MIRACLE IN MONDGOD?

As you're anxiously awaiting the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, you might want to consider what's been happening at the Drepung Loseling Monastery in Mondgod, South India.  (Drepung Loseling is currently the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the world, named for its famous predecessor in Tibet.) 

The first thing you need to know is that the Gaden Tripa (holder of the Ganden throne) is the title of the spiritual leader of the Gelugpa order of Tibetan Buddhism (the Dalai Lama is the temporal leader of the Gelugpas, and hence is of a higher order politically,  and hence, more visible in the public eye, but a notch below the Gaden Tripa in spiritual terms.)  Because the position is not an incarnation, but an office awarded both by reputation and examination, and because they serve for set terms, there have been many more of Gaden Tripas than Dalai Lamas.  The current holder is the 101st in the line.

The second thing you need to know is that the 100th Gaden Tripa, Lobsang Nyima, died on September 14 of this year.  Except that he didn't.  Not exactly.  He entered on that day a state of advanced meditation known as thukdam in the Tibetan tradition.  It is during this state that advanced meditators, accomplished practitioners who have, in effect, practiced dying for years, are able to meditate on the "clear light stage," and oversee the dissolution of mind and body as they prepare for their next incarnation. 

And here's where things get interesting from the Western perspective.  In South India, with its substantial humidity and, at best, temperate climate, Lobsang Nyima's body remained pliable and undecayed for 18 days as he practiced his meditative exercises.  Of course, from the Western perspective, he died on September 14--no observable heart beat, no observable respiration, no ocular activity.  But no decay, no odor, no slumping, no rigor mortis.  For 18 days.  There's the rub.

Personally, I have little trouble accepting thukdam as a spiritual fact, a phenomenon that's still in the cue of Facts To Be Proven Within the Narrow Spectrum of Western Empiricism.  Also, I met Lobsang Nyima in May, 2007, when he was very old and somewhat ill; he was an extraordinary person, and that was apparent even to me, with my set of dull Western receptors. 

Lobsang Nyima's thukdam has caused quite a stir within the monastic community at Drepung Loseling Monastery, and Geshe Dorjee, here in Fayetteville has kept me informed of its progress over the past three weeks.  (Nyima was one of Geshe Dorjee's teachers, and always spoke of him with that deepest fondness that Tibetans reserve solely for their most influential teachers.) 

Various doctors, of course, have congregated around Lobsang Nyima recently, briefs are being written, and you can read a fuller report here.  For more on this particular holder of the throne, click here.

Finally--while Tibetans are deeply impressed by this accomplishment, they don't view it as a miracle, by any stretch of the imagination.  It's closer to how we view Gebreselassie's latest world record in the marathon--a feat reserved for the few, one that demands enormous discipline and ability, but one that is clearly within the realm of our fundamental potential.  Inspiring, in a word.

There's a big difference between the unreachable miraculous and the achievable inspiring.  Let's concentrate on the latter, as we anticipate the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.