Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud Read online

  ‘He is India’s great friend. We love him. He was an extraordinary man. He preserved a large part of our history for us.’

  I must have looked surprised, and I felt embarrassed. ‘I know who you mean,’ I said.

  But I was puzzled. Could this be the same Xuanzang? I dimly remembered from school that Xuanzang had written about his journey, but we were never taught about him, nor did we read his book, The Record of the Western Regions. The next day I went to the Bodleian Library to see if I could find it. It was there, of course, and also The Life of Xuanzang, the biography written by his disciple, Hui Li, both in English. I sat down at once in the Upper Reading Room and began to read.

  I became completely absorbed. For the next three days I hardly did anything else. I felt I was on a treasure hunt, each page its own reward, but giving me a clue to the next discovery. I could not believe the wealth of information contained in the two books. The sheer number of cities and towns he visited, the history and legends associated with each place, the kings who ruled with righteousness, the Buddhist masters and their luminous wisdom – his Record is an encyclopaedia of the history and culture of the time; it is the testimony to a lost world. I wondered how much of it remained to be rediscovered.

  The Record gives you no impression of Xuanzang himself nor of his adventures on the journey; those you find in the biography. It was a total revelation. Xuanzang was lost in the desert for four days without water. He was robbed many times – once pirates even threatened to throw him into the river as a sacrifice to the river goddess. He was almost killed by an avalanche in the Heavenly Mountains. At one point he even had to go on hunger strike to be allowed to continue his journey. The monk whose biography I was reading bore no relation to the one I had known from childhood. In fact, he was the very opposite of the helpless man in The Monkey King. He embodied determination, perseverance and wisdom. They were both monks, and both went to India in search of sutras – but there the resemblance ended.

  Grandmother was right after all. There was a real Xuanzang. He was born into a scholarly Confucian family in 600 AD, in Henan Province, the cradle of Chinese civilization. He was the youngest of four sons and lost his parents when he was an infant. A serious child, he did not want to play with other children; even at festival times he stayed in and read. He soon became fascinated by monastic life – one of his brothers was initiated as a monk early in his life, and Xuanzang often went to stay with him in his monastery.

  When he was thirteen years old, an imperial decree announced that fourteen monks were to be trained and supported by the state at his brother’s monastery. Several hundred candidates applied. Xuanzang was too young to qualify but he had set his mind on it. He lingered round the examination hall all day until the imperial invigilator noticed him and called him in. When asked why he was so keen on becoming a monk, he replied: ‘I wish to continue the task of the Buddha and glorify the teachings he bequeathed.’ The invigilator was surprised by this answer from a young boy who seemed to know his mind so well. He made an exception for him.

  Xuanzang took to monastic life like a fish to water. He studied day and night, with little sleep or food. After hearing a sutra only twice, he could remember every word. But his studies were soon interrupted by a major peasant uprising. ‘The capital has become a nest of bandits,’ as he later told Hui Li. ‘Law and order has broken down completely. The magistrates have been killed and the priests have perished or taken flight. The streets are filled with bleached bones and the rubble of burned buildings.’

  He and his brother fled first to the capital, Chang’an, today’s Xian, but there were few monks there: most had gone to Sichuan in the southwest, where, isolated by high mountains and the Three Gorges of the Yangzi River, life was unaffected by the war. Xuanzang followed them and was able to learn from monks from all over the country who had taken refuge there. Within two or three years, he mastered all the Buddhist scriptures of different schools and soon made a reputation for himself. He and his brother preached with an ease and eloquence that the local people had never heard before. And Xuanzang in particular made a strong impact. He was almost six feet tall, with bright eyes and a clear complexion, and he cut an impressive figure in his Buddhist robe, graceful, serious and dignified. When he spoke, his sonorous voice had a hypnotic effect. His loftiness of mind, his lack of attachment to worldly things, his insatiable curiosity about the metaphysical aspects of the cosmos, and his ambition to clarify the meaning of life left a deep impression on everyone who came into contact with him.

