By: Matthew Akester
The
mountain known as ‘Shun-ki Drak’(Shun gyi brag), the ‘Rock of
Shun’,
is a distinctive cluster of limestone pinnacles towering over the east
bank of the confluence of the Lhasa and Tölung (sTod lung) valleys,
roughly ten kilometres west of the city. ‘Shun’ was the name of a
pasture to the west of Drépung monastery (‘Bras spungs), below the
old Dongkar fort (Shun gDong dkar rdzong) and village. High up on the
mountain’s south face at the base of a mighty spire of rock is the
entrance to an underground cave, traditionally said to have pillars and
beams of crystal.
Shun-ki Drak itself is an inescapeable feature, whose peculiar
silhouette dominates Lhasa’s western horizon, yet it is strikingly
absent from conventional characterisations of the Lhasa Mandala. None of
my local informants has been able even to put a name to the mountain.
Some know and revere the name of the ‘Shékar Dru-puk’ cave,
associating it with Guru Padmasambhava in the generic manner typically
applied to sites whose specific legend has been forgotten. Others invoke
a primordial legend that a giant Garuda (Khyung) once nested in the
upper peaks and terrorised the surrounding countryside, or have at least
heard of a second meditation cave in one of these peaks, known as 'Khyung-tsang
Drak' (Khyung tshang brag), ‘Garuda’s nest rock’.
According to Newar visitors who last saw the cave in the 1950s,
two of the crystal pillars remained inside and were marked with a spiral
design. There was also a spring (sGrub chu) of very pure water. It was
said that even though the pilgrim became rather dirty in the course of
climbing up to the cave and crawling inside, he would re-emerge clean.
These days, the area between Drépung and Shun-ki Drak has
largely been occupied by the Lhasa cement factory, it’s adjacent
limestone quarries, and a petroleum storage installation. Tibet’s
principal northern and western highways have their junction at the
mountain’s southern foot, and there are more fuel dumps, military
bases and another cement factory on it’s west side, in the lower Tölung
valley. The traditional spelling “Shun” is no longer in use, and
locals refer to the modern village (and destroyed Dzong) as “Shing
Dongkar”.
Several factors can be adduced in support of the notion that the
Crystal Cave was a Bön-po holy place in antiquity. Not least among them
is the ‘re-claiming’ of the site by Bön-po monks and meditators,
mostly from eastern Tibet, over the last decade. These latest occupants
have ‘re-built’ a cluster of makeshift retreat huts a short way
below the entrance, although by all accounts there were no residents
(and certainly no Bön-po-s) at the cave earlier this century. Moreover,
the contemporary claim that this was a meditation place of the legendary
master Li-shu Tak-ring (gNyan chen Li shu stag ring) is not
well-attested in Bön-po literature
and, like the Newar legend, belongs more to the realm of
folklore.
But those considerations do not in themselves render the idea
untenable. Arguably, the general notion that the Crystal Cave was a
pre-Buddhist site can be read into the standard Buddhist description of
the Lhasa Mandala given in the ‘Mani Kahbum’. The famous divination
conventionally attributed to the Chinese Buddhist princess Wen-ch’eng
includes four inauspicious configurations (Sa dgra) in the cardinal
directions around Lhasa which require physical ‘suppression’ by
Buddhist symbols. To the west was ‘a black demon peering (towards
Lhasa)’ which Lhasa folk even now identify with Shun-ki Drak.
The idea that this jagged rock was a ‘threat’ to the
introduction of Buddhism which needed to be ‘tamed’ is echoed in a
story that a Buddha statue on it’s summit was desecrated during the
ninth century persecution of Buddhism. This story is just local hearsay,
but it certainly bears comparison, for example, with a passage from
Nyang Nyima Özer’s History of Buddhism,
which purports to quote king Langdarma (‘U dum btsan po)
addressing his ministers on the harm caused by various Buddhist devices
of geomantic suppression. The king contends, for instance, that if the
Yarlung Dharmaraja-s and their foreign queens had not built Buddhist
Stupa-s on Chakpo-ri (lCags po ri) or driven a Kila stake into Marpo-ri
(dMar po ri) in Lhasa, the Tibetan empire would soon have included India
and China (respectively).
It seems possible that the construction and maintenance of
Buddhist images on this rocky peak, as a conscious inheritance of the
Yarlung era, was a practice supported by later Buddhist rulers of the
Kyi-chu valley, at least the pro-Géluk-pa (dGe lugs pa) governors of
Taktsé (Bye ri stag rtse rdzong) and nearby Néyu Dzong (sNe’u rdzong).
