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Keeping the Faith: Divine Protection and Flood Prevention in Modern Buddhist Ladakh

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Keeping the Faith: Divine Protection and Flood


Prevention in Modern Buddhist Ladakh,

Andrea Butcher

Divinity and Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen

38 Fore Street, North Tawton, Devon AB24 3FX, UK angebutcher@yahoo.co.uk



Abstract


In August 2010 the Himalayan Region of Ladakh, Northwest India, experienced severe flash­f looding and mudslides, causing widespread death and destruction. The causes cited were climate change, karmic retribution, and the wrath of an agentive sentient landscape. Ladakhis construct, order and maintain the physical and moral universe through religious engagement with this landscape. The Buddhist monastic incumbents—the traditional mediators between the human world and the sentient landscape—explain supernatural retribution as

the result of karmic demerit that requires ritual intervention. Social, economic, and material transformations have distorted the proper order, generating a physically and morally unfamiliar landscape. As a result, the mountain deities that act as guardians and protectors of the land below are confused and angry, sending destructive water to show their displeasure. Thus, the locally-contextualized response demonstrates the agency of the mountain gods in establishing a moral universe whereby water can give life and destroy it.


Keywords


tantric divination; moral universe; chthonic landscape; protection; development


Taklha Wangchuk's Prophecy

In early 2010, the residents of the Lalok valley of Changthang, Ladakh requested Taklha Wangchuk, local protector deity and patron of the Drigung Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, to visit through his oracle. The deity complained that increasing ritual and physical pollution in Ladakh was sullying the abodes of the gods—the lha—and warned that

they were angry. He instructed those present that in order to restore good relations, Ladakhis should perform extensive sangsol1—ritual offerings of burnt juniper—to purify the atmosphere and “remove” the dirt from the gods' shrines. Under the auspices of Togdan Rinpoche, the Lalok-born head of the Drigung Kagyu in Ladakh, the people of the area

performed the pre­scribed ritual action, and a representative was dispatched to the district capital Leh to warn the Ladakhi Buddhist Association (LBA) of the oracle's prophecy and ritual prescription. The LBA took no action. Later that sum­mer, villages on the banks of the Indus River were devastated by severe flash flooding and mudslides, the extent

of which had not been witnessed according to recent memory. Whilst limited in comparison with the devas­tation occurring in Pakistan further downstream, for the people of Ladakh, this was an unprecedented event, leading to massive loss of life and exten­sive damage and destruction to property and farmland.2 The Lalok valley was unaffected, which its residents believe to be a result of the ritual action undertaken there. Those who were affected angrily insisted that the LBA arrange the necessary sangsol immediately to prevent further misfortune, and Ladakhis everywhere lamented the decline in moral values: people are no longer good, they no longer listen to the lha, they behave incorrectly. “Taklha Wangchuk is no ordinary village god,” Ladakhis began to say. “He is a powerful srungma3 (guardian) and his prophecies are accurate. We should respect him.”


This tale emphasizes the interdependence between Ladakhi moral dis­course and the maintenance of correct order, indicated by the condition of water as a life-giving and a life-destroying element. Commercial endeavour, disaster prevention models, and empirical ecology discourse that con­structs the natural world through precise scientific measurement, all oper­ate to dislocate people's cultural encounters with water and nature (Cruikshank 2005); therefore, narratives linking climate change with sha­manic belief and pollution

concerns help to reveal the localized and con­textualized explanations of disaster and environmental management in transforming landscapes in ways that empirical ecology studies cannot accommodate. In Ladakh, knowledge of the state, flow, and abundance of water is produced through particular ways of knowing the sentient land­scape and its susceptibility to polluting practices. Social, economic, and religious changes are ushering in new experiences of pollution, creating events seen as impacting upon abodes and temperaments of

water spirits. Thus, ritual experts are facing new challenges for maintaining correct human relations with the spirit world, for diagnosing the removal of pollu­tion, and restoring and maintaining order. In contemporary Ladakh, there­fore, water's flow and movement are used to explain the transformations initiated by the incursion of the “modernworld into the region and of local and religious ambivalence towards development. This paper considers human encounters with the guardians of water, ritual authority and inno­vation in responses towards economic progress, climate change, and the dynamics of locally-owned disaster prevention strategies.


Ladakh is a high altitude desert region in India's northern-most state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Ladakh is divided into the districts of Leh and Kargil, with predominant Buddhist and Muslim populations respectively, and it is the Buddhist response I examine here. The region has short but hot summers with a commensurately brief agricultural

season, and long, cold winters. Located in the rain shadow of the high Himalaya, Ladakh receives little rainfall. Agriculture, a major source of income and material wealth for Ladakhis, is dependent upon glacial snowmelt for irrigation; therefore the “proper” flow of water is critical, and the management and control of water is an object of ritual activity. Social agency in Ladakh is determined by rela­tionships with a living landscape, or chthonic beings, that control the flow of water; and human behavior is directed


towards keeping these relation­ships pure. Correct social, moral and ritual activity determines the condi­tion of water, with a disturbed, unnatural state being attributed to incorrect human behavior. Water may become sparse as the flow is withheld, leaving the land dry and barren; or it becomes a flood, chulok,4 a destructive force that destroys

villages and fields, and takes life. Monastic ritual specialists of sufficient merit, however, can use their expertise and innovation to medi­ate between humans and chthonic beings, ensuring their protection and diverting disaster. Religious and productive life in Ladakh is thus depen­dent upon the protection and participation of the beings who act as guard­ians of territorial domains. They are the focus of Buddhist offering and pacification, leading Mills to assert that, rather than “people” being the focus of Buddhist authority, “it is instead a matrix of chthonic forces and sources of symbolic power, within which ‘people' . . . are both constituted and embedded” (Mills 2003: 243).5


The Flood and Its Causes

The meteorological explanation for the flood describes an intensive con­vective system developing in the easterly current associated with the mon­soon conditions, which had moved up from Nepal and the Indian plains, intensifying as it did so before bursting over the region (Leh Disaster Management Plan 2011: 16). Due to the usual state of low rainfall,

the event was considered an anomaly, and in scientific discussions was generally attributed as a sign of climate instability. The authoritative narratives of the monastic scholarly elite asserted that the flood was borne from karmic con­sequence, lasgyudas,6 and visits from the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and the Twelfth Drukchen Rinpoche (head of the

Drukpa Kagyu School) gave great comfort to Ladakhis, particularly the more traumatized victims. Both told Ladakhis they had borne the karmic consequences of actions taken in pre­vious lives, that with this misfortune their suffering had been dispelled, and now they could begin building better lives both materially and spiritually. The demotic

narrative cited the agents of the flood to be the lha-lu,7 and the sadag8: the mountain gods, water spirits, and earth guardians that inhabit the mountains, trees, rocks and water. The l ha-lu, the majority of my respondents declared, sent the flood as retribution for the increase in ritual and physical pollution, and a decline in moral values. They declared it to be a time of demerit, and noted that Padmasambhava prophesized that this time would come.


The History of Ritual Flood Prevention

Whilst there is little historical discussion of flooding in Ladakh, the human encounter with living water and flood prevention strategies has a long history in central Tibet, most crucially for Lhasa, the former principal seat of authority in Tibet and the site of Tibet's most sacred temple and symbol of the Buddha's protection, the Jokhang.9

Prophecies state that the temple will be destroyed by flooding, initiating an era of decline, whereby the power of the Buddhist Doctrine and the merit of beings will deteriorate. Thus, struggles for political and religious control of the flood-prone Lhasa valley were centred upon the ritual protection of the Jokhang from flooding (Akester 2001: 9), leading Per Sorensen to assert that, “The history of Lhasa is therefore the history of water” (Sorensen 2003: 92). The Jokhang, the tem­ple housing the statue of the

historical Buddha Shakyamuni, was built by the first Buddhist king Srongtsen Gampo in the seventh century to subdue the malevolent forces (including the king of the water spirits upon whose lake-palace, myth tells, the temple is built) thus restoring the auspicious elements conducive to the success of the Buddha's teachings (Mills 2003: 14; Sorensen 2003). The presence of the statue symbolizes the civilizing presence of Buddhism in Tibet, and therefore the Jokhang became the sub­ject of ritual and prophetic texts

