Chapter 22 - The Hermit Abbot of Lachen

From the foregoing chapters it will be clear that the deepest sources of inspiration are not the big monasteries or the great monastic colleges and universities (like Sera, Drepung, and Ganden, the greatest seats of learning in Tibet), but the humble hermitages, tucked away in the folds and cracks of mighty mountains, or in lonely valleys and in inaccessible canyons, or perched on high cliffs like eagle's nests, or scattered over the solitudes of remote highlands and along the shores of placid lakes, far away from the tracks of caravans and the noise of trading camps and market-towns.

It was in these hermitages that saints and sages of Tibet found their inspiration, and it is to these hermitages that those who want to tread the path of wisdom and liberation return again and again. It is for this reason that every monastery possesses a number of isolated cubicles for meditation, as well as mountain retreats (ri-khrod, pron. 'ritö') and hermitages.

The greatest hermit of Tibet was the poet-saint and yogi Milarepa (Mi-la-ras-pa), who spent the larger part of his life in caves and in the most inaccessible mountain fastnesses and up to the present day his followers (in the Kaigyütpa Order) lay greater stress on silence and meditation than on book knowledge and learned discussions. His life is perhaps the best example for the profound influence that even the most unworldly hermit may exert upon the world at large. His contributions to the cultural and religious life of Tibet are unrivalled in their originality and spontaneity, their beauty and their sense of dedication.

An outstanding example among modem hermits is the Abbot of Lachen, better known as 'the Gomchen of Lachen', who had his hermitage on the border between Northern Sikkim and Tibet. The Earl of Ronaldshay (later Marquis of Zetland), a former Governor of Bengal, has written admiringly about the Gomchen: 'Over a period of twentysix years, he had been in the habit of retiring from the world from time to time and living a life of solitary meditation in a remote cave, high up and difficult of access, among the cliffs of an inhospitable mountain tract above the path to Thangu. One of those periodic retirements from the world had been extended over a period of five years, during which time he had seen no human being and had kept body and soul together on a minimum of food.'

This was written almost thirty years ago, in the book Lands of the Thunderbolt, in which the Earl of Ronaldshay describes his conversation with the Gomchen, from which he had the impression that the latter had reached the state of liberation. This at least is certain', he added, 'the motive which impels men to leave their fellows, and for years on end, spurning the weakness of the flesh, to live a life of solitary confinement, must be an extraordinary powerful one. That such lives excite admiration and respect is equally certain'.

People may ask whether such tremendous effort and achievement would not have benefited the world more if the hermit had returned to the haunts of man and propagated the wisdom which he had acquired. This would have been in keeping with the example of many other spiritual leaders. But the hermits way was different.

One day a Western scholar approached his cave and asked to be admitted as a chela (disciple). The hermit pointed to another cave in the vicinity and answered: 'Only if you will stay in that cave for three years without a break'. The chela accepted this condition and stayed on for three years, enduring patiently the hardships and utter isolation of three Himalayan winters with arctic temperatures.

The chela was none other than the famous French Orientalist and explorer Alexandra David-Neel, whose books on Tibet were so outstanding that they were translated into all the major languages of the world. The profound knowledge that informed these books, which for the first time gave an objective account of hitherto unknown spiritual practices and psychic phenomena, were the direct outcome of these three years of study and meditation under the Great Hermit, who thus, with unfailing certainty, had chosen the right medium for broadcasting his message over the entire world, without himself ever leaving his far-off retreat among the snows of the Himalayas. With this 'message', I do not mean a message of any personal nature or the propagation of any particular doctrine, but a message which opened the eyes of the world to the hitherto hidden spiritual treasures of Tibetan religious culture. If the Gomchen had not had this aim at heart he would never have consented to be Alexandra David-Neel's Guru and to spend three years in teaching her all that which enabled her to enter Tibet and its inner life. One of the main gains of her life in the solitude of those years has been expressed by her in the following significant words: 'Mind and senses develop their sensibility in this contemplative life made up of continual observations and reflections. Does one become a visionary or, rather, is it not that one has been blind until then?'

This is really the crux of the matter: the contemplative hermit, far from closing his eyes and being dead to the world, opens them and becomes wide awake; far from blunting his senses, he develops a higher awareness and a deeper insight into the real nature of the world and of his own mind. And this shows him that it is as foolish to run away from the world as to run after the world: both extremes having their root in the illusion that the 'world' is something separate from ourselves. It is this lesson which the Gomchen taught his disciple, a lesson which in the philosophical language of Buddhism is based on the mystery of śūnyatā, the inconceivable nature of the Plenum-Void. It is the same lesson which he taught me, though in a very different way, when I visited him in his mountain retreat near Thangu, at an altitude of about 13,000 feet in the Central Himalayas.

The Maharāja of Sikkim, whose guest I was during my stay in Sikkim in 1937, had been kind enough to give me his own men and horses, to equip my little caravan with all necessary provisions, and to allow me to make use of all rest-houses and monasteries in which I might choose to stay on my journey to the northern extremity of his realm in order to meet the Great Hermit. It had been my ardent desire to meet him, and as he was already over seventy years old, I felt that there was no time to lose. I did not mind a two week journey on horseback through the most mountainous region of the world (Sikkim is said to have the greatest number of mountains above 24,000 feet compared to any other area in the world of similar size), if thereby I would have a chance to meet face to face a man who had such a profound influence on the spiritual life of his country. I even did not mind the risk of finding his hermitage closed against any visitor, as it happened so often when he was engaged in a long period of meditation. A further risk was that the winter was fast approaching, and, indeed, the day before I had set out on the last stage of the journey a heavy snowfall had almost blocked the road. I was warned to wait until yaks could be procured, since the horses might not be able to negotiate the snow-drifts. But I was impatient of further delay, feeling that it was a matter of now or never, and so I pushed on and succeeded in getting through, in spite of all obstacles.

