Columns/Reviews |
D’SHALA DIARY
Dharamsala:The answer to the world prayer
Monday, 8 October 2007, 10:30 a.m.
By Thubten Samphel
Professor Sharma launching the book(Photo Sangjey Kep) |
Tourists, travellers, spiritual seekers, refugees escaping repression and those wishing to undergo life-changing experiences all flock to Dharamsala. They hope in Dharamsala they would find what’s troubling them or what’s wrong with the world.
Their hope is pinned on one person: His Holiness the Dalai Lama. “Across the globe, the word ‘Dharamsala’ inspires an instant connection with the Dalai Lama. The moment it was allotted as his temporary home in exile in India, this nondescript Himalayan village began its ascent on the world map of sites of spiritual significance,” writes Swati Chopra in her new book Dharamsala Diaries.
“Dharamsala is today emerging as the centre point in the global upsurge of interest in Buddhism. In times when many spiritual places and institutions are falling into decline, Dharamsala’s star is on the ascendant,” writes Swati Chopra. She says Dharamsala is acquiring the identity of the world’s spiritual capital.
Author reading passages from her latest book |
Professor Sharma backed the author’s observation. He said, “His Holiness the Dalai Lama is not a person but a presence. In fact, Swati Chopra’s chapter on His Holiness the Dalai Lama is called The Presence. “There are some places,” Professor Sharma said, “which have a latent spirituality, but His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s presence makes any place spiritual and endows it with spiritual grace.”
“I am both nervous and elated,” Professor Sharma said, when he launched the book on 4 October at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. “People have launched my books but I have not had the privilege of launching someone else’s book,” Professor Sharma said. Like Jawarhalal Nehru’s Discovery of India, Swati Chopra’s Dharamsala Diaries is a discovery of Dharamsala, he said, “I read all the chapters. It is an extraordinary book.” He said the spiritual streak in the author’s genes is very clear.
“People come to Dharamsala to seek spiritual solace,”said Geshe Lhakdor-la, the director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, when introducing the writer to the audience at the book’s launch. From Dharamsala Diary, Geshe Lhakdor-la said he hoped people would get the spiritual message behind all the cultural activities. “Through this book we hope that many people will realize the wealth of Tibetan culture, which is our privilege to help preserve.”
Dharamsala Diaries is also the author’s own search, a search for her grand-uncle who took the life of an itinerant sadhu, whose travels across mountains and deserts led him eventually to Dharamsala. The author’s grand-uncle was one of many who found what they sought. The writers says, “As a seeker and writer on seeking, my nose is particularly sensitive to the whiff of an untold story of an ordinary life made rich and unusual by the compulsions of inner striving and exploration. But long before I was sniffing out such tales in cloisters and caves, I was handed my grand-uncle’s story that marked me for life. It spoke of a journey so powerful that it was seared upon my mind as a child and stayed with me through repetitions and variations by elderly relatives over the years. This tale of a yogi who did everything from fomenting revolution to inner transformation, followed by years of possessionless wandering, became my earliest introduction to the endless possibilities of human life.”
During the launch, the audience had the privilege of listening to the writer read excerpts from the book. One passage she read touched on her interview with the 17th Karmapa. “My first question is about his relationship with birds, an odd question for those who don’t know of the sixteenth Karmapa’s great fondness for birds. I want to establish a link between the two, the sixteenth and the seventeenth, to explore the fascinating realm of reincarnating bodhisattvas.
“He says, His Holiness the sixteenth Karmapa was a Mahabodhisattva and each of his actions was for the benefit of all sentient beings. He did have a collection of birds, which he probably kept to liberate them from suffering. We cannot compare with what the great masters do. As far as I am concerned, I think birds are essentially free and you and I cannot possibly know what they need. So it is best to let them be as they are, naturally.”
Swati Chopra weaves the various strands of Dharamsala into a seamless whole and comes up with a pattern that is refreshing and composite. Dharamsala Diaries is the best travelogue on the place. At last we have a traveller’s Bible of the place and people.
Swati Chopra’s latest offering is published by Penguin Books India and is priced at Rs. 295.