detailing threats of deluge and how to avert it. Padmasambhava, the eighth century Tantric yogin who subdued Tibet's (and Ladakh's) chthonic beings, oath-binding them as protectors of Buddhism (Day 1989; Mills 2003: 15; Mumford 1989: 87; Samuel 1993: 35), is attributed with providing the instructions for protection—the building of Buddhist temples and chorten,10 sacred objects of divination—albeit as “treasures” to be revealed by those of sufficient merit at a future time (Akester 2001; Sorensen 2003: 91): . . . the symbols of body, speech and mind, temples and so on are [produced through] the power of the merits of beings, and that being so, the time when temples and holy symbols

are constructed is the time when the merits of beings are at their highest. When offerings and circumambulations are made at these temples, the merit is medium, and finally, when these temples fall, the merit of beings will be greatly diminished. . . . Conflict in the land will disturb the gods and spirits (lha srin). Disturbed gods and spirits will agitate the elemental spirits (‘byung po), causing more conflict . . . freakish flood waters will arise. (Prophecy of Padmasambhava, cited in Akester 2001: 16-17).


This brief historical analysis highlights how the causes of chulok in Lhasa were attributed to a deterioration in karmic merit and negative moral action that disturbed the local deities, who would force the waters of the Kyichu river running through the Lhasa valley to rise and flood (Akester 2001: 5-16; Sorensen 2003: 92). Acts of protection and the

ability to control chulok are couched in the narrative of karmic discourse, relating to the merit of the ritual specialist and the participation of beings in the meritori­ous activities of sponsorship and construction of Buddhist temples and iconography (Akester 2001: 6).


Authority and Ritual in Tibetan Buddhism

Vajrayana Buddhism (the Diamond Vehicle) practiced in Tibet and Ladakh is an esoteric form of Mahayana Buddhism (the Great Vehicle) that uses tantric meditation and ritual to assist the practitioner on the path to Enlightenment. The essences or blessings of transcendental deities are transferred to the ritual specialist through tantric empowerments,

confer­ring ritual capacities upon the specialist (Mills 2000: 24). At the apex of the ritual and monastic hierarchy are tulku,11 the human emanations of tantric deities or transcendent reincarnated teachers, considered to be sources of blessing (Mills 2003: 9-10). Respectfully addressed as Rinpoche12 (precious one), the most renowned tulku are the

Dalai Lamas. Monastic tulku receive intellectual training in the Buddhist doctrine from monastic colleges, therefore grounding their motivation for performing tantric ritual activities within the clerical Buddhist principles of merit accumulation, beneficial for the cessation of all suffering (Mills 2003; Samuel 1993). Skilled in tantric meditation,

tulku have significant ritual dominance over chthonic beings; their abilities of mental intuition enabling them to “know” the presence and classification of deities, to exorcise the demonic ones, and to pacify the higher classes of deity with correct offerings, binding them as guardians of the Doctrine. The gods are socialized, given identities, and opportunities for merit accumulation and liberation through their participation in social and ritual life (Day 1989: 118-119; Mills 2003: 260; Mumford 1989: 84).


Ladakhi Models of Retribution


There are two distinct but interdependent explanations of retribution operating in Ladakh. The authoritative monastic discourse of retribution is the Buddhist principle of karma, or lasgyudas: the universal law of cause and effect that arises from the intentions and actions of all sentient beings. Harmful intentions and actions toward others

result in the accumulation of negative karmic merit, the fruits of which must eventually be reaped in a future life. However, there is a further equally significant retributive mecha­nism governed by the chthonic beings: dip13—ritual pollution—is a dis­tinct but not wholly unrelated explanation of retributive action. Dip describes the presence of either

