Images of Devotion

1.

I am used to being a ¨spiritual¨ person everywhere I go, whatever that word means, but here among Tibetans, I become self-consciously worldly, materialistic.\

2.
When I was five or six, I was taken by an obsession with reciting Heart Sutra. Each recitation would take at least a minute, spoken at a firing-gun speed. At the end of the school day, I often came home and announced to my mom, all excited:

¨Today I recited 50 times¨, or ¨ today I did 108 times¨.

But I always recited by concealing from my classmates, because the Chinese expression ¨recite scriptures 和尚念经¨ sounded like a mock. Besides, according to the textbook, religion was synonymous with superstition.

One or two years later, this Sutra fad petered out --- the unagreeable environment around me fated that.

3.
But here, even the riffraff-looking young men off the street tangle their hands with Buddhist beads, and shuffle one bead for every mantra they recite.

Walking among Tibetans, the Sutra returned to my tongue and lips. They are flapping and crackling just like the fluttering prayer flags of Tibet.

4. A bus ride in Tibet:

I knew this place is unlike everywhere else I have been, just by stepping into the crowded bus where shoulders chafe shoulders, but every pilgrim, or local is chanting, twirling the prayer wheel, or shuffling Buddhist beads with their thumb. The bus turns into a moving ceremonial space buzzing with hypnotising prayers.

Also read:

¨A Whisper¨,One of the most intimate moments in Lhasa with a couple of cloth-makers: http://weiyulin2017.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-whisper.html