  But Xuanzang was far from content. The more he studied, the more dissatisfied he felt. Chan masters, or Zen as the world now calls the school, would tell him that we all had in us the purest, unspoiled mind, the Buddha-nature, but it was defiled by erroneous thoughts; if only we could get rid of them, we would experience awakening. This could happen any time, at any place – while you were drinking tea, hearing a bell ring, working in the field, or washing your clothes. But Zen placed much emphasis on meditation that enabled one to go beyond logic and reason, the stumbling-blocks to enlightenment. How do you get a goose out of a bottle without breaking the bottle? This was the sort of question, or koan, that Zen masters would ask their disciples to jolt them out of their analytical and conceptual way of thinking, and to lead them back to their natural and spontaneous faculties. Reciting the sutras – the teachings of the Buddha – and worshipping his images were no use at all. As a famous Zen master said, ‘If you should meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.’

  But Xuanzang was told by masters of the Pure Land School that practising Zen was difficult and laborious, like an ant climbing a mountain. Instead he should simply recite the name of Amitabha Buddha, who presided over the Pure Land of the Western Paradise. The Bodhisattva of Compassion, Guanyin, is his chief minister. Often portrayed in Chinese temples with ten thousand hands and eyes, Guanyin is ever ready to go anywhere and lead the faithful to the land of purity and bliss. Once there, in the company of Amitabha, anyone can swiftly achieve enlightenment. Guanyin became Xuanzang’s favourite deity and he would pray to her whenever he was in difficulty. She was also Grandmother’s favourite, and that of all Chinese Buddhists.

  The followers of the Tiantai School, based in the Tiantai Mountains in eastern China, claimed, however, that they had found the true way. Buddhism was introduced into China in the first century AD and with the help of Indian and Central Asian monks, most of the major sutras had been translated into Chinese by Xuanzang’s time. The Tiantai School made the first comprehensive catalogue of the large number of sutras and synthesized all the various thoughts and ideas. They came to the conclusion that the entire universe was the revelation of the absolute mind, that everyone possessed the Buddha-nature, and that all truth was contained in the Lotus Sutra alone. You could forget about all the others.

  Xuanzang never ceased to examine the different schools, but he told Hui Li that despite all his efforts, he was never free from doubts. Each of the schools claimed to know the quickest way to enlightenment, but he found them wildly at odds with each other. Was it because the sutras they read were in different translations? The early Indian and Central Asian monks did not speak Chinese and the sutras they had translated were not always accurate. But what troubled him even more was whether all the schools were authentic. The Chinese were very practical and down-to-earth, not given to abstract concepts and metaphysical speculation, and had no time for abstruse doctrines and convoluted logical debates. This was why they preferred the instant enlightenment of Chan or winning a place in paradise through recitation. It seemed all too easy. Xuanzang knew well that the Buddha’s path to enlightenment was long and arduous. He was far from sure that everyone had the Buddha-nature, and he could not believe enlightenment was to be reached without fundamental understanding of the nature of reality and the mind.

  Xuanzang decided to go back to Chang’an where the head of the rebels, Li Yuan, had crowned himself the emperor in 618 and established a new dynasty, the Tang. He thought he
might find some masters there who would help him clear the doubts in his mind. He was particularly keen on Yogacara, the most abstract and intellectual school of Buddhism which held that everything in the world was created by the mind. But no one could shed light on it. His brother did not want to leave: they had already acquired a reputation for themselves and he thought they should stay put. So without telling him, Xuanzang left with some merchants.

  Back in the capital, he studied with two masters ‘whose reputation spread beyond the sea and whose followers were as numerous as the clouds’. But even their interpretations differed and he told Hui Li that he was at a loss to know whom to follow. One day he met an Indian monk, who told him that Yogacara was very popular in India, particularly in Nalanda, the biggest monastic university. Xuanzang’s interest was aroused. He had long sensed there was a vast ocean of Buddhist wisdom, which he could perceive only dimly. A pilgrimage to India would give him direct knowledge of Buddhism and clear all his doubts. Once he set his mind on the journey, he started making preparations: taking Sanskrit lessons from Indian monks, gathering information about the countries along the way from the Silk Road merchants in Chang’an, reading accounts of early pilgrims to India, looking for fellow-travellers, and exercising to make himself fit. Meanwhile he sent a request to the imperial court for permission to go abroad, but in vain. There was a coup in the imperial palace: the young Emperor Taizong had just come to the throne after killing his brothers and forcing his father to abdicate. People were not happy; there was the threat of more rebellions. Everything was in flux and nobody was allowed to travel.