“dirt” or mental defilement that disturbs the proper order (Day 1989: 138). Dip occurs when human activity subverts socially prescribed rules that result in territories becoming impure, pollut­ing the deities and their shrines, and causing them to become retributive. Unlike lasgyudas, the creation of dip can be unintentional and the effects are

immediate, requiring remedial ritual action to remove the pollution, restore order, and avert retributive deeds. One of the main functions of monastic activity is the performance of sangsol and additional rituals aimed at removing the pollution that harms the chthonic beings. Nevertheless, lasgyudas and dip can be related if the cause of the

gods' anger is attributed to actions borne out of namtog,14 mental confusion or affliction, states caused by the arising in the mind of ignorance, greed, and hatred that cause karmic suffering (Mills 2003: 224; Mumford: 163-164). The presence of dip allows for a more tangible manifestation of karmic conse­quence with which moral and ritual action can be oriented towards.


Classes of Deity


In Ladakh—as in other Himalayan Buddhist societies—the phenomenal world of experience (as distinct from the ultimate reality of unchanging consciousness)—is divided into a three-tiered cosmology. At the apex are the abodes of the lha, the mountain srungma who offer protection to those living in the realms below. Powerful lha are protectors of the Doctrine, or choskyong;15 they assist rinpoche in temporal affairs, appearing through oracles to give prophecies and declarations or confirming the abilities and activities of


rinpoche, thus increasing the legitimacy of their authority (Day 1989; Mills 2003: 241). The most prominent of these is Tibet's state oracle, the Nechung Oracle, who continues to be a principal protector of the Tibetan Government in Exile. Their shrines are located in high places associated with certain kinds of power and blessing: mountain tops and passes, or the roof of houses and monasteries. Lha control the cycles of weather, bringing snow in the winter and sun to melt the snow in the spring, giving life and fertility to the fields below (Day 1989: 58-61).16


The lu are associated with the underworld. They inhabit the ponds, streams, and the green fertile fields and take the form of fish, snakes, and lizards. Lu are the guardians of natural and productive wealth, and are asso­ciated with fertility. If kept happy, water and wealth are in plentiful supply. However, they are capricious creatures and respond

angrily if polluted or injured, sending disease or withholding water (Mills 2003: 206; Samuel 1993: 162). The mighty lha, however, are the agents of large-scale retribu­tion, sending floods, avalanches, or earthquakes when they are displeased with human action, both ritual and moral. The activities of the humans— inhabitants of the middle realm

therefore have consequences; if one does not treat the physical environment or moral universe with care, pollu­tion results. One has to be cautious not to dirty streams, cut trees, plant seeds, or construct buildings without asking the owner's permission.17 Whilst the lha-lu are the agents of retributive action, the rinpoche authorize the rituals that remove dip and ensure the protection of the lha-lu through their power and status as incarnate beings.18


Rinpoche and their Oracles in Modern Ladakh

The flow and condition of water is indicative of the success or failure of monastic ritual activity and human behavior; activities that have undergone significant transformations in recent years. India's state models of development and economic planning, based upon modern governance paradigms, conflict with religious and ritual knowledge

and practice, not recognizing the agency of chthonic beings in social life. Ladakh's incorpo­ration into the Indian Union has reduced the religious influence of Ladakhi lha, although they remain important consultants regarding matters of health and business. Understandings of Buddhist practice on the global stage have also undergone transformations:

as post-colonial Buddhist�states shifted from kingly models of Asian statehood that attached merit to the ritual offerings made to worldly protectors (Houtman 1984), ideologi­cally-reformed Buddhist movements emerged, mainly in the Theravada (Doctrine of the Elders) south Asian nations, that reinterpreted the teach­ings of the historical Buddha,

rationalizing them according to scientific empiricism, and declaring ritual propitiation of worldly gods to be deviant (Levine and Gellner 2005: 282-283). Despite claims of rationalization of Buddhist practice aimed at Tibet's exile government (Lopez 1998), models of ancient governance and protection have remained stable in practice: the

transcendental deity Palden Lhamo and the possessing worldly deity of the Nechung Oracle continue to offer ceremonial protection for the exile government, and despite the secular discourse of Tibet's World Peace proj­ect, pacification is “performed” through the consecration of monuments built not only for symbolic representation but for ritual

subjugation of sen­tient landscapes (Mills 2006: 202). Nevertheless the Dalai Lama and high rinpoche caution the laity against reliance upon the lhas' protection, insist­ing that local gods are not srungma, but simply helpers (rokspa19) and should not be treated as objects of refuge, a statement repeated frequently by Ladakhi monks. The overall performance of government through ratio­nal-legal and bureaucratic systems has eroded ritually-prescribed social behaviors.


