A Thousand Memories
Rigpa
Few of the Dalai Lama's friends have known him as long as Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, who played a key role in advancing some of the most important academic institutions of the Tibetan community in exile in India. She looks back, in fondness and admiration, over nearly fifty years.
Nearly five decades ago, two ochre-robed young men arrived in India to attend the 2500th anniversary of Lord Buddha. They were like twin 'gandharvas’, celestial beings from the heavens. As they walked in, there was an instant, peaceful silence. Their presence was as captivating as it was elevating. They came from the land beyond the snows, and their faces radiated with the pristine purity that they embodied. At a closer look, one could be distinguished from the other; the two were in fact quite different. Little did anyone realise then that their paths would be so divergent: one would seek freedom in exile and transform the consciousness of humanity, and the other was destined to remain in bondage, both outer and inner.
Image courtesy Dr K. Vatsyayan
Ever since that first encounter with His Holiness the Dalai Lama until the next, when he arrived in Delhi after his fateful journey from Tibet in 1959, I felt that I partook somehow of the mellow sunlight of his being. No longer a celestial gandharva, as I watched him enter Vigyan Bhavan, he was, for me, the 'human' embodiment of the essence of the Buddha, the Tathagata. Indeed, throughout the superhuman trials and turbulence of his life and the life of his people, the compassionate equanimity of his mere presence has transformed the gross into the subtle, the impure into the pure. Neither speech nor sermon is necessary, nor argument, nor voice of deep commitment; it is his radiant, all-encompassing smile that illuminates all. Compassion, love and altruistic action envelop him, as he shows the path to millions.
“Indeed, throughout the superhuman trials and turbulence of his life and the life of his people, the compassionate equanimity of his mere presence has transformed the gross into the subtle, the impure into the pure.”
For me there have been occasions to see other dimensions of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. After a gap of a few years, and when he had settled in Dharamsala, he shared with me his vision of the education of Tibetan children, then refugees in India. This was in fact a great educational experience for me. It was His Holiness's foresight which insisted that these young children should be given an all-round education, so that they could become citizens of the world, at home with the Tibetan tradition, and yet capable of coping with the changing world around them. The children from these schools, whom I had the privilege of knowing, are today adults who have exhibited rare qualities of leadership in India and abroad.
Yet another opportunity came when the nucleus of the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, then located in the Sanskrit Varansiya Vishwavidyalaya, had to be given an independent institutional identity. The task was complex and required the most dextrous and skilful handling. As a servant of the government of India, it was my responsibility to accomplish this, with sensitivity and delicacy. Had I not received the complete trust and affectionate guidance of His Holiness at every stage, the Institute, today deemed a University, would never have come into being. His hand guided me, as if invisibly, to bring a vision into concrete reality. The motivation was pure and altruistic, the task gigantic at the intellectual level and difficult and full of nettles at the administrative and financial level. Nevertheless, it was accomplished, at the time in the face of opposition, hostility and threats, and now with the approbation and admiration of the world community of scholars. Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche's initial hesitation and reticence was transformed into a resolute commitment to a cause, that of restoring the lost fragments of the Buddhist tradition, and preparing a new generation of scholars. I discovered that His Holiness could find solutions to the most vexing and complex problems, and in the most simple way. To my mind, this was his way, his way of following the Middle Path in action and with the greatest ease.
Time passed, and the young celestial from the heavens, the leader of men, was the sixty-year-old Nobel Laureate, who propagated the message of Universal Responsibility. A large and spectacular function was held in his honour in 1989 in the Convention Hall of Ashoka Hotel. Speaker after speaker paid tribute to His Holiness and his message. I had the privilege to sit next to him on the dais. A thousand memories floated into my mind's eye. Was I really sitting next to a presence so benign and so sacred? His Holiness, with the tenderness of a mother and the innocence of a child, spoke of the only truly selfless love, the love of a mother for her child. He could almost have been a mother holding her first-born child. No words, no gestures even were necessary; all grandiose intellectual arguments on the need for world peace and harmony melted away likes specks of cloud in the glow of an afternoon winter sun. He turned around, looked at me, set the end of my saree right, held my hand with affection and said, "Isn't that so, Mataji (mother)? Wouldn't the world be a different place if each human being looked at others as a mother looks at her child, nourishing him without a thought of return?"
“Wouldn’t the world be a different place if each human being looked at others as a mother looks at her child, nourishing him without a thought of return?”
And the name Mataji has stuck. He laughs as only he can, to say: "I am sure, in my last birth you were my mother". Yet this Mataji is not the mother. She is much more like his child, the receiver of his abundant love and affection. And this love is grace indeed, received undeservedly and yet treasured as most sacred, a protection and a guiding light throughout my life.
As a tribute to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, on the occasion of his visit to the south of France [2000], I can do no more than quote from him and from an answer he gave me in the course of an interview. I asked him: "Your Holiness, perhaps you might comment on this verse by Atisha:
Be like an eye;
Always seeing your own faults.
But be like a blind person,
Towards the fault of others.
Be without arrogance and pride,
Meditating constantly on the meaning of emptiness and non-self.
Can you explain emptiness and non-self?" He laughed as he replied: "That is a complicated subject. We would need many hours to explain it. In Sanskrit, the word for emptiness is shunya. Of course, among the various Buddhist schools of thought, there are different interpretations of it. However, according to the Madhyamaka school, the explanation is something like this: because things are so heavily interdependent, every object you see, every phenomenon, has as its essential nature the absence of independent existence, the absence of any inherently existing nature. That is what we call shunya or emptiness, or voidness. So this is one aspect of things - their voidness or absence of inherent existence. And were we to ask: 'what is the main reason, and basis for that?' the answer is interdependence. Things are void of independent existence because they are dependent on other factors. In order to exist at all, a thing must depend entirely on other factors. So that means that there is something. In another way then, emptiness means that things are full. Just like a zero. A zero alone means nothing, but without a zero you cannot count. It is something. So, you see, emptiness means in one way voidness, in another way fullness. And that is what we mean by pratityasamutpada or dependent arising; shunya means pratityasamutpada and pratityasamutpada means shunya."
It is to this celestial being, come to earth as the fourteenth Dalai Lama in order to cleanse, purify and heal, that I offer this humble tribute, and seek his blessings, along with millions of others.
Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan (1928 - 2020) was the President of the India International Centre. She was formerly the Secretary of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, and Academic Director of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. Author of over a dozen books, Dr. Vatsyayan was internationally acclaimed for her scholarship in the fields of culture and inter-disciplinary work in the arts. She was responsible for the establishment of many institutions of Buddhist studies, Oncology and the Arts, as well as being the recipient of a number of honorary degrees from universities in the U.S.A. and India, including the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies.