The Greatest Buddhist Relics EVER

Here's a letter from 2003. It's about the most amazing astonishing jaw-dropping things ever. And I actually saw them. How cool is that?

CHINA GIVES US THE FINGER!

Saw Buddha's finger yesterday. Yup, lil ol me actually gazed upon part of God Buddha himself.

But it wasn't actually that which is so so great but something else, but I'll get to that soon.

First off, haven't mentioned anything about Buddha's finger before because it just happened. Out of the blue. Suddenly China announced that they'd send down everything to HK for five days and then, after that, no one else in the world would ever see them again. Like, EVER!

Mad scramble for HK to get organised. And it all happened too fast for anyone to really let anyone else know. It was only on the news; and there wasn't even any time to get a buzz going.

Me? I saw it on the local English channel and the hair stood up on my neck and I got goosebumps and the chills and I knew I HAD to go! Like, something in the very deepest part of me wanted me to go!

And then everyone thought I was mad and no one would go with me; couldn't even see why I'd want to go ... but, hell, it was Buddha's finger! And there were the Serenas too! All the stuff that Tripitaka, the little monk himself, carried back from India - except for the actual scrolls and the baskets which have, quite obviously, vanished back into dust! The whole thing was mind-blowing: the very objects that are the actual foundation of Chinese Buddhism! The stuff of China's greatest Legends! Their Arc of Covenant! Their Holy Grail! The whole point of everything that happened in that gorgeous Korean TV series "Monkey Magic"! To me it was such a mythic and amazing experience being given a chance to see it all with my own eyes and I was just appalled that no one I knew could see how special it all was.

(2008 - But other folk were on my side. Zillions of them, in fact. For the five days China let us have it, 2,500,000 people visited every single day. And that's 10 million visitors without a single cent being spent on advertising. Imagine what they'd have earned if they'd charged us all to get in.)

Am I getting ahead of myself here? Do you know all about this? How all these objects were meant to be "mythic" and then, after a long period of Cultural Revolutionary Neglect, in 1987 an ancient temple - Famen Temple - collapsed up in Mainland China, and when they were bulldozing away the mess, they discovered a secret room below the temple? And in that room they found the most AMAZING collection of objects: everything, everything, everything that Tripitaka had been given in India to explain Buddhism to China?

Anyway, all this incredible stuff came into CPC hands and China being China tried to keep it secret, however word got out and HK started asking questions, like "Did this actually happen?" and "If so, what have you done with everything?" and "Tell us, please, please, please, that you haven't destroyed anything?" and China was being horrible about it all, and then, for some inexplicable reason, suddenly this announcement!

Anyway, that's the back story. But what happened to me? What did I actually see?

Well, I got to the HK Entertainment Centre early yesterday, on the morning of the fourth day, when, luckily, there were only about 100,000 people ahead of me so I only had to queue for four hours, and, finally, what I actually saw was a gold casket covered with seriously stupid and shapeless blobs of white jade and a small glass window, above eye height, containing something that looked like a small ball of white wax. I tiptoed to see more of the white blob - to check if it were actually more than a tiny wax ball (resisting the urge to jump up and down for a better look) but was stopped by a most elegant Mainland Chinese Buddhist nun who said, in the most withering BBC/Oxbridge-accented tones "Would you mind moving on. There is a queue behind you." (Who on earth could she have been? Intriguing!)

So I moved on, but it wasn't enough, so I joined a group of cripples sitting in a cordoned-off spot at the back of The Great Hall, to see if this visceral need could be filled by viewing the object from a distance, but no! I got nothing, so I left.

But it was when I was leaving I noticed another Hall that no one else seemed to have noticed, so I ducked in there ... and it was in that room that there was like some explosion in me because ... THE SERENAS!!! All the gifts the Indian Buddhists sent with Tripitaka to be given to the Emperor of China! And it was only me and them in there! In the room! Alone!

But it wasn't actually the Serenas, it was the Sariahs, the containers the Serenas had been placed in for the journey that were doing it for me.

The Sariahs are really only wooden boxes, some painted, some covered in a thick layer of gold, of varying sizes, that had images of the entire pantheon of Hindu gods carved or painted all over them, only somebody with no skill in such things had painted over or hacked off Ganesh's head and Shiva's extra arms. Since the descriptions alongside each of these boxes said that these figures represented "Buddha's Bodhisitva" and that so wasn't the case, I can only imagine that - since you don't send foreign Emperors damaged goods as presents - it was some Chinese Buddhist monks, millenium back, who took offense at all the faces of the Hindu gods and went Luddite on them! And the fact that someone had tried to "silence" the Hindu origins of Buddhism convinced me that these items were indeed very, very old ... and very likely authentic ... only the box that Buddha's finger is meant to have been carried in is so very, very tiny it didn't seem possible that it ever contained the thumb-sized waxy thing in the other room.

Buddha's fingernail maybe.

But it was nothing about how they looked that made them special to me: it was, and how can I explain this?, the fact that I knew them. Yup, in the deepest part of myself I knew some of these boxes - five of them that looked like they belonged in a set and had been made by the same person - and it was like I recognised them, like I'd seen them before back when I was a very young child, and ... god knows, it was like all my molecules wanted to get together with them again or something. I stood there for ages, wishing they weren't behind glass and that I could actually hold them, trying to work it all out and have to say I still have no idea. Is it a reincarnation thing and I made them in a past life? Or a Jungian ancestral-memory thing and some long-lost forefather made them? Nope, no idea whatsoever: all I know is that my body in the deepest and most atomic level knew these boxes in a very deep and meaningful way! Oh, probably the easiest way to explain this is to say the spoke to me ... only not in any language I also spoke so their entire message is a mystery to me!

Any reason-based and logical explanation for this weirdness would be most welcome.

Well, that's the highlight: the fact that the Sariras did for me so much more than Buddha's finger! Apart from that, I loved the day, the crowds and all the intrigue. And I totally totally adored the Japanese Royal Family.

Yup! In addition to everything else, I have actually seen - Me! Me! Me! I did! - the Japanese Imperial Family in the flesh. They were all dressed in Chysanthemum Court-mode and I have to tell you that the sight is sublime beyond anything: they are all more wispy than you imagine, so fragile and dainty and dignified and like gorgeous little dolls, and they were all wearing traditional million dollar kimonos in the most breathtaking fabrics and they waft by you like they're hardly real, ephemeral, and they're surrounded by Samurai dressed as real Samurai with real swords and shaved foreheads and those sticky-out bunchy top-knots. It was breath-taking. And I got to see it all. Me! I did! And do you know how often the Chyranthemum Court goes out together? JUST ... NEVER!!! Seriously, these guys NEVER take it on the road, and after yesterday I can now say, in all honesty, that I WAS THERE THE ONLY TIME THEY EVER EVER EVER DID!!!

And let me tell you this, which may or may not surprise you: the stinky horrible Red Guard were practically prostrating themselves in front of them. Yup, there was Communist China, so adamant that no one was going to get special treatment and insisting everybody queue no matter who they were ... but it was instantly goodbye to "All Men are Equal" and total humble-grovel-mania the instant these gorgeous, gorgeous fragrant wisps of people wafted in.

Hey, wouldn't it have been so cool to have been inside the Great Hall too when they were in there and seen for yourself how they handled the whole thing? If only I'd have been twenty minutes earlier arriving, twenty minutes ahead in the queue, I'd have had this extraordinary and amazing opportunity. Drat it!!!

Oh, but when they wafted past me on their way out, I have to tell you too that the Japanese Royal Family en-masse smells ever so faintly of ginger! The flowers that is, not the root! Bet there are very few people that can tell you that fact!

(2008 - I found this fragrance so haunting, I researched it and discovered the Japanese Imperial Family has worn the same perfume for over 800 years, made for them by a particular family, and so, in 2006, in Kyoto, I tracked down the shop this family owned - it's just a tiny shop in the sublime ancient area of the city, next to one of the myriad temples we visited - forgotten the name but it's the one with the True Love Stone and the Suicide Jump - and, with the help of one of the nicer students, I told the charming lady in there that I'd seen the Imperial Family in HK and found their fragrance haunting and wanted to know what the flower was, but she just gave me an enigmatic smile and said it was A National Secret. But she did let me smell a bottle! It was so lovely I sent frantic pleading messages with my eyes for her to put a dab on me, but she sent back an eye message that I was a naughty little minx, which is a nice way of telling me to sod off. But really, wouldn't it be the coolest thing ever to smell, even for a day, like a member of the Japanese Imperial Family?)

(But I can tell you that I think the main ingredient is the flower off the ginger plant!)

Oh, and I watched them go all the way down the hall and out onto the Entertainment Center undercover ring-road, where they were picked up by a fleet of brown coloured 1930s Rolls Royces, which means the Peninsula Hotel had something to do with this clearly hobbled-together arrangement.

Also wonderful was seeing David Suzuki in the main hall queue - and he noticed me recognise him and gave me a really self-deprecating smile which I think was due to the fact he's known to be an atheist and I'd caught him out! (Hell, it's Buddha's finger! You don't have to be a Buddhist to think that's the coolest thing ever!)

AND I was stuck in the queue with a bunch of minor Canto pop stars and I started off thinking they were very beautiful and wished I knew who they were, but by the end I detested them with the strongest passion imaginable after they kept hooting with loud derisive laughter at all the handicapped, and people carrying cripples and chemotherapy hairless children, and the men in wheelchairs with a person alongside pushing the plasma bottle stand. I kept thinking that Buddhism is all about Karma and getting your just-desserts, and with this behaviour they were most certainly inviting the universe to send them limb-removing traffic-accidents and illnesses, and I wished even more I knew who they were so I could following their stories in the newspapers and gossip magazines, and enjoy seeing them all getting their righteous come-uppances.

Oh, and one more little thing; after you passed through Queuing Halls 1 through 4 (the ones being run by Hong Kong) you then had to do Queuing Halls 5 and 6 that were run by China and the difference in style and atmosphere was startling. I have to say the Red Guard were horrible beyond measure and I got shoved in the chest on four different occasions - like, seriously pushed out of the queue and abused roundly for being there - only in every instance some little old lady, often a Buddhist or Chi Lin nun, would come running over to my defence and attack them roundly in return, and everytime they soldier'd back away and look very sheepish about it. And then they'd put an arm around my waist and guide me back into the queue. Oh and I would dearly love to know what those heroics little darlings said to them to make them cower that way. Gosh, they can give a right scolding!

But, all up, a truly wonderful, uplifting, glorious day. Thank you, China, for giving us the finger!