Yet after the flood, Taklha Wangchuk's festival, held annually in a recently discovered pilgrimage site in remote Changthang, witnessed a three-fold increase in pilgrims. Around three thousand attended to hear Taklha Wangchuk's prophecies and receive his blessing. Taklha Wangchuk assists in the worldly affairs of Todgan Rinpoche, Ladakh's Drigung Kagyu

lineage head. Now, assisted by his lha's prophecies, Togdan Rinpoche has demon­strated his ability to obstruct flood waters through his ritual activities that petitioned the protection of the gods in the Lalok region, guaranteeing continued lay devotion to the monasteries, motivated by such demonstra­tions of skill.


That December at Ladakhi New Year, a time when lha visit through their oracles to give advice for the year ahead, I visited Taklha Wangchuk's shrine at a village in Lalok, and discussed in more detail the causes of the flood. Taklha Wangchuk told the villagers that the gods sent chulok because peo­ple have become more selfish, more jealous, too

concerned with money. They no longer have pure thinking and do not keep faithful relations with each other. They neglect their ritual traditions, continuously polluting the atmosphere through their actions, and neglecting the purificatory offerings. Now the lha who inhabit the mountains are very much polluted and have become dangerous. He told those present that in order to prevent such tragedies occurring again, they have to remain pure and practice the teachings of the Dalai Lama and rinpoche.20


Keeping the Faith

Prior to the flood, Ladakhis, particularly those close to Leh town, were uncomfortable discussing the impact of development on the realm of the gods, stating privately that lha show their anger by withholding snow, or by sending chulok, but reluctant to admit the continued significance of the lha-lu, or development's impact on their homes.21 After the flood, these concerns were expressed more explicitly. Older folk lamented the decline in respect for the chthonic beings, so critical to the fortunes of the territory. Young

urbanites, the demographic most reproached for neglecting Ladakhi religion and culture by religious elites and older laity, feared that their mod­ern styles had caused harm. They would state how it is a sign of decline into sonam nyamspa,22 an evil era of decay prophesized by Padmasambhava, when the Doctrine and the merit of beings becomes less, and

there is more disaster. The social behavior of those residing in remote areas like Lalok, less affected by development, is considered more moral and ideal. Togdan Rinpoche warned of too much desire: “People have to collect good karma and make their hearts good, otherwise the elements may clash and different types of evil will happen. The merit

from earlier times has fin­ished” (interview data, 03/12/2010). The consequences of the flood were karmic, but its agents were chthonic. Yet, as stated in Padmasambhava's instruction (Akester 2001), it is possi­ble to arrest degeneration through continued patronage of religion, under­taken through the recitation of prayers and the building of temples and


20) This may seem contradictory given the monastic authorities' disapproval of the lha. However, lha maintain their influence amongst the laity by casting themselves as guardians of the Doctrine, therefore necessitating allegiance to powerful rinpoche.


21) Prior to 2010 Ladakh experienced several smaller floods. In 2008 flooding caused sub­stantial damage to Ridzong Monastery and its supporting village, Yangthang. The causes were attributed by the monks and laity alike to the anger of the lhalu.


22) bsodnams nyams pa. shrines to pacify the landscape. In the summer of 2011, the protector of Tibet's exile government, the Nechung Oracle, recommended Ladakhis construct chorten to establish the presence of Buddhahood, pacify the territories and protect from future disaster.23 The organization and spon­sorship for the construction and consecration of chorten throughout

the landscape is now well underway in Leh as well as in remote areas including Changthang; with Togdan Rinpoche acting as advisor for the preliminary ritual preparations that include requesting permission from the territories' chthonic owners. There is a significant drive amongst the Buddhist elite for the laity to acquire knowledge of the teachings, with an increase in work­shops offering training in philosophy and classical Tibetan; and Buddhist private schools impart a “moral education” to children through the teach­ing of classical Tibetan. The LBA also organize prayer festivals for collecting merit, which are well attended by the laity.


Whilst economic transformation has altered the way that Ladakhis approach and use their natural environment, chulok as an expression of the gods' anger demonstrates the significance of water and its state or flow in determining the condition (material and moral) of the environment and its ability to support the beings that inhabit it. It highlights the interdepen­dent relationship humans have with the guardians of water. Ethnographies discussing explanations of disaster from the perspective of morality and

supernatural belief emphasize sin and survival prejudice that foreground discourses of social and cosmic justice, sin and retribution, and the nature of the divine (Oliver-Smith 1996: 308). Oliver-Smith and Bode, both who have undertaken ethnographic research into disaster in the Andes, high­lighted how encounters with a sacred, animate landscape in South America's mountain regions shed “the greatest light on these tensions, dis­closing the vulnerable or weak points in the social fabric” (Bode 1977: 263), which are

strengthened through restoration of correct relations with the punishing deity (ibid: 264). Cruikshank (2005) and Torry (1986) highlight the role of authoritative traditions in describing and managing geographi­cal transformation or disaster response. In Ladakh, narratives of fortune and misfortune continue to be determined by the chthonic response towards pollution and the disorder that results from human action. It is unsurprising then, that the majority of narratives about the causes of the flood were attributed to continuing human misadventure: carelessness


23) This is a new development and space does not permit a fuller discussion, but the signifi­cance is clear. with the Earth's resources; karmic retribution resulting from a reduction in merit and a degeneration of faith in the Doctrine; and the retributive action of the lha-lu, angered by a reduction in ritual observance and the resulting pollution. In the age of development, the power of the divine in actively and self-consciously using water either to give life or to punish is still the ontological reality.


References


</poem> Akester, Matthew. 2001. “The ‘Vajra Temple' of gter ston zhig po gling pa and the Politics of Flood Control in 16th Century lhasa.” Tibet Journal 26.1: 3-24.


Bode, Barbara. 1989. “Disaster, Social Structure and Myth in the Peruvian Andes: The Genesis of an Explanation.” The Annual New York Academy of Science 293: 246-274.


Cruikshank, Julie. 2005. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination. Vancouver: UBC Press.


Day, Sophie. 1989. “Embodying Spirits: Village Oracles and Possession Ritual in Ladakh, North India.” PhD Thesis, London School of Economics. Disaster Management Plan Leh District 2011-2012: http://leh.nic.in/Disester%20 Management%20Leh.pdf.


Levine, Sarah and Gellner, David. 2005. Rebuilding Buddhism: The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-Century Nepal. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.


Houtman, Gustaaf. 1984. “The Novitiation Ceremonial in Theravada Buddhist Burma: A ‘Received' and an ‘Interpreted' Version.” South Asia Research 4.1: 50-76. Lopez Jr., Donald. 1998. Prisoners of the Shangri La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


Mills, Martin. 2000. “Vajra Brother, Vajra Sister: Renunciation, Individualism and the Household in Tibetan Buddhist Monasticism.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6.1: 17-34.


——2003. Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa Monasticism. Abingdon: Routledge Curzon. ——2006. “The Silence in Between: Governmentality and the Academic Voice in Tibetan Diaspora Studies” in G. De Neve and M. Unnithan-Kumar (eds) Critical Journeys: The Making of Anthropologists. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 102-205.


Mumford, Stan R. 1989. Himalayan Dialogue: Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Oliver-Smith, Anthony. 1996. “Anthropological Research on Hazards and Disasters.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 303-328.


Samuel, Geoffrey. 1993. Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Sorensen, Per. 2003. “Lhasa Diluvium: Sacred Environment at StakeLungta 16: 85-134.


Torry, William. 1986. Morality and Harm: Hindu Peasant Adjustments to Famines. Social Science Information. 25.1: 125-160. Tulku, Sharpa and Perrot, Michael. 2006. A Manual of Ritual Fire Offerings. Dharamsala: LTWA. </poem>




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