Mongolia | Zanabazar | Cult of Tara

The First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia Zanabazar came by his interest in Tara honestly. His previous incarnation, the Tibetan lama Taranatha, was deeply involved in the Cult of Tara. Taranatha was born in 1575 in Drong, Tibet, on the same birth-day as Padmasambhava, the founder of Buddhism in Tibet. Like Zanabazar, he was a childhood prodigy whose astounded everyone with his precociousness. “By the time he was only a year old,” one biographical account claims, “Taranatha could read and write, walk, and practice meditation without any imperfection. He also could name all the deities in any thangka, even those so worn and dirty that no one else alive could tell which deity was painted. He already could heal people from disease.”

Later Taranatha studied under numerous Tibetan gurus, including Jampa Lhundrup, Kunga Tashi, Je Draktopa, and Yeshe Wangpo. He also became a disciple of Buddhagupta, one of the very last prominent Buddhist monks in India, where Buddhism by that time had been largely supplanted by Islamic incursions and resurgent Hinduism. This peripatetic wanderer-monk had sojourned in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, Java, East Africa, Bodhgaya in India (where Buddha had achieved Enlightenment), Assam, Burma, and northern Thailand and would have been able to inculcate in Taranatha a thorough knowledge of Buddhism as practiced outside of Tibet., Taranatha probably learned much about the history of cult of Tara, which originated in India, from Buddhagupta.

Taranatha became a staggeringly prolific writer whose collected works amounted to sixteen hefty volumes. Perhaps his most famous work was the History of Buddhism in India, completed in 1608. An “amazing intellectual performance” according to its editor, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, the History is still in print in English translation today. He also wrote a volume of commentary on the Kalachakra Tantra, which according to tradition had been taught by Buddha to Suchandra, the first king of the legendary realm Shambhala. He also translated from Sanskrit a guidebook to the Kingdom of Shambhala entitled Kalapar Jugpa (“The Entrance to Kalapa”, Kalapa being the capital of Shambhala) This translation was later used as the basis of the most famous guidebook to Shambhala, Description of the Way to Shambhala, written by the Third Panchen Lama Palden Yeshe in 1775. Also, in his Autobiography, the first volume of his collected works, he relates that while in a dream state a small white boy led him to Shambhala. Alone among the many sojourners who claim to have visited this storied kingdom, either in their physical bodies, in dreams, or in meditative states, Taranatha found Shambhala inhabited almost entirely by women.

Taranatha was also a chief spokesman for the so-called Jonang School, a small but vigorous sect which held doctrinal tenets in some cases decidedly different from some other schools of thought in Tibet. The basic teachings of the school had appeared early as the eleventh century, but it is Dolpopa Sherab Gyelten (1292-1361) who is credited with fully developing the Jonang belief-system. The sect is best known for its philosophical doctrine of ultimate truth called shen-tong, or “other emptiness.” This is different from the rang-tang doctrine of “self-emptiness” expounded by Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, and other Indian teachers. Shen-tong asserts that “emptiness, in dispelling the illusive relative truths of the world, reveals an ineffable transcendental reality with positive attributes.” The rang-tang view “claimed that emptiness is merely the elimination of falsely imagined projections upon the relative truths of the world and does not imply anything else.” As Tibetologist Stephen Batchelor points out, “While such distinctions may strike us today as theological hairsplitting, in Tibet they became (and still are) crucial articles of faith.”

In addition to the shen-teng teachings, the Jonangpa had an special interest in the Kalachakra, the doctrine which supposedly first flourished in Shambhala. Numerous Jonang monks besides Taranatha wrote on the Kalachakra, and a unique line of Kalachakra teachings has been passed down to this day by the Karma Kargyu school.

In the thirteen century Kunpang Tukje Tsötru (1243-1313) founded the original Jonang Monastery, which became the seat of the Jonang Sect, about three miles up a small side valley of the Tsangpo River. Reportedly this monastery was modeled on the traditional layout of the kingdom of Shambhala as shown on Shambhala thangkas. In 1327 Dolpopa Sherab Gyelten built nearby an enormous seven-story stupa, the Jonang Kumbum, similar in appearance but older than the much more famous kumbum in the city of Gyantse.

In 1614 Taranatha established the Puntsokling Monastery three miles down the side valley from the Jonang Monastery, near the south bank of the Tsangpo. The main buildings of the monastery were built on a high knob overlooking the river and offering spectacular views up and down the valley. The Puntsokling Monastery eventually became famous for its printing workshop which among many other items published the sixteen-volume collected works of Taranatha himself. According to some accounts Taranatha went to Mongolia not long after founding Puntsokling and established several monasteries there. Almost nothing is known about his years in Mongolia and it is unclear what monasteries he may have founded in those pre-Zanabazar days. In any case, he died in Mongolia in 1634 and his body was returned to Tibet.

According to Italian Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci, Taranatha was buried at Dzingi, five miles northeast of Oka: “A large silver chorten is said to hold the mortal remains of Taranatha, a well-known Tibetan polymath . . . As tradition has it, Taranatha’s relics were thrown into the river and carried by the stream to Katrag, midway between Zangrikangmar and Oka, where they were collected and transported into the Dzingi temple.”

