From the Elephant's Back (9 page)

He is no less patriotic than the next Greek but he hates bloodshed and faction and he sees that the Cyprus situation can only be settled by a decent compromise. If he had been forced to store arms in the kitchen cupboard it was not the Turks that bothered him so much as his own compatriots. The result of years of intrigue and agitation is now before our eyes to see.

It seems really extraordinary that two small communities, 454,000 Greeks and 106,000 Turks, cannot manage to live in peace in this island paradise. The conflicting claims have often been discussed in a search for a compromise but the real stumbling block is the Greeks' refusal to give up the dream of Enosis, and one of course can quite understand them.

Ethnologically the island is Greek. Aphrodite was washed up in Paphos, and the Cyprus variety of ancient Greek is the oldest known. The majority of inhabitants are Greek and the product of a Greek culture and education. The religion is Orthodox and for the Greeks today it seems unthinkable that union with Greece should not be envisaged even if they have to wait fifty years for it. The Republic of Cyprus temporized on this issue but we have a right to respect the Greek case.

But what of the Turkish? Well, there are no poetical, ethnological, or historic reasons to be invoked by the Turkish position. It is purely strategic and quite straightforward.

The island is too close to Turkey and the Turks would prefer to see it neutralized. Also, the Turks in the island have always claimed that they were being discriminated against. And they have shown a desire to be ruled by something a little more liberal than the Greek-oriented administration. One can respect their point of view, also, remembering that they are Moslems, and that counts for something.

But that this tragic situation should have blown up just at the present moment is terribly unlucky not only for Cyprus but for Greece as a whole, which has just welcomed back the new-old Premier, Constantine Caramanlis,
[7]
whose Government could be easily overturned on an issue as burning as this one. Surely everything must be done to see that he stays in.

He has hardly begun to liberalize the country and restore a true democracy. He is a careful, thoughtful, and forceful man and certainly the wisest Greek politician since Premier Sophocles Venizelos.
[8]
Ironically, too, he is the architect of the Cyprus Republic and the man who created a warm rapprochement with Turkey. Yet here he is also riding the tiger of Enosis.

The talks in Geneva appear to be in deadlock and one senses why, for if the Turks are granted the sort of autonomy in the island which they seek, bang might go to the old dream of Enosis and the man in the street in Athens would take that very hard indeed.

The real problem is to try to do justice to Moslem feelings without wounding or stifling Orthodox ones. If an answer cannot be found, we will have to go back to first base.

Curiously enough the Soviet solution—a return to a republic under Makarios—may be the only one still acceptable to the two factions.

After all, the Turks of Cyprus have had ten years of Makarios's rule and they know he is, when all is said and done, a man of peace, and, of course, he has the enormous prestige of being a religious leader.

If, therefore, no compromise is possible, why not return to the old principle which has worked so far? With Caramanlis at the wheel in Athens one could be sure of a fairly peaceful policy instead of one which inflamed the hotheads of EOKA in this astonishingly unlucky island.

The republic has, after all, worked once. Under Makarios it might work again, and we must not forget that the Republic of Cyprus was stable owing to the fact of banking in the City of London, and it would be a pity to throw everything overboard unless one found a better solution to a hedgehog of a problem.

Lamas in a French Forest

1984

WHEN THE HOLY MEN FLED
from Tibet in 1950 they sought to follow their Buddhist faith in the west. Some of them found a home in a strange monastery in Burgundy. This is their story.

Just before winter sets in I like to indulge in a journey, a ramble with a friend about an unfamiliar corner of France. It is usually the end of October—the first skirls of snow have settled in the mountains and the first winter thunderstorms have come and gone. The tourists have fled, but there are often spells of good weather until Christmas. Though the little hotels are empty, the food is still ambrosial—after all, this is France.

