Ian Johnson - Baltimore Sun, Thursday, July 25, 1996

KARAKORUM, Mongolia AD On a summer day, the silence at the Erdene Zuu Monastery can be unnerving. Inside the main hall, a dozen lonely monks are singing the Tantric chants of Tibetan Buddhism; the grounds have the wasted and beaten look of chronic neglect.

Yet here and throughout Mongolia, the beginnings of a great religious revival are slowly becoming apparent, one with profound implications for neighboring China and its troubled province, Tibet.

Mongolia is more than another former Communist state recapturing its traditions. It is a linchpin of the Tibetan religious world, a country with such strong cultural ties to Tibet that it took the bold step earlier this century of recognizing Tibet's independence from China.

Now, with Tibet back firmly under China's control and its god-king, the Dalai Lama, in exile in India, Tibet Buddhism's tenuous rebirth in Mongolia gives the Dalai Lama a new ally. Where the Dalai Lama previously had no country in the world where Tibetan Buddhism was the main religion, one is now reappearing.

"Perhaps one of the most important developments for Tibet in recent years is that Mongolia is an independent country again," said Robbie Barnett, of the London-based Tibet Information Network. "There's a huge potential strength for the Dalai Lama in creating links with Mongolia."

Tibetan Buddhism, which embraces the Russian territories of Buryatia and Tuva, forms an arc that almost encircles China's western regions, adding powerfully to the Dalai Lama's stature at a time when China is trying to crush his influence in Tibet.

But as seen by the inactivity at Erdene Zuu, Tibetan Buddhism still has a long way to go before it regains the dominant position it had before 1937. Then, Mongolia's brutal dictator Choibalsan had 17,000 of the country's 110,000 monks executed, with all but a handful of its 746 monasteries burned to the ground.

Gombochir, an 85-year-old monk who like most Mongolians uses one name, sits in a room near the main prayer hall and relates a typical story.

As a young monk of 26, Gombochir was spared the firing squad that awaited senior monks. He was sent to work in a factory and eventually married. In 1990, when Mongolia's Communists fired their hard-line leadership and proclaimed a democracy, he hardly dared to return to the monastery. Only after several assurances did he dare help carry out the first ceremony, a simple chant at dawn to start the day.

By then, however, Erdene Zuu was hardly recognizable as one of the great centres of Tibetan Buddhist learning. Once housing 60 temples and thousands of monks, Erdene Zuu had three temples that housed a "museum of religion" and a few old monks like himself.

Since then, nearly 200 young monks have joined, but most of the senior monks who knew something of religious life have since become too ill to participate in services. Without dormitories, the monks still do not live a monastic life. Prayers that only can be passed on orally from monk to monk have been lost.

"It has actually been a very tenuous existence in Mongolia," said Sue Byrne, an Englishwoman who runs a London-based charity, Buddhism in Mongolia, that promotes Buddhism's revival. "There are really just a handful of young monks in the country trained fully in Buddhism."

A chief supporter of Tibetan Buddhism's revival here has been Kushok Bakula, India's 79-year-old ambassador to Mongolia. Bakula, who is considered a reincarnated Buddhist saint, spends one day a week receiving pilgrims and dispensing spiritual advice. Dressed in red-and-saffron robes, Bakula says Mongolians remained Buddhist in their hearts, even when it was forbidden.

'YOU LOSE YOUR IDENTITY'

"If you are not Buddhist, then what are you? You lose your identity," Bakula says. "What difference are you then from Chinese or Russians?"

In Tibet and Mongolia, Buddhism gained adherents by integrating its teachings with local folk gods and shamanistic practices, such as exorcism and chanting with masks.

Sometimes called "Lama Buddhism" because the religion is guided by lamas, or senior monks, the religion developed into a theocracy backed by huge, wealthy monasteries. Before the Communist revolution of 1921, Mongolia was led by a god-king, much as Tibet was run by the Dalai Lama before China invaded in 1950.

Whether Mongolians ever return to the Buddhist life they knew before the Communist revolution is doubtful, but they seem enthusiastic about their rediscovered roots. It is impossible to travel this sparsely populated land of 2.3 million nomadic herders without coming across a ruined temple that is being rebuilt.

The Erdene Khambyn monastery, for example, was destroyed in 1937, but a small chapel has been rebuilt thanks to the efforts of one of the monk's granddaughters, Dawa. Now 63, Dawa has assembled $20,000 U.S. worth of help from local herders, the Indian ambassador and worshippers. Its prize possession is a statue of the Maitreya Buddha supposedly handmade by Mongolia's first theocratic ruler 300 years ago.

RISKING THE WRATH OF CHINA

Like many of the country's few remaining relics, the statue was saved by being hidden for more than 60 years. Dawa hid it in her yurt, a circular tent traditionally used by Mongolia's nomads, never showing the statue to her children for fear they would carelessly disclose its existence.

Dawa's new chapel, like countless yurts across Mongolia, has political and religious symbols that would anger China. Her small temple prominently features photos of the Dalai Lama, who has visited Mongolia four times since 1990, each time drawing huge crowds.

China has protested each time the Dalai Lama has come to Mongolia, but he is so popular that Mongolia has risked the wrath of its neighbor rather than ban him from visiting.

Dawa has also hung a picture of the former Panchen Lama, the second most powerful figure in Tibetan Buddhism who died in 1989, as well as his successor appointed by the Dalai Lama. China, however, has chosen its own successor, detaining the Dalai Lama's choice and banning his photograph from monasteries in Tibet.

China has also started banning the Dalai Lama's portrait from monasteries and has beaten and arrested scores of monks who protested in recent months. Observers believe China's actions against the Dalai Lama is the most sustained effort in a decade to wipe out his influence. At least in Mongolia, however, the Dalai Lama is secure.

"I think Buddhism has a future here if we support the Dalai Lama and his choice for the Panchen Lama," Gombochir of the Erdene Zuu monastery said. "Then we Buddhists will be strong and united and cannot be defeated."