The Prospect of Terma?
What a difference a month makes! Not long ago we were reeling from storm-caused damage; now that same storm seems to have presented us with both mystery and adventure!
Probably due to the torrential rain, a section of the facade of the mountainous cliffs to our northeast has collapsed revealing numerous cave entrances. Our village has decided to mount an exploration expedition and Anil and I have decided to go along.
Anil is wildly excited; what 12-year-old boy would not be? He is peppering me hourly with questions on all manner of cave trivia and I’ve had to do some research to satisfy him. I thought you’d be interested in the answers to some of his steady stream of Who, What, When, Where, How and, most important of all, Why.
How… are we going to pull this off?
The approach to the caves will likely be a struggle. They are high on the cliff so we’ll need ropes and other climbing equipment and provisions. The climb itself is likely to be extremely dangerous; the cliff face is probably unstable and may crumble. Before departure, we will make the usual ritual offerings to our protector gods, hang some prayer flags and scatter more to the wind. I’m hoping Becky, the ritualist who has agreed to come along, will chant during our ascent as well.
Getting up will only be half the battle. If the caves turns out to contain anything of importance, we will have to devise a system of lowering objects down via rope for cleaning and cataloging.
When… were the caves built?
The mountains of Tibet and Nepal hold tens of thousands of caves some as recent as 500 years old, some dating back millennia. Scholars hypothesize that the older caves had different uses than the more recent ones. Three thousand years ago, they were probably burial sites; 1000 years ago they might have been dwellings complete with kitchens, bedrooms, shrines and storerooms. By the 1400s, they were likely used for meditative retreat or for military purposes such as lookout posts or refuges from attack.
Who… built the caves?
This is one of the best parts of the mystery: nobody really knows who dug the caves, or why, or how they got up there to do it. Really old caves were probably built by practitioners of Bon, Tibet’s native cultural and spiritual tradition. But as Bon was gradually integrated into and subsumed by the Indian Buddhist practices that moved into Tibet around the 8th century, more recent caves could contain relics or artifacts from either tradition.
What… are we likely to find?
As there appear to be a series of entrances, we may actually discover a complex of caves rather than isolated ones. I have read about complexes 10 levels high with 15 rooms on each level connected by corridors and vertical shafts — a veritable rabbit warren for Anil to get lost in! What excites him most is the prospect of ‘secret’ rooms. When the ‘Library Cave’ was discovered in the cave complex at Dunhuang in 1900, it was crammed floor to ceiling with precious items like the manuscript below.
Fifty years ago, our village made a similar but much smaller discovery in the same area as these new caves. We could very well again uncover important sutra and tantra texts, silk paintings, murals, beads and other adornments for the dead, or even household items such as teacups, cauldrons or mirrors. Anil has visions of piles of gold. But as we’re off the old Silk Road or salt trade routes, any pile will likely be small. I hope he isn’t too disappointed if we find some old takin horns instead!
Why… is it important that we go?
If we do find any artifacts, gold will probably be the least significant of them. The recent discovery of a trove of Bon manuscripts in Mustang, Nepal, led to a major rethink of the Bon tradition. Whereas beforehand Bon was believed to be a mostly oral tradition with only limited instruction about the path to liberation, some of the Mustang sutras contained teachings on the pāramitās and compassion — clear evidence of ultimate teachings within Bon. Unfortunately looters had already removed the valuable title pages painted with silver and gold from these manuscripts, another reason we should lose no time in getting our expedition underway.
Looters can come in multiple guises too. I understand that the discovery of the Library Cave became an “archeological free-for all” with French, Japanese, Russian and American teams taking turns cherry-picking the items of the highest historical value. As this preceded the establishment of international treaties protecting cultural heritage, these items are now in places like the British Museum where they are probably lost to Tibet forever. This is our heritage; wouldn’t it be wonderful if any discoveries we make could be housed in a museum right in our village?
I’ve saved the most important ‘why’ for last. Maybe, just maybe, we will find a sutra or tantra that has never been seen before, an original teaching! It is known that Padmasambhava and other adepts hid teachings to be discovered in the future. These terma, as we call them, are meant to be revealed when people are ready to receive or understand them. If those caves house terma, our village will never be the same.
