Chapter 1 The Foundations of Prayer The story of prayer is the story of the impossible: of how we creatures of flesh and blood lay siege to heaven, speak to the Maker of all things, and await, with confidence or hopeful skepticism, a response. The story of prayer, like that of all treasure sought through the centuries, is rich in myth and dream, revelation and tragedy, secret maps and elusive clues. Here the absurd and the sublime sit side by side, while the fantastic and the banal merge. Consider the following: A dear friend of ours, a native Tibetan, returned last month from a visit to his homeland in the high plateau region of Gelok, far east of Lhasa. Dechen arrived in Massachusetts haggard but smiling, red Tibetan mud still clinging to his yellow Gore-Tex jacket, bearing with him harrowing tales of vicious customs officials, of torrential rains and deadly mudslides, of uncharted mountain passes and hidden valleys thick with wildflowers. At a welcome-home dinner, he and his wife set up a projector, and we spent the next few hours poring over his slides. Everyone marveled at the herds of Tibetan yaks, their shaggy coats and gracile horns so reminiscent of the prehistoric beasts in the Lascaux caves; at the crowds of Buddhist monks lighting bonfires or blowing impossibly long horns, looking for all the world like Lascaux shepherds transported to a Himalayan castle in the clouds. This was the Tibet of legend, far from the tourist hotels of Dharamsala, an area until recently forbidden to outsiders and still unvisited by television, pollution, and indoor plumbing. Bringing out an atlas, we asked Dechen to trace his journey. His finger landed on a bare white area as large as Massachusetts, a true terra incognita at the dawn of the third millennium. It reminded us of Victorian maps of sub-Saharan Africa, of ancient mariners sailing off the edge of the world. "No one goes there," Dechen said. "Too difficult. Too far." No one, that is, except a handful of Chinese soldiers and bureaucrats, who have done their best over the past quarter of a century to suppress one of the worlds great religions. Only in the past few years have the monasteries been rebuilt in a curious Sino-Tibetan architectural idiom whose bright pastels and wedding-cake faades threaten to create a new form of Buddhist kitsch. One photograph in particular caught our fancy, for it seemed to capture best the spirit of these eastern Tibetans. It depicted a wooden framework, looming above the tallest monk (and the Tibetans are a tall people), and consisting of two massive uprights of rough-hewn lumber supporting four long crossbars. Upon each crossbar stood nine or ten prayer wheels, each containing a bit of paper inscribed with the traditional Buddhist prayer om mani padme hm (Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus). As the wind blows down the mountainside, each wheel spins madly, and the mantra is flung into the universe like a message in a bottle, drifting on celestial curr Excerpted from Prayer: A History by Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