The Puntsokling Monastery and Jonang sect in general fell on hard times in the early 1640s. One of the most prominent opponents of the shen-teng view espoused by the Jonangpa was Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug sect, and the Gelug continued in later years to take exception to the Jonang teachings. But while it is easy to imagine Jonang and Gelug monks engaging in fierce courtyard debates over these teachings it is difficult to believe that philosophical differences alone were behind the forceful takeover of the Puntsokling Monastery in 1642 by the Dalai Lama-led Gelug sect and the subsequent suppression of the Jonang school. It would appear instead that the Jonang, along with the Karma Kargyu sect, had made the political miscalculation of siding with the King of Tsang against the Fifth Dalai Lama in the civil war which broke out in Tibet in the early 1640s

According to the monks there today, the monastery was heavily damaged in 1642 by forces loyal to the Dalai Lama. Many of the printing blocks at the printing establishment were destroyed, including those of Taranatha’s own books. The monastery thereafter became a Gelug establishment with the new name of Ganden Puntsokling, and presumably the monks were converted to the Gelug sect. While the Jonang sect itself was suppressed, it should be pointed out that many of Taranatha’s writing later became fully incorporated into the teaching of the Gelug sect.

Zanabazar made the first of his two trips to Tibet in 1649, when he was fourteen years old. In 1650, after meetings with the Panchen and Dalai lamas, he set out to visit places in Tibet connected with the lives of his Previous Incarnations. The monastery of Ganden Puntsokling was one of the stops on this pilgrimage. By then it was a Gelug establishment, and no doubt the damage from the turmoils of 1642 had been repaired. While at Ganden Puntsokling Zanabazar was given a very valuable book, identified in Mongolian sources as the Ja-Damba, which was printed in gold on leaves of sandalwood. This book he took back with him to Mongolia. He probably saw the enormous (forty feet in circumference) three-dimensional Kalachakra mandala fashioned from gold and copper which was one of the main attractions at Ganden Puntsokling. According to one source it remained here until 1680, when it was finally taken to the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s palace in Lhasa, where it remains to this day as the stunning centerpiece of the Kalachakra Temple. No doubt he walked up the side valley the original Jonang Monastery and visited all seven stories and dozens of temple niches within the Jonang Kumbum. And maybe he climbed the hillside east of the Kumbum and sat in the cave which Taranatha himself had used as a meditation retreat. At Ganden Puntsokling and other monasteries on his itinerary he also collected statues of Tara, Chenresig (the Tibetan name for Avalokiteshvara), and Maitreya. These statues were taken back to Mongolia and may have served as models for his own works.

Ganden Puntsokling is off the heavily-beaten tourist path in Tibet, but monks in residence say that a fair amount of foreign tourists and pilgrims find their way there in the summertime. There were no other visitors in the wintertime when I was there. There are no tourist facilities anywhere in the area, but the monks were kind enough to let us use a guestroom and give us tea and dinner.

The ruins of Taranatha's monastery

Most of the monastery was heavily damaged during the Cultural Revolution. The castle-like building on the high knob overlooking the valley is still in ruins, but two of the temples at the base of the knob have been restored. In one of them, the Shambhala Temple, is a wooden replica, just recently constructed, of the huge three-dimensional Kalachakra mandala which had been removed from here at some point and placed in the Potala in 1680. An hour’s walk up the side-valley leads to the Lingshar Nunnery where about a dozen nuns now live. They are in the charge of huge Jonang Kumbum and act as guides for visitors. The Kumbum was also heavily damaged by the Red Guards but the exterior of the structure and some of the temple niches on its seven floors have now been restored. The fourth-floor is dedicated to one of Taranatha’s preoccupations, the Kalachakra, and the temples on this floor contain statues of some of the twenty-five Kalkin Kings of Shambhala, although most are now unrecognizable. From the top of the Kumbum is a good view of the environs of the old Jonang Monastery, supposedly modeled on Shambhala, but the buildings themselves are now almost totally in ruins. On the hillside can still be seen the cave the nuns say Taranatha used as a meditation retreat. Unfortunately they have never heard of Zanabazar, and thus are unable to say for sure if he himself ever visited here.

See More photos of Jonang

The Golden Rosary Illuminating the Origins of the Tantra of Tara, Volume 12 of Taranatha’s Collected Works, is one of the famous works about the Tara mythologem. According to Taranatha’s account, Tara was first a sentient being named Jnanachandra, the Moon of Wisdom, who lived an unfathomable number of eons before our present day, perhaps in a universe that existed before the Big Bang that produced current universe in which we now live. For countless eons Jnanachandra made offerings to a Buddha named Tathagata Dundhbhishvara and prayed for enlightenment. At long last she was able to achieve what Taranatha calls the “Thought of Enlightenment,” or bodhicitta, the desire to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all other living beings. “At that time some monks said to her, ‘It is as a result of these, your roots of virtuous actions, that you have come into being in this female form. If you pray that your deeds accord with the Teaching, then surely you will change your form to that of a man, as is befitting.’”

Jnanachandra replied,

Here there is no man, there is no woman,
No self, no person, and no consciousness.
Labeling ‘male’ or ‘female’ has no essence
But deceives the evil-minded world . . .

She continued: “There are many who desire Enlightenment in a man‘s body, but none who work for the benefits of sentient beings in the body of a woman. Therefore, until samsara is empty, I shall work for the benefit of sentient beings in a woman’s body.”

For countless eons Jnanachandra practiced her devotions. “Behaving skillfully towards objects of the five sense,” Taranatha tells us, “she practiced concentration, and thereby attained the acceptance that all dharmas are unproduced . . . and realized the samadhi called ‘Saving all Sentient Beings.’ By the power of realization, every day in the morning she then freed a million million sentient beings from worldly thoughts, and would not eat until they were established in that acceptance. Every evening also she so established a similar number. The Tathagata Dundhbhishvara, observing her devotion and compassion toward all sentient being, declared, ‘As long as you manifest the unsurpassed Enlightenment, you will be known only be the name Goddess Tara.’” Ever since Moon of Wisdom-knowledge has been known as Tara.

