[42]The ancient Greek legend of the Pleiades is that they were the daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and that the seventh, Merope, concealed herself out of shame for having loved a mortal. But the legend is doubtless vastly older than the Greeks and has an esoteric, or hidden meaning. A telescope reveals hundreds of stars in the constellation.
[42]The ancient Greek legend of the Pleiades is that they were the daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and that the seventh, Merope, concealed herself out of shame for having loved a mortal. But the legend is doubtless vastly older than the Greeks and has an esoteric, or hidden meaning. A telescope reveals hundreds of stars in the constellation.
In this sense we are our brothers’ keepers: that if we injure them we are responsible. Therefore, our duty is, so vigilantly to control ourselves that we may injure none; and for this there is no substitute; all other duties take a lower place and are dependent on it.From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
In this sense we are our brothers’ keepers: that if we injure them we are responsible. Therefore, our duty is, so vigilantly to control ourselves that we may injure none; and for this there is no substitute; all other duties take a lower place and are dependent on it.
From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
CHAPTER XXVIII
When Ommonyrecovered consciousness it was some time before he was sure he was not dreaming. There was no sense of stability. The universe appeared to sway beneath him, and the sky, when he opened his eyes at last, swung like a compass-card. He closed his eyes, heard voices, and presently discovered he was in a stretcher being borne on men’s heads. When he opened his eyes again the first thing he saw was Diana looking down at him from a rock. She barked when he moved his hand.
It was a very rough stretcher made of poles and hide. His feet were loosely tied to it and a rope was passed over his breast, but he could get his hands under the rope, and its purpose was explained when the stretcher became tilted at an acute angle and he rode for a while with his feet pointed at the sky. On either hand were sloping limestone cliffs and he was being carried up a dry watercourse between them.
He felt no impulse to ask questions, but was curious about his own condition. He recalled rather vividly a time, ten years ago, when he was carried to an operating room. When the stretcher returned to the horizontal and he cautiously tested each muscle, he discovered that his leg-sinews were so stiff that he could hardly bear to move them. Then he remembered; every step of the climb up that titanic stairway came back to him like a nightmare.
He craned his neck looking for thesirdar, but failed to discover him. He could not see the stretcher-bearers, but there were eight Ahbors walking behind, ready to relieve them—hairy, savage-looking men, possessed of that air of deliberate indifference that usually hides extreme fanaticism; their eyes were large, like those of deer, and the hair came close up to their cheek-bones. They all had weapons; two were armed with bow and arrows; but no two weapons were alike, and no two were dressed exactly alike.
Presently the path began to follow the edge of a cliff five or six thousand feet above a river—undoubtedly from its size the Brahmaputra—that galloped and plunged among rocks in the bed of a valley on the left hand. Incredible, enormous mountains leaned against the sky in every direction, suggesting barrenness and storms, but the valley lay golden and green in the sunlight, patched with the vivid green of corn-fields, dotted with grazing cattle and with the dark-brown roofs of villages. It looked like an exceedingly rich valley, and well populated.
After a mile or two of gorgeous vistas the track turned to the right and passed between miles of tumbled ruins, whose limestone blocks, weighing tons apiece, had turned to every imaginable hue of green, gray, brown and yellow. Blue and red flowers were growing in the crevices, and trees had forced themselves between tremendous paving stones that now lay tilted with their edges to the sky. Ommony untied the rope across his breast and sat up to observe the ruins, laying both hands on his thighs to ease their aching; and presently he gasped—forgot the agony.
The track passed between two monolithic columns more enormous than the grandest ones at Thebes, and emerged on the rim of a natural amphitheater, whose terraced sides descended for about two thousand feet to where a torrent of green and white water rushed from a cave-mouth and plunged into a fissure in the limestone opposite. The air was full of the noise of water and the song of birds, intoxicating with the scent of flowers and vivid with their color.
Every terrace was a wilderness of flowers and shade-trees, strewn with bowlders that broke up the regularity, and connected one with another by paths and bridges of natural limestone where streams gushed from the fern-draped rock and fell in cascades to the torrent in the midst. There was an atmosphere of sunlit peace.
Above the topmost terrace, occupying about a third of the circumference, were buildings in the Chinese style; the roofs were carved with dragons and the rear walls appeared to be built into the cliff, which rose for a thousand feet to a sheer wall of crags, whose jagged edges pierced the sky.