It was on one of these rambles, a few years ago, that I discovered the Château de Plaige, a Buddhist centre in the heart of the Morvan mountains, near Dijon. It was the oddest happening. Only that afternoon we had been talking about the poetry of Mila Repa,
[1]
the Tibetan hermit-poet. Suddenly we were riveted by the unmistakable sight of a couple of lamas walking down a country road in the snow laughing their heads off. There was no sign of any habitation—it was as if they had been dropped from the clouds.

Bemused, we stopped to talk to them, finding to our relief that one of them spoke French. He pointed towards the deeper woods, indicating where the château they had come from lay hidden. Obviously thinking that we sought instruction, he urged us to go there and we obeyed without a word.

It was rather an odd château, more like an overgrown seventeenth-century manor house which had had funny conical towers added to it at the start of this century—altogether whimsical and appropriate to its present use. Beside it stood a great white stupa, or Buddhist statue, looking rather like a hippopotamus at its prayers.

A symbol of the so-called “awakened state,” it is a strange emblem of a faraway land to find in the misty vales and woods of Morvan.

We were received courteously and invited to participate in a short service. Then, over tea and sweet cakes, the forty-two-year-old Tibetan in charge of the monastery, Lama Sherab, answered our questions. He explained that the version of Buddhism expounded at Plaige was derived from the inspiration of none other than Mila Repa himself. It seemed a lucky omen and it made my first contact with Plaige a memorable one.

Until the fall of Tibet, Buddhism was a plant of slow growth in the west, though there was much sympathy with the oriental point of view and it had been given some intellectual respectability by famous writers such as Aldous Huxley and Somerset Maugham.
[2]
But the Chinese invasion of Tibet produced a radical change, something like the fall of Constantinople:
[3]
for the holy men and the priests were forced to fly into India, taking with them the jealously guarded holy texts of their faith. Suddenly we found ourselves overwhelmed not only by the documents (it would have taken us another 200 or 300 years to get our hands upon all this important documentation), but by the very presence of the religious leaders themselves. New centres and agencies for the study and practice of Buddhism sprang up of which several hundred are listed in the directory of the London Buddhist journal,
The Middle Way
.
[4]

Plaige was bought in 1974 by Buddhist adherents and was among the first of these new institutions. It was offered as a teaching centre to the Venerable Kalou Rinpotché,
[5]
a renamed master of higher insight. He named it Kagu-Ling and dedicated it to the central work of his life and creed. Plaige was to be a centre of repose, study, and meditation, and Kalou Rinpotché proposed to run it on exactly the same lines as the larger seminary over which he now presides in Darjeeling.

The abbot, now over eighty, visits Plaige several times a year and is always on hand during the principal ceremonies. But the day-to-day running is confided to three of his most cherished and trusted lamas, among whom the expansive and jovial Lama Sherab rules, because of the excellent knowledge of French he has acquired after ten years in the country.

As the establishment has gradually expanded over the years, a whole cluster of little chalets has grown up in the surrounding woods. The château offers its novices the means to practise the tough withdrawal period of initiation which lasts three years, three months, and three days.

Accommodation at Plaige is limited to about thirty resident lamas and novices, but people often come and lodge in the village to spend a few days of study and meditation at the centre.

A Tibetan lamasery encourages visitors even if they do not attend services; in Plaige many local people like to have picnics with their children in the grounds. In fact anybody can just arrive at the château and ask for instruction—there are courses dealing with every stage of Buddhist realisation, classes in yoga and meditation, and even simple language courses in Tibetan. But the religious services, also open to all, are the most important part.

A similar Buddhist centre, called Kagyu Samyé Ling, presided over by the same teachers, exists in Dumfriesshire in Scotland. The two communities keep in close touch, despite the language difference, and British novices often do a stint at the French centre.

On my first visit, Plaige, like other Buddhist centres, was suffering from lack of space. According to Lama Sherab the plan was to build a temple as a centre of assembly and welcome, a chapter house and a lecture hall.