  But Xuanzang had to leave, imperial approval or not. One day he had a dream in which he saw Mount Sumeru, the sacred mountain at the centre of the universe in Indian and Buddhist mythology. It was surrounded by sea but there was neither ship nor raft. Lotus flowers of stone supported him as he crossed the waters, but so slippery and steep was the way up the mountain that each time he tried to climb he slid back. Then suddenly a powerful whirlwind raised him to the summit where he saw an unending horizon. In an ecstasy of joy he woke up; he believed he had been shown a vision of what he must do – he must go to India and learn the teaching of the Buddha at its source.

  I returned again and again to reading about Xuanzang. It was as if a new person was entering my life, someone to whom I was strongly drawn, wise and calm, brave and resourceful. He did go to India, but on his own, with no magical protector. The more I learned about him, the more extraordinary I found him, and the more puzzled I was. Why had I known so little about him? After all, my education was full of the emulation of one hero after another. What was it that had kept him away from me, and from most Chinese? I had to find out. I had to separate fact from fiction. Gradually I realized all the clues were in my own family. Only I was part of it, and could not see them.

  My father was an ardent Communist. He joined the People’s Liberation Army in 1946, when he was sixteen, and marched from northern China to the southern coast, helping to bring the whole country under Communist control. Then he saw duty in Korea for eight years. In the process, he joined the Communist Party, rose through the ranks and became a firm believer in Marx, Lenin and Chairman Mao. When he came back from Korea in 1958, he divorced the wife arranged by his parents, and fell in love with and married my mother, a beauty twelve years his junior.

  My maternal grandmother was a Buddhist, the only one in our family. Most men and women of her generation believed in Buddhism one way or another. Mao’s own mother did, and under her influence the young Mao worshipped the Buddha too, even attempting to convert his father. Ever since Buddhism spread to China in the first century AD, it had struck a chord in the hearts of the Chinese. They had their indigenous beliefs, Confucianism and Daoism. While Confucianism emphasized the order and harmony of society where everyone had their place, with the emperor at the apex, Daoism concentrated on the search for the eternal, unchanging nature that unifies the individual with the universe, with the ultimate goal of achieving immortality in this world. Neither said anything about the question most of us wanted answered: what would be waiting for us after we departed from this world? The Buddhist doctrine of karma and paradise allayed Chinese anxieties about the afterlife, and satisfied their desires for longevity, for justice, and also for compassion. In the end, in this land already possessed of a long history and strong culture of its own, Buddhism adapted, survived and blossomed, despite opposition and frequent persecution.

  Father had a deep affection for Grandmother. He never talked about it but he was full of regret and remorse about abandoning his own parents – he never saw them again after he joined the army; his mother went mad missing him and drowned herself, and his father died too while he was in Korea. He treated Grandmother with enormous respect and kindness. She had bound feet and it was very hard to buy shoes for her. Every time he went on a work trip somewhere, he would search all the department stores and always came back with a few pairs. Grandmother was very grateful; she would say to my mother: ‘How lucky you are to have such a wonderful husband! Kindness and prayer do pay.’

