Book Review: "Grains Of Gold" By Gedun Choephel

Grains of Gold, Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler, Gedun Choephel; trans. Thupten Jinpa and Donald S. Lopez Jr.; University of Chicago; 2014.

It’s always a pleasure to hear from Gedun Choephel and have an opportunity to gain a better understanding of someone who is often considered a leading Tibetan intellectual of the 20th century. In Grains Of Gold, he talks about his ventures in India and Sri Lanka between 1934 and 1941: Places he visited, works, authors and scholars he came into contact with, and the impact these encounters had on his thought. From his free-spirited account emerges the picture of a multi-faceted and fascinating but also contradictory personality.

Gedun Choephel discovers that Tibetans hold India in such high esteem as the birthplace of the Buddha, but actually have neither an idea of the historical context in which Buddhism originated, nor a notion of its fate after the decline. So he begins his book with a history of India from its classical to the colonial period, specifically elaborating on the Muslim conquest and Islam in general. He also describes in detail the geography of the country, explains the origin of Indian place names and what these places looked like when he visited them, as compared to accounts from earlier travellers.

Among many other topics, he makes an excursion into botany, exploring native Indian flowers and trees and comparing them to the ones in his homeland. One can feel the curiosity of a person who spent all his life behind high mountains, coming out into the world for the first time:  Everything is new and interesting and worth exploring in more depth – even down to the plants that grow in this new world.

As a trained monk from a thoroughly and exclusively Buddhist background, it must have come as a shock to see the Dharma utterly vanished from the land of its origin, with many places of worship often only in ruins. Perhaps that is why he travelled to Sri Lanka to experience another living Buddhist nation besides his own He dedicates a whole chapter to it, concluding noticeably distressed that the Theravada Buddhists actually didn't consider the Tantrayana of the Tibetans as properly Buddhist. But Gedun Choephel was eager to reach a common understanding so both can "live in a state of appreciation and affection for each other from our respective lands so that at least the recognition of our kinship in having the same Teacher and teaching will not be lost," (p. 346-7).

He also discusses the history of Tibet in a new way by using global events as a reference points. Songtsen Gampo was seven years old when the prophet Muhammad passed away, he wrote for example; that Princess Wencheng of the Tang court in China came to Tibet nine years after the death of Muhammad; which would confirm the Tibetan statement that the Tsenpo was sixteen years old when he married the princess. In this way he hoped Tibetan readers at home would be able to place national events into a wider, international context and gain a broader historical awareness.

"Buddhism & Science" only began to become a popular discourse in the 1980s with Tibetan Lamas beginning to exchange knowledge with physicists and these days also with neuroscientists. But it is already an important topic in Gedun Choephel's book written during the first half of the past century. He doesn’t mention any specific scientist or a modern idea that could have had an influence on his thought, such as Einstein for example and theory of relativity. But he came into contact with what he calls "this modern reasoning" earlier than many of his compatriots and also sensed the importance to philosophically reconcile science and religion. He wrote: "Please pray that the two, this modern reasoning of science and the ancient teachings of the Buddha, may abide together for ten thousand years." (p. 407).

Treating a broad range of topics often in a comparative manner perhaps had never taken place before in the Tibetan language. It required the author to do an enormous amount of reading in various languages, meticulous research, translating, comparing, checking and crosschecking. For someone who was notorious for his loose lifestyle, he was surprisingly productive.

A point I would have expected but is not touched upon, is China's relevance for Tibet. Of course, Grains Of Gold is primarily about Gedun Choephel's experience in India and Sri Lanka. But not mentioning China at all other than through the Buddhist pilgrims of old Faxian and Xuanzang, who visited India, is somehow surprising. He saw British India, had access to international media, socialised with Western and Indian scholars and must have been aware of the Second World War raging, the Japanese occupation of China, and the Chinese Communists starting their movement. Not mentioning the bigger picture makes his discussion of the Tibetans' imprecise knowledge of Indian geography almost trivial: Who cares about the geography of India when geopolitics on the other side with China would determine Tibet's fate? Could it be that the intrepid traveller from the Sino-Tibetan frontier acquired the insulated view of the Lhasan élite with whom he was quarrelling all his life?

