Word: lamas
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Over Lhasa, the golden roof of the Potala Palace sparkled in the thin air. Once the living heart of Tibetan Buddhism, spiritual and temporal seat of the Dalai Lama, Potala is now a cultural relic. It remains an architectural wonder. Designed as fortress, labyrinth and spiritual sanctuary, Potala rises 13 stories high and stretches 460 yards along the dominating hillside. Across the front of the palace, in giant white letters on a black background, was a solemn epitaph: ETERNAL GLORY TO CHAIRMAN MAO TSE-TUNG, GREAT LEADER AND GREAT TEACHER...
...current Dalai Lama, 14th in the line of succession, fled the palace for India in 1959. Eight years after Chinese troops seized control of Tibet, he had attempted an uprising against the Communists that ended in bloody failure. Thousands of Tibetans were slaughtered as the Chinese consolidated their control. Even the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution reached into this mountain fastness. Now, our Tibetan guide told us, "Tibet is an inalienable part of China...
...week for the ceremony approached, the town became an open-air monastery. Lamas in robes of red and ocher rubbed shoulders with laymen, zealously spinning the prayer wheels that would magnify a hundredfold the effect of incantations written upon them. The Dalai Lama, followed by flocks of devotees, visited monasteries rancid with the odor of butter-oil lamps. Then, leaving the bustling tent township erected for the occasion, he retired with his chosen monks to a small pagoda on the banks of the Indus River to devote six days to prayer and penance...
Finally, last week began the Dhukor Wangchen (the sermon of the Wheel of Time), one of Buddhism's most elaborate rituals. For each of three days, the air exploded with the bellowing of conch shells and rhythmic prayer chants. Then, in the hush that followed, the Dalai Lama delivered an eight-hour discourse on tantrism, the most magical form of Mahayana Buddhism. Renunciation, enlightened motive and a correct understanding of sunyata (nothingness) are the three prerequisites for the tantric practice, he explained. Disciples were given two reeds to sleep on, one under the pillow, the other under the mattress...
Step Toward Bliss. Such persistence is not hard to fathom. The Dalai Lama is, after all, believed to be the very reincarnation of the Buddha in Buddhism's Tibetan variant. To see him during one of his rare public appearances is a step toward bliss. To hear the Wheel of Time sermon, however, is a guaranteed shortcut to nirvana. Such a blessing is rarely available. A Dalai Lama delivers the sermon only a few times during his lifetime, six being the customary maximum. At Leh, the current Dalai Lama was delivering his sixth sermon...