It’s observance by the newly established national government (dGa’
ldan pho brang) is documented in the fifth Dalai Lama’s autobiography:
a passage concerning the renewal of holy images on strategic points in
the landscape in order to allay the threat of conflict and invasion
states that a new image - presumably a rock carving - of Sakyamuni
subduing the Mara-s (Thub dbang bdud ‘dul) was established ‘on the
peak of Shun-ki Drak’ (Shun gyi brag rtse) in the year 1677.
The discourse of geomantic subjugation in such hagiographical and
retrospective works as ‘Mani Kahbum’ certainly cannot be taken as
referring, even in a veiled or implicit manner, to the Buddhist
conversion (or disparagement) of indigenous holy places. At best it can
yield clues which, in the case of the Crystal Cave, are amplified by
circumstantial evidence. The lower Tölung valley (sTod lung mda’) is
widely indicated as a site of religious monuments and a centre for the
propagation of religious teachings in both Bön-po and Buddhist sources,
and to some extent in the Tunhuang documents. The hermitage on the site
of the later Gahdong (sGa gdong / dGa’ gdong) monastery had been
founded by Gya Dul-dzin (rGya
‘dul ‘dzin dBang phyug brtson ‘grus) (c.1120) in the very shadow
of Shun-ki Drak, on it’s northern side, not long before the
‘discovery’ of the ‘Mani Kahbum’, and the expatriate Newar
Mahamudra master A-su (Bal po A su sKye med bde chen) had chosen a
hilltop on the western spur of the mountain for his hermitage several
decades earlier.
If this were simply an insignificant or undesirable location, why
would more than one notable Buddhist teacher have favoured it as a site
for religious practice?
About an hour’s walk north of Shun-ki Drak, on the mountainside
above the modern village of Sangmo (bZang mo), is another totally dark
limestone meditation cave, of similar dimensions to the Crystal Cave,
known as ‘Néchen Dru-puk’ (gNas chen sgrub phug). Also like the
Crystal Cave, it is popularly regarded as a meditation place of ‘Guru
Rinpoché’. The delicate matter of locating Guru Padmasambhava’s
inconceivable activities in Tibet is a subject well beyond the scope of
this discussion, but for present purposes, I propose a broad distinction
between the ten or so cave sites associated with this master on the
basis of coherent biographical references in Nyingma-pa (rNying ma pa)
literature, and the great majority of sites for which this label is a
more or less un-substantiated generic, perhaps displacing the specific
history or legend (whether Buddhist or otherwise) of an ancient place of
spiritual accomplishment. Both the ‘Néchen’ and ‘Shékar
Dru-puk’-s in lower Tölung clearly fall into the latter category. The
fact that this area is vaguely but persistently indicated in the sources
as a locus of the Guru’s demon-subduing activities after his arrival
in Tibet could
thus be taken as further confirmation that it was a religious centre of
some importance in eighth century Tibet.
Seen in context, the story is not particularly unusual, and the
underlying premise that these treasures had been concealed there (and
their re-discovery predicted) by Guru Pema is so fundamental and obvious
to all concerned that no reiteration is necessarily called for. Taken in
isolation, however, the lack of reference to legends or prophecies
concerning the Guru is striking: indeed, apart from the identification
of a naieve clay figure as a ‘likeness of the Lotus Guru’ (“Padma
Gu ru’i ‘dra sku”), there is no indication beyond the general
context that this is even a Buddhist Térma. What the passage does tell
us, if only by inference, is that Khyung-tsang Drak had in the past been
a centre of spiritual attainment, or at least a holy place of some kind.
The broken rope-ladder is a sign that it’s meditation caves had long
been vacant. One should bear in mind here that Shikpo Ling-pa was born
in Tölung, into the most powerful noble family in the area (sNang rtse
sde pa), and became one of the greatest Nyingma-pa masters of his day.
Moreover, the Khyung-tsang Drak Térma is presented in Nyingma-pa
literature as his principal discovery. If there had been a Buddhist
legend or history associated with the place, he would surely have had
something to say about it. Possible lost works of Shikpo Ling-pa and so
on notwithstanding, this curious silence could just be a sign that the
legend or cult of this mountain was pre- (or in any case non-) Buddhist.
