The Buddha of Brewer Street by Michael Dobbs Page B

appeared exaggeratedly dark under the light of the passing street lamps. Everything flickered in the harsh shadows, a little like one of those three-dimensional penny peep shows on Brighton pier he remembered from his childhood. The first time he’d been on a church outing with the choir and had received a good slap when the vicar had caught him. Not now, though, although there were other perils. As she nestled across his lap, both of them contorting to master the awkward shape of the seat, Baader gasped. His back was in knots. He’d have to spend all week on the chiropractor’s table. But somehow he didn’t give a damn.
    ‘Do you think this could be a big mistake?’ she whispered.
    ‘Oh I do hope so,’ he replied. ‘I do hope so.’
    The final bed was little more than a stone shelf built out from the wall. Uneven, cold, and covered with nothing more than a blanket. It was the middle of the night and the temperature in Kunga Tashi’s room had fallen below freezing, but a lifetime of meditation had enabled him to sleep in such conditions without discomfort. For a Tibetan Buddhist, the body can be turned into something that is detached, almost disposable. Kunga often taught such meditation techniques to the younger monks, encouraging them to lift their consciousness to a higher plane of spirituality and disembodiment. And if it helped them to sleep through the icy blasts of a Himalayan winter, so much the better.
    It had been a winding road that had led Kunga to the monastery at Rapang. There had been other monasteries in the last ten years, each one offering no more than a brief interlude in his flight from persecution. Or what might alternatively be described as stopping places along the road to enlightenment – it all depended on your outlook. To a Tibetan Buddhist the body is a vehicle for the soul; to those like the Han, the soul is nothing more than deceit, an excuse for the body to sit around a monastery living like a pickpocket off the rest of the community. So the Chinese arrived at each monastery with their political commissars who dismissed the abbot and installed one of their own choice. The monks would then be forced to sign a ‘confession’ giving up all allegiance to the Dalai Lama, and all pictures of their leader would be smashed. Some monks signed the confession, then hid pictures of the Lama in private places. Others resisted, and in those cases the normal Beijing response was to send in bulldozers and raze the monastery to the ground. Many, like Kunga, fled to other monasteries. But always the Chinese and their commissars followed.
    So, many years ago, Kunga had written to the Dalai Lama for his advice. To stay and sign? To lie and deceive? To fight? Or to fly? The monk’s dilemma. The Lama’s response had been characteristically blunt.
    ‘To Rapang!’ his reply had instructed, naming a monastery in the remotest part of north-western Tibet. ‘Where there is no electricity. No vegetables. There you will find safety. For where there is no electricity and no vegetables, there you will find no Chinese!’
    As Kunga had read the advice he could almost hear the Lama laughing. And how right he had been. The Chinese had no liking for the rigours of Tibetan life and everywhere tried to recreate a miniature version of the Han homeland. Han food. Han fashions. Han laws, of course. Even the language – only Chinese was permitted to be used in the schools. The Han claimed they were a civilizing influence in this feudal land. But they also opened bars and brothels. And gaols. And lost interest in their civilizing role with each mile that led them away from the nearest power station.
    Rapang was a very long way from any power station, or serviceable road, or supply of beer. And it was here that Kunga had come several years before to be the chant master and to give himself time for meditation. If that in Chinese eyes made him a parasite, it was a remarkably ill-chosen spot. Not a place to grow fat. But a