Designed Sacred Landscapes: A Study of Pretapuri in Western Tibet
In 1993, I was awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to study the designed sacred landscape of Pretapuri. Located in the Mt. Kailas - Lake Manasarovar region of Western Tibet, Pretapuri is one of the twenty-four sacred sites in Tibetan cosmology. The objectives of this project were two-fold:
1) Explore the significance of the designed sacred landscape in Tibetan Buddhist culture by focusing on the characteristics and qualities of Pretapuri, and the nature and extent of human intervention in the setting of stones; and
2) More broadly document the development of the meditation garden within a comprehensive historical context; and the role of Tibet in this development.
Following is the brief presentation made of this research at the American Society of Landscape Architects Annual Meeting (1996), University of Cincinnati 'Making Sacred Places Conference' (1997), and UNESCO 'Natural Sacred Sites Conference' (1998).
There are special landscapes in the world to which people travel on pilgrimage. They undergo great difficulties and put aside dangers to receive the blessings of places that, with their magical and mysterious qualities, captivate and move the mind to a condition of increased awareness - places that open up the heart and energize within feelings and beliefs associated with the spiritual dimensions of life.
The sacred landscapes surrounding Mt. Kailas in Western Tibet reverberate in the hearts of a half billion Buddhists and Hindus throughout the world. These places of pilgrimage are held sacred owing to the unique features appearing in the natural formations of the earth, waters and skies, and the energies that emanate from the presence of the revered sages who once taught and meditated at these spots. These landscape features are considered the embodiment of the spirits themselves, the deities as recognizable natural forces; and through the presence of pilgrims they are modified by design as artistic expressions of spiritual practices and philosophical views used in quests to become peaceful with themselves and the surrounding world. The study of the features and characteristics of these designed sacred landscapes was the basis for my being awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
The idea that the designed sacred landscapes of Tibet potentially hold a significant position in the evolution of the meditation garden unfolded when I discovered David Slawson's translation of a 15th century Japanese text on garden design, Illustrations for Designing Mountain, Water and Hillside Field Landscapes. Compiled by Zoen, Shingon Buddhist priest and garden-maker at the temple of Ninna-ji in Kyoto, it states that:
The art of setting stones in the landscape garden originated (in India) at the lake called Manasarovar where rocks numbering 8,631 were set, with each of the Eight Dragon Kings in charge of more than 1000 rocks....
Before traveling to Tibet, it was necessary to find documents of this sacred landscape on the Tibetan Plateau and ascertain how and when, if at all, any design transmission to Japan would have taken place. To begin with, I found no scriptural nor historical records of setting stones in the landscape around Lake Manasarovar to which the garden-maker Zoen could have referred. Nor did the landscape architects in Kyoto with whom I spoke believe that there was any such landscape to which Zoen could point for inspiration.
The general opinion was that he used this reference, not for historical authenticity, rather than to lend an aura of credibility to the main body of his work. By referring to the origins of Buddhism in the same breath as his reference to the origins for setting stones in the landscape garden, it would help to validate the truth and value of his text. So, while this requires more investigation, there is no question that I was surrounded by stones set upright in the landscape around Lake Manasarovar.
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Mt. Kailas and Lake Manasarovar embody the center of the Buddhist cosmological universe. Mt. Kailas is the expression of Mt. Meru and Lake Manasarovar that of Anavatapta, The Lake Without Heat or Difficulties. The Abhidharma, the Buddhist Compendium of Knowledge, says that through the play of emptiness, in dependence upon the collective karma of all sentient beings, a great circle of waters appeared on which rested a Sphere of Gold and the Nine Great Mountains.
In the centre - Mount Meru: its four faces of gold, silver, lapis and crystal; and the waters of Anavatapta, endowed with eight magical qualities. It is said that the Ganga River poured from the heavens onto Mt. Meru and flowed to Anavatapta, where it circled the holy mountain and lake seven times. From Anavatapta, the Ganga split into the Four Great Rivers, and flowed in the direction of the four cardinal directions.
