Word: lamas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...American Yoga-believers from Arizona, husky, 20-year-old ex-Lawyer Theos Bernard is the first white man to become a Tibetan Lama. In 1936 he took a Master's degree in philosophy at Columbia University (specializing in Buddhism), spent the next 16 months in India and Tibet. He was allowed to enter...
...wangling which got him an official invitation to the "forbidden city" of Lhasa, his novitiate in the big monasteries of Drepung, Sera and Ganden, with monk populations from 5,000 to 10,000. The climax is, of course, the fussy, interminable ceremony at which he became a full-fledged Lama, a Western reincarnation of a long-dead Tibetan saint. For readers who picture Tibet from James Hilton's Lost Horizon, Lama Bernard's account should be an eye-opener...
...Kangtse, just outside the border of Tibet, last week waited the Panchen Lama, Tibet's "Living Buddha," now very much dead. He died 13 months ago while attempting to regain his godly throne. Since for religious reasons he could not be embalmed, and for political reasons cannot be taken into Tibet, he is still sitting, wrapped in shrouds, surrounded by hundreds of flickering yak-butter lamps, guarded by 2,000 armed retainers, serenaded by a brass band of 40 instruments...
Lamaist Tibet became a godless land nearly nine months ago when death came to the second, and more spiritual, of its "living gods," His Serenity the Panchen (or Tashi) Lama, "Buddha of Boundless Light" (TIME, Dec. 13). Long dead was Tibet's latest temporal god, the Dalai Lama. Last week, according to reports from India, Tibet still lacked living gods, was becoming increasingly embarrassed at having in its midst one god who was extremely dead. From Jyekundo, where the Panchen Lama died, a retinue of 1,000 lamas, Chinese soldiers and relations of the Buddha set out last winter...
Traveling ten miles a day in stately procession, they encamped at night in lamaseries or caravansaries, surrounded the Panchen Lama with hundreds of yak-butter lamps. The caravan finally arrived in Kanze, where the Panchen Lama remained last week, sitting odorously in his cerements. The Chinese troops wished to accompany the body to Lhasa; the Tibetans wanted no foreign soldiers; neither side gave in. Of authentic infant candidates to reincarnate and succeed either the Dalai or Panchen Lamas, no word had reached the outside world last week...