Also absent is a critical discussion of the Tibetan ruling system. Although Gedun Choephel saw the world, there is no word about the institutionalized religious rule of the Gelugpas which excluded many Tibetans from power in all taken-for-grantedness. What strikes me is that Gedun Choephel - the sharp observer, the born Nyingma Tulku trained in the Gelug system, the one interested in everything under the sun with the inside view and the courage – had nothing to say about the shortcomings of the traditional Tibetan political system. Was he too preoccupied with philosophical issues? Did he simply have enough on his plate already and wasn't keen on letting frictions degenerate into a total war with the establishment? Or did he not develop the awareness because it was the norm?

Generally speaking, Gedun Choephel's relationship with the powerful comes across as ambivalent. His writing style changes in tone from beseeching via dismissive, all the way to incisive. Returning from India, he could have circumvented Lhasa and returned to his native Amdo to set up a modern school and let his ideas speak. Instead, he insisted with people who clearly didn't know how to appreciate his work. It appears Gedun Choephel was more traditional on this point after all, waiting for that slap on the back from the establishment, which never came.

Similar to the earlier translated work by Donald Lopez Jr. "The Madman's Middle Way", it is never quite clear in Grains Of Gold whether Gedun Choephel wrote to enlighten his audience and make them curious about the world or whether he was writing to demonstrate how smart he was. Revealingly, the translators point out that the original Tibetan manuscript was studded with Sanskrit expressions few in Tibet at the time would have understood at all and that he deliberately employed them with the intention to impress readers. In fact, the author's whole Sanskrit discussion is distinctive of the dichotomy between wanting to share his insight and his Ego intervening:

From Khagya to Gengya [two places in Amdo] is far.

The road from Ü to Amdo is very long.

From Magadha to Tibet is most distant.

From actual Sanskrit to Tibetanized Sanskrit is farther than that.

The only Sanskrit likely to ever cross my lips will be a couple of Mantras, names of Tantric deities and funny exclamations like Thrat! and Phat! But also a debutant can follow that as a Tibet(an) scholar you can draw on Sanskrit for a lifetime. There is no doubt about the importance of a good grasp of Sanskrit for the knowledge carriers of Tibetan Buddhism. It is the lifeblood of our religion, the impeccable ideal upon which our written language was modelled. Sanskrit for Tibet is like Latin for Europe. It’s the root of our civilization, classical and eternally beautiful.

Missing in Gedun Choephel's Sanskrit discussion however, is his own ideas on how to improve the low standard. While the author aptly elaborates on the shortcomings he then simply moves on to the next topic without proposing any solutions. Is that the way? He could easily have brought the discussion to a concrete end by proposing to invite Indian Sanskrit scholars to Tibet so the level could be raised - or something to that effect; a man like Gedun Choephel must certainly have had ideas? It's a pity he didn't continue to think big all the way through. This omission makes his Sanskrit discussion – as correct as it may be - appear like of a lot of noise.

Alas, people never got to read his work in real-time. It's not even clear to whom Gedun Choephel sent his manuscript after completion in 1941. It’s not clear either whether Grains Of Gold is the English translation of the Tibetan version published for the first time in Tibet in 1990. The translators mention they had to compile a template from various manuscripts. Also parts of the original manuscript and many of the illustrations were reportedly lost during the political turmoil following the Chinese takeover.

By the time his book was finally published in 1990, Gedun Choephel was long dead and generations of Tibetans had already had their own first-hand experience of India and the world beyond, due to the political circumstances of exile. As for the ones who remained in Tibet, they too, had had access to international materials through Chinese translations with the opening in the 1980s. So one may ask: When the topics presented in Grains Of Gold could no longer be considered a novelty in the Tibetan version of 1990, have they retained any relevance at all in the English translation of 2014, more than half a century after Gedun Choephel wrote them? What insights could readers of our generation derive from Grains Of Gold?