Surrounding the centre are the twenty-four sacred sites recognized in Tibetan Buddhist systems of practice. There are eight sacred sites of the skywalkers, eight sacred sites of the walkers on earth, and eight sacred sites of the underground walkers. This composition of twenty-four sites is part of the mandala of the Buddhist deity Chakrasamvara, an expression, perceived through the awakened mind of enlightened beings as a landscape purified of all obstacles and hindrances.
Chakrasamvara resides at the peak of Mount Kailas with consort Vajravarahi, as physical expressions of the complete purification of consciousness. Located thirty miles west of Mt. Kailas and Lake Manasarovar in Western Tibet, Pretapuri is one of the eight underground sites and represents the first spoke of the wheel of the body mandala of Chakrasamvara.
I focused my research on Pretapuri following the description by my teacher, Zasep Rinpoche, of his pilgrimage to this place in 1959 and the possibility that here may be the missing link in this historical tapestry. The Old Guide Books say that pilgrims must visit Pretapuri in order to completely fulfill the holy pilgrimage to Mt. Kailas. They also say not to be deceived by appearances. Question everything you see … and a few good games of billiards wouldn't hurt to lighten up the mind ... there at the central market square of Misar, the nearest settlement to Pretapuri.
Pretapuri has the same essence as Mt. Kailas, deriving its power from the embodiment of wisdom, the Great Mother Vajravarahi. It is considered the gathering place of all the wisdom deities of the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon, whose presence is expressed within the stones invested with their symbolism and significance. They say that pilgrims can naturally hear the source of the mantras all the time, and will attain enlightenment just by going to this place.
These guidebooks use three layers of discourse to present the characteristics and features of Pretapuri. These are called the external explanations, internal explanations and secret explanations. I used these explanations as a basis for exploring this designed sacred landscape. Some aspects of the landscape appeared to be rich in external features. Other aspects appeared to depend more on the richness of the internal explanations, so a minimal degree of human-modified design was visually apparent.
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The external explanations present, in cultural terms familiar to Tibetan people, the physical descriptions of the site by referring to topography, geology, hydrology, soils, flora and fauna. These explanations are artistic expressions that embrace a basic landscape architecture design vocabulary through the subtleties of spirit, space, wind, movement, position, interaction, life and death. In describing the surrounding features of Pretapuri, the Old Guide Books use geomantic terms similar to those used in the Chinese divination techniques of feng-shui:
Now I will explain, the books say, if you wish to know, about the outside of this place: the four directions and the beauty and the many amazing things about this place. It has all types of great wonders.
The Tiger on the East is the mountain on the east, which has stripes on it with many colors. The Blue Dragon on the South is actually the Great River called 'Coming Out From the Elephant Mouth.' The Red Bird on the West is the Big Red Rock. The end of the Big Red Rock goes into the Great River. The Yellow Turtle of the North is the mountain behind the monastery.
Surrounding Pretapuri the land rises in a series of remnant riverbeds and alluvial terraces of the ancient Sutlej River, developed under the semi-arid conditions typically found north of the Himalayan mountain chain. Underlain by layers of sedimentary rock deposited 200 million years ago as water-laid particles in the Tethys Sea, the Tibetan region was uplifted by the collision of the Indian and Asian continents, contributing to two natural phenomena: the annual monsoon rains, north-bound winds rich with moisture absorbed from the Indian Ocean; and the relative isolation of the Tibetan Plateau from these rains.
Western Tibet became a high alpine desert; consequently, the half-meter high native juniper shrubs are the tallest and dominant species of the region, only sporadically covering the hills. They are referred to as the dama bush, used by Tibetans primarily for firewood; by western travelers, as a place to retreat when a toilet is needed.
Upon the broadest of the four terraces on the north side of the river sit the major part of the Pretapuri monastery: buildings, shrines, caves and sacred stones, originally founded here as a temple and given its name in the mid-eleventh century by the great Indian Buddhist scholar Atisha, who came to Tibet to help the revival of Buddhism.