Then for eon after eon Tara perfected her practices while continuing to aid countless sentient beings. In the eon of Vibudda she received the names Loving Mother, Swift One, and Heroine; in another she learned to protect sentient being from the Eight Fears, and finally in the of eon of Asanka she achieved the title, “Mother of all Buddhas.”

According to Taranatha, Tara made her appearance in our world, known in Buddhist texts as Jambudvipa, a few centuries after the birth of Buddha Sakyamuni. She was thought to be an emanation of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Out of pity for human mired in samsara Avalokitesvara shed a tear which fell to earth and became a crystalline lake. According to legend, Tara was born out of a lotus flower that appeared on the surface of the lake. The Dalai Lamas of course are considered to be male emanations of Avalokitesvara.

In India a cult soon grew up around the idea of Tara the Protectress. Because of her compassion for sentient beings built up through countless eons she was thought to be ever ready to come to the aid of people in distress. She perhaps became most famous for protecting people from the Eight Fears, a talent she had learned, as noted earlier, in a far-distant eon before she appeared in our age. These eight objects of fear were: lions, elephants, fire, snakes, robbers, imprisonment, water, and man-eating demons. While most of these fears seem related to people of India and other southern Asian countries (fears of elephants and lions, for example), it should be pointed out that the Eight Fears also have an esoteric connotation. Each of them in order stand for pride, delusion, anger, envy, wrong views, avarice, attachment, and doubt. These are actually what Tara is supposed to protect us from.

Eventually a whole corpus of prayers, hymns, and praises evolved around Tara, Two of the most famous are called “Praise of Arya-Tara” and “The King of Praises Called the Fulfiller of All Aims, A Praise of the Arya Goddess Tara.” both attributed Matrceta, an Indian monk who allegedly lived in the second century, although considerable doubt has been raised about exactly when he lived and his authorship of the text. The first is nine verses long; a sample verse reads, the fourth, reads:

Your body, unmoved by defilements, is firm like a mountain.
Well-grown, since nourished by Your perfect virtues,
Full-breasted, since loving kindness moves your heart,
Venerable Tara—homage to You!

The second is forty-five verses long. Two verses read:

You have a body that’s green, for all activities.
On Your crown You’re adorned with Amitabha,
With the look of a universal ruler,
Tara, captain of beings, such is your body . . .

Your lovely locks are beautified with a crown,
Diadem, ribbons, crescent and double vajra.
Earrings, adornments of neck and shoulders, bracelets,
Girdle, anklets and lower-leg wrappings adorn you.

Zanabazar’s Green Tara, shown here, is a perfect objectification of the Tara described in these three verses. This Green Tara is now the Eighth Bogd Gegeen's Winter Palace in Ulaan Baatar.

In India by the sixth century images of Tara—statues, reliefs and perhaps paintings—began to appear, first shown together with Avalokitesvara and finally by herself, and eventually she was depicted in famous Buddhist cave-temples of Ellora. Thus began the long tradition of Tara portrayed in art works which lead to Zanabazar’s Taras.

In the seventh century the King of Tibet, Songtsen Gampo, acquired wives from the neighboring countries of Nepal and China. Both of were Buddhas and both became instrumental in the spread of the Dharma in Tibet. The Chinese wife was thought to be an incarnation of White Tara, the Tara of the Seven Eyes, while the Nepali wife was considered to be an incarnation of Green Tara. Both brought numerous Buddhist statues with them when they came to Tibet and it is possible that images of Tara were introduced into Tibet at this time. The Jowo Buddha statute brought by the Chinese wife, by the way, can still be seen in the Jokhang Temple in the old section of Lhasa, although the crush of people who rush the shrine when it is opened to the public can be daunting to those not accustomed to Tibetan crowd scenes.

Jokhang Temple in Lhasa

Buddhism suffered a hiatus in Tibet after the persecutions of the apostate king Langdarma (838-42), a supporter of the Bön religion who destroyed many Buddhist temples and persecuted monks and lay believers. Within the space of the few years the Dharma all but disappeared. Not until the eleventh century, with the appearance of Atisha and other Indian masters did it finally recover.

Atisha (982–1054) had been born Prince Candragarbha, the second son of King Kalyanasri, ruler of a small Indian kingdom in what is now Bangladesh. According to one account of his life, as a young man he had a vision of Tara in which she advised him to renounce his royal title and seek a guru in another country. After years of study in various part of India he sought out teachers in Sumatra, where he lived from 1013 to 1025. Upon his return to India he did stints at the monasteries of Nalanda, Odantapuri, Somapuri, and Vikramasila and soon became recognized as one of the greatest teachers of his age.

While at Vikramasila during the years 1036–1040 Atisha worked with a Tibetan named Nak-ts’o who had come to India to study the Dharma and translate Sanskrit Buddhist texts his own language. Atisha and Nak-ts’o worked together to translate into Tibetan “The Pearl Garland, A Praise of the Goddess Arya Tara”, a forty-three verse praise which had been was written by the Indian monk Candragomin in the seventh century. This later became one of the primary texts of the Tara cult in Tibet Verses four and six:

With magical body of space, unobstructed,
You cross with compassion samara’s great ocean,
And conduct migrators to the land
Of Liberation, great Captain—homage!

Subduing with mantras hostile gods,
Taking Your image upon one’s crown
Becomes a cause to achieve the four rites,
You of power unimpeded—homage!

