the glorious mural express (臥遊)

There exists a great arc dotted with Buddhist cave temples that stretches from the State of Maharashtra in India reaching all the way across the Taklamakan Desert-- deep into the heart of China.

It is miraculous really. From influences derived from the West, Buddhist art was born.

And within 5 centuries, dozens of cave temples covered in murals of impossible beauty were to be created across thousands and thousands of miles along the Silk Road-- all the way to Japan.

I told him: We really should start a railway company and put down tracks to connect all the temples so that pilgrims can ride with us on our glorious mural express.

Being a practical sort of guy, he was dubious about the diplomatic and political hurdles, and so I sought to persuade him.

It would be a wonderous beginning, that's for sure. I mean, starting in India, the Murals of Ajanta would set the mood, right?

He said he was listening. So, I continued:

It must be a riny narrow gauge train with blue cars and a carmine red engine and red caboose. "Just like the one we rode to Shimla," I say. And it won't be for everyone either-- for like Mecca, our train will be a place reserved only for true believers-- for believers of love and beauty.

He smiled and answered that, It wouldn't be easy since the mountains kind of get in the way.

That's when I tell him my plan to dynamite our way through the mountains:

What do you think about blasting a huge tunnel that goes for miles and miles under the Himalaya—and then we can use laser lights to recreate all the murals that were lost on the tunnel’s dark walls for our dear passangers? Wouldn’t it be romantic? They can dine on Cantonese cuisine by candlelight as they watch the evening laser light mural show?  After all, so much has been lost.

Are you in or not, my darling?

I'm in, he says at last. And asks, Where to from Ajanta?

Well, first it's up to Ladakh.

Ladakh? Isn't that a little off the beaten track?

No, not really. For in that remote region, downtown Leh might as well be downtown Manhattan. And everyone loves Manhattan.

Just a few kilometers outside of the town of Leh is-- of course-- the Monastary of Alchi, which has paintings that have almost stained my mind with their dazzlingly rich colors. As I have written in these pages before, sometimes when I close my eyes before sleeping at night--even now all these years later-- I see those colors. And, it was Alchi that first inspired me to dream this dream journey dream from Ajanta to Dunhuang and then all the way across to Horyuji-- traveling on the glorious mural express.

**

I spent some time last year translating two documents for the Oriental Library about two other cave temple sites along the Silk Road: Bezeklik and Kizil. As I looked at photos from the sites, I become dazed like a pilgrim-- nearly blinded by the beauty of the Flaming Mountains and and the seering noonday sun of the desert, I imagine stepping into a darkened cave temple, and there I find myself in another dimension-- a place of pilgramage.

This from my translation:

The architecture follows an iconographic programme, functioning as the stage for the carrying out of a Buddhist pilgrimage. device for this procedure. Entering  the cave, the pilgrim   first contemplates the past lives of the Buddha as he or she passes along murals depicting scenes from these past lives. The pilgrim would next circumambulate the corridor moving in a clockwise fashion. Along the back walls, the pilgrim would view scenes Sakyamuni’s nirvana scene and in order to contemplate his or her own existence...

Like falling in love; like mountains of the mind; indeed, like all pilgramages-- this is an imaginary possession achieved via the colloboration between physical form and human imagination; a dream journey that occurs at precisely that disjuncture between the real and the imagined. Pilgramage. I wonder if this is not yet another essential human practice on the decline (an endangered species?) Pilgramage being of particular significance since it is both practiced collectively together with others and serves to connect inner and outer understanding.

 

Recently, I listened to an old TED Talk lecture with Matthieu Ricard, on his book the Habits of Happiness. In the lecture, Ricard talks about the Buddhist idea of a pebble being tossed about on the waves on the ocean. Most of us exist in such a state that like a pebble being tossed about in the water, our state of mind is so dependent on outside forces that we are happy when things are going well and then crash when bad things happens. The Buddhists tell us to combat this doomed way of being, we need to cultivate our inner serenity, inner freedom, and confidence through what Ricard calls mind training (ie meditation). For it is mind that "translates" all our outer experiences into inner meaning, he says. As a translator myself, this image of mind "translating" experiences into meaning speaks to me very strongly. Ricard urges us to think about how illusory our control inevitably is over outer circumstances. And indeed we meet people all the time who have everything in the world and yet remain unhappy. And vice versa, those suffering great adversity who seem strangely quite happy.

