Walking in a Buddhas Footsteps

'So can you explain something Indra? About Buddhism?'

'I can try?'

'Well, Buddha was born in Nepal, right?'

'Yes thats right, in Lumbhini, near the border with India, 600BC'.

'But Nepal, and Tibet too I suppose, didn't become Buddhist until a lot later, when Padmasambhava came in 8th or 9th century AD. How come?'

We had left Tengboche and were walking through a rhododendrum forest, on the way to Dingboche. It was out of season now but in Summer the colours must have been glorious.

We had visited the Gompa, or shrine room in the monastery the day before. I was entranced by one of the pictures, one of the many Buddhas, with a moustache, sitting on a lotus above a valley with lots of different creatures in.

'This Padmasambhava. He come to Nepal and Tibet to make Buddhism,' A Monk had come up beside me and was explaining the picture. 'He called this area 'Khumbu', hidden valley, Buddhist Kingdom. He named Guru Rimpoche'.

The lost kingdom, in a hidden valley at the end of the world! I had had that very thought when I spied Everest a couple of days before from the hills above Namche. It was possible that Padmasambhava, or Guru Rimpoche as he was also called, had walked the very same path as us and founded his kingdom here.

'So why did Padmasambhava come here Indra?' We had passed on from the rhododendrum forest and were now walking on a path above the river. It was cold in the shade, but the sky was blue, and after awhile the sun made the walk quite hot.

'Well Nepal and TIbet were very wild places. Lots of different Kingdoms always at war with each other. They practised shamanism and witchcraft and were very backward.

'The Buddha, Shakyamuni, Siddharta Gautama, had left and gone to India. They were much more enlightened there, Hinduism had been flourishing there for many centuries already, and they were open to his teachings.

'So Buddhism spread in India, and then also Sri Lanka and then to Indonesia. But it never really went to Nepal or Tibet because of the high mountains and the warring kingdoms.

'Eventually the Kings of Tibet and Nepal looked at India, a bit like we do at the West now, and saw that they were much more developed. They wanted the best for their countries too, for them to be educated, so they would ask Indian Teachers to come and spread Buddhism. Maybe then the dark ignorance of the magic and shamanism would then die out.

'Padmasambhava was one of these teachers He came and founded the Nyingma sect of Buddhism. Others came later, Atisha who founded the Geugpa school which is the sect of the Dalai Llama. Also Kamalashila and Shantarakshita came from India too.

'But Guru Rimpoche is worshipped most in Nepal. There are more Nyinma monasteries than any others'.

Just then we rounded a corner, and there, painted on the side of the mountain was Guru Rimpoche with a little shrine below.

'And he came up here and founded his Kingdom?' I asked excitedly.

Indra looked at me. 'Maybe,' he said. 'No one really knows. Its not a normal kind of Kingdom'.

And indeed it wasn't. We had passed 4000m and the trees and vegetation was thinning out. From a distance, it looked like a Shangri-La, but up close, it was dramatic and beautiful, but arid and lifeless too.

When I was in my early twenties, I travelled for a few months in Indonesia. In the south of the Java, near the second city of Yokjakarta, I visited a Buddhist temple that had been lost in the jungle for a thousand years. It was built on three levels, and devotees would circumambulate, praying and drawing instruction from the bas relief carvings etched into the side of the walls.

The first level were stories about the life of the Buddha. How he found his life of ease and luxury meaningless, how he became a wandering holy man, looking for enlightenment, how he meditated under the Bodhi tree, and so on and so on.

The next level, were esoteric carvings of Dharma, or Buddhist teachings. This would take on the forms of deities, demons and gods, fabulously carved but each picture had so much meaning that I could not understand and was a guide towards enlightenment.

The final level, on the roof of the temple, was the most surprising and beautiful. Apart from a small Buddha in a carved stone cage, there was nothing there. No garish carvings, no impenetrable philosophy. Emptiness. The ultimate cessation of everything. Stunning views over the jungles of Indonesia.

Dingboche, our destination appeared round a corner. The river valley continued up, colours slowly dieing away into awesome majesty, the town perched inconspicuously on a small plateaux. It was a perfectly composed picture. There was a complete peace and serenity in the air.

And this is what the Kingdom of Padmasambhava felt like. I was expecting a kind of Rivendell, a Shangri-La, an Eldorado, a lush and beautiful magical kingdom, where all desires were met.

But instead, there was an emptiness and a stillness that calmed and bought peace. It was a place of beauty not because desires were met but because desires ceased. A kingdom not of the senses but of the heart, the mind, or the true self.

We were walking in the steps of a Buddha. I prayed that some of his wisdom and compassion would stay with us.