Some further light is shed on the mystery in an interesting
passage from the fifth Dalai Lama’s autobiography. During the summer
of 1656, Tibet’s supreme pontiff records, one Mohamed Shafi, an envoy
of the Mughal ruler of Bengal Shah Suja, arrived at court in Lhasa
bearing gifts, and a request: “There is a deserted cave at the back of
the Shun (area) called the ‘Crystal cavern’ (Shel dkar brag khung)
which many people visit on the strength of an old wives’ tale (“Ri
bong cal ‘drogs”, literally ‘rabbit’s mutterings’) that it is
a meditation cave of Urgyen Rinpoché (Padmasambhava) with crystal
pillars and beams. Just like the proverb of the mouse-hole and the far
horizon (?), this nonsense has spread as far as India, and since a great
deal of crystal was required to ornament the (Bengali) king’s throne,
(the envoy) asked if he might take some. This kind of situation arises
simply through the tendency of living beings to grasp illusory
appearances as real, which is the root cause of their wanderings in
Samsara.”
First of all, this passage confirms in some important respects
the view we have formed so far of the site, as a holy mountain whose
cave-hermitages were long abandoned, and whose claims to sanctity lay in
the distant past and had no basis in orthodox Buddhist sources. It tells
us in addition that ‘many’ pilgrims were visiting the Crystal Cave
in the mid-seventeenth century. But the emphatic and dismissive tone of
the piece could in itself tell us something more: the popular view of
the Crystal Cave as sacred was no ordinary Samsaric mirage, it was a
serious matter, as it seems that for the Great Fifth, as for the
princess Wen-ch’eng of the ‘Mani Kahbum’, the place was not
insignificant so much as malign, representing a threat whose suppression
and exclusion was desirable.
Even as he wrote the passage, the learned author would have been
aware of Shikpo Ling-pa’s activities at Khyung-tsang Drak a century
earlier, and his disapproval of them is perhaps implicit in his curt
dismissal of the Crystal Cave. According to the biographical sources,
the Great Fifth’s antipathy to the so-called ‘Nang-Sok-Gong Sum’
trio of Nyingma-pa masters (sNang Sog Gong gsum ie; sNang rtse gter ston
Zhig po gling pa, Sog zlog pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan, Gong ra lo chen
gZhan phan rdo rje) related much more to political allegiances than
explicit doctrinal differences or polemics,
and one could also seek to understand the conflicting representations of
Shun-ki Drak and the Crystal Cave in the context of the geo-political
rivalries and schisms of the period.
The Nangtsé Dé-pa-s of Tölung held sway in the Lhasa valley in
alliance with the lords of Rinpung, who dominated central Tibet at the
expense of the mainly pro-Géluk-pa (dGe lugs pa) nobles and Lama-s of
Ü (dBus) district. They were patrons of the Sha-mar Karma-pa-s (Zhva
dmar pa) of Yangpa-chen (Yangs pa can) and had cordial relations with
the emergent ‘Southern Druk-pa’ school (lHo ‘brug) of Bhutan. In
other words, Shikpo Ling-pa was a senior religious figure-head
representing the powerful coalition of interests opposed to the
political aspirations of the Lhasa aristocracy and the Géluk-pa school.
In addition, the ‘Nang-Sok-Gong Sum’ were well known for performing
Nyingma-pa rituals of national defence, particularly aimed at ‘turning
back the Mongols’, the allies of the Dalai Lama-s who eventually did
invade Tibet and crush the enemies of the Géluk-pa school.
We can be fairly sure that the Great Fifth would have taken a dim
view of Shikpo Ling-pa’s claim to have discovered such rituals in a
cache buried by Guru Pema on Shun-ki Drak, although his attitude to the
master was fraught with ambiguity. In the words of a later Nyingma -pa
commentator: “The
‘Nang-Sok-Gong Sum’ used a prophecy revealed by Shikpo Ling-pa to
say various (unpleasant) things about the Géluk-pa-s and (the Nyingma-pa-s
of) Dorjé Drak (rDo rje brag), and since Shikpo Ling-pa himself had
important relations with the Southern Druk-pa he was obliged to advocate
their position, for which he is criticised severely in the works of the
Great Fifth, but the minds of great and noble saints are hard to
fathom....for it is certain that he (the Dalai Lama) kept holy symbols
blessed by the ‘Nang-Sok-Gong Sum’ as objects of his own personal
devotion.”