The monastery is the most dominant structure on the terrace. Constructed in front of the monastery is a recently constructed mani wall 800 feet long and covered with stones carved with mantras and seed syllables. It is oriented 100 degrees on the compass. Towards the southwest it points to the sacred mountain Nanda Devi in India, which can be seen on a clear day 120 miles away, while to the northeast it points directly towards Mt. Kailas.
The terrace is tied to a corresponding terrace at the same elevation on the opposite side of the Sutlej River with three sets of ropes of multi-colored prayer flags. These help to restore the subtle energies carried along the discontinuous ridge severed by the river valley and maintain some continuity of earth energies.
The Sutlej River flows at the base of Pretapuri. The Sutlej is one of the four major rivers emanating from the vicinity of Lake Manasarovar. It is called Langchen Khambab, 'the river that issues from the elephant's mouth.' From its source, the Sutlej River meanders through a narrow valley into an amphitheater at Pretapuri, where it rapidly flows through a narrow gorge and explodes into a majestic valley two miles across.
The Japanese monk Ekai Kawaguchi wrote in 1909 that the location of Pretapuri on the Sutlej River constitutes one of nature's best essays on landscape, and I found that the siting of Pretapuri is incontestably dramatic. It amplifies the importance of the particular landscapes where notable teachers and realized individuals chose to undertake meditation retreats for long periods of time, and where disciples chose to construct temples, shrines, and stupas in which to strengthen their connection to these places.
This is a topographic and geologic transition zone: a margin between two ecological systems; an ecotone, a transition between biotic communities; a tangential between two coexisting spheres of drama, chapters in geological history; a point in the landscape defining the positioning and relationship of landscape formations within their environmental context - where they meet and speak with one another.
Where mountain edge meets the level plains; where rock outcrops hang over valley; where river flows over boulder and embankment and cuts through a narrow gorge; where the structure of rock strata deforms in recumbent folds; at the point where winds rise above the windward side of a hill and begin to fall over the leeward.
These places dramatically reveal the essence of the operations of the natural process, and the active movement of subtle energies riding through the earth, in the waters and on the winds … they express the natural qualities and features that underlie the designed sacred landscape; meeting grounds where people have opportunity to clearly sense the impact of the landscape - the place to which all sentient beings are drawn for spiritual renewal -
Where sensitivity to motion is enhanced by meeting with rest …
Where sensitivity to height is heightened by meeting with deepening of depth …
Where sensitivity to rising is raised by meeting with falling …
Where sensitivity to features of solidity is strengthened by meeting factors of softness …
Where life forms associated with female principles are broadened
by meeting with life forms associated with male principles ...
Where dry meets wet … and heat meets cold …
Where space meets form …
Where growth and life meet decay and death
These are the transactional grounds where pilgrims make sacred pacts with the deities - charging the atmosphere with the power of those pacts,
absorbing the energy of the landscape, breathing it -
and as it flows through their veins, strike chords in their hearts to make them sing.
In their song, pilgrims reconstitute both themselves and the sacred landscape with a design defining spaces and objects in space, in a design vocabulary reflecting people, places, spirits and deities, providing a focus for spiritual aspiration. This focus offers clues to the artistic expressions produced by the fully awakened mind, and opens up the heart to the internal explanations and the most subtle secret explanations of Pretapuri.
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The internal explanations of Pretapuri present the stories and legends that took place as a result of having been designated and invested with the more subtle attributes to which pilgrims earnestly give respect and devotion accorded to a sacred landscape. These are the tales associated with the famous teachers who lived there, the deities who made their appearance and the physical phenomena seen as a result of their presence.
Pilgrims first gave this place the name Tirthapuri, which means the place of pilgrimage on the sacred river. It also became known as Pretapuri, the city of beings who have taken rebirth as wandering hungry ghosts - always hungry because their bellies are so large and their throats are so small.
