I met up with my tour guide Gyantzing in the lobby and we took the jeep to Tashilhumpo, the Panchen Lama’s monastery.  Tashilhumpo on the whole is a cluster of many buildings, including three with gold roofs.  The one in the center is the one that wasn’t destroyed during (or more likely before) the Cultural Revolution, and it houses the tomb of the Fourth Panchen Lama.  The others are brighter gold; the Fifth through Ninth are housed in the one on the right, and we went in and saw the Tenth Panchen Lama’s tomb, another huge gold stupa.

Like any traditional Tibetan monastery or temple, Tashilhumpo contains pillars with banners hanging from them, but one thing I’ve never noticed in any other Tibetan monastery is that safety-pinned to these banners are countless plastic bangles and necklaces and barrettes, and white clothes wrapped around the banners, and amid all the trinkets, pens and barrettes are tucked into these scarves or strips of cloth.  These are all offerings to Manjushri, bodhisattva of wisdom, and kids especially offer pens in hopes of doing better in school.

As we walked across the courtyard, after crossing through the entrance gate, a big yellow dog carrying a stick ran, grinning and wagging its tail, and I laughed.  The dog took the stick to a monk.  “The dog is happy to have a stick,” Gyantzing said.  After seeing all those scruffy dogs at the Gyantse monastery, it was good to see a dog that was energetic, happy, and healthy. 

We slipped into a couple of temples when they were about to close, and it was interesting to see how novice monks, or mostly monks who appear to be teenagers, sweep the floors.  The wide rectangular mop is made of sheepskin and has strings on each end; the monk places the string in front of his waist and drags it.

In some of the temples, a group of three or four monks sat in a corner and chanted, with instruments.  I enjoyed listening to the soothing music while gazing at gold statues, offerings, and Buddha murals.  Once, all four monks had castanets, and I was fascinated by the high-pitched chink, chink, chink.

In 1447 the first Dalai Lama had this monastery built.  The Fourth Panchen Lama, who is also the most famous, was the first abbot of Tashilhumpo.  His original tomb is still standing; the tombs for other Panchen Lamas are replacements.  If you’re facing the monastery, the replacement tombs are for the Fifth through Ninth Panchen Lamas and are on the right.  They look shiny and new, with bright gold roofs, and the one original tomb truly looks older than the others.  These tombs, with their sharply steeped gold roofs, are reminiscent of the Dalai Lama tombs on top of the Potala.

Before the Chinese invasion, Tashilhumpo had three thousand monks, but now it’s down to nine hundred.

The thirteen rings at the top of stupas (or chortens, in Tibetan) represent the thirteen steps to enlightenment.  The chorten, or house of relics, was filled with scriptures, statues, and grains.  The grains represent a wish to have a good harvest.  The different layers of the stupa represent the elements (although my notes are brief and don’t say this, I’m thinking by “elements” I meant the five traditional elements of earth, air, fire, water, and spirit).

Like all the other temples and monasteries we’ve visited in Tibet, the Guardian kings stand guard at the entrance.  The West Guardian King holds a stupa and a sword and is accompanied by a creature that looks like a rat but is a mythological creature…much like a rat.  The East Guardian King holds a guitar or lute.

The Indian Buddhist teacher Atisha came and taught in Shigatse and said the statues there are the biggest copper statues in the world.  The Maitreya statue is 26 meters high.  Look up up up.  His finger is two meters long; that means approximately eight feet.  The big Maitreya contains:  winter wheat, rice, barley, brick tea (Tibetan tea comes pressed together in brick form), statues of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and a thangka from a seventh century Chinese princess.

Tashilhumpo contains four chapels.  On the first floor, they were all built by the Ninth Panchen Lama. More accurately, four hundred laborers built it, and it took them four years to build.  The face and the crown alone took one year apiece to build.  The builders used cedar trees from Northeast of Tibet.  This statue’s one of the most important Tibetan statues.  The murals were repainted in 1984.  The colors are symbolic:  red means peace, white means power, and yellow means success.

In Tibetan artwork there are three Manjushris:  one is wrathful and wielding a sword (cutting through wisdom), and another represents peace.  The representation with which I’m most familiar is typically seated on a throne Western-style rather than with crossed legs, and he has his hands in the teaching mudra.

Three statues:  Avalokiteshvara (compassion), Manjushri (wisdom), and fierce Vajrapani (power).  These three go together in all the Tibetan temples, because compassion and wisdom aren’t enough; you have to have power in order to take action rather than sit around feeling compassion and feeling hopeless.  That makes me think of engaged Buddhism, the very first thing to attract me to Buddhism when the bombs started falling on Iraq, thanks to the Bush Administration.  Governments perform atrocities while regular people complacently or hopelessly sit by and watch.  But I digress.

The Red hat sect is older; Tsongkapa founded the Yellow, or Gelugpa, as a reformist sect.  Mongols invaded and the king said, “Don’t kill Yellow Hats, just Red,” so members of the Red Hat sect disguised themselves as Yellow Hats for survival.  That’s how the Yellow Hat sect became more popular.  This tidbit does not improve my opinion of the king.  Tsongkapa’s two main disciples were from the Red Hat sect.  In the third temple, we looked at an impressive Tsongkapa statue flanked by two disciples, while Gyantzing explained all this.

The Tenth Panchen Lama is the one who died in 1989 (I’m of the opinion he was poisoned), and he is still honored in Tibet.  It’s legal to honor him and have photos of him, unlike the Dalai Lama, because the tenth Panchen Lama to some extent went along with the Chinese government.  But he didn’t do this unquestioningly enough to prevent his eighteen-year imprisonment.  I once read an excellent book called The Search for the Panchen Lama by Isabel Hilton, and it’s about the Tenth and Eleventh Panchen Lamas.

The monastery has some Chinese art, I guess thanks to schmoozing.  Located in the temple of the Tenth Panchen Lama’s tomb are a statue of a Chinese emperor and other statues, Chinese antique statues and power of the Manchurian (Chinese) emperor.  I wasn’t terribly impressed with the beauty of the life-size statue of the Tenth Panchen Lama, and I’m sure it’s not just because he was obese.  I seem to recall reading that his embalmed corpse is actually inside that shiny gold statue.  That reminds me of a Vincent Price film about a wax museum in which the wax figures have skeletons inside them.

We entered the original Fourth Panchen Lama tomb.  It is a dark gold stupa, and of course unlike the other tombs looks really old.  Some jewels have been replaced.  The Fourth Panchen Lama, incidentally, tutored the famous and influential fifth Dalai Lama.

Genzen is the banner of victory; the gold tubes on roofs of monasteries and temples are banners of victory.  I didn’t know that until now, although I’ve seen these gold banners many times, including from close up, such as on top of the nunnery in Dharamsala and on top of the Jokhang Temple.  I simply thought they looked a lot like prayer wheels.  The more you understand Tibetan art, the more you appreciate it, even if you’re like a baby—like me—and are attracted to the bright colors.