My Spiritual Journey by The Fourteenth Dalai Lama was one of them, recommended to me by a friend.
I was a little skeptical at first, thinking that this book would be a propagation of Buddhism rather than an account of a journey. Also, he doesn't speak English very well and had an interpreter essentially write the book. So I assumed it was going to have some sort of bias in some way. I was pleased to find out how wrong I was.
This man is really amazing! The life he leads and recounts in this book makes me hopeful for the goodness of society, Western or not. The contents are divided up into parts, then sub parts, as if he and his interpreter sat down for seven days straight or some ungodly amount of time and conducted an interview. These sub parts seem to be his answer to whatever question she may have asked him. The interpreter does put in her two cents as well, though, to help the reader fully understand specific portions of his life. And I can say that they are factual, praising, and as unbias ask I had initially hoped.
What's more, it's not all about his spiritual journey. There are portions about his actual, physical, Dalai Lama journey. My favorite set of sub parts (so far) are when he talks about how he was found and recognized as the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. (Now for those friends who are reading this entry, you get to hear this story twice - I talk about this book all time, it seems.)
When the Thirteenth Dalai Lama passed on at age 57, he was embalmed and prepared for the rituals that were to come, traditional to Tibetan customs. During this process his head was placed as facing South, but the next morning the monks discovered that his head turn to the northeast! They accepted this as a sign, a compass of sorts, to lead them to his reincarnation. They were soon encouraged by a sacred sign found on the waters of Lhamo Lhasto that seemed to point to a monastery in Kumbum, northeast of the Dalai Lama's temples.
While all this was happening, a boy was born in this same town of Kumbum to a poor peasant family. Before this child's birth his father was very ill and had to take to his bed, unable to preform the tasks that he was responsible for. The morning the child was born, however, his father leaped out of his bed as if he had never been sick. After he found out his wife had given birth, he declared that this child should be a monk, as he had sacred powers unlike the other children.
So anyway, the search party of dignitaries are heading down this river in search for the reincarnate Dalai Lama, when they stop at the monastery and find that a boy had been born there a few years before (there's this thing about being able to reincarnate yourself while you're still alive - a transfer of spirit. Just read the book). They take this as another sign and go to the house where the boy is living.
They stay there for the night bringing with them some possessions of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, along with a bunch of impostors. They then perform this test on the boy, laying out the cane of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama along with several other canes. When asked what he thought about these canes, the boy snatches up the Thirteenth Dalai Lama's cane and then scolds the dignitary for stealing his cane. Weird, right?! The same thing happens with a set of Buddhist rosary beads that belonged to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. The boy picked him up right away!
When Tenzin Gyatso (I can't seem to understand if that's his birth name, or the name he received as the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and I'm too lazy to look it up on the Internet at this present moment) was deemed the Fourteenth Dalai Lama he moved into the Dalai Lama's palaces. When he gets there, though, he freaks out and demands that he has his teeth back. A search party sets out and ventures into the private storage rooms where all the belongings of the previous Dalai Lama's are. After a long search, they finally find this old brown box that contained a set of dentures that belonged to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama! FREAKY!
I'm a huge believer in magical things like that. I mean, I cried at the last Harry Potter movie primarily because I had realized that the wizarding world of Harry Potter wasn't actually real. But I digress...
I am infatuated with the buddhist idea that we do not come from a beginning and we do not have an end. We keep on living somehow, somewhere, because we still have tasks that we have not completed in one life and we become destined to finish them in another, not matter how long it takes. For me especially, I feel that with all I want to do and accomplish, that I'll never be done with my life. I need to live on somewhere. And that makes me excited that I don't stop when I die, but find refuge in another body. But, reincarnation has to come with good Karma, which I haven't seem to accumulated.
Which brings me to my next and final point; Buddhism is not all "meditation and leaving worldly goods behind" like we learned in 10th grade history class. Of course those things are components of the religion, but the most important is the desire to find peace. Not only in ourselves but the world. It is to contemplate the virtues of love, compassion, patience, and tolerance. To find beauty in every one. I think meditation and expulsion of worldly goods are just vehicles to these achievements. And that's where the Karma comes in, and ultimately reincarnation, because out desire for goodness has to go on, somewhere.
So maybe I will be reincarnated when I die. I'd like to think so. For now, though, I'll keep Dalai Lama-ing it up.
Until next time.