Always wandering looking for sustenance, a small number of pretas manage to rise from the hot springs and along the fault line at the base of the escarpment. They come with the barest hope of receiving the sacred power of the blessings from the deities who are found there and from the pilgrims who have come to make offerings. When the Tibetan scholar Giuseppe Tucci visited Pretapuri he wrote:
The fantasy of pilgrims gave a name at every one of those springs: every rock has a legend; each piece of ground requires prostrations. The ground is consecrated to the divinities. You must be very careful with what you do and how you do it; occult forces are found everywhere and deities are ready to appear from the ground.
Pilgrims develop a medium by which to communicate with deities. Deities recognize the value that people place in the unique qualities of the sacred landscape, and appear in ways that people can identify and respond to them. Through the force of their ability to influence the operations of nature, deities modify the features of the landscape, bringing into being the potential for people to see them; through the clairvoyance of highly realized teachers, people see spirits in the rocks, mountains, waters and the air. The karmic connections between pilgrims who seek them out, and the deities whom are sought become well established.
Scattered among the groups of shrines and low walls that form the most dominant feature of human activity are the stones identified as the rang-jin, 'self-appeared images,' soft fine-grained sandstone or calcium carbonate remnants of the mountain eroded by the action of wind-borne sand. These images appear in every landscape feature on the grounds, on the rocks and in the cliffs, so many that I could not sketch them anymore. You can see them very clearly -
The lion-faced dakini, overlooking the landscape, protects the escarpment where the rock gorge opens to the majestic valley.
Eight images of Padmasambhava - there is a story of how the first teacher of Buddhism in Tibet came to Pretapuri to pacify the female cannibal spirit. Seeing her trying to escape, he ran and caught her only to see her consciousness dissolve into a rock. Grabbing her, she again escaped to the Naga Land below; and through the hole you can still hear sounds from the Naga Land.
The self-appeared image of Mt. Kailas
The self-appeared image of garuda from which pilgrims take the sacred healing powder
The housefly dakini
The dissected and eroded calcium carbonate hillside
George Lucas must have been inspired here to create Jabbar the Hutt for Star Wars
Small stone caves evoking the practice caves of the teachers who meditated here
Hiking in the midst, questions arise: Were these the stones to which the Japanese author Zoen referred in his text on garden-making? Was this the elusive link to the gardens of Japan that so inspired him? I don't have sufficient evidence to confirm it. My sense is that, if anything, his inspiration may have been derived from a deepening awareness of the more subtle vehicles of the esoteric mandala brought to Japan.
The mandala would have been derived from the secret explanations, the most subtle visualizations and activities of the Vajrayana Buddhist practitioner, which result in the eventual cultivation of the awakened mind and the designed sacred landscape as the artistic expression of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Pretapuri here arises as the purified environment of the deity, produced through the power of the forces of the six perfections: giving, ethics, patience, effort, concentration and wisdom. In this way, Pretapuri is a medium for the pilgrims' devotional practices, and helps provide the causes for attaining enlightenment. It is a landscape sited and designed as an integral component of the spiritual teachings, providing the basis for opening up the heart.
To the mind of the Buddhist, the deities recognize the values that pilgrims place in the unique qualities of the landscape and they appear in ways to which disciples can relate and understand. The rocks in the landscape have the energy and blessings of the deities, consecrated by the great teachers. For Buddhists, these deities are present all the time. For those who believe in their presence, they can be seen as clearly as you and I. This gives them great encouragement and inspiration.
This is all I will say for now. Perhaps you sense that this project was inspirational for me as a pilgrimage as it was significant for research. I'll conclude with a paragraph from Lama Govinda's Way of the White Cloud, which reverberates very deeply in my heart:
And while the pilgrim touches the holy ground with his forehead and adds a few more stones to those heaped up by previous pilgrims, in token of their devotion and happiness to have been granted the realization of their life's dreams, there is only one prayer in his mind: 'May I never forget it! May I ever be able to keep this realization alive within me!'
5:2006