There were no human beings in evidence, but smoke was rising from several of the buildings, which all had an air of being lived in. The track, which was paved now with limestone flags, led under an arch in the midst of the largest building. The arch turned out to be the opening of a tunnel, twenty feet high at lowest and as many wide, that pierced the mountain for more than a hundred yards, making two sharp turns where it crossed caverns and followed natural fissures in the limestone before it emerged on the edge of a sheer ravine, overlooking another valley that appeared to approach the gorge of the Brahmaputra at an angle of nearly forty-five.
Away in the distance, like a roaring curtain, emerald green and diamond white, blown in the wind, the Tsangpo River, half a mile wide, tumbled down a precipice between two outflung spurs that looked like the legs of a seated giant. The falls were leagues away, and yet their roar came down-wind like the thunder of creation. Below them, incalculably far below the summit, the rising spray formed a dazzling rainbow; and where, below the falls, the Tsangpo became the Brahmaputra, there were rock-staked rapids more than two miles wide that threw columns of white water fifty feet in air, so that the rocks looked like leviathans at war.
The path led up the side of the ravine, curved around a projecting shoulder, and entered another tunnel, which emerged at the end of fifty yards into a natural cavern. There the bearers set the stretcher down and two of them offered to help Ommony up a long flight of steps hewn from the limestone rock. However, he managed to walk unaided and Diana followed him through a great gap in the wall into what was evidently the basement of a building.
There he was met by a brown-robed monk—not an Ahbor, a Tibetan—who smiled but made no remark and led him up winding stairways between thick masonry walls to a gallery that overhung the valley from a height which made the senses reel. It was the upper of two galleries that ran along the face of a building backed against a cliff; doors and small windows opened all the way along it, but the Tibetan led around the far corner, where the wooden planking came to an end at a stone platform and there was one solitary door admitting to a room about thirty feet by twenty, that had a window facing the tremendous Tsango-po Falls.
It was in all respects a comfortable room, with a fireplace at one end and a bright fire burning. On either side of the fireplace there were shelves stacked with European books in several languages. The stone floor was covered with a heavy Chinese rug. There was no glass in the window, but there were heavy shutters to exclude wind and rain, as well as silken Chinese curtains.
The monk went away and returned presently with a pitcher of milk and some peculiar cakes that tasted as if made from a mixture of flour and nut-meat, raised with butter. He signed to Ommony to eat and, when he had finished, took the pitcher and plate away again.
Ommony warmed his legs at the fire, rubbed them to reduce the stiffness, and chose a book at random—Kant’sCritique of Pure Reason; it was well thumbed. He sat down in a chair before the fire to read, regarding the book as no more incomprehensible than his own predicament and likely to keep his mind off profitless conjecture. He was too tired to think about his own problem—too sore in every muscle to consider sleep. One fact was clear: he had been admitted to the Ahbor Valley, and there must be some reason for it. For the time being, that was enough—that, and the comforting sense that all motion had ceased and he could sit still within four walls that shut off the stunning hugeness of the scenery. He had no geographical curiosity—was not qualified in any event to make a map that would be of any real value, and was not sure it would be courteous to try to do it. People who don’t invade other people’s countries have a right to their own privacy. Besides, he was quite sure he could never retrace the way into the valley, and doubtful whether he could find a way out of it, except down that thundering river. He was absolutely at the Lama’s mercy, and entirely sure the Lama was a man of superb benevolence, if nothing else.
Finding he could not make head or tail of Kant in the original German (he spent ten minutes trying to find the subject of one verb) he laid the book down and began to wonder whether this was the place in which his sister and Jack Terry had died. Time vanished. Thought took him back to the days when he had sent for his sister Elsa, then seventeen, to come to India and keep house for him. He frowned, blaming himself for having been the cause of all she suffered. They had had so much in common, and he had understood so well her craving for knowledge that is not in any of the text-books, that he had tacitly encouraged her to make acquaintances which his better judgment should have warned him to keep out of her reach. He wondered just to what extent a man is justified in guiding or obstructing a younger sister’s explorations into unknown realms of thought—knew that he himself would resent any leading-rein—knew, nevertheless, that he felt guilty of having neglected to protect his sister until protection and precaution were too late. He had done his best then, but—
“Dammit, are we or aren’t we free agents?” he asked aloud, staring at the fire; and then he heard Diana’s tail beating the Chinese rug. It sounded as if the dog were laughing at him! He turned his head sharply—and saw the Lama standing in the doorway.
“We are free—tobecomeagents of whatever power we wish,” said the Lama, smiling. “Don’t get up, my son. I know how thighs ache after a climb up the stairs of the Temple of Stars. Thesirdardoes not know the other entrance to the valley.”