Here and in a number of similar references, we are told that the
Great Fifth quietly accepted their integrity as distinguished Nyingma-pa
Lama-s, while vigorously opposing their worldly (or political)
ambitions. It would not be implausible to see this troubled and
contradictory relationship reflected in his eagerness to repudiate the
Crystal Cave, and one could interpret the passage as an implicit
indication that Shun-ki Drak had been mobilised to some degree as a
contested symbol in this feud, and that it’s re-suppression had been
ensured by the Mongol - Géluk-pa conquest of central Tibet and
establishment of a new capital at Lhasa. In this regard, there may be
some significance in a local story (apparently unrelated to the Bengal
Raja) that two of the cave’s alleged four crystal pillars were removed
in this period to be incorporated in the new Potala palace.
It should now be apparent at least that the history of the
Crystal Cave has long been buried in obscurity, and that there are no
firm grounds permitting an assessment of Suratbajra’s activities
there. If a theme has emerged from this obscurity, however, it is one of
a popular and ancient pilgrimage cult to which orthodox Buddhist
authority is either ambivalent or hostile. The recurrent theme in the
tales of Suratbajra meanwhile, including the story that he engaged and
defeated the Lama-s (‘the Dalai Lama’ in some versions) in a contest
of spiritual powers at Lhasa, is an un-orthodox and iconoclastic
opposition to organised religion reminiscent of the Indian
‘Maha-siddha’ genre and the 'Mad saints' (sMyon pa) of Tibetan
folklore. Could it be that Suratbajra chose the Crystal Cave, precisely
because of it’s significance to followers of popular as opposed to
organised religion, as a kind of ‘weak link’ in the Lama-s’
Mandala, and a suitable locus for challenging their authority?
The legend of the cave (or what remains of it) says that
Suratbajra meditated in the dark sanctuary on his tutelary Devi, the
Nairatma (lHa mo bdag med ma) of Guhyeswari, until her image appeared
naturally in the rock. In the oral tradition surrounding this master,
several often humorous or satirical episodes relate how Suratbajra
always got the better of Lhasa’s Grand Lama, in reliance on magical
powers conferred by a clairvoyant relationship with his Devi. But their
final show-down took place at the Crystal Cave: in the course of a
contest of powers which had begun in good sport, Suratbajra in the form
of a dove realises that his opponent, who has assumed the form of an
eagle, is trying to kill him, and flies into the cave for refuge. The
‘eagle’ then assumed demonic form and blocked the mouth of the cave
with a huge boulder. Suratbajra effortlessly pushed this aside,
whereupon the Lama turned into a fearsome serpent. Suratbajra struck the
creature with a magic sword produced at the critical moment by his Devi,
or somehow turned it to stone, in which form it has remained there ever
since. He was then obliged to flee Tibet. It is said that as he reached
the banks of the Tsang-po (gTsang po) or Brahmaputra river, since there
was no boatman to carry him over, he laid out his scarf on the waters
and floated serenely to the south shore, while spontaneously composing
and singing his ‘Jayavanchali’ Carya-git in praise of the Devi. As
soon as he had crossed, the river whipped up into a storm, drowning
boat-loads of his pursuers. He returned to Nepal to find the ceremonies
for his presumed death in progress, and since no-one really seemed to
realise who he was, he went into seclusion at the Takse Bahal (in
present-day Ason, in Kathmandu) and never re-emerged. Some say he is
still in there.
As far as I know, only one historical document probably relating
to Suratbajra has so far come to light. This was a liturgical text (Pancaraksa)
kept at the the Chaturbrahma Maha-vihar in Tadhichen Bahal at the
eastern end of the Bhaktapur Darbar square, whose colophon stated that
the community was founded by Suratbajra’s son Jiva-chandra, who had
moved there from Takse Bahal in Nepal Sambat 611 (1490).
This would make Suratbajra a contemporary of
king Yaksa Malla and tentatively place his journey to Tibet in
the third quarter of the fifteenth century. Although there was no
‘Dalai Lama’ as such at that time, Suratbajra would have encountered
Géluk-pa Lhasa in it’s confident youth. The ecclesiastical and
political centre of the city in those days was the grand and populous Drépung
monastery, which had been established half a century earlier, about
seven kilometres to the west of old Lhasa, not far from the Crystal
Cave....
Without further evidence, the questions raised by Suratbajra's
activities in Tibet cannot be satisfactorily addressed, and I would
therefore like to conclude these observations with an appeal to readers
more knowledgeable than myself in the Newar Buddhist tradition and the
history of Nepal - Tibet relations for any contributions toward that
end.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to Min Bahadur Shakya
for his kind assistance and encouragement, and to thank Khenpo Tsultrim
Gyeltsen, Tsi-pa Kun-gah Rikdzin and Roberto Vitali for their various
comments and suggestions.
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