so that when she and her younger brother Lhendup arrived at the Buddhist Society they were pleased and surprised to find that the monk who would be conducting the ceremony was the same English monk whom they and their family had known in Kalimpong. The memorial service took place in the Society's library, which I had previously made ready for the occasion. Only Kesang and Lhendup were present, together with Kesang's elder son Jigme, the future king, then nine or ten years old. After chanting the appropriate suttas I gave a short talk in the course of which, besides referring to Jigme's assassination, I spoke of the shortness of human life, of the inevitability of death, and of the importance of practising the Dharma while one was still in a position to do so. No doubt Kesang and Lhendup remembered, as I did, the occasion when, thirteen years ago, I had jointly conducted a similar service over the dead body of their father and had spoken in much the same vein to the grief-stricken family. After I had given my talk and concluded the ceremony by chanting verses invoking on the bereaved brother and sister the blessing of the Three Jewels, Mrs Humphreys and the three women who worked in the Society's office brought in tea and soon a lighter atmosphere prevailed. Later on in the afternoon Lhendup and I were able to have a private talk, and he gave me his version of what had happened in Bhutan the previous year. He also spoke about the political situation in Sikkim, where the position of the new Maharaja, his cousin, was becoming increasingly untenable. As he did so, I could not help thinking how greatly he had changed since our last meeting. Then he had been a strapping young man whose principal interest, apart from women and drink, was football. Now he looked as though he had suffered a lot, his once stalwart frame appeared to have shrunk, and it was evident that all his old confidence was gone. Kesang, on the other hand, had changed very little, and I was glad to see she was still her sweet and gentle self. When the time came for us to part both she and Lhendup expressed a wish to see me again, and in Kesang's case, at least, the wish was fulfilled.
Four weeks after the memorial service Toby and Puck (as Mrs Humphreys was familiarly known) invited me to lunch. The Queen of Bhutan would also be coming, I was told, as would my old friend Marco Pallis. This time Kesang was accompanied not by Lhendup but by Tashi, who was the elder of the two and still unmarried. As Marco Pallis (or Thubden Tendzin, as he preferred to be called) had lived in Kalimpong for several years and had known both sisters, as well as their parents and other members of the Dorje family, the occasion had something of the character of a happy reunion. I myself had seen Marco only once since my return to England, and had formed the impression that he was not anxious to keep up the connection, either because he had no time to spare from his musical activities or, what was more likely, because he disapproved of my failure to adhere to the strict traditionalist principles he had imbibed from René Guénon, the French Sufi master. Unfortunately I had to leave early, as that evening I was giving a lecture in Birmingham. Before my departure Kesang presented me with three lengths of Bhutanese hand-woven cloth.
Wemet for the third and last time two weeks later, when she and Tashi attended the Buddhist Society's Wesak celebrations, which took place in Caxton Hall, Westminster. This was my first Wesak since I returned to England, and as the thrice-sacred day was the highlight of the Buddhist year I had been looking forward to it. In the event I was disappointed. Things were much the same as they had been the last time I attended the Society's Wesak celebrations, some twenty years earlier. Toby was in the chair, there were speeches and a reading from the scriptures, and that was about all. The audience had not changed much in the interval either, whether numerically or in respect of its composition. There could not have been more than a hundred people in the hall, not all of them Buddhists, and including a sprinkling of colourfully attired Asian nationals. The big difference, so far as I was concerned, was the fact that twenty years ago I had been a humble member of the audience, taking pansil from a Burmese monk and listening to the various speeches, whereas now I was on the platform, a monk myself, leading the audience in a (rather ragged) recitation of the Three Refuges and Five Precepts and giving the opening speech after being warmly welcomed by the chairman. In a way it was unfortunate that I spoke first. Back in India I had preferred to speak last on such occasions, so that if any of the previous speakers, who often were orthodox Hindus, happened to misrepresent the Dharma, I would have an opportunity of correcting them. This time there were no previous speakers to be corrected. Rather was it a question of stirring up the audience, which seemed to be in anything but a celebratory mood. I therefore spoke vigorously, reminding my listeners that what we were celebrating that day, above all else, was the supreme fact of the Buddha's Enlightenment; that by following his teaching we could achieve what he achieved; that whether followers of the Theravãda, the Mahãyãna, or any other tradition, as Buddhists we were all one in the Dharma, and that Buddhism in Britain was not going to be confined to any one school. According to a report appearing in The Middle Way I went on to say that I had noticed in the East that when people celebrated Wesak they were remarkably joyful, whereas in the West there was generally an atmosphere of gravity and seriousness. Surely when we come to a meeting like this we can concentrate our hearts on the fact of the Buddha's Enlightenment, I concluded, which should mean so much to all of us. My words w
ere not altogether without effect, but that effect, such as it was, was soon nullified by the other speakers. White-haired Douglas Harding, who was known to many of the Society's members through his book On Having No Head, lost himself and his audience in his very personal brand of Zen mysticism, Toby's speech was very flat, and though Marco Pallis rightly emphasized the importance of devotion in the spiritual life he did so in such a pedantic, old-maidish way that few people could have been inspired by what he said. The decade had yet to learn that 'the medium is the message'.
What Kesang and Tashi thought of our English way of celebrating Wesak I do not know. In Bhutan and Sikkim, as I was only too aware, the major Buddhist festivals were celebrated in a highly elaborate and colourful manner, and in Tibet this was still more the case -- or had been until recently. Even in Kalimpong, where Buddhists were a minority, albeit a substantial and influential one, Buddha Jayanti -- as Wesak was generally known in India -- was celebrated not just with speeches but with pujas and processions and the singing of devotional songs. When I spoke to the sisters afterwards I did not, therefore, ask them what they thought of the meeting. Had I done so, they no doubt would have been far too polite to express anything save warm appreciation of our efforts. But they must have been disappointed. Certainly I was disappointed. I felt I had hardly celebrated Wesak at all, and was glad that two days later we would be celebrating the thrice-sacred day at the Vihara in what I hoped would be a very different manner. Two days later, therefore, we celebrated it not for an hour but for the greater part of the day, and not just with speeches but with a morning devotional meeting, an afternoon 'At Home' for members and friends, and a ceremonial flower-offering by the younger devotees at the commencement of the evening public meeting.
If lawyer Christmas Humphreys was the best-known English Buddhist at the time, then probably poet Allen Ginsberg was the best-known American Buddhist. Three years earlier, when he was not even a name to me, he had come to Kalimpong in search of Tantric initiation and one afternoon had unexpectedly appeared on the veranda of my hillside monastery -- a dirty, hirsute, and dishevelled figure. I had taken him to see my Chinese friend and teacher the hermit Yogi Chen, and Yogi Chen had directed him to the celebrated Dudjom Rimpoche. Since then I had not seen or heard anything of the poet, and it was only when some young men came to see me that I learned, quite by chance, that he was in London. They were from the printers, the young men explained, and had come to enquire what a thousand-petalled lotus looked like. They wanted a picture of one, together with a Sanskrit om, for the programme of the poetry reading Allen would be giving at the Albert Hall in a few days time. I gave them a note for Allen, and a week later he came to see me still hirsute, but this time clean and tidy.
We spent the whole afternoon talking, and Allen told me all about his experiences in India after leaving Kalimpong. Having visited Sikkim and met the Karmapa, the head of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, he had rejoined his wife Peter in the plains and for months the two of them had lived in cheap rooms in Calcutta and in Benares, associating with ganja-smoking holy men, watching bodies being burned at the ghats, reading and writing poetry, and eventually being harassed by the cid. Allen had loved India, even though he had not succeeded in obtaining Tantric initiation and his guru was still William Blake. He did not play his finger cymbals and sing 'The Tyger' that day (as he did the next time we met, a decade later), but before leaving he presented me with a copy of Reality Sandwiches, from which he had read at the Albert Hall, and I took the opportunity of asking him what had really happened on that historic occasion. According to the press, the poetry reading had been a rowdy affair. Allen did not beat about the bush. 'I was drunk,' he said.
A few months later there was a sequel to my meeting with the Beat icon. Among the people Allen had got to know in London that summer was a young poet called Dick Wilcocks. Dick was secretary of the Peanuts Group, and Allen, the born facilitator, had told him about me and urged him to invite me to give the group a Buddhist poetry reading. This he eventually did, with the result that on the evening of 5 November -- Guy Fawkes Day -- Terry drove me from the staid Victorian ambiance of the Buddhist Society, where I had just spoken on The Schools of Tibetan Buddhism, to the Kings Arms public house near Liverpool Street Station, where, in an upstairs room with a bar at the other end, I read poems by Milarepa and Han Shan to an audience of about fifty people. This was the first public poetry reading I had given, but the occasion was a great success, and Terry and I did not get away much before eleven o'clock.
Before my return to England I had been keenly following developments in South Vietnam, where persecution of the Buddhists by the Roman Catholic oligarchy headed by President Ngo Dinh Diem had led, towards the end of 1963, to the overthrow of his much hated regime. I had been kept abreast of those developments not only by the newspapers but by my Vietnamese monk friends. The chief of these was Thich Minh Chau, who was studying at the then Nava Nalanda Mahavihara with my own teacher, Jagdish Kashyap, and sometimes spent the hot weather with me in Kalimpong. One afternoon in June, the day before my meeting with Allen Ginsberg, I received a visit from the South Vietnamese ambassador. Dr Thich Minh Chau would shortly be arriving in England, he informed me. In fact my old friend did not arrive until the middle of August. He stayed with me at the Vihara for four days, and in that time did a good deal of sightseeing. With me for guide, he visited various places of historic interest in London, including Westminster Abbey, St Pauls' Cathedral, and the Tower, as well as spending a few hours in Oxford, where he was particularly impressed by the Ashmolean Collection and by the monastic atmosphere it not being term time of Christ Church and St John's.
The second day of his stay happening to be a Sunday, a special meeting in his honour could be held at the Vihara instead of the usual lecture. After I had introduced him to the gathering, he spoke at length on Buddhism in Vietnam, dwelling especially on recent developments in that unhappy country, and answering questions put to him by members of the audience. What struck people most about his talk, I think, was the fact that, as he made clear, Vietnamese Buddhism was characterized by a harmonious combination of the contemplative Buddhism of the Thien or Chan School and the devotional Buddhism, centred on the figure of the archetypal Buddha Amitãbha, of the Pure Land School.