“Where is he?” asked Ommony, staring. He was not particularly interested in thesirdar. A suggestion as to who and what the Lama might be, had occurred to him suddenly. He was sparring for time to follow up that thought.
“He returned,” said the Lama, sitting on a chair before the fire, betraying an inclination to tuck his legs up under him but resisting it. “The Ahbors would have killed him if he passed beyond the opening. They would have killedyou—if it were not for Diana the dog. My son, you wonder why I left you in Darjiling? There were seven reasons; of which the first is that I have no right to lead you out of your environment; and the second, that youhavethe right to make your own decision. The third reason was that these Ahbors guard their valley very strictly; it is their valley; they also have their rights. The fourth reason was, that an excuse must be presented to the Ahbors for admitting you. The fifth, that I alone could do that. The sixth, that I must make the excuse in advance of your coming, since they would not listen unless given time to consider the matter. And the seventh reason was, that it was fitting you should learnwhythis has been kept from you for twenty years, before you learn as much of the secret as I can show you. Behind each of those seven reasons are seven more beyond your comprehension. You spoke with Miss Sanburn?” Ommony nodded. Suspicion was approaching certainty. He wondered that the thought had not occurred to him long before.
“Where is thechela—Samding—Elsa Terry—my niece?” he asked. There is no foretelling which emotion will come uppermost. He felt a bit humiliated. It annoyed him to think he had lived for two months in almost constant association with his sister’s child and had never guessed it; annoyed him more to think that the Lama should not have trusted him from the beginning; most of all that he had not guessed the Lama’s identity. He felt almost sure that he had guessed right at last. Nothing but a western dread of seeming foolish restrained him from guessing aloud.
But the Lama read his thoughts, and answered the unspoken question first in his own way, his bright old eyes twinkling amid the wrinkles.
“Those who are trustworthy, my son, eventually prove it—always, and it is only they to whom secrets should be told. It is not enough that a man shall say, ‘Lo, I am this, or I am that.’ Nor is it enough that other men shall say the same of him. Some men are trustworthy in some respects, and not in others. He who trusts, and is betrayed, is answerable to his own soul.—Do you think it would have beenfairto trust you with the secret of mychela?” he asked suddenly.
Ommony side-stepped the question by asking another:
“Why do you call her San-fun-ho?”
“It is her name. It was I who gave it to her. She accepted it, when she was old enough to understand its meaning. Do you know Chinese? The word means ‘Possessor of the three qualities,’ but its inner meanings are many: righteousness, virtuous action, purity, benevolence, moral conduct, ingenuousness, knowledge, endurance, music—and all the qualities that lie behind those terms.”
“You think she hasallof them?” Ommony asked. His voice held a hint of sarcasm. He intended that it should.
“My son, we all have them,” said the Lama. “But she is the firstordinarymortal I have known, who couldexpress them.”
Ommony pricked his ears at the word “ordinary.”
“Youknow—you haveseenthe Masters?” he demanded.
The Lama blinked, but otherwise ignored the question, exactly as every one Ommony had asked, who was likely to know, always had avoided it. There is a legend about mysterious “Mahatmas,”[43]whom all the East believes in, but whom none from the West has ever met (and talked much about afterward).
“No man ever had such achela,” said the Lama, changing the subject and betraying the first hint of personal emotion Ommony had ever noticed in him.
“Are you one of the Masters?” Ommony demanded, sitting bolt-upright, studying the old man’s face.
But the Lama laughed, his wrinkles dancing with amusement.
“My son, that is a childish question,” he said after a moment. “If a man were to tell you he is one of the Masters, he would be a liar and a boaster; because it must be evident to any one who thinks, that the more a man knows, the more surely he knows there are greater ones than himself. He is a Master, whose teaching you accept. But if he should tell you there is none superior to himself, it would be wise to look for another Master!”
But Ommony felt more sure than ever. He knew that Pythagoras, for instance, and Appolonius, and scores of others had gone to India for their teaching. For twenty years he had kept ears and eyes alert for a clue that might lead him to one of the preservers of the ancient wisdom, who are said to mingle with the crowd unrecognized and to choose to whom they will impart their secrets. He had met self-styled Gurus by the dozen—a perfect host of more or less obvious charlatans—some self-deceived dabblers in the occult, whose motives might be more or less respectable—but never a one, unless this man, whose speech and conduct had appeared to him consistent with his idea of what a real Mahatma might be.