In 1040 emissaries were sent from Tibet asking Atisha to come there and help re-establish Buddhism. At first Atisha hesitated, but in yet another vision Tara, his tutelary deity, advised him that although he would shorten his life by twenty years by doing so, going to Tibet would greatly aid the spread of the Dharma. He left Vikramashila later in 1040, the following year arrived in Nepal, and was in Tholing in Western Tibet by 1042. It is Atisha we are told, “who was to establish the Buddhist religion in Tibet once and for all . . .” Indeed, his fundamental lamrim text Lamp for the Way of Enlightenment is still in print and read today. The school which grew up around him, the Kadam sect, eventually developed into the so-called New Kadam, or Gelug sect, to which the Dalai Lamas and Zanabazar in his later life belonged. He was also instrumental in spreading the Tara cult in Tibet. Taraist Martin Willson points out, “. . . it would seem that her name was constantly on his lips and that She frequently helped him. There is hardly a significant event in this life that one or other of his biographers fails to connect with the Goddess. Thanks to his devotion, Tara became one of the two most popular deities of Tibet.”

Although not a prolific writer on Tara, Atisha did write at least one praise to Tara and three sadhanas (tantric rites devoted to a particular deity). The eleven verse praise read in part:

To those tired of circling long,
again and again, among the
Six Destinies, you grant the rest,
supremely pleasant, of Great Bliss

Goddess who works the weal of others!
Just to think of You dispels problems!
You, endowed with love and compassion,
liberate from samsara’s bonds . . .

Drolma Lhakhang (Tara Temple), where Atisha spent the last years of his life and where he died, is located about twenty miles from Lhasa on the main road to Shigatse Every visitor who arrives in Tibet via airplane passes by this temple on the way from the airport to Lhasa, but very few seem to stop, and it is not appear to be on the itinerary of guided tours. The first time I was there it was not even necessary to buy a ticket to visit the temple, a rarity in Tibet (two years a ticket was required.) It’s relative obscurity is puzzling, since it contains some of the oldest extant Buddhist statues in Tibet. Unlike almost all over temples in Tibet it was not damaged during the Cultural Revolution and most of its contents survived in tact. According to local monks the Bangladesh government made a direct please to the Communist authorities in Beijing to protect the temple of Atisha, who is considered a saint in his homeland, and as a result a unit of the PLO protected it against the rampages of the Red Guards. (I have never been able to confirm this story independently, but it’s clear the temple and its contents were not significantly damaged.) On the outside of the front wall, to the right of the entrance to the center temple, is a large painting of Tara, Atisha’s tutelary deity, and in the center temple itself is a large Tara surrounded by the other Twenty-One Taras.

White Tara on the front wall of Atisha’s Temple

These have a more than passing resemblance to the Twenty-One Taras made by Zanabazar and now on display in the Winter Palace. A statue of Tara which Atisha himself brought from India used to be here in this temple but it has since disappeared, no one knows how or where. The temple to the right, although not directly unconnected with Tara, contains huge statues of Amitayus, the past Buddhas Kashyapa and Dipamkara, and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas, all dating back to the eleventh century and untouched by Mao’s Little Generals. Here you can get an inkling of what temples in Tibet must have looked like before the iconoclastic upheavals of the late 1960s. Incidentally, sometime during that turbulent decade Atisha’s ashes, which were kept in an urn in the central temple, were returned for safekeeping to Bangladesh, where presumably they remain today.

See Photos of Atisha’s Temple

The New Kadam, or Gelug sect, a continuation of the Kadam tradition initiated by Atisha, was founded by the great reformer Tsongkhapa (1357–1437) This is the sect to which Zanabazar would later belong. One of Tsongkhapa’s two main disciples was Gedün Drup (1391-1475), who was posthumously given the title of First Dalai Lama after the Tibetan lama Sonam Gyatso had been given the title of Dalai Lama by the Mongolian chieftain Altan Khan in 1578 (Sonam Gyatso became the Third Dalai Lama, the second, Gendun Gyatso, was also given the title posthumously.) Gendün Drup received extensive teachings on Tara from a number of celebrated gurus and went on to write a “A Praise of the Venerable Lady Khadiravani Tara Called the Crown Jewel of the Wise,” and various other Tara-related works. Also, Tara supposedly appeared before him while he was meditating. ”It is said he always consulted Her before undertaking anything,” avers Taraist Martin Willson.

Perhaps then Tara had a say when in 1447 Gendün Drup established Tashilhunpo Monastery in the city of Shigatse. This went on to become one of the largest and most influential monasteries in Tibet. In the mid-seventeenth century the head of Tashilhunpo was a lama named Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen (1570-1662). This distinguished lama had begun studying at Tashilhunpo when he was seventeen and became abbot of the monastery at the age of thirty-one. In 1604 he journeyed to Drepung Monastery in Lhasa and served as the tutor and ordinator of the 4th Dalai Lama Yönten Gyatso. After the 4th Dalai Lama passed away in 1616 Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen led the search for his reincarnation and was instrumental in choosing Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso as the 5th Dalai Lama. He gave the young Dalai Lama his novice ordination in 1625 and his full ordination in 1638, and became his principal teacher. Later, after the Fifth Dalai Lama had achieved both spiritual and temporal control of Tibet, he declared that Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen was a manifestation of the Buddha Amitabha. Since an abbot of Tashilhunpo was traditionally known as a Panchen (“great scholar”), the Dalai Lama gave Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso the official title of Panchen Lama and also recognized as Panchen Lamas a line of three previous incarnations leading back to Khedrup Je, one of Tsongkhapa’s two chief disciples. Thus Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso became the 4th Panchen Lama, according to some reckonings, but still considered the first by many.

