The Center for Central Asian Literatures in Translation

THIS IS WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THE MAGIC OF BOOKS

WORDS AND MANTRA

I remember there were two pills, I don't know who gave them to my father.  They said that these precious objects, which had been placed in the offering scarf and in the ritual urn, were tantric pills.  I asked father about these pills, the days and months passed by, and the interest I felt on that day had slipped my mind.  One day, father took out the urn and undid the offering scarf, the pills had greatly multiplied.  It wasn't a seed from a plant, so it hadn't been planted in the earth and yet it had generated, and that was a real surprise.  Father said,

"They have been blessed by many millions and thousands of millions of mantras.  This is what gives them their power."

"What's a mantra?" I asked him.  He replied,

"Words."

The magic of words had increased two pills to twenty or thirty but at that time I couldn't understand the explanation.  I'm thinking that, while later I got the idea of sparking endless meanings from two words in an alembic, in my youth I felt that I had no need to find the key to unlock the box of inexplicable secrets.

There is a depression in the Tufted Sands known as the Hollow Hand.  The light reflects off the standard of gold upon the peak of Golden Hill and strikes the Hollow Hand.  The monks living there love their life of good fortune, which has greatly increased with the magical pills and which averts disaster.

The magically multiplying pills, whose tantric power the monks had discovered, were passed around and two came into father's possession.  And later he explained them and showed me their generative power, how it was unlimited.  Words such as those which enchanted the pills glowed in my heart, their meaning resounded, and I came upon the blessing which brought forth the trembling, the happiness and sadness, and the mental strength through which it is made manifest to others.

In the shining rays of Golden Hill, I scatter an offering of milk, the blessing  have spoken is upon my son wherever he goes, upon the stirrups as he journeys on.  I remember how my mother said to me Think about this! and how she gave my left cheek a big wet kiss and whispered into my ear.  And we had a book called Good Fortune, which was read among the nobles.  Mother touched it to the crown of her head and placed it into my two hands, and I blessed my forehead;  I carried it three times around the ger, came back inside and placed it in the place of honor.  Mother entrusted it to me, she said,

"Oh, the words of this book light up the entire ger, it brings peace and good health to our whole family.  Please trust the power of human wisdom and skillful means, held within the words of this precious book."

I think about the eternal holiness, unmoved by fame and reputation, as though it is brought to life in hearing the magic of all words, deeply expressed in the wise elders' beating hearts, all absorbed into a river of books. 

In the words are collected the perfect gifts and strengths and these stand out among the myriad of dust, and they can penetrate cliffs.  For, in this world, no creature has yet created blades and bullets and fighter planes so powerful as words, nor will they do so in the future.

Once, a man placed a curse upon a distant trader.  The trader knew the other man to be wise and, although he said he would reply in kind, he was unable to do so and was quite baffled.  Moreover, as predicted in the words of the curse, he upturned his castiron cooking-pot and caused a flood.

"A word has two ends," father explained.  "There's a drop of milk hanging on the good end and a drop of poison dangling from the bad end."  He went on,

"Following the road of wisdom, my son, we long to write books, but before that we need to purify our minds.  If you ask about the enchanting books written by wise people in the past, they exisit in the purity of body and mind.  However, a jealous person, one who pursues with slanderous words, one who deceives his friends, one who is stocked up with envious thoughts, is said to cast a shadow across the brilliance of those whose friendly words flow from their powerful minds like gold.  Please do not read the books of wicked people, for although the books written in honeyed words by wicked people may superficially appear harmonious, their true character is like filthy water and they will make your mind filthy."

I spent a long time thinking about these words of father's.  Did not the wise khaans of ancient Mongolia invite the authors of books to the palace, did they not seek to select the brightest of the finest, who created the golden accounts of the state, and was this not the very earth itself?

And I created fantasies across the paths of the ancient stories, through the yellowing pages of precious texts, and I wrote a poem, piling it up again and again and knocking it to the floor.  Here is this poem.