“Hannah Sanburn told me,” he said slowly, “that there are individuals to whom you go for advice. Did she tell the truth?”
“She received that truth from my lips,” said the Lama, nodding.
“Aretheythe Masters?”
“The Masters are only discoverable to those, who in former lives have earned the right to discover them,” the Lama answered. “There is a Higher Law that governs these things. It is the Law of Evolution. We evolve from one state to another, life after life, being born into such surroundings as provide us with the proper opportunity. It was not by accident, my son, that San-fun-ho was brought into the Ahbor Valley to be born.”
“Do the Masters live here?”
“No,” said the Lama, smiling again.
“Then what is the particular advantage of the Ahbor Valley?”
“My son, I do not rule the Universe! It was not my province to arrange the stars! There is no place, no circumstance that does not have particular advantages. The Ahbor Valley is more suitable to some than to others, but I am not the one who selects those who shall come here.”
“Who does?”
“There is a law that governs it, just as there is a law that rules the stars, and a law that obliges one to be born rich and another poor. When did cause begin? And when shall effect cease? Can you answer that?”
“At any rate,youwere the cause ofmycoming here,” said Ommony.
“Nay, my son! No more than I was the cause of your coming into the world. If I should have caused you to come here, I should be responsible for all the consequences; and I do not know what those might be. I havepermittedyou to come here. I have removed some difficulties.”
“Why?”
“Because I sought to remove other difficulties from the path of some one else, and it seemed to me possible that you might be the one who can assist. Remember: it was not I who caused you to resign your position under the Indian Government; not I who appointed you a Trustee at Tilgaun; nor I who invited you to disguise yourself as a Bhat-Brahman. Have I ever given you advice on any of those matters?”
“No,” Ommony admitted. “But you have corresponded with me ever since Marmaduke died, and if your letters weren’t educative, what were they?”
“Evocative!” the Lama answered. “Shall I show you the copies of all the letters I have written to you? I believe you will not find one word in them that might evoke from you anything except your higher nature, nor one word that you could twist into inducement to do this, or to do that. I have taught you nothing. You have tried to understand my letters, and have found a guiding force within yourself. I am not your guide.”
“Well then—why the interest in me?” Ommony retorted.
“My son, you are immensely interesting. You were forced on my attention. I havemywork to do, and I have nearly finished it.”
The old man paused, and suddenly he seemed so old and tired that all his previous exertions—night-long rides on camel-back, two months of journeying in the heat of the Indian plains, patient control of a dramatic company, and (not least) the return across the mountains to his home—appeared incredible. For a moment sadness seemed to overwhelm him. Then he smiled, and as if his will shone through the cloud and warmed the worn-out flesh, he threw off fifty years.
“For what purpose are we in the world?” he asked. “The purpose lies in front of each of us. It is never more than one step in advance, and whither it leads, who knows? It is the best that we can do at any moment that is required of us. A tree should grow. Water should run. A shoemaker should make shoes. A musician should make music. A teller of tales should tell them. Eyes are to see with. Ears are for hearing. Each man’s own environment is his own universe, and he the master or the victim of it in exactly the degree by which he governs or is governed by himself. Could you have patience with me, if I should tell a little—just a little of my own experience?”
“Good God!” said Ommony. “I’d rather hear it than find a fortune! Ears are to hear with!” he added, grinning, settling himself back into the chair to listen.
“Some men listen to the wrong sound,” said the Lama. “It is good to listen carefully, and to speak only after much thought. I will not tell more than is required to make a certain matter clear. Thereafter, you must use your own judgment, my son.”
[43]The legend persists; mocked by the missionaries and denied by governments, but believed, nevertheless, by multitudes of ignorant people and by an increasing number of thoughtful investigators. There is much vague rumor and some corroborated detail, but whoever really knows the facts is silent.
[43]The legend persists; mocked by the missionaries and denied by governments, but believed, nevertheless, by multitudes of ignorant people and by an increasing number of thoughtful investigators. There is much vague rumor and some corroborated detail, but whoever really knows the facts is silent.
I have conversed with many priests; and some were honest men, and some were not, but three things none of them could answer: if their God is all-wise, what does it matter if men are foolish? And if they can imagine and define their God, must he not be smaller than their own imaginations? Furthermore, if their God is omnipotent, why does he need priests and ritual?From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
I have conversed with many priests; and some were honest men, and some were not, but three things none of them could answer: if their God is all-wise, what does it matter if men are foolish? And if they can imagine and define their God, must he not be smaller than their own imaginations? Furthermore, if their God is omnipotent, why does he need priests and ritual?