When Zanabazar made his first trip to Tibet in 1649 at the age of fourteen he met with both the Panchen Lama Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen and Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, the Fifth Dalai Lama. He received numerous initiations and teachings from both, and although the record does not specifically say so we might assume that these included practices on Tara. As mentioned, he also traveled to the monastery of his previous incarnation Taranatha, author of The Golden Rosary Illuminating the Origins of the Tantra of Tara. Atisha’s Tara Temple is on the road from Lhasa to Shigatse and it’s tempting to think of Zanabazar stopping there to admire the Tara statute which Atisha had brought from India and the other Twenty-One Taras on display, but we have no proof that he did so. In any case, it might be averred that by the end of his first visit to Tibet he had acquired a thorough grounding in the whole Tara mythologem.

Just as important for Zanabazar’s immediate future, the Dalai Lama finally managed to convert him to his own Gelug sect and for the first time officially recognize him as an incarnation of Jebtsun Damba. For a fifteen year old to be told that he was the latest appearance in a spiritual lineage dating back to the time of Buddha must have been a heady experience. Indeed, Zanabazar was so deeply impressed by his experiences in Tibet that he wanted to stay in the country indefinitely. During one of his visits to Tashilhunpo he had told the Panchen Lama, “I wish to settle in Tibet and undergo instruction.” According to the Rosary of White Lotuses, the Panchen Lama finally had to tell him, “It will be much more beneficial to the Teachings and sentient beings if you go back to the Sog country [Mongolia] and set up new monasteries there, rather than stay and study here.” At some point he also intimated to the Dalai that he would like to stay in Tibet, but the Great Fifth gave him the same answer as the Panchen Lama: he could do the most good for sentient beings in Mongolia.

So Zanabazar tried to make the most of his limited time in Tibet. The construction of the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s great palace which to this day looms over Lhasa, was in progress while he was in Tibet, and there were many artists from Nepal and other countries in the Tibetan capital to assist in the construction of new building and to create new art work for its furnishing.

The Potala in Lhasa

Although the Mongolian accounts say nothing of this, it is possible that Zanabazar, who had shown marked artistic inclinations from early childhood, used this opportunity to acquaint himself with the techniques employed by these various artisans. In any case, art historians would later detect Nepalese influence in many of his most famous works. It’s also possible that at this time he became acquainted with the theoretical canons of art contained in the Tengyur, the vast collection of commentaries on the Buddha’s teachings.

While in Lhasa, Zanabazar stayed at Drepung Monastery, which as we have seen had been founded in 1416 by one of his previous incarnations, Jamyang Chöje Tashi. Pelden. The Gomang College at Drepung was traditionally where Mongolians monks who came Tibet to study stayed and it eventually became famous for its Mongolian scholars. Drepung continues to be an important pilgrimage site for Tibetans, as well as a standard stop on all tourist excursions in Lhasa. I have visited Drepung several times. Once I was there in the winter when the courtyards and hallways were jammed with Tibetan pilgrims from the countryside. On this occasion I had the benefit of a guide and translator, a Tibetan woman in her thirties who spoke excellent English. I explained to her that I would like to ask someone at Drepung whether they knew anything about Zanabazar, the famous Mongolian lama who had visited here in the mid-seventeenth century. I had intended that she ask someone in a position of authority about this, but instead she immediately turned to an old toothless monk who happened to be shuffling by and put the question to him. He was hard of hearing and my translator ended up shouting at him while he cupped his hands to his ears in order to hear. Immediately a crowd of pilgrims gathered around us to see what all the commotion was about. He finally understand her question and after ruminating at length, all the while twirling the half-dozen or so white hairs which constituted his beard, said “Oh,“ you must mean the famous Mongolian lama whose 9th reincarnation now lives in India.” Amazing, he was indeed referring to Zanabazar, whose current reincarnation is now headquartered at a monastery in Simla, India. I was startled to hear that he knew about Zanabazar, but even more so that he aware of Zanabazar’s present reincarnation. “Ask him how he knows about the reincarnation in India,” I told my translator. After another shouting match she replied, “He heard about this lama on BBC.”

“Come,” said the monk, “I’ll show you where Zanabazar lived.” He led us up some cobbled pathways to the back of the monastery and pointed to a mass of ruined walls and rubble covering the hillside. “Zanabazar lived in one of those buildings, but it were destroyed back during the troubles,” he said, referring to the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately the monk could tell us nothing more about Zanabazar’s stay in Lhasa during his first trip to Tibet, but it seems significant that even the humblest of the monastery’s current inhabitants remember his presence at Drepung.

Ruins of the building Zanabazar lived in at Drepung

More Photos of Lhasa

Interesting as his stay in Tibet must have been it was soon time to return to Mongolia. On the Dalai Lama’s advice he took with him numerous Tibetan monks and fifty Tangut monks from the Kingdom of Xi Xia (roughly the modern-day province of Ningxia, China).

Statue of Xi Xia Monk in the Ningxia Provincial Museum

All of them were members of the Gelug sect and were to assist Zanabazar in converting Mongolia to the Yellow Hat Faith, as the Gelug were also known.