A POET'S STORY

The shattered sun reddens, weak
Amid clouds of dust.
Their tired horses' manes droop,
The weary heroes helmets glisten.
They set up the pavilion
With shining standards erect.
At evening, thoughts flash and
Open into the master's mind:
With no chance to shake off even the dust from the road,
He gives his orders:
To find the poet whose star is rising,
The spirit of whose talents gushes forth,
They charge full-pelt along the road,
With urgent missives flying through the day.
Crossing the ravines of peaceful mountains,
Fording a thousand rivers,
The hooves of hale horses growing lame,
They raced to a halt alongside the famous poets.
Gers of white silk stood side by side,
A thousand sheep were slaughtered for their flesh,
The very best of airag glistened, and
Serving maids and toastmasters and children all ran
To the confluence of three rivers, where
The three hundred came together,
Never setting down their goblets for three months,
Nor taking the sun for three months.
The milky distillation flowed like a river,
Ran dry like springs and streams.
The feast that shook the world drew to a close.
His Holiness gave his orders.
As the residence moved onwards,
Two hundred seventy poets
Proceeded to a special feast,
Received their reward of silk brocade.
With gratitude for his blessing,
They headed home.
Everyone was proud in their deel.
Thirty sensitive poets,
Who wrote heartfelt verse,
Were held in custody for three months,
And very nearly starved to death,
Their songs of sadness pressing on their ears.
One poet's misery is
Surely not the same as others':
A grey bird plucks out its feathers,
Then moans its distress at piercing its chest.
In the dark depths of imprisonment,
In these miserable conditions,
Three poets never put away their brushes,
But sat and wrote their joyous odes.
Twenty-seven were released,
Received their reward of silk brocade and,
A coach and two being harnessed,
Were sent off with honor to a distant land.
Having passed the king's test,
Those three determined poets
Were placed upon the golden lion throne
And crowned with fame.
The days and months passed by,
The world turned and turned.
One sat upon a cushion and
Sunk his talent into homely joys.
One sang praise to privilege
To please his master -
A royal poet, giving
Pleasure to queens and princesses.
Only one of them
Chose to follow another path.
He had been thought uncouth by the ministers,
He went searching for his own truth.
He looked, sleepily, upon misty mountains,
He gazed, confused, into cloudy skies,
While the brilliant horsemen rode away,
He mounted his poetic steed.
The earth turned, and
The entire nation was at rest, and
He wrote the everlasting truth,
Not dragging his feet through time.
By the nine-tailed banner,
Among the virtuous masses,
The Mongol poet revealed himself,
Faithfully singing the story of horsemen.
It is not easy to find a special white stone
Among many white jades,
Nor is it easy now to recognise
The talents and wisdom of divinity.
The precious, shining path has not been worn away
By the hard yoke of the centuries.
It is not easy to say who wrote
The epics of azure Mongolia, but
He devoted his whole life,
He committed himself to his work, and
His name is forgotten.
It is not easy to make such an effort...

...so, it was not by indulging at celebrations where the wine is glinting, nor was it by being discouraged in the depths of a dark prison, nor was it by being placed upon a cushion on a lion-throne, nor was it by being crowned with gold, but was it not rather with a single line of verse that we in our own times have achieved the pure wisdom written in the books of the wise? However, it is said that we have cast a black wall of ignorance athwart the lines of these shining texts and have forever foresaken the body of the precious wish-fulfilling tree, with its millions and millions of branches.

The endless light in the books of our superiors helps just a little to penetrate the shadow of wickedness and gloom, the poet's mind and heart strikes the drumbeat of time and the poem draws to its conclusion, lifting away confusion and worry....

...And so, unobstructed, this consumate poet
Moved through the sixty years of iron.
He contemplated the words of the eternal Dharma,
His heart kept his life beating.
How often, when the times are harsh and cruel,
Does the tongue touch upon what is true?
We'll leave the entrance undiscovered
Into the other writings of our minds!

Our native Mongolian script rose up, it was as though a myriad of horsemen had suddenly leapt into the saddle.  The words of books, and the stories and the wisdom offered by our elders, stood up that they might penetrate the minds of future generations.

Our small children stood and grasped onto the great writings of our motherland Mongolia, just as, on the battlefield, the army stood and raised aloft the standard which had fallen to the ground.  Hurrah! for the wise words of our elders, hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!