I put up in a horribly cold and draughty wooden rest-house not far below the hermitage of the Gomchen, and since it was too cold and too late to do anything else, I retired as soon as possible, hoping to meet the hermit in the course of the next morning.

But before I could fall asleep a strange thing happened: I had the sensation that somebody took possession of my consciousness, my willpower and my body, that I had no more control over my thoughts, but that somebody else was thinking them and that, slowly but surely I was losing my own identity. And then I realised that it could be none other than the hermit, who, by directing his attention upon me, had entered my body and taken possession of it, probably quite unintentionally, due to the power of his concentration and my own lack of resistance in the moment while I was hovering between the waking and the sleeping state. There was nothing aggressive in his presence, on the contrary, it gave me some kind of satisfaction and a sense of wonder to yield to its irresistible magnetism and growing power.

I felt like a meteor, drawn into the orbit of a bigger celestial body, until it dawned upon me that once I allowed myself to 'fall' without reserve, the impact would be my inevitable end. And then, suddenly, a terror seized me, the terror that neither this body nor this mind would be mine any more, the terror of losing my own identity for good, and of being pushed out of my own body, irrevocably: the indescribable, inexpressible fear of emptiness, to be blown out like a candle, to fall into the Nameless Void, a void from which there could be no return!

And with a last effort of self-preservation, by the very strength of this terror, I jerked myself from my bed on to my feet and, struggling tenaciously against the power that still seemed to hold me, I lit a candle, grabbed my drawing-board and a piece of charcoal which I always kept handy during the journey, and, in order to assure myself of my own reality, I started frantically to draw a self-portrait in front of my shavingmirror. No matter that the temperature in the room was below freezing-point, I had to do something and do it quickly! And as I got into the work the strange power left me! When the sketch was finished I had regained my self-control, went to bed, and slept peacefully until next morning.

After the breakfast, I climbed up to the hermitage, where the Gomchen received me with a friendly smile. After exchanging the usual polite questions and sipping hot Tibetan butter-tea, which he poured into my wooden cup from the eternally simmering teapot, I told him how deeply I was impressed by his chela's works, and that I had often wondered how she had been able to endure the hardships of an anchorites life for so many years. He beamed when I mentioned her name, enquired about her whereabouts, and brought out an old yellowed newspaper cutting with Alexandra DavidNeel's picture on it, recalling the time of her discipleship and praising her endurance and strength of character.

He asked me about my own Guru, and when he learned that it was Tomo Géshé Rimpoché (who at that time had already passed away), he took my Guru's small Buddha-image, which I had been showing him, from my hands and reverently placed it on his head. 'He was a great Lama,' he said, 'a very great Lama!'

When I told him about my earlier training in Ceylon, he laughingly pointed to his pigtail and asked me what the Buddhists in the South would think of him, since he had never shaved his head and had been a married man throughout his life, though his wife had died many years ago. 'Well, I said, joining in his laughter, 'even the Buddha had a wife and child and never shaved his head; and yet he attained Enlightenment within the same life! I But you are right, most people judge by appearances and external circumstances. They do not know that it is not the robe or the shaven head but the overcoming of selfish desires that make a saint.'

'And the knowledge that springs from the experience of ultimate reality in meditation,' the Gomchen added. 'Mere goodness and morality without wisdom is as useless as knowledge without goodness.

This brought us to the subject of meditation and its various methods and experiences, and in this connection I was almost on the point of mentioning the happenings of the previous night. But as I felt slightly ashamed of my terror, when faced with the experience of falling into the abysmal void. I let the opportunity pass and merely asked him to write some suggestions in my meditation booklet, which for many years had served me as a kind of breviary during my journeys.

He hesitated a moment, saying that he was old and that his hand was no more steady, but then, suddenly taking a bamboo-pen and dipping it into his home-made ink, he filled a page with Tibetan characters.

`There!' he said. 'Here is your subject for meditation: The Eighteen Kinds of Voidness!'

So he was aware of what had happened to me the previous night and what I had tried to hide! I was deeply moved. And when leaving the Great Hermit, after having received his blessings, I felt that I had not only met him in the flesh but in the spirit: in a manner which revealed both his spiritual power and his human kindness.

I was never to see him again, for he soon followed my own Guru. But whenever I contemplate the self-portrait which I did on that memorable night, I know that it is not only myself but the Hermit as well, and that, though it seems to have my features, it looks at me with the eyes of him who had realised the Great Void.

Thus my journey had not been in vain, and I returned with gratitude in my heart, both towards the Gomchen as well as towards the Maharāja, who had made this journey possible for me and who, in doing so, expressed his own high esteem and veneration for the Great Hermit. I shall never forget the peace of his hermitage amidst the eternal snows and the lesson he taught me: that we cannot face the Great Void before we have the strength and the greatness to fill it with our entire being. Then the Void is not the negation merely of our limited personality; but the Plenum-Void which includes, embraces, and nourishes it, like the womb of space in which the light moves eternally without ever being lost.