“Plaige is growing out of its limits,” he said. “The temple is the pet notion of our spiritual master, Kalou Rinpotché, who has been dreaming about it for some time.” And Lama Sherab added: “Whatever he dreams up there in Darjeeling tends to come true, either here or in Scotland.”

More than a year later Lama Sherab appeared on my doorstep in Provence in the depths of winter. He had come to ask me if I would consider helping to raise funds for the temple. The basic structural work had been done but they had run out of funds to complete the project.

I agreed and formed a small committee with my brother Gerald and two French writers.
[6]
Together we plotted a few fund-raising gambits, the most successful being our lotus wall inside the temple itself: each person who gave money was encouraged to plant a lotus leaf or flower which would bear the name of a loved one.

Last autumn I returned to Plaige to see what progress had been made on the temple. The chosen design was the inspiration of the Abbot: an exact copy of the Temple of Samyé, the first Buddhist temple to be built in Tibet during the eighth century. All the heavy construction work on the building was complete, but the decoration and colour still had to be added. It stood there looking rather forlorn but so eloquent—like the skeleton of some prehistoric animal.

My visit coincided with a three-day “coming-out” party for twenty new Western lamas, ten women and ten men; their initiation was complete and they were due to emerge the next day. The ceremonies were being attended by lamas from several countries, including the United States and the UK. Kalou Rinpotché was there for the occasion. Though at first he seemed very old and as frail as a gnat, the energy which poured out of him was closer to that of a vivid little dragonfly. He hardly seemed to breathe; he never gestured. But he was everywhere, and so was his compassionate smile of welcome, so typically Tibetan.

There was a distinctly festive air: friends and relations had come to greet the novices and swap the traditional white scarves of congratulation. Lama Sherab was quite adamant that the three-year incubation period was not too long. “It's not long enough to make either a surgeon or a violinist. It's simply the initial contact with all the muddle and mix up and distortion of the psyche. But it's the first grasp or inkling. If successful then it's a point of departure out of which one can develop a new sort of life-pattern.”

Nevertheless, toughness and resolution are essential qualities for the novice. Another young Buddhist felt that three years was just the right length of time. “It's decisive, why don't you try it?” he said. The Tibetans themselves obviously do not think the retreat is onerous. The pamphlet which describes the activities of the château refers to it as “delicious.” But it also emphasises that Buddhism takes work, effort, and diligence.

At the ceremony, as well as a few French boys and girls who had taken the plunge into the Dharmic life, there were two couples, one American and one Canadian, and an English lama called Alasdair MacGeach. Having done welfare work, chiefly in India among the poorest communities, he saw this European retreat as a refresher course, a welcome breath of air after the torrid heats of India. Soon he would be returning there, after a short visit to England. The Canadian couple described with warmth and humour the sacrifices they had made to pay their way and become members of the little community—no job had been too humble for them to take on if it answered their purpose.

The scene in the forest in the early morning was strange and moving. The initiates emerged pale and exhausted from their long vigils, to be greeted by the roaring and blaring of Tibetan horns, the gnashing of gongs—a strange barbaric orchestra of salutation to be heard in a French forest at the crack of dawn. Then followed the ceremonial procession round the grounds of the château and the religious offices in the old shrine room which marked the re-entry of the novices into the ordinary world. Some were to stay on at the château; others were to travel or work elsewhere. The celebratory air of these Buddhist services was striking—there seemed nothing penitential or gloom-laden about them. It was as if the spectre of original sin had been laid to rest.

Perhaps the feeling of ease and ampleness about Plaige was due to the Tibetan view of reality with its accompanying belief in human reincarnation: what you cannot achieve in this life you can attend to in the next.

The Karmarpa, one of the great Tibetan doctors of divinity who had a share in the founding and expanding the work of Plaige, had recently died.

In discussing the loss with Lama Sherab I was told that before his death the Karmarpa had left the most precise instructions as to where and when he would be reborn. I supposed it would be a generation or more before this happened. “Not at all,” said the lama. “In a couple of years or so. With so much to be done, why waste time?”