Xi Xia Tantric Art in the Ningxia Provincial Museum

In addition to the monks were an assortment of artists, painters, and other craftsmen to help Zanabazar build and adorn new monasteries in Mongolia, including Sardgiin Khiid. In total over 600 people accompanied Zanabazar back in Mongolia, in addition to his own entourage. From the artists among them he may have acquired the skills needed to create his Taras and other works. They arrived sometime in 1651, exact date unknown. The seeds of Tara had no doubt been sown in his mind, and they would later flower as the Taras here in the Eighth Bogd Khan’s Winter Palace.

For more on Zanaabazar’s career in Mongolia see Guide to Locales in Mongolia Connected with Life of Zanabazar, First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia.

India | Darjeeling | Madame Blavatsky | Mahatmic Intrigue

Along with being famous for Tea and The Final Resting Place of Csoma de Koros, Darjeeling is invariably connected with the so-called Mahatmas, or Ascended Masters, the spiritual teachers first unleashed on the unsuspecting world in the latter half of the nineteenth century by the Russian traveler, writer, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, world-class adventuress, and Fairy Godmother of the New Age movement Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, often referred to by her followers as H.P.B.

Madame Helena Petronova Blavatsky

According to H.P.B. the Mahatmas were highly evolved spiritual entities who had taken human form and were acting as her gurus. The Theosophical Society was based in part on the teachings of these Mahatmas as relayed to the general public by Madame Blavatsky and in Hundreds of Letters to various people that they allegedy wrote, many of which were eventually collected and published in book form. During her lifetime Madame Blavatsky managed to convince her huge and influential following of the existence of the Mahatmas, although sceptics maintained that they never existed outside of her own legendarily fecund imagination and that the letters which supposedly emanated from them were written by H.P.B. herself.

If, however, the Mahatmas were inventions of Madame Blavatsky’s, they should have vanished from the scene when she herself transmigrated in 1891. Instead, to the intense frustration of Madame Blavatsky’s innumerable detractors, they refused to disappear and instead took on a life of their own, continuing to write letters and appear either in material or astral form to those who had taken up the Theosophical torch. Many later adherents of Theosophy, including Nicholas Roerich and his wife Helena Roerich (given their Shambhalic Proclivities it was inevitable that both of them would eventually show up in Ulaan Baatar) continued to believe explicitly in the Mahatmas. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books, articles, and pamphlets have been written about them, both pro and con, and indeed the dispute about their existence rages on to this day, as any search on the internet will very quickly reveal.

In Madame Blavatsky’s day Darjeeling was a hotbed of Mahatmic intrigue. Madame Blavatsky herself had been taken there by the Mahatmas, in particular Morya, or Master M. as he was sometimes called.

Morya

Although numerous Mahatmas would surface over the years the two most prevalent, and certainly the two busiest letter writers were Master Morya and Koot Hoomi.

Koot Hoomi

One of the more celebrated meetings with a Mahatma took place near Darjeeling, between one of Madame’s Indian acolytes, a young man named S. Ramaswamier, and Master Morya.

Henry Steele Olcott - a respectable New York lawyer (or at least as respectable as a lawyer can be) who after Madame Blavatsky cast her spell on him moved to India, grew a Santa Claus beard, and started going bare-footed.

Madame Blavatsky and her co-conspirator, the American lawyer Henry Steele Olcott, had founded the Theosophical Society in New York City in September of 1875. In December of 1878 Madame Blavatsky—by that time a naturalized American citizen (the first Russian woman to achieve that honor)—and Olcott decamped to Bombay, India, where they hoped to find more fecund grounds for the flowering of the Theosophical Society. They soon attracted a sizable contingent of both Indian and British followers. Among the Indians was Ramaswamier, a young clerk from the city of Tinnevelly. During a visit to the Theosophical Headquarters in Bombay in September of 1881 Ramaswamier claimed to have seen a materialization of Master Morya, and shortly thereafter he received a letter from the Master welcoming him as an chela, or acolyte, in the Himalayan Brotherhood. “Upasika [“female disciple,” the Masters’ name for Madame Blavatsky] has all the instructions. Let my chela [Ramaswamier] follow the instruction he will receive from her,” Master M. told him in a letter. Like many chelas and other Theosophy camp followers Ramaswamier was extremely eager to see and converse with the Masters, and he apparently began badgering Madame Blavatsky, who was in communication with them, to arrange a meeting. At some point he must have threatened to go to Tibet in search of the Masters himself if Madame Blavatsky would not faciliate an encounter. In response, Ramaswamier received another Mahatma letter sometime in September of 1882: “YOU cannot go to Tibet . . .” Master M. admonished him, “You must first show that you deserve it by labouring in that direction for two or three years. You must be prepared to do anything told to you, anything you are ordered through her [Madame Blavatsky]. If you have faith in us—others have not—are you prepared to do all and everything to prove our existence?” If Madame Blavatsky was, as her legions of detractors maintained, the actual author of the various letters from the Mahatmas, then instructions like these were just fairly simply ploys to ensure the obedience of her followers. As it turned out, Ramaswamier was “prepared to do all and everything to prove” the existence of the Masters.”

About this time Ramaswamier had a physical and mental breakdown. He applied for and was granted a medical leave of absence from his job.“One day in September last,” he later wrote, “while I was reading in my room, I was ordered by the audible voice of my blessed Guru, M——Maharsi, to leave all and proceed immediately to Bombay, whence I had to go in search of Madame Blavatsky wherever I could find her and follow her wherever she went. Without losing a moment, I closed up all my affairs and left for the station.”