From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
CHAPTER XXIX
“I ama Ringding, of the order of Gelong Lamas. That is neither a high rank nor a low one; but high enough to provide the outer forms of dignity, and low enough to avoid the snares of pride. I have ever found contentment in the Middle Way. I was born in Lhassa,” Tsiang Samdup began, and then paused and got down on the rug, where he could sit cross-legged and be comfortable. Diana went and laid her great head on his knee.
“Just a minute,” said Ommony. “How old are you?”
But Tsiang Samdup smiled. “My son,” he answered, “we live as long as we are useful, and as long as it is good for us to live. Thereafter we die, which is another form of living, even as ice and water and rain and dew are the same thing in different aspects. When the appointed time comes, we return, as the rain returns, to the earth it has left for a season. As I told you, I was born in Lhassa.”
He rubbed the dog’s head as if he were erasing unnecessary details from the tablets of memory. Then he laid a stick of pine-wood on the fire deliberately, and watched it burn. It was several minutes before he spoke again.
“The Dalai Lama is a person who is mocked by Western thinkers. The few Europeans who have been to Lhassa have hastened to write books about him, in which they declare he is the ignorant head of a grossly superstitious religion. To which I have nothing to say, except this: that it is evident the writers of those books have been unable to expose the Dalai Lama’s secrets. An army which invaded Lhassa failed to expose them with its bayonets. I, who took the highest possible degrees at Oxford and have lived in Paris, in Vienna, and in Rome—so that I know at least something of the western culture—regard the Dalai Lama with respect, which is different, my son, from superstitious awe. The Tashi Lama, who does not live in Lhassa, is as high above the Dalai Lama as a principle is higher than a consequence.
“There was a Tashi Lama who selected me, for reasons of his own, for certain duties. I was very young then—conscious of the host of lower impulses and far from the self-knowledge that discriminates between the higher and the lower. To me in those days my desire was law, and I had not yet learned to desire the Middle Way, which leads between the dangers of ambition and inertia.”
Tsiang Samdup paused again and stared out of the window at an eagle which soared higher and higher on motionless wings, adjusting its balance accurately to the flukes of wind.
“We learn by experience,” he went on after a while. “Few of us remember former lives and those who say they do are for the most part liars, although there are some who are deceived by imagination. But the experience of former lives is in our favor—or against us, as the case may be. Its total is what some call instinct, others intuition; but there is a right name for it, and there are those whose past experience equips them with ability to recognize that stage in others at which the higher nature begins to overwhelm the lower. They are able to assist the process. But such men are exceedingly rare, though there are hosts of fools and rogues who pretend to the gift, which comes not by desire but by experience endured in many lives.
“That Tashi Lama said to me: ‘My son, it may amuse you to linger for a few lives on the lower path; for you are strong, and the senses riot in you; and it is not my duty to impose on you one course of conduct, if you prefer another. It is very difficult to rise against the will, but very easy if the will directs.’ And I, because I loved him, answered I would do his bidding. But he said: ‘Nay. Each man must, each minute, make his destiny. It is your own will, not mine, that directs you. Shall I fight your will, and force you to attempt the better way? Not so; because in that case you would surely fall, for which I should be responsible. But I perceive that the time has come when you may choose, and that your will is strong enough to make the choice and hold to it. You may be a benefactor or a beneficiary—a man, aware of manhood, or a victim of the lower senses, bound to the wheel of necessity. Which shall it be?’—And because he had discerned, and had chosen the right moment, there was a surging of the spirit in me, and as it were an awakening.
“I said to him: ‘I have chosen.’ And he asked me: ‘Which way?’ To which I answered at once: ‘The higher.’ Whereat he laughed; for I do not doubt that he saw the pride and the ambition that were cloaked within the answer.
“Thereafter he considered me for a long time before he spoke. And when I had waited so long that I supposed he would say no more at all, he said this: ‘They who take the higher way in the beginning are consumed with arrogance; they mortify the flesh and magnify the will until there is no balance left; and when, after their period of death, they are born again, it is into a feeble body possessed by a demon will that tortures it; even as they who choose the lower way are reborn into brutal bodies with feeble wills.’
“Whereat I asked him: ‘How then shall I choose between the higher and the lower, since both are evil?’ And he considered me again, a long time.
“At last he said this: ‘There is the Middle Way; but there are few who find it, and yet fewer who persist in it, because pride tempts one way and sloth the other.’