In the end, I think just as Ricard says, it all comes down to working to cultivate practices and habits which will enrich us by forming and strengthening what is an underlying ethical-aesthetic sensibility-- for it is that which will help us to flourish and feel serenity. Ricard talks of meditation while the Dalai Lama speaks above about the "shaping power" of pilgramage. The Dalai Lama's words above recall the project of the Confucian Rites as proper comportment through the cultivation of ethico-aesthetic sensibility, don't you think? I know I am not the only one who wonders what is at stake for the human race when collective and shared practices which have long served to connect inner and outer understanding via the human heart are lost forever (Are we really destined to become McPeople like I fear?).

I like to imagine that the Mural Express will have a special line that travels West to Bamyan, which stands as the ultimate symbol of that which is lost forever and then East all the way to Japan. For what better place than Japan to end up? Beautiful Japan-- land of the Great Antiquinarians, the Japanese have been obsessed with the Silk Road since the 1980s and scholars continue to work to re-create what was lost--in reproductions or in digitalization--in what in itself is an act of pilgrammage.

Favorite writer William Dalrymple on Ajanta: The Greatest Ancient Picture Gallery

Comments

[Penelope]

I include this morsel for you/ just to say
that your Mural Express is mood / has transport/
has adventure. Has nos-tal-gia: Something of a
feeling of the beautiful & sacred. Known/glimpsed/
remembered.

"...candied apple, quince and plum and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrups 'tinct with cinnamon
Manna and dates...
From Fez, and spiced dainties every one,
From, silken Samarkand to cedar'd Lebanon..."

[Mika Jarmusz]

ブログをゆっくり拝見できる時間をなかなか見つけられずにいるのですが、久しぶりに味わわせていただきました。美しいですね。聖なるものへの畏敬の心、失われて久しいもの。宗教や宗派にこだわることなく、普通の感覚で見直していければと改めて感じました。

[Don Croner]

Hey Peony! Check out the Bezeklik Caves!

[peony]

Hi Don,

You know I love those photos you took at Bezeklik! This one, as you know, is my fav

Were you allowed into the caves themselves? I thought those particular caves were not open to public? Well, there is not a lot left, anyway, there I guess. Did you notice the link I have at left for Ryugaku University's digitally reconstructed Bezeklik mural project? It is pretty amazing.

[Don Croner]

I assume the “mysterious and sexy Csomo de Koros” mentioned above is not this Csomo de Koros. Anyhow, some of the Bezeklik caves are, or were, open, but there is very little in them. Some faint outlines of murals, mainly on the ceilings. The rest were destroyed by local iconoclasts and the Red Guards, or removed by Occidental (and maybe Japanese) archeologists. Some of the murals have been preserved in the Indian Art Museum in Dahlem, just outside of Berlin, Germany. Also see the Silk Road Restaurant in Ulaan Baatar. Also, sorry to go off-topic here, but I should call attention to the Tragic Situation of Nomads here in Mongolia.

[peony]

Quite right, the sexy Csomo of my post is a friend who writes about Csomo! Actually, the murals were destroyed in a different way (not by iconoclasts and red guards but the majority were looted by Western/Japanese treasure hunters, with the finest pieces lost in Allied bombing in Berlin. I don't work with Ryudai on their project but work with Toyo Bunko in Japan on their silk road project and the story is far more interesting....I'll upload something for you later... in the meantime, is there a better pcture of that silk road map?? Did the restaurant owner create the map? It is very fetching. And wish you would stop being so elusive on facebook :)
Ciao.

[Don Croner]

My Lovely Peony! Even today you can see where the eyes and sometimes entire faces of some of the figures in the Bezeklik wall paintings were scratched out. This was supposedly done by local iconoclasts who objected to the portrayal of human beings. These paintings, I was told by local people, were not removed by later treasure hunters because they had already been damaged. These same local people told me that Red Guards destroyed much of what the treasure hunters had left. Whether this is true of not I do not know. Admittedly, my local informants were extremely anti-Chinese. In any case, while in the Bezeklik area don’t forget about nearby Gaochang and Toyuq. And on the north side of the Tian Shan there is the formerly very famous Uighur capital of Beshbaliq. As noted, the temple is the photo is supposed to contain excellently preserved murals. When I was there I almost got arrested, since the area was at the time still closed to the public, but the temple was in the process of being restored and now might be open to the public.

[Laura Kelley]

What a beautiful site you have!

Some of the historical stories told are done with such passion and immediacy that you seem to be writing about events you experienced yourself - perhaps this is so, right?

I will post a link to your page on my site.

Thank you,

Laura Kelley,
The Silk Road Gourmet