The Way and the Mountain by Marco Pallis

Author:Marco Pallis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-933316-53-6
Publisher: World Wisdom

We have chosen to illustrate our theme by a number of examples drawn as if at random from among the various currents, profound or comparatively shallow, which together go to compose the complex stream of Tibetan spirituality. One last illustration now awaits discussion, one that is of quite a different order from the relatively contingent questions that have just been occupying the reader’s attention, since it will point back again into the heart of things, to that Bod hisattva doctrine which is for the whole Tibetan tradition both its source of inspiration and its reservoir of power. Every doctrine, however, as the Mahayanist books are for ever reminding one, over and above its theoretical enunciation, pertaining to aim and direction, requires a corresponding method to render it effective, otherwise it will remain barren of results. Wisdom and Method, so it is said, are inseparable partners; or else they are respectively compared to the eye which discerns the path leading to the promised land and the legs that will carry one thither. Our example in this case pertains to means, for of doctrine enough has been said for present purposes.

The practice about to be described, if briefly, is one which has been a frequent subject of ridicule by foreigners, associated as it also sometimes is with the use of an auxiliary appliance miscalled a “prayer-wheel”, since prayer in its more ordinary sense, does not enter in at all, no idea of petition being implied. The practice in question should properly be described as “invocation” (the Indian “japa”) and consists, as far as its outward expression is concerned, of the continual repetition of a sacred formula, the aim being to pro mote concentration by substituting, in place of irrelevant thoughts and other producers of dissipation, something which, being itself a highly concise symbol of the Knowledge to be realized, is able to serve as a catalyst of that same Knowledge within the heart. The Gospels tell us that when one devil has been expelled from a man, if nothing further is done about it, seven worse devils will enter and take possession of the empty place, which they will find “swept and garnished”. So it is with distracting thoughts; if a man succeeds in mastering one of them, to the point of arresting it for a moment, others will not fail to crowd in its wake, for the human soul when in a state of ordinary consciousness cannot for a moment remain vacant, and if it be not filled with spirituality then the demons of profanity must enter and occupy it. The object of “invocation” therefore is to substitute the symbol, direct objectivation of the Know ledge aimed at, and keep it turning round, as it were, so that no agent of distraction can even for a moment obtain a footing. This is the nearest one can get to an explanation without going off into technical details, but perhaps it is just enough to afford an inkling of that process of which “invocation” is the operative support.

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