Talk is cheap by people like me who profit from the mercy of late birth. Grown up in a post-modern, post-gender era, with a decent education and convinced that there are no topics too difficult for general discussion, many of Gedun Choephel's radically novel ideas and approaches in Grains Of Gold have become mainstream in our time. Everyone discusses Buddhist ecumenism now, lauds the compatibility of Buddhism with science or supports Tibetan writing reform at least as an idea.

But we could read Grains Of Gold to better understand the times in which Gedun Choephel lived and gain additional insight into the thoughts of this controversial and colourful personality who was persona non grata during his lifetime and through a miraculous, post-humus metamorphosis, became everybody's darling: the much-heralded romantic rebel of the youths, the hero of the socialists. Academics, filmmakers, writers, artists, politicians, people of all walks are enamoured of him for all kinds of reasons.

Only Dharamsala has remained silent. If we can consider the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) the successor of the historical government in Lhasa, should it not finally shoulder the responsibility for wrongly imprisoning Gedun Choephel after his return from India? Wouldn't it suit the government to rehabilitate him and issue an official apology to his relatives? When they were able to find final words of appreciation for famous contemporaries such as Ngapo and Phuntsog Wangyal, what could possibly prevent them from making a similar statement with regard to the man from Amdo and his contribution to modern Tibetan thought?

Gedun Choephel wasn't a political figure who shaped the course of Tibetan history, but if he wasn't important in other ways, why did the government bother to throw a small fish into prison, at a time when the real threat was lurking at the gates preparing to overrun the country?

In their excellent introduction the translators wrote, "the heroes most esteemed in Tibetan history are the lotsawas, the translators, those who made the long journey to India to learn Sanskrit so that they could translate the treasury of Buddhist teachings in the sutras, sastras, and tantras into Tibetan. Gedun Choephel places himself in that lineage…" (p. 8)

Dharamsala could pay its last respects to Gedun Choephel by welcoming him home into the circle of Tibet's great Lotsawas. It's true, he was arrogant and probably also a pain in the neck. But had he not died so early he may well have outlived this Sturm und Drang period, become mellower and who knows what else he would have accomplished. Isn't everyone more antagonistic, radical, and impatient when they are younger? Isn't radicalism the bonus of youth? 

The one characteristic trait of his work that hasn't lost its relevance for today's readers is his ability to question fearlessly at the expense of challenging authority and compromising his reputation when necessary. He didn't mind to be in the minority opinion. Smart cookies are never a majority anyway, he may have told himself. In this sense, Tibetan posterity can still learn a thing or two from Gedun Choephel.

He also tried to continuously incorporate new insights remaining mentally open to reframe his outlook, which is a sign of good scientific work. At the same time, it is also a fundamental characteristic of the Buddhadharma where serious practitioners make an effort to apply "correct view" based on non-attachment and developing a non-dualistic attitude. 

That's my long-winded conclusion!

Gedun Choephel, the specialist in breaking complicated messages down into easily understandable pieces, packed it into the unassuming sentence: "If one has intelligence, one can find great significance anywhere."

Mountain Phoenix Over Tibet

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I went to pick up my children from a kid’s birthday party the other day when I ran into an acquaintance who had just returned from Lhasa with a pile of books on Gedun Choephel in his luggage. My acquaintance said a group of disciples had finally published his Sungbum and he got the collection “just for entertainment”, which somehow sounded like an apology.

While a dozen kids were running around the house, we then began a conversation about the “Amdo beggar”. - What a welcomed change of subject after the exile-Tibetan election craze and the Dalai Lama’s recent surprise announcement to withdraw from politics!

