The Double Dorje: Looking at Modern Vajrayana Buddhism.
Jyekundo / Yushu: travelling in East Tibet
Wed, 18 Sep 2024
A traveller's tale from eastern Tibet three decades ago! The great prayer wheel at Mani Dunkhor. Some words you might like to look up: Sakya Mala Vajra Yushu Jyekundo Mani-Dunkhor Trisong Detsen Śāntarakṣita #Buddhism #Vajrayana #Tibet #DoubleDorje #Yushu #Jyekundo #lama #mantra #meditation #nyingma #kagyu #Refuge #Bodhicitta Transcript, with possible errors, can be read at the blog In the early weeks of this podcast I included an approximate script, not particularly well edited, on a blog page. For the episode dropped on 4 September entitled “Bad gurus, tosh gurus and good gurus” and for episodes due to be dropped from 18 September onwards, starting with “Jyekundo / Yushu: travelling in East Tibet” there is a transcript file which is much closer to the actual words used. Note that other distribution platforms do not necessarily pass this on, and if you want to read it you may need to listen on podbean. YouTube has been making its own transcript, which was an unholy mess. I think I have now deleted all of these "auto-generated" scripts, but it will not be possible to retrospectively add properly edited transcripts to episodes prior to September 2024.
Full Episode
Hello, and once again, let me extend a real welcome to the listeners to this Double Doge podcast. The last couple of episodes, that's the one about the four revolting thoughts, and the one that touches on the whole business of refuge, were fairly serious. But amongst other things, in the trailer I did promise you some Traveller's Tales, and I think it's time for one of those.
To be honest, the story doesn't amount to all that much, but it did mean a lot to me at the time, so I hope you might be able to share some of the feeling. Firstly, forgive me for the brief interruption, but let me urge you to take a moment to like this episode... to share it and tell your friends, and if you haven't already, to subscribe to the Double Doge. Thank you.
Now, we are going back some three decades or more. I was lucky enough to go on a pilgrimage with about 20 other students of my teacher at the time, Chimmy Rimpoche. Let's forget the run-up, how we got there, what was our destination. Just picture yourself in the far eastern part of Tibet, in Kham, more specifically in Jeikundo, or Yushu as it is now known under its Chinese name.
The town of Jeikundo is of significant size, but I'm afraid I haven't got a number for you any more accurate than some tens of thousands. But somehow we were there. The Governor's Guesthouse is probably not the worst place to stay in Jeikundo. The indications that we gathered from the way our whole journey had been organised were that it was probably in fact one of the best.
From what we could see, the place itself was rather less grand, although we were far too pleased to be there at all to be very worried. On each of five concrete floors was a small office where the keys were held. Along the corridors, which seemed always to be wet, stood pots at regular intervals.
While these pots were doubtlessly receptacles for spit and nub ends, the colour and odour suggested that they may also have been piss pots. Smells, however, can mislead. It's not as if I went around actually sniffing them, let me assure you.
But the toilets opened directly onto the corridor, with nothing but a mottled grey-brown curtain for a door, hanging from the lintel, down about as far as waist height. The toilets themselves were an interesting compromise with Western methods. A row of metre-high cubicles is something you could see often enough in China, but usually these had a single hole in the floor of each cubicle.
In this case, on the other hand, instead of one hole per cubicle, a single tiled trench ran sideways through the floor of the row of cubicles. Now and again, a welcome stream of water would flush through the whole trench. At that stage on our journey, I had learned three Chinese characters, namely the character for man, the character for woman, and the character for Beijing.
The first two are very useful in a lot of circumstances. Here, positioned between the door marked man and the one marked woman, there was a washroom where a galvanised electric boiler produced water that was usually really hot. Its open mains breaker buzzed and sparked continuously.
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