Far Eastern Economic Review - February 8, 1996

TIBETAN LAMA PROPAGATES BUDDHISM FROM THE LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE BRAVE

By Nigel Holloway

Adore neighbourhood in Berkeley, California, seems an unlikely location for a project aimed at saving a civilization. Among the small factories and workshops along a main road stands the long, low-rise building which houses Dharma Publishing. The organization aims to preserve and propagate the works of Tibetan Buddhism.

Ordinarily, the nondescript building wouldn't catch your eye. But these day's, brightly coloured banners outside trumpet an exhibition within after quietly' toiling away for a quarter-century', Dharma Publishing is unveiling the fruits of its labour: 128 huge, beautifully bound volumes containing the canon of Tibetan Buddhism and an accompanying set of ancient teaching.

This represents more than a literary exercise or an act of religious devotion. It is an attempt to rescue an entire culture that faced extinction at the hands of the Chinese. They began persecuting Tibetans in 1951; by 1959, the supreme leader, the Dalai Lama, fled with 100,000 of his followers. According to human-rights organizations, in the pillage that followed, the Chinese killed more than 1 million Tibetans and destroyed all but 13 of the country's 6,250 monasteries along with their precious libraries. Says Sylvia Gretchen, Dharma Publishing's research editor and a Tibetan scholar: "The culture was on the edge of survival."

Landlocked Tibet continues to struggle for international recognition, but at least the type of Buddhism practised on the roof of the world has been tugged back from oblivion. Its survival is due in no small measure to Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan lama who fled to India in 1959. There, a teacher advised him to go West: The United States contained the religious freedom and the resources needed to preserve Tibetan Buddhism and spread the Word. After nine years in India, he arrived at Berkeley, virtually penniless.

Aided by donations and a small group of pupils, he acquired an old printing press and set out to publish Buddhist texts in book form. In Tibet, scholars had begun the arduous task of translating the original Sanskrit texts into Tibetan in the 7th century A.D. They had traditionally stored them on thin strips of paper in boxes.

Tarthang Tulku and his assistants scoured the world's great libraries in search of Tibetan texts. But there were few to be found - a testament, perhaps, to the country's hermetic history. Instead, they spread. the word to Tibetan refugees who had spirited texts out of Tibet during the mass exodus of 1959. "Some refugees had to choose between carrying books or food," says Gretchen. "They took the books and died on their way through the Himalayas."

In one of the world's most ambitious publishing ventures, Dharma Publishing has been able to piece together the canon based almost entirely on what was brought out of Tibet.

Today, 128 hand-bound volumes, each the size of a large atlas, contain the entire Tibetan Buddhist canon. Dharma has also published 627 volumes (if Nyingma, or ancient teachings, which date from the 7th century when Buddhism "'as first introduced to Tibet by the reigning kings. If it were printed in a conventional Western format, the total library would comprise about 2,500 volumes all produced in the past 25 years.

The easy part was reproducing the original texts. The workers simply photocopied each strip (if flimsy paper and lined them up four strips to a page). The harder part was collecting all the material and placing it in a logical order - a feat no one had ever accomplished.

Now that the canon is finished, Tarthang Tulku must get the texts back within Tibetan communities before the older generation dies. Otherwise, they will not be able to pass on these Buddhist teachings to their children.

But distributing the texts to exiled Tibetans and to people within Tibet has proven difficult. The Buddhist canon, published in I981, is now housed in the libraries of six Tibetan monasteries. Although the second set of texts, the Nyingma canon, was finished in 1993, it still waits inside three large containers to be trucked into Tibet from Nepal.

Although it has taken almost three years to unwind bureaucratic red tape in India, Nepal and China, practical-not political-reasons have kept the books outside Tibet's borders. "We have never encountered any political difficulties, only logistical ones," says Gretchen. The problem, she says, is that the containers are not designed to negotiate the narrow roads leading to Tibet.

To mark the completion of its book venture, Dharma Publishing is exhibiting the texts and a collection of sacred Tibetan art through March. In a library near the printing presses, from shoulder height to ceiling stand row upon row of red and brown volumes, their gold-embossed spines glinting in the light. Also on display are small prayer wheels fitted with mantra sheets inside their drums. As a worshipper spins it, the wheel is believed to speed the prayers on their way.

Tarthang Tulku's efforts are not limited to book publishing. Since 1989, he has organized an annual ceremony to pray for world peace at BodhGaya in Bihar, India, the site of Buddha's enlightenment. More than 37,000 Buddhists from across the globe were expected to converge on the site on January 20 for 10 days of prayers.

In 1973, Tarthang Tulku also set up the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, to focus on teaching Tibetan Buddhism. The school relies on Dharma Publishing's efforts for its teaching material. Dharma's new thrust will be an emphasis on translating the ancient Tibetan texts into English. There is much to do: Only one-tenth of 1% of the Nyingma texts has been translated into English, says the institute's dean, Barry Schieber. Their subject matter is wide-ranging, from astrology to psychology and medicine. "It has vast implications, when the world can understand what are in those books," Schieber says. "They contain 2,500 years of distilled knowledge and wisdom."

To conduct the translation in a tranquil environment, Tarthang Tulku and his followers built a large monastery 100 miles north of Berkeley. The lama, now a U.S. citizen, has found a spiritual home in American event the ancient Buddhist texts seem to have foretold His followers quote this passage: "When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetans will be scattered throughout the world like ants and the Dharma [Buddha's teachings] will come to the land of the red men."

Nigel Holloway is a REVIEW correspondent based in Washington.