Cautiously I said: “It’s good to know people are looking after his legacy. Gedun Choephel had an unusual style to say it politely, but he also gave the Tibetans a lot of new impulses in many areas. A lot of people at the time just weren’t able to appreciate, don’t you think?”

My acquaintance replied: “Yes, but you know, his Lobma only mention the positive side in these books and say nothing about his controversial works.”

Yes, it’s one-sided to mention only positive things. But then we’re not talking a work of science, are we? Disciples are encouraged to focus on the positive attributes of their Lama so they can proceed on the path, correct?

Maybe suspecting that I must be a fan of Gedun Choephel’s my acquaintance remarked: “I think he simply went overboard. There is a fine line between genius and mania. You know the saying isn’t there for nothing: "Sherab chälpa pe-la shag, Amdo Gedun Choephel ta bu.”

Huh?

The “saying” sounds more like a threat if I got it right: “If you need an example for misdirected intelligence, just take a look the Amdowa Gedun Choephel!”

"Tibet Improvement Party"
Logo by Gedun Choephel

I had always thought of Gedun Choephel as a liberal door-opener who failed not because he wasn’t convincing enough, but because he was stopped by jealous people who were not as smart but came in superior numbers. My impression of Gedun Choephel had been heavily coloured by the non-spiritual part of his life: His arts, his travels outside Tibet, his historical research, and his involvement with the Tibet Improvement Party. I never even properly realised he was born a Tulku with a religious following.

If anything, my idea of Gedun Choephel was a reflection of my own wishful thinking: Finally a person in our recent history who saw the hopelessness of the Tibetan system which was fossilised down to the very fundament; finally a person who did something about it!

After I had brought my kids to bed that night, I fetched a couple of books about Gedun Choephel and began rereading them.

Slowly I noticed that my idea of the man was perhaps not so accurate after all. It sure looked too romantic and incomplete: Not only did I miss that he was a Lama, I was ignorant of the hugeness of his fallout with the Buddhist establishment. I didn’t notice his political naïveté in dealing with people in the Lhasa government either nor the wider implications of his works for the Tibet Improvement Party – and who knows what else I am still missing out on.

Politically Gedun Choephel was almost innocent for current standards. Would you send cartographic materials about a sensitive border area by regular mail when spies playing the “Great Game” are lurking everywhere? That’s what he’s said to have done after members of the Tibet Improvement Party based in Indian Kalimpong convinced him to take the long and not so obvious route back to Tibet. He jotted down all the historical border markers on the way for them. Clueless when he crossed into Tibet, he sent all the materials via British mail back to Kalimpong. The content was discovered, the Lhasa government informed and Gedun Choephel along with the leading members of the Tibet Improvement Party became suspect.

Reminds me of a good-natured friend who naively sent me print-outs of downloads from the internet about the kidnapped child-Panchen Lama to my workplace in Tibet. Hell was I scared when I saw what was in the envelope! I burned everything immediately and thought how lucky I was they didn’t open the mail. But a year later when my friend was about to enter Tibet, the police showed up at her hotel room in the middle of the night interrogating her about her motives for sending me “documents” a year earlier. There was no visible trace the envelope had been openend before I got it. They were watching us all along.

As for Gedun Choephoel’s religious involvement, all I had retained were his legendary debates in the Chöra and how he disguised himself as an unsophisticated Dobdob to defeat a learned, arrogant monk in debate and teach him a lesson in humility; and how he successfully argued that plants are also sentient beings like humans and animals; how the others, short of arguments, would beat him up in order to silence him. The guy was unstoppable. How I loved these stories!

But then I stumbled over a reference which made me think. In her biography of Gedun Choephel, Heather Stoddard writes he quit his Buddhist studies after eleven years shortly before completion because he found it meaningless to obtain the Geshe degree when he didn’t practice.

Isn’t that strange?

What’s the point in sticking around a monastery for eleven years, hanging out with people whose views you disagree with; studying stuff you can’t relate to, that you’ve never even intended to apply? Just to ponder on others’ deficiencies? To teach others a lesson how inadequate they are? For your own aggrandisement?

