| |
Lama Ananga Rika Govinda is
considered to be perhaps the most influential in introducing
Tibetan Buddhism to the West. Lama Ananga Rika Govinda did not
mind two weeks of journey on horse back through the most
mountainous region of the world to visit The Great Hermit Abbot
of Lachen.
Our effort is to take you to that particular Cave of Lachen
Gomchen,
which won’t be as strenuous as then.
ABOUT LAMA ANAGARIKA GOVINDA
 He was born as Ernst Lothar Hoffman in Waldheim, Germany in
1898, son of a German father and a Bolvian mother. He was
invalided out of German army during the first world war because
of tuberclosis. He was the founder of the Buddhist Order Arya
Maitreya Mandala. He came to India in his early years. His
interest in Buddhism and monastic life led him to Sri lanka and
Burma.
He had been to Tibet many times lived for two years in Central
and Western Tibet with his wife Li Gotami, a British Educated
Parsee from Bombay. In 1931 he attended a Buddhist Conference in
Darjeeling intending to affirm the purity of the Theravadin
tradition against the Mahayana, which in his view, had
degenerated into “a system of demon worship and weird beliefs.”
This trip to Darjeeling was to alter his life. Here he met his
Tibetan Guru, Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, under whose influence he
converted into Gelugpa sect. He finally settled in Almora,
India. He held posts in various Indian universities and held
exhibitions of his paintings, several of which he made together
with his wife still in Tibet. In 1971 he made a journey to
America and Canada. In 1972 he was on tour in Europe. He became
a mediator and peacemaker between East & West. Govinda’s Tibetan
experiences are recounted in his book The Way of the White
Clouds, which includes elements from several genre-spiritual
journals, adventure narratives, anthropological field reports
and philosophical commentaries. It is one of the century’s
classic spiritual autobiographies. Lama Govinda’s final years
were spent in California living in the San Francisco Bay area on
Alan Watts’ houseboat, then in Mill valley. In San Francisco he
established an American branch of the Arya Maitreya Mandala,
called “Home of Dhyan”. He is considered to be perhaps the most
influential in introducing Tibetan Buddhism to the West. He died
in 1986. His ashes are contained in the Nirvana-Stupa, which was
erected in 1997 on the premises of Samten Choeling Monastery (a
Tibetan Monastery), in the district of Darjeeling, West Bengal,
India.
LAMA ANAGARIKA GOVINDA AND THE HERMIT ABBOT OF LACHEN IN
NORTH SIKKIM
 An outstanding example among modern hermit is the hermit abbot
of Lachen ‘better known as the Gomchen of Lachen, who had his
hermitage on the border between Northern Sikkim and Tibet. The
Earl of Ronaldshay (later Marquis of Zetland), former governor
of Bengal, has written admiringly about the Gomchen: ‘ Over a
period of twenty six years he had been in the habit of retiring
from the world from time to time and living a life of solitary
meditation in remote cave- high up and difficult of access,
among the cliffs of an inhospitable mountain tract above the
path to Thangu. One of the periodic retirements from the world
had been extended over a period of five years, during which he
had seen no human being and had kept body and soul together on a
minimum of food.’ The Lachen Gomchen was no other than the Guru
of the famous French Orientalist and explorer Alexandra David
Neel. In 1937 when Lama Anagarika Govinda was the guest of the
Chogyal of Sikkim, he visited the Hermit Abbot of Lachen in his
mountain retreat near Thangu, at an altitude of 13000 feet in
the Sikkim Himalayas. He was in ardent desire to meet the hermit
as he was already over seventy years old, and he felt he had no
time to loose. He did not mind the two weeks journey on horse
back through the most mountainous region of the world (Sikkim is
said to have the greatest number of mountains above 24000ft
compared to any other area in the world of similar size) He
risked the fast approaching winter and the risk of the hermitage
being closed to visitor as it happened so often when he was
engaged in along period of meditation.
He put up in a horribly cold and doughty wooden rest house not
far below the hermitage of the Gomchen. The next morning he
climbed up to hermitage and he was received by the Gomchen
discussed about David Neel and the subject of meditation and its
various methods and experiences.
The Great Hermit Abbot of Lachen, Lama Anagarika Govinda has
long been gone, but the cave in the cliffs is still there in the
beautiful mountains of North Sikkim.
|
LAMA ANANGA RIKA GOVINDA & HIS "WAY OF THE WHITE CLOUDS"
07 Days 06 Nights |
|
|
Day 01 |
|
Bagdogra-Gangtok |
|
Day 02 |
|
Gangtok- Lachen ( N.Sikkim) |
|
Day 03 |
|
Lachen - Diuthang.
Overnight halt in a hut / tent |
|
Day 04 |
|
Diuthang-Cave- Overnight
Meditation Programme at Cave |
|
Day 05 |
|
Cave to Phalung Night halt
at |
|
Day 06 |
|
Phalung - Thangu - Lachen |
|
Day 07 |
|
Lachen – Gangtok |
|
|
|
|
