THE LIVING BUDDHA

CHAPTER XL

IN THE BLISSFUL GARDEN OF A THOUSAND JOYS

In Mongolia, the country of miracles and mysteries, lives the custodian of all the mysterious and unknown, the Living Buddha, His Holiness Djebtsung Damba Hutuktu Khan or Bogdo Gheghen, Pontiff of Ta Kure.  He is the incarnation of the never-dying Buddha, the representative of the unbroken, mysteriously continued line of spiritual emperors ruling since 1670, concealing in themselves the ever refining spirit of Buddha Amitabha joined with Chan-ra-zi or the “Compassionate Spirit of the Mountains.”  In him is everything, even the Sun Myth and the fascination of the mysterious peaks of the Himalayas, tales of the Indian pagoda, the stern majesty of the Mongolian Conquerors—­Emperors of All Asia—­and the ancient, hazy legends of the Chinese sages; immersion in the thoughts of the Brahmans; the severities of life of the monks of the “Virtuous Order”; the vengeance of the eternally wandering warriors, the Olets, with their Khans, Batur Hun Taigi and Gushi; the proud bequests of Jenghiz and Kublai Khan; the clerical reactionary psychology of the Lamas; the mystery of Tibetan kings beginning from Srong-Tsang Gampo; and the mercilessness of the Yellow Sect of Paspa.  All the hazy history of Asia, of Mongolia, Pamir, Himalayas, Mesopotamia, Persia and China, surrounds the Living God of Urga.  It is little wonder that his name is honored along the Volga, in Siberia, Arabia, between the Tigris and Euphrates, in Indo-China and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.

During my stay in Urga I visited the abode of the Living Buddha several times, spoke with him and observed his life.  His favorite learned Marambas gave me long accounts of him.  I saw him reading horoscopes, I heard his predictions, I looked over his archives of ancient books and the manuscripts containing the lives and predictions of all the Bogdo Khans.  The Lamas were very frank and open with me, because the letter of the Hutuktu of Narabanchi won for me their confidence.

The personality of the Living Buddha is double, just as everything in Lamaism is double.  Clever, penetrating, energetic, he at the same time indulges in the drunkenness which has brought on blindness.  When he became blind, the Lamas were thrown into a state of desperation.  Some of them maintained that Bogdo Khan must be poisoned and another Incarnate Buddha set in his place; while the others pointed out the great merits of the Pontiff in the eyes of Mongolians and the followers of the Yellow Faith.  They finally decided to propitiate the gods by building a great temple with a gigantic statue of Buddha.  However, this did not help the Bogdo’s sight but the whole incident gave him the opportunity of hurrying on to their higher life those among the Lamas who had shown too much radicalism in their proposed method of solving his problem.