I really had nothing better to do with my spare time, so I dug deeper into Gedun Choephel religious thoughts reading a Buddhist text attributed to him (or at least parts there of). It was translated into English by Donald Lopez as “The Madman’s Middleway: Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gedun Chophel”.

I didn’t understand a single argument in the book. It was all mind-boggling, metaphysical hair-splitting from the standpoint of a layperson with a mild interest in the Dharma. As far as I could follow, Gedun Choephel said “absolute reality” was beyond eternalism and nihilism. He said absolute reality could not be placed between existence (eternalism) and non-existence (nihilism) as propagated by some Lamas because it cannot be conceptually explained but only directly experienced in meditation – or something to that effect, I am not sure at all. Anyway, an ugly dispute arose and Gedun Choephel was called a heretic and a madman.

Personally I couldn’t care less. People who never heard about this theological debate reach(ed) enlightenment too, so why get excited about inconsequential differences?

But at the same time, I thought I got a sense of the depth and the sophistication of the points brought forward by Gedun Choephel. So I began to wonder why he went to such lengths to dispute standard views of the time: If you don’t practice, why care at all? Why waste precious time detecting others’ perceived mistakes in interpreting the Buddha’s - or in this case Nagarjuna’s - words? What is someone’s motivation for doing that?

I’ve come to the conclusion that Gedun Choephel must have cared after all: Truly and deeply. He just had a problem with getting his message across because more often than not, he hit the wrong tone - “c’est le ton qui fait la musique”, n’est-ce pas? But of course our whiz-kid had an answer to this as well: Stupid people don’t deserve better treatment - touché!

It sure must have felt good to triumph. But did he do himself a favour?

His goal was for people to take a fresh look at Tibetan Buddhism. For that he needed the buy-in of the opinion-leaders in the establishment. But the reaction he got from them was complete disagreement and personal discredit. There were so many who thought he was misguided, including his own teacher, that it entered the vernacular (”If you want an example for misdirected intelligence, look at the Amdowa Gedun Choephel”).

Yet in my eyes, he was not a blasphemer at all. In my eyes, he remains an innovator with the best of intentions even in the field of Dharma. But after reading “The Madman’s Middleway” I also believe that Gedun Choephel is himself to be blamed for a lot of the criticism he got. He could have written without hubris, mockery and cynicism. He could have written as Lamas are supposed to speak: With kindness, understanding, and tolerance, choosing his words carefully. But he decided not to. Instead he allowed himself to write as he lived: in excess.

As for his unforgiving critics, whose voices are also included in the book: Aren’t they the ones who teach: “Don’t look at the person, look at the Dharma”? And weren’t they the ones who looked at the person instead of the Dharma? Why didn’t they give Gedun Choephel a chance by objectively looking for the silver lining? When he gave them condescendence, mockery and pride, why did they have to give him back more condescendence, more mockery and more pride? If their position is superior, how come it doesn’t reflect in their demeanour? Why wouldn’t they make an effort to find out for themselves, without any prejudice and ignoring the polemics, whether there was some truth to what Gedun Choephel was trying to get at?

How sad there never was a meeting of the minds! How sad both sides didn’t meet to talk it out in goodwill! It looks like Buddhism as dialogue never happened. Instead, they preferred to write “hate mail” to each other from afar, what a waste!

Lhasa-based gallery and artists

organisation using GC's name

Isn’t it ironic that Gedun Choephel has become an officially lauded reformer and innovator post mortem? Both the Chinese side and Dharamsala claim him as a hero. Tibetan intellectuals on both sides love to associate with him using his name for all kinds of projects. But if he were really among us today, my gut feeling is few people on either side would like him. My guess is he would have remained the persona non grata he was back in old Tibet because had he not died so early, he would continue to hold up a mirror to the Tibetans - and to the Chinese, you bet! He would have continued to question and to disagree, and a lot of uneasy truths would have been put on the table. Can anyone seriously imagine Dharamsala being fond of such a person? Remember, this is the place where a harmless Miss Tibet contest prompts the Prime Minister to make a public comment and deem it “un-Tibetan”.