  For all his affection, Father found Grandmother’s behaviour embarrassing. She made no secret of her faith and was kind to people who were in political trouble and shunned by everyone else. Father asked my mother to talk to her about the matter. My mother worked in the nursery of my father’s regiment and she was very aware of the political pressures. She had seen too many people being denounced for an innocent remark or for no reason at all. Grandmother was a potential threat to Father’s career in the army. The Party had its eyes and ears in the neighbourhood committees, which knew exactly what went on in every household. Father could get into trouble for not ‘keeping his house in order’ and not taking a firm stand against feudal practices and the enemies of the people. Long before I was born, my parents had persuaded Grandmother not to go to the temples, or burn incense at home. My father even sold her ‘superstitious article’ – a little bronze statue of Guanyin and her most precious possession – to the rag-and-bone man.

  Grandmother was deeply hurt. The statue was her amulet. She thought her prayers had been effective: her children and grandchildren were healthy; her daughter was lucky to have found a good husband; her son-in-law was safe from political persecution. Perhaps she got the point from my mother’s explanation. Particularly at that time, when my father’s job in military supply was keeping the family fed while so many were going hungry. The great famine which began in 1959 and claimed over thirty million people was coming to an end, but the country was still suffering. Farmers back in Grandmother’s village were too weak to plough the fields; factories were shut down; very few children were born – starvation had made women infertile. On top of everything, parts of China were going through appalling drought, while others were afflicted by severe floods.

  Reluctantly, in the face of all the misery the Party relaxed its grip, not only in its economic policy but also in its ideological control. But what followed took Mao and the Party by surprise: the masses who had survived the hunger immediately returned to their old gods and goddesses for solace and divination – they even built new temples. They were not just old ladies like Grandmother, but even Party members. Mao must have found this very discouraging, particularly after thirteen years of intensive campaigns to educate the masses and implant socialist ideas. He had lost confidence in the Marxist-Leninist ‘law’ that religion would fade as socialism developed – it was on this basis that a guarantee of freedom of religious belief had been included in the Constitution. Mao resorted to his old method, mass campaigns. The Campaign against Superstitious Activities and the Socialist Education Campaign began in 1963, the year I was born.

  They were some of the biggest programmes Mao launched prior to the Cultural Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of civil servants, teachers, doctors, artists, engineers and soldiers were sent to the rural areas to reinforce the Communist ideology. My father went to a commune near his military base. For four months he helped the farmers
with their work, ate with them, and slept in their huts to gain their confidence. He spent days and nights persuading the activists of the village to target what the Party regarded as the residue of feudalism: traditional Chinese medicinal practice and funeral customs, fortune-telling and arranged marriage, and visiting local temples. Father lectured them not to put their faith in God, but in the Party, echoing a verse of the time written by a loyal farmer:

  God, O God, be not angry,

  Step down as quickly as you can.

  I revered you for a long time,

  And yet you changed nothing

  And our farms were still ploughed by the ox.

  Mechanization is now being carried out,

  I request you to transform yourself.

  But instead of helping him root out the die-hard believers, the locals took advantage of the struggle meetings he organized to voice their grievances. They told him about the suffering and deaths in their villages during the recent famine – the worst they could remember. They begged him to go back and tell the Party the real problems in the countryside. Superstition was not on their minds – survival was.

  Father had a frustrating four months, and he was even more disappointed when he returned home. I was born, his third daughter. Despite Mao’s claim that women were half the sky and the absolute equal of men, my father desperately wished for a son to keep the Sun family line going. A veteran Communist, he none the less believed in a dictum of Confucius, as all Chinese had done for more than two thousand years: the biggest shame for a family is to fail to produce a son. Now my mother had borne yet another girl, instead of the much-wanted boy. Father was so disappointed he did not even visit Mother and me in hospital. We were left there for three days and it was Grandmother who brought us food and took us home. Years later Grandmother told me what happened – the only fight she ever had with Father.

  She prepared a special meal to welcome Father, Mother and me home. But Father, even while he was gulping down the dishes that Grandmother conjured up, could talk about nothing but his headaches and successes during the campaign. ‘They were really backward in the villages. Even the cadres weren’t good Communists. They allowed temples and family shrines to be rebuilt. We had a good go at them. We banged away at the village officials, then we asked them to identify the most superstitious people. If they didn’t cooperate, we would take away their jobs. There were some really stubborn ones; you can guess where they ended up.’