In Bombay he discovered that Madame had become very ill and had suddenly decamped from the city several days earlier. As Ramaswamier himself later related:

Really not knowing whither I had best go, I took a through ticket to Calcutta; but, on reaching Allahabad, I heard the same well-known voice [Master M.?] directing me to go to Berhampore. At Azimgunge, in the train, I met, most providentially I may say, with some Babus (I did not then know they were also Theosophists since I had never seen any of them), who were also in search of Madame Blavatsky. Some had traced her to Dinapore, but lost her track and went back to Berhampore. They knew, they said, she was going to Tibet and wanted to throw themselves at the feet of the Mahatmas to permit them to accompany her. At last, as I was told, they received from her a note, informing them to come if they so desired it, but that she herself was prohibited from going to Tibet just now. She was to remain, she said, in the vicinity of Darjeeling and would see the BROTHERS on the Sikkim Territory, where they would not be allowed to follow her. . .

Although it would appear he had found the trail of the elusive Madame Blavastky, for whom he was so diligently searching, Ramaswamier decided for some reason to continued on to Calcutta. Here he met with a “Brother Nobin,” president of the local Theosophical Society. Nobin, relates Ramaswamier, “would not tell me where Madame Blavatsky was, or perhaps did not then know himself. Yet he and other had risked all in hopes of seeing the Mahatmas.” Apparently Nobin soon got intimations of her whereabouts, since on 23 September he took Ramaswamier to the city of Chandernagore, just north of Calcutta, where they were promptly united with the frustratingly evasive Madame Blavatsky. She had little to say to the hapless Ramaswamier, but a man with her who he assumed was a Tibetan informed him, Ramaswamier, that he was too late, “that Madame Blavatsky had already seen the Mahatmas and that he had brought her back.” Nevertheless Ramaswamier, Nobin, and assorted other camp followers were now determined to follow Madame Blavatsky where ever she might go. There followed a bizarre series of events—trains mysteriously leaving ahead of schedule, connections inexplicable missed, and so on—which again separated the Theosophical seekers from their leader. Ramaswamier explains:

It requires no great stretch of imagination to know that Madame Blavatsky had been or was, perhaps, being again taken to the BROTHERS, who, for some good reasons best known to them, did not want us to be following and watching her. Two of the Mahatmas, I had learned for a certainty, were in the neighbourhood of British territory; and one of them was seen and recognised—by a person I need not name here—as a high Chutuktu [?] of Tibet.

Finally, however, Madame Blavatsky with her band of acolytes in tow reached Darjeeling. Here Madame shut herself up in house of a Bengalese Theosophist and refused to talk to any of the party who had followed her, including Ramaswamier. No matter, however; on or about September 30 Ramaswamier got a letter from Master M. with explicit instructions written in the third person:

RAMASWAMIER will don the robes of a regular Vedantin ascetic—even to the top-knot if necessary, and send his useless clothes to Bombay. He must travel from town to town along the line to Allahabad, and preach Theosophy and Vedantism. Every one must know he is my chela, and that he has seen me in Sikkim. He must let Upasika know of his movements constantly, and finally join her at Allahabad—as also receive my orders through her. His whole aspiration and concern must be directed towards one aim—convince the world of our existence.

The point to remember here is that Master M is telling the impressionable Ramaswamier about their meeting before it even occurred, thus making it appear that such an encounter was pre-ordained. Yet Madame Blavatsky herself refused to offer any assistance. “To all our importunities,” Ramaswamier wrote, “we could get only this answer from her: that we had no business to stick to and follow her, that she did not want us, and that she had no right to disturb the Mahatmas, with all sorts of questions that concerned only the questioners, for they knew their own business best.”

If, as her armies of detractors maintained, Madame Blavatsky was the inventor of the Mahatmas and their letters were in fact her productions then this whole series of events was a masterful pyschological ploy. She had managed to assemble a whole group of Theosophists in Darjeeling, all the while maintaining she did not want them here, and then herself refused their heart’s desire—meeting the Mahatmas—while in a letter to Ramaswamier intimating that such an encounter was inevitable. It’s no wonder that Ramaswamier was confused. He was, after all, not only on medical leave for physical and mental exhaustion but had also just traveled helter-skelter coast-to-coast across India upon the instruction of “voices” and mysteriously delivered letters. “In despair, I determined, come what might, to cross the frontier which is about a dozen miles from here, and find the Mahatmas, or-DIE,” he wrote. “I never stopped to think that what I was going to undertake would be regarded as the rash act of a lunatic.”

“October 5, I set out in search of the Mahatmas,” wrote Ramaswamier. “I had an umbrella, and a pilgrim’s staff for sole weapons, with a few rupees in my purse. I wore the yellow garb and cap. Whenever I was tired on the road, my costume easily procured for me for a small sum a pony to ride.” He was bound for Sikkim, the border of which was at that time about a dozen miles north of Darjeeling, even though he had no permit to enter the country and would face arrest if caught. That afternoon he tried to cross the Ranjit River via the swaying suspension bridge, but soon lost his nerve and took the ferry instead. Soon the path narrowed and he was in thick jungle. “I met on the road, in the afternoon, a leopard and a wild cat;” he wrote, “and I am astonished now to think how I should have felt no fear then nor tried to run away. Throughout, some secret influence supported me. Fear or anxiety never once entered my mind. Perhaps in my heart there was room for no other feeling but an intense anxiety to find my Guru.” At nighfall he happened upon by sheer luck an uninhabited two-room cabin. The door was locked but a rear window proved to be unbolted. “By a strange coincidence of circumstances,” he noted, “the hillman had forgotten to fasten it on the inside when he locked the door! Or course, after what has subsequently transpired I now, through the eye of faith, see the protecting hand of my Guru everywhere around me.”