It’s so safe to find Gedun Choephel cool now that he’s dead and conveniently can’t talk back. There, I said it!

Actually Gedun Choephel’s life begs to be filmed. Why hasn’t anyone made a feature film about his life yet? For sure it would be a million times more exciting than the life and times of Milarepa where I expect the only climax to be how Milarepa conjures up a hail storm to kill his enemies - with the whole story placed against the single backdrop of a somniferous, arid Western Tibetan plateau, yaaawn.

Gedun Choephel’s life in contrast, has all the ingredients for a dazzling thriller: Shot on location in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tibet, and the Himalayas; sharp intellect, sarcasm and humour; adventure, intrigue, hot sex with numerous partners in all kinds of positions; and a tragic ending! And imagine the cast: Over here the radiantly talented Renaissance man without humility; and over there the jealous and mediocre people in the Tibetan government who try everything to make his life miserable, steal his achievements, and keep him small and insignificant; and still a little bit further: a few unforgiving, grim-looking, dry Lamas with no sense of humour who demonise him as a threat to the Dharma not realising that their rigidity is an equal threat.

But a prophet has no honour in his own country.

Maybe Gedun Choephel should have tried his luck in Buthan?

Instead of returning to Lhasa where he was incarcerated to rot in prison before being released again only to die a little while later, I think he should have gone to Bhutan. He may have become a saint by now, just like Drukpa Kunley, the 15th century Tsangpa, who left Tibet and became famous for his crazy methods of enlightenment, blessing women by way of sexual intercourse and giving teachings in exchange for alcohol - “Bhutanese Arts of Love” if you wish!

In one region of Bhutan, drawings of huge male genitals’ are all over the house walls. And not only that, at the monastery, they will bless you with a gigantic wooden replica of the venerable Drukpa Kunley’s “very own”. I was almost knocked out by it. Have you ever been blessed by a phallus? Where in Tibet can you receive a blessing from a phallus? You get blessed by receiving a Khata from a Lama. If you’re lucky, you receive a cha-wang, or as the Gyalwa Karmapa used to do back when he was still in Tsurpu, bless visitors via a 3-metre long arm-extending cord. But blessed by a phallus? That’s only possible in Bhutan. The Bhutanese may have known how to appreciate someone like Gedun Choephel!

Another more recent Lama who would fit the series “crazy saints” is the late and controversial Trungpa Tulku. We find the same pattern of a life-style branded by alcohol and sex which is what we would associate with a rock star but not a Tibetan Lama. Even though he didn’t look nor live like a conventional Lama, he brought Buddhism to many people. Some say he was successful in doing it precisely because he dropped monastic conventions so he was better accessible. These days a film is screened about his life and times. I haven’t seen it yet but I saw that a trailer, “Crazy Wisdom”, is out.

Anyway, maybe it’s not just Lamas like Gedun Choephel, Drukpa Kunley or Choegyam Trungpa who are the misfits. Maybe it’s us. Maybe when they see how we act, talk and think, they can’t help but go nuts to finally produce a meeting of the minds?

Wait a minute!

Are we perhaps in the middle of that Buddhist parable about this king whose subjects all went nuts because they had drunk water from a poisoned well?

The king, who didn’t drink from the well, was the only one who remained mentally intact, but after a while, since he always ended up arguing with his crazy subjects, they accused him of being the one who was mad. To dissolve the impasse, the king then deliberately drank the poisonous water. Now they were all sitting in the same boat rocking in the same waves.

Perhaps that explains what’s going one here?

I am confused. Maybe next time our little ones need to be picked up from a birthday party, I’d better ask my partner to go.

April Fools :--)
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