“And I said: ‘I have chosen.’ And he said: ‘Speak.’ And I said: ‘Let it be the Middle Way.’ Whereat he did not laugh, but considered me again for many minutes; and at the end of it, he said: ‘My son, you have much strength. If you persist and keep the Middle Way, you have a destiny and you shall not die until you have fulfilled it. But beware of pride; and above all, seek no knowledge for your own sake.’
“At that time he said no more, but I became hischela. I washed his feet, and I swept the floor of his chamber, which was less than this one and less comfortably furnished. He taught me many things, but mainly patience, of which I lacked more in those days than a snake lacks legs. I supposed that before his time should come to die he would prefer me to high office. But nay. On a certain day he sent for me and said: ‘I shall die on the eleventh day from now, at noon. To-morrow at dawn take the road into India, and go to Delhi, to a certain house in a certain street, and there learn the tongue of the English. Thence, I having made provision for it, journey to England, to a University called Oxford; and there learn all that the University can teach—and particularly all they think they know about philosophy and religion.’
“I said to him: ‘Why?’ And he said: ‘I know not why; but I tell you what I know it is good for you to do. There is a destiny which, if you fail not, you shall fulfill. But beware of the Western knowledge, which is corrupt and strained through the sieve of convenience. I do not know, but it may be that you must learn the Western teachings for another’s sake. Who can teach a horse unless he understands the way of horses? Who can make a sword unless he understands the qualities of steel?’
“And I said to him, ‘Shall I be a swordsmith?’ But he answered: ‘Nay. I said you have a destiny to fulfill.’ So I asked, ‘When?’ But he said, ‘I know not. However, I know this: if you seek your own advancement, you will fail. And there is a certain condition in you that will inevitably bring you to a death by violence, because of lies that you yourself will tell; but because of your strength that may not come to pass until your work is finished.’
“So I said to him, ‘How shall I know what my work is?’ And he answered, ‘That will appear.’ But I said, ‘If you, my great and very holy master, are to die, who then shall show me how to fulfill this destiny?’ And he answered: ‘It is for you to become fit to be the tool of destiny, and to hold yourself at all times ready. There are those from whom, at the proper time, you may receive the right advice.’ So I asked: ‘How shall I find them?’ And he answered: ‘They will find you.’
“Thereafter I besought him earnestly that I might remain with him in Lhassa until his death, because I was hischela, and that is no commonplace relationship. Its roots lie deeper than the roots of trees. But he answered: ‘The first duty of achelais obedience.’ ”
Tsiang Samdup paused and stared through the open window at the sky for several minutes. Eyes and sky were so exactly the same color that it looked as if the substance of the sky had crept within him and appeared through slits amid the walnut wrinkles of his face.
“It was midwinter,” he said after a while, “and no light task to cross the passes. But the route the Tashi Lama gave me was this way, through the Ahbor Valley, and I lay for a month in this monastery, recovering from frost-bite and exhaustion. And as I lay between life and death, one came to me who had a pilgrim’s staff, and no outward appearance of greatness, who considered me in silence for a long while; but the silence appeared to me like the voice of the universe, full of music, yet without sound. He went away. But in three days’ time, when I was already far recovered (for I was ever strong), he returned and led me to what I will show you to-night and to-morrow. And I saw myself within myself.”
He paused again, and again the far-away look in his eyes searched the sky and seemed to blend with it.
“He carried me forth,” he said presently, “I lying like a dead man in his arms. His voice in my ear was as a mother’s speaking to a child. ‘It is well,’ said he. ‘Now set forth on your journey, and remember. For you know now what you have to overcome, and also what is yourswherewithto overcome.’
“So after certain days I set forth, and in due time I came to Delhi, where I studied English. Thereafter I went to England.”
The wrinkles moved in silent laughter, and the old eyes twinkled reminiscently as they looked into Ommony’s.
“My son, that was no light experience! It was warfare, and myself the battle-field. Warfare, and loneliness. Curiosity, contempt,—courtesy, discourtesy, indifference—all these were shown toward me. And there were very generous men at Oxford, whose pride was racial, not intellectual, who were as patient in the teaching as the sun is patient to the growing grass—most worthy and laughter-loving men, mistaken in much, but as sure of the reward of generosity as there is surely good will in their hearts. They did not know I was Tibetan; they believed I was Chinese, because I speak and write that language, and none knew anything about Tibet.
“I came to understand that the cycles of evolution are moving westward, and that the West is arrogant with the strength it feels within itself. I saw, my son, that the West is deceived by the glitter of results, knowing nothing of causes, and that the East is in turn deceived by the wealth and ostentation of the West—for this is Kali Yuga,[44]when delusion and a blindness overspreads the world. I knew—for none had better right to know—that strength can be guided into the grooves of destiny, and that knowledge is the key. But I perceived that great harm can be done by interference. There is danger in another’s duty. Also I saw thatmyvoice, however reasonably raised, could accomplish nothing, because of the racial prejudice. The West is curious about the East, but proud—contemptuous—and most cruel when it most believes it is benevolent. The West sends missionaries to the East, who teach the very culture that is poisoning the life-springs of the West itself. The strength of the West and its generous impulse must be guided. Its rapacity must be restrained. But it was clear to me that I could not accomplish that, since none would listen to me. The few who pretended to listen merely sought to use my teaching for their own enrichment and advantage.
“I met a certain one in London. He appeared to be English, but that meant nothing. He had the Ancient Wisdom in his eyes. I had taken my degrees at Oxford then, and I was sitting in the Stranger’s Gallery of the House of Parliament. I remember I grieved; for I saw how eager those debaters were to rule the whole world wisely—yet how ignorant they were of the very rudiments of what could possibly enable them to do it. I said to him who was in the corner next to me: ‘These men boast of what is right, and they believe their words; but they do not know what is right. Who shall save them?’ And he answered, after he had considered me a while in silence: ‘Ifyouknow what is right, you will attend to your own duty.’
“So l went and lived in Paris for a while, and in Vienna and in Rome, because it was my duty to learn how the West thinks, and in what way it is self-deceived. And thereafter I returned to Tibet, wondering. It did not seem to me that I was one step forward on the path of destiny. I could see (for I had walked the length of India with pilgrim’s staff and begging-bowl) that the West was devouring the East and the East was inert in the grip of superstition, inclined, if it should move at all, to imitate the West and to corrupt the Western energy by specious flattery, hating its conquerors, yet copying those very methods that made conquest possible.
“An unfathomable sadness overwhelmed me. It appeared to me that all my knowledge was as nothing. I doubted the stars in the sky; I said ‘These, too, are a delusion of the senses. Who shall prove to me that I am not deceived in all things?’ ”
Tsiang Samdup paused and thought a while, stroking Diana’s head.
“My son,” he said presently, “it was as if the knowledge that was born within me, and all the false Western doctrine I had studied, were as waters meeting in the basin of my mind, and in the whirlpool my faith was drowning. It is ever so when truth meets untruth, but I did not know that then.
“I went to the Tashi Lama—the successor of my teacher. He was but a child, and I was ashamed to lay my heart before him, though I laid my forehead on the mat before his throne, for the sake of the traditions and my master’s memory. And to me, as I left the throne-room sadly, one of the regents, drawing me aside said: ‘I have heard a destiny awaits you.’ I asked: ‘From whom have you heard that?’ But he did not say. To him I laid bare the affliction that was eating out my heart; and to me he said: ‘Good. This is a time of conquest of self by the Self; I foresee that the higher will win.’ Thereafter he spoke of the folly of stirring molten metal with a wooden spoon. He bade me let my thoughts alone. And because he saw in me a pride of knowledge that was at the root of my affliction, he appointed me a temple neophite. He who was set over me had orders to impose severe tasks. I hewed wood. I carried water. I laid heavy masonry, toiling from sunrise until dark. I labored in the monastery kitchen. I dug gold on the plateau, where for nine months of every year the earth is frozen so hard that a strong man can with difficulty dig two baskets-full. By day I toiled. By night I dreamed dreams—grand dreams full of quiet understanding—so that to me it seemed that the night was life, and the day death. I was well contented to remain there in the gold-fields, because it seemed to me I had found my destiny; the miners were well pleased to listen to me in the intervals when we leaned on the tools and rested, and when the blizzards blew and we were herded very close together for the warmth, with the animals between us in the tents.
“But when the Tashi Lama, who succeeded him whosechelaI had been, came to man’s estate he sent for me. And after he had talked with me a while on many matters he promoted me. I became a Lama of the lowest rank, and yet without the ordinary duties of a Lama. I had time to study and arrange the ancient books; of which, my son, there are more than the West imagines; they are older than the West believes the world to be, and they are written in a language that extremely few can read. But I can read them. And I learned that my dreams were realities—although the dreams ceased in those days.
“Once, that one who had come to me when I lay sick in this place on my journey southward, came to me in Lhassa, where I was pondering the ancient books and rearranging them. And to him I said, ‘Lo, I have met my destiny! I see that it is possible to translate some of these into the Western tongues.’ But he answered: ‘Who would believe? For this is Kali Yuga. Men think that nothing is true unless they can turn it into money and devour what they can purchase with it. If you give too much food to a starving horse, will he thrive? Or will he gorge himself to death?’
“Said I; ‘Light travels fast.’ Said he; ‘It does. But it requires a hundred million years for the light of certain stars to reach the earth. And how long does it take for the formation of coal, that men burn in a minute? Make no haste, or they will burn thee! They have Plato and Pythagoras and Appolonius—Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed—and others. Would you give them a new creed to go to war about, or a new curiosity to buy and sell for their museums? Which?’
“Thereafter the Tashi Lama sent for me, and I was given no more time to study the ancient books. But I was promoted to the rank of Gelong, and became a Ringding, whose duty was to teach the people as much as they could understand. I discovered it was not much that they could understand. They knew the meaning of desire, and of the bellyache that comes from too much eating. I found that if one man learns more than another, he is soon so filled with pride that he had better have been left in ignorance; and I also found that men will accept any doctrine that flatters their desires or excuses ignorance, but that they seek to vilify and kill whoever teaches them to discipline the senses in order that their higher nature may appear and make them wise. There is no difference in that respect, although men are fond of saying that the West is quite unlike the East. East or West they will murder any one who teaches them to think except in terms of the lower self.
“There was an outcry against me in Lhassa, and there were many Lamas who declared I should be put on trial for heresy. I was stoned in the streets; and the great dogs that devour the dead were incited to attack me. So I said: ‘Lo, it may be then I have fulfilled my destiny. For he who was my teacher prophesied that there is that in me which must inevitably bring me to a violent end. Nevertheless, I have told no lies yet, that I know of!’
“But the Dalai Lama sent men—they were soldiers—who, under pretense of throwing me in prison, hid me in a certain place. And escaping thence by night, with one to guide me, I went on a journey of many days, to a village where none knew me, where I dwelt safely; so that I thought that my teacher had prophesied falsely, and for a while again I doubted.
“But there came to me that same one who had come when I lay sick in this place on my journey southward, and he said to me; ‘Have you learned yet that the stars and the seasons keep their course and the appointed times, and that no seed grows until the earth is ready?’ And I said: ‘How shall I know when it is ready? And who shall tell me the appointed time?’ For I was full of a great yearning to be useful. But he answered: ‘Who rules the stars? Until you can control yourself, how shall you serve others?’ But I was burning with desire to serve, and moreover indignant at persecution, for in those days I had very little wisdom. I was a fool who puts his face into a hornets’ nest to tell the hornets of the Higher Law. And I said to him: ‘I am beginning to doubt all things.’ ‘Nay,’ said he, ‘for you began that once before, and made an end of it. You are beginning now to doubt your own impetuosity, and that is good, for you will learn that power lies in patience. He who will play in the symphony awaits the exact moment before he strikes his note. You forget that the world existed many million years, and that you lived many scores of lives, before you came to this pass. Will you sow seed in midwinter because it wearies you to wait until the spring?’
“And when he had considered me again for a long while, he went away, saying that he would doubtless speak with me again, should the necessity arise. And before many days there came a message from Lhassa, saying that one was dead who had charge of this monastery in the Ahbor Valley, and that the Dalai Lama had appointed me to take his place.
“So hither I came, and was at peace. And many years, my son, I lived here studying the ancient mysteries, considering the stars, and not seldom wondering what service to the world my destiny might hold in store. I made ready. I held myself ready.”
[44]The age of darkness.
[44]The age of darkness.
And I have asked this of the priests, but though they answered with a multitude of words, their words were emptiness: If it is true that a priest can pacify and coax God, or by meditation can relieve another from the consequences of his own sin, why should any one be troubled and why do the priests not put an end for ever to all sin and suffering? If they can, and do not, they are criminals. If they can not, but pretend that they can, they are liars. Nevertheless, there is a middle judgment, and it seems to me that SOME of them may be mistaken.From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
And I have asked this of the priests, but though they answered with a multitude of words, their words were emptiness: If it is true that a priest can pacify and coax God, or by meditation can relieve another from the consequences of his own sin, why should any one be troubled and why do the priests not put an end for ever to all sin and suffering? If they can, and do not, they are criminals. If they can not, but pretend that they can, they are liars. Nevertheless, there is a middle judgment, and it seems to me that SOME of them may be mistaken.
From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.