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Book Box: What the Dalai Lama taught me at his birthday party
On a pilgrimage to celebrate the Dalai Lama's 90th birthday, travelers share stories, face delays, and reflect on spirituality and gratitude.
Dear Reader,
The traffic ahead of us has stopped. It’s been two hours since we left Manali, on our way to Dharamsala, but now we can go no further. Blocking the narrow mountain road ahead of us is a truck, its wheels jammed tight in sticky wet mud.
Drivers from the cars and buses around us mill around in groups outside their vehicles. It looks like we are in for a long wait. Never mind, I tell my city self - we are on a pilgrimage to meet the Dalai Lama on his 90th birthday- surely the first lesson is patience.
Then slowly, a giant JCB earthmover lumbers in. Ripples of excitement spread through the crowd. Before our incredulous eyes, a hook is attached to the truck, the goods carrier is lifted magically as if it were a small toy truck and set gently down upon the surface of the mud. And so our journey continues.
Driving on, I wonder. Is it sinful to be worshipful of this man-made machine? To be in a car at all ? There are no easy answers.
Pilgrimages draw together strange combinations of people, and ours is one such. A poet and illustrator, her 11-year-old daughter, a wandering musician, and me - your columnist. The 11-year-old turns out to be a prodigy, spinning fantastically inventive tales. “It’s her father’s family tradition,” says her mother. "The families in Zanskar have been snowed up for most of the year, they spent hours telling stories to each other, that used to be their only entertainment.”
The musician tells us a book brought him here. Leaving his home in Kolkata, he found himself picking up an odd orange book from the family library to take on his journeys. “That book saved me, I took it with me everywhere, reading on the upper berths of trains, carrying it with me on my motor bike ride to Spiti,” said the musician. The book, The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying set the musician on a new path he said, and gave him answers to questions he had been struggling with.
When we reach Dharamsala, we find shelves full of books in our guesthouse. Many are by the Dalai Lama, which is not surprising. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has authored more than 70 books. The musician and I both pick up Healing Anger: The Power of Patience.
But first the festivities. The biggest excitement, here in Dharamsala, is the birthday party celebration of the Dalai Lama to be held on the auspicious date of June 30, the fifth day of the fifth Tibetan month of the Wood-Snake Year. Anyone can attend !
“His Holiness will come to the monastery at 9 am for the ceremony but you can come earlier for seats,” a man on the organising committee tells us.
“We must leave our guesthouse at 4.30 am,” says the prodigy solemnly.
And so we do.
It is raining when we begin our climb up the mountain to the monastery. The slopes are squelchy, and the many rocks that line the path are slick with rain. But we four walk together in the darkness, our phone torches lighting up the path before us. It feels like The Pilgrim’s Progress. I first encountered this classic book - in the opening pages of Little Women, when the four March sisters each get a copy as a Christmas present; there is no money for anything else, because their mother has given away everything to a poor family. The title captured my imagination and has stayed with me ever since.
When we reach the monastery, we find a serpentine queue of deep maroon robed monks and nuns standing patiently in the rain, waiting to enter.
We are directed to a large shamiana erected opposite the monastery. Inside a fantastic sight awaits us - rows and rows of low seating tables, each piled high with delicacies - apples, oranges, queen cakes, Tibetan fried bread, chocolate eclairs and nougat from Thailand.
Everywhere people are settling themselves down on sheets of waterproof foam, women minding their beautiful Tibetan chupa dresses with care, for the carpeted floor has pools of water everywhere.
The prodigy produces pen and paper, and we play hangman to pass the time - guessing the world gompa easily but being hung before we guess the word enlightenment. And then His Holiness appears on a gigantic screen from the monastery opposite the street and the formal festivities begin. There are many moments of magic. We wish His Holiness together, hundreds of us each holding up our khatags, the beautifully woven white silk scarves we have brought with us as an offering to the Dalai Lama. After the many tiered birthday cake is cut, we too eat the little cupcake birthday cake on the table in front of us. Made from yak butter, it has an unusual sweet-salty flavour. Then the music begins - a haunting melody of loss for the Tibetan homeland that has many in the gathering singing along.
At 11 am, five and a half hours after we arrived, the party ends. We come away with our keepsakes - thangka-like paper rendition of his Holiness, and a sense of gratitude. I resolve to give up the anger I carry with me. For as his Holiness says - “Can I see my part in contributing to the situation I am angry about? Will my anger benefit anyone, including me?”
The last thing I come away with, is this reading list -
1.Voice for the Voiceless, the new book by the Dalai Lama where he chronicles his struggle with China and discusses his successor.
2. The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong, a memoir written by the elder brother of the Dalai Lama that combines his family story with the history of the Tibetan people.
3. Eat the Buddha: Stories of Life and Death in a Tibetan Town by journalist Barbara Demnick
4. Why Buddhism is True by Richard Wright a fascinating mix of spirituality and the science of Buddhism
Do you have favourite Buddhist spiritual books we can add to this list ? Do write in.
(Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or reading dilemmas, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com. The views expressed are personal
