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Spiritual Bazaar Believers
Western travellers’ spiritual wallowing in McLeod Ganj is only as profound as sampling things at a religious supermarket
Mcleod Ganj, the world’s most intense spiritual bazaar. On doors and notice-boards and once-bare walls, collage upon collage of notices tempt you with all the spiritual creeds ever known east of Egypt, from the archetypal pagan worship to the hybrid forms of modern meditation; although what dominates is Buddhism, as the town is home to the Tibetan government in exile – colourful prayer flags flutter on every rooftop and in the mornings you are awoken by the sangha’s (generic term for Buddhist monks and nuns) blowing their trumpets in the forest monasteries, the delicate sound of the trumpets desirous, part of the intimately endearing imagery of the Himalayas, as the bagpipe is to the Highlands. This is what attracts the Westerner tourists, which account for thirty percent of the town’s population. It is said that you could feel the spirituality in the air, clinging to you like mist, and many Westerners are so sucked into this energy that they stay. Yet – the surprise of seeing that many of the Buddhist sangha’s floating through the streets have Western faces never ceases.
Carol, a sweet voice, ready smile, in her mid-twenties, had been a sangha for two years, spending one year in a monastery in England before deciding to move over a year before. She said, “I wanted to be close to His Holiness [the Dalai Lama].”
“So what did you have to do to become a sangha?”
“Have dedication.”
“Granted. But didn’t you have to go through a process? Didn’t you have to learn the scriptures and gain religious merit?”
“No. You have to find someone to put in a word for you, and kind of demonstrate that you’re pretty serious about it.”
It seemed suspiciously easy to be ordained a sangha: you just had to have a will. I said, “So did you have to give up every ambition?”
“Everything. Family, relationships, career…”
“Do male and female sangha’s have equal status?”
“Yes. Buddha said women are equal to men.”
“So what do you get out of this monastery life personally?”
“Before I felt like I was lost; now I feel that my life is full and has a purpose.”
“Every religion imparts that sense of purpose on the believers.”
I met Carol on the way to see Karmapa, the third-in-command in the Buddhist religious structure, yet the holiest Buddhist alive: he was the seventeenth incarnation of Karmapa, expected to achieve enlightenment (and nirvana) in this lifetime. The boy had escaped from under the Chinese rule two years before, taking a treacherous flight across the Himalayas, and now he gave four public appearances every week – the highlight of Westerners’ stay in Mcleod Ganj. There were about 200 faithful, a fourth of which were Westerners, and the gauntlet of security gave the occasion an expectant air, as if we were meeting a great figure, such as Nelson Mandela. When the 18-year-old boy walked into the temple a sigh erupted from the crowd; some threw themselves on the floor, kissing the floor on which he walked. He walked with a slight stoop, taking short and light steps, his head bowed, as if he was fragile or as if he had shrunk so as not to draw attention to himself. His dark eyes were at once penetrative and glazed, and he looked bewildered: here was a boy who did not belong to himself, who had been taken away as public property. He had not been allowed to grow up as an adolescent; the only contact with lay people were these public occasions. And we abased ourselves in front of this holy figure, one after the other queuing up to him, bowing our heads, our hands steepled in devotion, while he thrust a red ribbon in our hands. Only his Indian guards, four of them flanking him at a sociable distance, were impervious to the reverence that surrounded the boy, their shoulders slack and indifferent.
When this initial commotion had died and we were squatted on the straw mats that had been laid on the floor, the boy prayed a little in the nasal voice of Buddhist prayer, which sounds like muttering. Then he delivered his sermon, which was about how we could achieve compassion; he told us how we should daily make an effort to imagine and place ourselves in sufferings of others so we would cultivate compassion for all sentient beings. Nothing new there. I was trying hard not to fall asleep.
Afterwards, I asked some of the Westerners: “If you had to be in Rome and had opportunity for a public audience with the Pope, would you attend?”
All of them shook their head in vigorous alarm.
“Why not?”
“I’m not interested in the Christianity, but I am interested in Buddhism,” someone said, and the others nodded their agreement.
“But this doesn’t make sense,” I said. “The Pope would have done the same thing. He would have blessed us, and he would have spoken about compassion in the same manner. The only difference would have been in form: more pomposity, and he might have kissed our forehead instead of giving us a ribbon.”
It is easy to reject Christianity because it is of our own kind, our history; it is common, it is home, and Buddhism is distant and exotic, a product of the majestic mountains, and it is different – but perhaps only at the superficial level of appearances. In the Christian churches of Europe, we would have heard sermons about the virtue of compassion week after week, but we never attended. At the place we call home our observations are jaded, our ideas are already cast, so we travel halfway across the world, where we rediscover curiosity (the essence of travel), and – in a place where to experience Buddhism is to experience the special and simple joy of the Himalayas – we listen attentively to something we could have heard in our hometown.
In its favour, however, Buddhism presents a benign humanity that stands to reason with liberal cultural values. Christianity is arrogant; Islam is at war; Judaism is associated with Israeli oppression and notions of Jewish racial purity; Hinduism is lost under a barrage of deities and fantastically impossible tales. Buddhism is gentle and simple and subtle and accessible – a delicious absence of hierarchy, every part of the temple accessible to all, a central doctrine that is more about persuasion and logic rather than strict rules, a religion that is positively engaging.
All this is good, but we only take the part of Buddhism that doesn’t lead to personal sacrifices. Westerners conveniently ignore that Buddhism holds – like every other religion – a disdain for hedonism. Here, in Mcleod Ganj, while many of us profess an allegiance to Buddhism, few of us are prepared to give up casual holiday sex, drugs, and rapacious shopping for clothes and precious stones. Have we forgotten that Buddhism considers such hedonistic indulgences as obstacles on the road to enlightenment? I thought about this during a sermon delivered by the Dalai Lama, for which the Westerners attended with spiritual eagerness. Never mind that we didn’t understand a word of the Tibetan he uttered: our presence was proof enough, and this was just as well, because if we had to understand we might start disliking some of the things he preached.
(C) Victor Paul Borg 
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