His sleep was interrupting by the arrival of two or three people who took up residence in the adjoining room, unaware of his presence. He was terrified that they were robbers who might murder him for his admittedly few ruples, or, alternately, that he would be mistaken for the robber and they would kill him to protect themselves. After a harrowing night he managed to sneak back out the window at the first light of dawn and continue on his way. Here Ramaswamier must be quoted at length, since his account is one of the few detailed descriptions of an alleged meeting with a Mahatma in the flesh, in this case Master Morya:

It was, I think, between eight and nine a.m. and I was following the road to the town of Sikkhim whence, I was assured by the people I met on the road, I could cross over to Tibet easily in my pilgrim’s garb, when I suddenly saw a solitary horseman galloping towards me from the opposite direction. From his tall stature and the expert way he managed the animal, I thought he was some military officer of the Sikkhim Rajah. Now, I thought, am I caught! He will ask me for my pass and what business I have on the independent territory of Sikkhim, and, perhaps, have me arrested and—sent back, if not worse. But—as he approached me, he reined the steed. I looked at and recognized him instantly . . . I was in the awful presence of him, of the same Mahatma, my own revered Guru whom I had seen before in his astral body, on the balcony of the Theosophical Headquarters! It was he, the “Himalayan BROTHER” of the ever memorable night of December last, who had so kindly dropped a letter in answer to one I had given in a sealed envelope to Madame Blavatsky—whom I had never for one moment during the interval lost sight of—but an hour or so before! The very same instant saw me prostrated on the ground at his feet. I arose at his command and, leisurely looking into his face, I forgot myself entirely in the contemplation of the image I knew so well, having seen his portrait (the one in Colonel Olcott’s possession) a number of times. I knew not what to say: joy and reverence tied my tongue. The majesty of his countenance, which seemed to me to be the impersonation of power and thought, held me rapt in awe. I was at last face to face with “the Mahatma of the Himavat” and he was no myth, no “creation of the imagination of a medium,” as some sceptics suggested. It was no night dream; it is between nine and ten o’clock of the forenoon. There is the sun shining and silently witnessing the scene from above. I see HIM before me in flesh and blood; and he speaks to me in accents of kindness and gentleness. What more do I want? My excess of happiness made me dumb. Nor was it until a few moments later that I was drawn to utter a few words, encouraged by his gentle tone and speech. His complexion is not as fair as that of Mahatma Koot Hoomi; but never have I seen a countenance so handsome, a stature so tall and so majestic. As in his portrait, he wears a short black beard, and long black hair hanging down to his breast; only his dress was different. Instead of a white, loose robe he wore a yellow mantle lined with fur, and, on his head, instead of a pagri, a yellow Tibetan felt cap, as I have seen some Bhootanese wear in this country. When the first moments of rapture and surprise were over and I calmly comprehended the situation, I had a long talk with him. He told me to go no further, for I would come to grief. He said I should wait patiently if I wanted to become an accepted Chela; that many were those who offered themselves as candidates, but that only a very few were found worthy; none were rejected—but all of them tried, and most found to fail signally, especially—and—. Some, instead of being accepted and pledged this year, were now thrown off for a year . . . The Mahatma, I found, speaks very little English—or at least it so seemed to me—and spoke to me in my mother-tongue—Tamil. He told me that if the Chohan permitted Madame B. to go to Pari-jong next year, then I could come with her . . . The Bengalee Theosophists who followed the “Upasika” (Madame Blavatsky) would see that she was right in trying to dissuade them from following her now. I asked the blessed Mahatma whether I could tell what I saw and heard to others. He replied in the affirmative and that moreover I would do well to write to you and describe all . . .

Ramaswamier immediately turned around and headed back to Darjeeling, arriving late that evening completely exhausted by his two day ordeal. “I could neither eat, nor sit, nor stand. Every part of my body was aching,” he declared. He immediately went to see Madame Blavatsky, who was spending the evening with other members of the Theosophical Society. “At their prayer and Madame Blavatsky’s command, I recounted all that had happened to me, reserving of course my private conversation with the Mahatma . . . They were all, to say the least, astounded!”

We have no further description of Madame Blavatsky’s reaction, but she must have been very pleased by the performance of her acolyte. He had met Master Morya in Sikkim just as he had been instructed to do in the letter he had received earlier. His account was duly published in December issue of Madame Blavatsky’s journal The Theosophist under the title “How a ‘Chela’ Found His ‘Guru,”’ and became one of the main “proofs” of the existence of the Mahatmas, although of course there were no witnesses but Ramaswamier himself. Ramaswamier stuck to his story for the rest of his life. “And now that I have seen the Mahatma in the flesh,” he declared, “and heard his living voice, let no one dare say to me that the BROTHERS do not exist. Come now whatever will, death has no fear for me, nor the vengeance of enemies; for what I know, I KNOW!

No novelist would dare create a character like Madame Blavatsky. She was definitely sui generis. Marion Meade has waded into the morass of myth and legends swirling around H.P.B. and emerged with a fairly cogent and wonderfully entertaining biography firmly in hand. See her account of Madame Blavatsky's well-nigh unbelievable life: Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth.

Amazon.com Book Description:

“Madame Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, was the granddaughter of a White Russian princess. She became the first internationally famous professional psychic and she was also a brilliant occult con artist who drew such figures as G. B. Shaw and William Butler Yeats into her bizarre web. A fervent flower child, she journeyed to the East in search of enlightenment almost 100 years before the hippie hegira of the 1960s.”

For less impartial accounts compiled by a True Believer see:

Read H.P.B.’s magnum opus The Secret Doctrine: