Boleh Tahan ~ GALLIPOLI
“Hate
is not overcome by hate;
only
by Love is Hate overcome”.
Thus reads the Dhammapada.
IT IS SAID THAT,
AT ONE TIME, THE BUDDHA was surrounded by a great
company of disciples waiting for Him to address them,
but instead of saying anything, He held up a flower.
The assembly was mystified: Why was the Buddha holding
up a flower without saying anything? Finally, one
of the monks smiled, and the Buddha knew he had understood.
What was the Buddha’s meaning? There
must have been a meaning, and everyone would have
expected one; He was not holding it up as if to say:
“Look what a nice flower I’ve got!”
And how did the monk understand His meaning? Could
he read the Buddha’s mind, telepathically? Or
did he realize, intuitively, that the flower could
have been anything at all and still have the same
meaning: that, being empty of self-being, it is, at
the same time, full of everything—is everything;
because of the interconnectedness of things, everything
is—or involves —everything else. It wasn’t
the flower that was important, but what it symbolized
by its being.
Now, if I knew this myself, but didn’t
explain it to anyone, would anyone understand my meaning
if I were to hold up something? And I am holding something
up. Do you see what I am holding up? I am holding
up my words. What is the meaning of my words? Don’t
just listen to or read the words, but try to understand
what my meaning is. For this, we must be together,
must be one in our meeting of minds.
My talks usually go on for two hours or
more, during which I say many thousands of words.
Just another talk; you have heard so many. Afterwards,
out of politeness and custom, you might say: “Oh,
very good”—whether you think so or not—offer
your red envelopes, and go home. And what has happened,
during and after all the talks you have heard, the
purpose of which is to try to awaken people, to help
them become a bit more enlightened? Has there been
any effect from all the talks you have listened to?
How are my talks any different from all the other
talks you have heard? They are different simply because
they are my talks, and no-one else’s. You may
decide whether you think they are better or worse
than other talks you have listened to; that’s
up to you, but it will be your opinion. And if you
listen (or read) with a mind full of expectations
about what I’m going to say, it will prevent
you from hearing. It would be better if you listened
without expectations, without preconceptions and minds
already made up, without ideas of good or bad, better
or worse. This talk—this different talk—might
be the one that strikes a chord in you after so long,
and might make you exclaim, “Ah!” It’s
not impossible.
Just now, as I write this, I had a call from
a lady who had recently attended talks by a Korean
Zen Master who was passing through Kuala Lumpur—talks
that drew large audiences. She said the talks had
frequently been punctuated by applause from the audience,
though she, not understanding the points he had made,
had not joined in. She asked if it were appropriate
to applaud in the middle of a talk, and I told her
that it depends upon different things. If it is a
response to genuine understanding, it is appropriate,
but very often, I feel, people attend such talks with
minds already made up, and full of expectations about
what would be said, so that, even if the master said
a lot of old rubbish, they would still applaud, as
a sign that they were so attuned to him and had understood;
how come no-one applauds during talks by other teachers?
The applause seems to be part-and-parcel of a talk
on Zen. There is a great deal of hypocrisy and intellectual
snobbery attached to so-called ‘Zen’,
and the name-and-form become all important. Without
them, many ‘Zennists’ see nothing of the
Zen that is all around them, and need someone to point
it out before they will see, and then, of course,
it’s no longer Zen! Zen is never second hand.
For many years, I had wanted to revisit Turkey.
I had been there a number of times before becoming
a monk—first in 1967, and last in 1970. During
these visits, on my way to and from India, I had several
unpleasant experiences. I was twice attacked on the
street, for no apparent reason, as I’d not done
or said anything to my assailants; I was spat upon
and verbally abused, and had stuff stolen. However,
these experiences did not prejudice me to the extent
that I held the whole Turkish nation responsible;
it was only a few people who did those things to me.
Also, I reasoned that, because they knew nothing at
all about me, they were not doing it to me personally,
but maybe had had some negative experience with other
Westerners before me, and so were merely reacting.
Always, since then, I wanted to go back, feeling I
had missed something, and that the Turks deserved
‘another go’.
In 1997, therefore, while in Malaysia, I
made up my mind to go before I became too old to do
so. When I announced my intention, not a few people
were surprised, and said things like: “Why do
you want to go to there? Turkey is a Muslim country.
There are no Buddhists there!” I replied: “Yes,
I know it’s a Muslim country, and that there
are no Buddhists there—I’ve been there—but
the Turks are also human beings, are they not? If
we are concerned only about people who call themselves
‘Buddhists’, what kind of Buddhists are
we? How many people do you know who say they are ‘Buddhists’
but who know nothing—and in fact, mis-know—about
Buddhism? The name doesn’t make one a Buddhist.
Also, I do not care what people call themselves; it’s
more important what they are. Nor is it my aim or
hope to convert people to Buddhism. I’m only
concerned with people as people; in fact, I want to
help Buddhists become free of Buddhism and discover
their humanness, for this—to me—is what
it’s all about.” A name is not enough.
So, I went to Turkey, and now have a completely
different impression of Turkish people than before.
To overcome prejudice is always good, as it makes
the mind so much lighter, which is what enlightenment
is all about. I would like now to tell of some of
my experiences there, but for my story to make sense,
I must start by saying that I went in ordinary clothes,
not dressed as a monk. There were several reasons
for this: Firstly, had I gone in robes, it would only
have attracted unnecessary attention and served no
useful purpose. In Malaysia —and in other countries
with large Buddhist communities— many people
are very respectful towards monks, often even without
knowing anything at all about them; they react to
their appearance. Knowing this, certain persons have
dressed up as monks and gone begging on the streets,
and because this has become quite common (a number
of such fake ‘monks’ have been arrested),
there is now a call for monks to carry special identity
cards.
On the other hand, in some Western countries,
I have been abused with obscene language on the street
because of my appearance: same appearance, different
reactions, and in both cases, by people who knew nothing
about me personally.
I decided to go incognito, not as a monk,
but as a human being, and relate to people on that
level, to communicate with them by my own ‘merit’,
if you will. I wanted to make it on my own, without
the robe. In retrospect, I see this was the right
decision. In Malaysia, no-one ever mistook me for
a Malaysian, nor for an Indian in India, but I was
able to blend in so well in Turkey that people often
spoke to me in Turkish, thinking I was a Turk! And
whereas I’ve quite often been verbally abused
in other countries, I was never once hassled there,
but experienced much kindness and helpfulness. People
would willingly leave whatever they were doing—their
work, shops, and so on—and go out of their way
to show me directions, often without knowing any English
and without expecting anything in return. Turks also
smile easily. It made me feel good!
It was pleasant to move around unhindered,
and not to stand out in the crowd, and one time, because
of it, I was even arrested! I had boarded a tram for
the first time there, and had bought my ticket before
getting in, as is the way there, but not knowing that
one should enter by the front door, I went in by the
middle door. No-one paid me much attention. I got
down at my stop and was walking away, when I felt
a hand on my shoulder. Turning, I found myself face-to-face
with the tram-driver! He thought I had ridden without
a ticket! I opened my hands in a gesture of helplessness,
saying “I don’t know!”, then fumbled
in my pocket for the ticket, at which he realized
I was a foreigner and said: “Oh, tamam, tamam”—“Okay;
never mind!” I walked away smiling.
I would often meditate in the marvelous mosques
of Istanbul, wherein there is a very special atmosphere;
their lofty minarets and soaring domes lift the mind
to spontaneous calm and quiet. I met several interesting
people this way.
One day, after my meditation in Fetiyah Mosque,
I was approached by an elderly man who spoke to me
in fluent English and said he was curious, as he had
never seen anyone sitting like this before; he asked
if he might talk with me. “Certainly”,
I said, so we sat on the carpet in that tranquil setting
and had a nice conversation. We introduced ourselves,
and he told me his name was Ali, saying he was a retired
school headmaster. When I told him I was a monk, he
said: “Oh, I’ve read something about Buddhism;
but the Buddha was not a prophet, like Mohammed; he
was only a philosopher.”
“You are right”, I said; “he
was not a prophet”, but did not add that he
was also not only a philosopher. He then spoke to
me at some length about Islam and tried to convince
me of its superiority. I listened, without interrupting,
and when he had finished, I told him something about
Anicca—Impermanence, or Change—and how
we can hold on to nothing and claim it as a possession.
I also told him that by ourselves, we know so very
little, that most of what we think we know is not
our knowledge at all, but has come from other people
or books. And, because he had spoken a lot about God,
I asked him about that word: “Where have you
got it from? Is it something of your own experience?
Did it suddenly come into your mind one day when you
didn’t know it before? And do you have only
the word, God, or do you know what it represents,
what it symbolizes, what lies behind it, if anything?
A word is not a thing, not the thing it stands for.”
It caused him to think, and he did not really
know what to say. Instead, he took from his pocket
a rosary, and presented it to me, and I, in turn,
took from my bag one of the geodes I carry with me
to give to people who I think might appreciate them:
hollow pebbles with quartz crystals inside, called
in Australia, ‘thunder-eggs’. I explained
the meaning—or rather, my meaning—before
giving it to him: “What we are looking for is
not outside of ourselves”. He was surprised
at the difference between the outside and the inside
of this stone. He then invited me to a nearby coffee
shop where he introduced me to some of his friends
and we spoke more before going our different ways.
The next day, I visited him again, although
I had not intended to do so and he wasn’t expecting
me. He was pleased to see me, but was different from
the previous day—not so assured or pushy; in
fact, he was contrite and almost abject, and said
to me, in a choking voice: “I am a bad man.
I’ve done so many bad things and made so many
mistakes; I will go to Hell forever; there is no hope
for me!”
You can imagine that I did not agree with
this, and said to him: “I don’t think
it matters if you do not pray five times a day”
(as Muslims are supposed to do, but which many do
not, and of those who do, many pray mechanically and
as something expected of them, rather than because
they want to do it. In this, they are not unlike followers
of other religions, most of whom do not really understand
why they are performing the things their religions
require of them); “our right actions are our
prayers.” Then I told him a story from The Hadith,
which is a book recording tales of and about the Prophet
Mohammed:
It is about a prostitute who had lived an
immoral life and had been in no way religious. One
day, however, she came upon a cat lying beside the
road, dying of thirst. Feeling pity for this cat,
the woman took off one of her shoes and scooped some
water from a nearby well in it, and gave it to the
cat to drink. The book says that because of this kind
action, when she died, the woman went immediately
to Paradise.
Telling this tale had the effect of cheering
Ali up. He had been feeling so sorry for himself,
and here I come—a Buddhist monk—and tell
him a Muslim story to restore his spirits! We parted
friends.
(The story I told him, however, contrasts
and contradicts something found earlier in The Hadith:
how, four months after the moment of conception, an
angel is sent to appoint the destiny of the foetus
in the womb: what kind of person it would become,
what kind of actions he or she would perform, the
livelihood he/she would engage in, and whether, after
death, he/she would go to Paradise forever, or to
Hell. The person would have no choice about it, as
everything had already been divinely appointed for
it. [St. Augustine, and John Calvin, the founder of
Calvinism, said much the same thing]. This, surely,
presents the Muslim with a problem as to what to believe
here. On one hand, they are told that everything is
predetermined, and on the other, the story of the
woman and the cat indicates that destiny can be changed.
Buddhists do not have this problem, as Buddhism teaches
that everything happens because of causes, and though
the past has conditioned the present, here, in the
present, we have some choice, and can change the conditions;
it does not hold that things are predestined).
After retracing my old footsteps in Istanbul
and exploring this history-steeped city, I set off
on a long trip around the provinces, visiting places
I had been and not been before. The easternmost point
of this trip was Erzerum, where I had formerly had
several negative experiences. Though it is a very
old town, with ruins dating back to Roman times, my
purpose there was not sight seeing, but to finally
lay those old experiences—like old ghosts—to
rest; I achieved this, and now feel peaceful about
Erzerum. While there, I had an experience which, though
neither good nor bad, holds a lesson, and may be of
interest to some people. Someone came up to me on
the street and tried to sell me a carpet (this is
common in Turkey, which is famous for its hand made
carpets). I told him I didn’t need a carpet,
and that if he could sell me one, he would be the
best salesman in the world. “But everyone needs
carpets”, he said, and when I repeated that
I didn’t, he asked why not. “Because I
have no home”, I said. “Then where do
you live?” he asked. “I live here”,
I replied. Puzzled, he said, “Here, in Erzerum?”
“No, here”, I said, stamping my feet on
the ground, meaning that I live just where I am and
nowhere else (in fact, we all live just where we happen
to be at the present moment; it’s not possible
to live elsewhere). Unprepared for such an answer
and not understanding my meaning, he said: “You’re
crazy!” and walked away, abandoning any hope
of selling me a carpet. But does it mean I’m
crazy because he didn’t understand me? Perhaps
I am crazy, but not because of that!
The best part of my trip in Turkey was towards
the end, in the west, when I arrived in Canakkale,
a small town situated at the entrance to the narrow
strait of water that separates Europe from Asia known—from
ancient times—as the Dardanelles. It is from
Canakkale that most people visit the ancient city
of Troy and the First World War battle site of Gallipoli.
I also had come for this, and had been advised, by
people I had met along the way—other travelers—to
join a tour group rather than doing it alone. This,
therefore, is what I did, and found myself in the
company of mainly young Australians.
The tour began at 9:00 a.m. with a visit
to Troy. Our guide was a retired submarine commander
also named Ali, whose manner of narrating facts and
stories was quite endearing; he clearly loved his
work; I can hear his voice now: “Ladies and
gentlemen”, he would begin. He made Troy live
for me; I ‘saw’ scenes described by Homer
in The Iliad: of King Priam and his son Paris, whose
abduction of Helen had precipitated the war with the
Greeks; of the fierce combat between Achilles and
Hector, in which the latter was slain; of the Wooden
Horse, by which subterfuge the Greeks finally gained
entrance to Troy and destroyed it.
Always interested in history, I asked Ali
a number of questions about Troy and his answers satisfied
me. We returned to Canakkale and crossed the Dardanelles
to Gallipoli. I’d heard of Gallipoli before,
of course, but until going there, knew little about
it. Now I know more, and would like to tell something
of it before going further.
When the First World War broke out in 1914,
Russia took Britain’s side against Germany,
and Turkey—enemy of Russia almost by tradition—found
itself on Germany’s side (European alliances
were so complex and changed so often, that this year’s
enemy might be next year’s friend).
Britain, at that time, had the largest empire
the world has ever known, and could call upon almost
unlimited manpower. Australia and New Zealand, until
then, had never been involved in overseas wars, but
when the call for volunteers went out, many Aussies
and Kiwis—either from patriotism or desire for
adventure—enlisted to serve in places that most
of them had never even heard of. From cities and farms
they came to fight for the King-Emperor, knowing nothing
of those they would face. They were then shipped off
to places like Egypt, to be given basic training in
military discipline and the use of arms, before boarding
other ships for the invasion of Turkey, the aim being
to capture Istanbul, and thus knock Turkey out of
the war.
Had these plans succeeded, Istanbul—which
consisted mainly of wooden buildings at that time—would
have undergone a firestorm. But the Turks were anticipating
invasion, and had mined the waters of the Dardanelles,
so when a joint French-and-British fleet—the
vaunted British fleet that controlled the oceans to
the anthem of Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules the
Waves—tried to enter, several of its ships were
sunk by mines in the first day, forcing withdrawal
and reconsideration.
The powers in far-off London then decided
to land troops on a peninsula not far from the entrance
to the Dardanelles, at a place known as Gallipoli.
But again, the Turks were prepared, and although the
Allied ships launched a terrific bombardment of the
Turkish positions, the invaders were unable to advance
very far and were pinned down by Turkish fire; thus
began trench warfare. To protect themselves from enemy
fire, both sides dug trenches for shelter; but were
so close to each other that in places the distance
separating them was only 10 meters. The battle went
on for 8 months, during which British / Australian
/ New Zealand casualties (killed and wounded) were
205,000 out of 410,000, French casualties 47,000 out
of 79,000, and Turkish 250,000 to 300,000 out of 500,000.
The suffering was incalculable, but the stories of
courage and heroism that emerged from it have become
legendary, and made of the Battle of Gallipoli something
unique in military history. (It is not my intention
to glorify war and fighting, and I hope it doesn’t
seem as if I am doing so here; my purpose in writing
this is to point out that the Dharma was present—or
perceived by some—during the madness of war,
and to show that even on a battlefield, with death
and suffering all around, people are still able to
see beyond to a higher dimension).
Following military custom, orders were periodically
given for bayonet charges to be made. The men, though
naturally afraid and wanting to live, obeyed without
question and went over the top to almost certain death.
They did not say, “I don’t want to go!
I don’t want to die!” but climbed out
of their trenches and faced the withering fire of
the enemy’s machine guns. The carnage during
these futile and stupid charges was horrific!
After one such charge by the British, when
the survivors had withdrawn to their trenches and
the gunfire had ceased, from the blood stained and
corpse strewn ground between the trenches came the
cries of a badly wounded British officer calling for
help. No-one dared go to his assistance, however,
as they would have been immediately cut down. But
then something amazing happened: A white flag appeared
from the Turkish trenches, and out climbed a burly
soldier, who went over to the wounded British officer,
picked him up and carried him to the British trenches,
where he gently put him down and went back to his
own position. No-one knows the name of this valiant
and compassionate Turk, but such acts—it wasn’t
the only one; there were others, on both sides—gave
rise to deep respect in each for the other.
The night before the tour, together with
many other tourists, I watched a video documentary
about Gallipoli, showing survivors from both sides,
now very old men. Almost invariably, they said that
although they fought and killed their opponents, they
never hated them, but merely followed orders. They
spoke, too, of the respect and admiration of the courage
shown by their erstwhile enemies.
With such background information, we trod
the hills and sand-dunes of Gallipoli with awe and
reverence. It has become a sacred place, a place of
pilgrimage, visited by millions from both sides with
homage in their hearts. Young Australians especially
(I met so many of them in Turkey that half of Melbourne
seemed to be there!), are drawn to this place, as
it has a special place in Australian history: their
baptism by fire, as it were. Every year, on ANZAC
Day, people march down the streets of the towns and
cities of Australia (and New Zealand, too), in remembrance
of those who died in such battles. Survivors still
march if they can, in their old faded uniforms with
medals on their chests, tears in their eyes and thoughts
of fallen comrades, heads held high; some go by wheelchair.
There are not many left now of those who fought at
Gallipoli. In fact, I just heard that the oldest remaining
Australian survivor of the battle of Gallipoli—Ted
Matthews, one of the first men to land at Anzac Cove
at Gallipoli, and one of the last to leave—had
died in December 1997, aged 101.
In the trenches, unable to advance and the
battle at a stalemate, men from both sides resorted
to making hand grenades from tin cans filled with
stones, bullets, lead-shot and so on; but the fuses
on these bombs were so long that they would take up
to 30 seconds to burn down and explode—ample
time to pick them up and toss them back to where they
had come from. The deadly missiles would go to and
fro like ping-pong balls before exploding, and no-one
knew where they would go off; sometimes they would
explode in the places where they had originated! It
was soon realized this was too risky; they were killing
themselves as often as their opponents!
Then, someone must have seen the irony and
stupidity of the whole situation—maybe someone
with some understanding or feeling for Universal Dharma—and
from the Australian trenches, instead of bombs, chocolate
bars began to fly across no-man’s land! The
British and Australians—unlike the Turks—had
supplies of chocolate. When the Turks—who I
saw have a good sense of humor—recovered from
their surprise at such strange weapons, they expressed
their appreciation and reciprocated by tossing back
fresh fruit, which, being on home ground, they had
in abundance, while their enemies lacked this.
One day, from the Turkish trenches, a packet
of tobacco came flying over, with a note on a scrap
of cloth written in broken English, saying: “I,
you, tobacco. You, me, paper. Okay?” They had
tobacco but no paper with which to make cigarettes;
the British and Australians had paper, but were short
of tobacco. So, from the British and Australians magazines
and newspapers started to fly. Each side got what
they needed.
This and other tales told by Ali—one
of whose grand fathers had been killed at Gallipoli—brought
tears to my eyes; many of the young Australians in
the tour group I had joined were similarly moved.
But there was more:
When the British War Office in London finally
realized it had made a huge blunder and could not
win this battle, it reluctantly decided to evacuate
its forces from Gallipoli. But how to get out? The
Commander-in-Chief of the invasion force was asked
how many casualties must be expected during the evacuation.
His casual reply of 50% caused outrage in Britain;
he seemed to regard the troops as ‘throw-aways’,
with plenty more to replace those lost. He was replace
by someone less callous and more efficient—someone
to whom men were not so expendable. Plans were made
to withdraw during the dark phase of the moon, and
orders given to make no sound that might alert the
Turks to what was going on; elaborate devices were
rigged up to create the illusion that life in the
trenches was as normal.
It is impossible to move a whole army quietly,
however; the Turks knew what was happening, but their
Commander-in-Chief, Mustafa Kemal—who later
became the first President of the Turkish Republic,
and was honored with the title of Ataturk, meaning
Father of the Turks—had given an order, of just
three words: “Follow your tradition”,
which was taken to mean: Do not shoot a retreating
enemy in the back. So, whereas the British had expected
to lose many thousands of men, they lost not a single
one, only two men being wounded. So deeply had the
Turks grown to respect their valiant enemies that
they allowed them to go peacefully. What honor! Where
can we find another such example of it?
Wandering around the Allied cemeteries at
Gallipoli, reading the epitaphs on the stones, I was
stunned that the over whelming number of soldiers
who took part in this deadly conflict were just boys
in their late teens and early twenties. Most of them
had enlisted to go and fight for king and empire in
places many of them had never heard of; Gallipoli
became the graveyard of about 28,000 British, almost
9,000 Australians, over 2,000 New Zealanders, and
unnumbered Turks.
Because I had asked Ali a number of questions
during this tour, too, towards the end, he took me
aside and pulled from his pocket a tiny box containing
bullets and shrapnel from the battle site, and gave
it to me. I was very touched by his gift, but not
more touched than he was when, in turn, I presented
him with one of my ‘thunder-eggs’, saying
to him what I had said to the other Ali in the mosque:
“What we are looking for is not outside of ourselves”.
When he opened it, he was so moved that he said: “I
will keep it in my pocket always!” A few words
had affected him so much! Just as the monk understood
from the Buddha’s flower, so Ali got something
from my stone. I then told him that I am a monk—the
word in Turkish for monk (it’s actually Arabic),
is rahib—and he said: “I knew there was
something different about you!”
At the end of the tour, I thanked Ali, and
told him that although I’d had a good trip in
Turkey and visited many wonderful places, this had
been the best part of my trip there, and I would surely
write something about it for my next book (this one;
I have kept my word about it). He shook my hand very
firmly and warmly; I had made a new friend.
Over the years, I have given such stones
to many people in many places, with differing effects.
Some people merely said “How nice!” and
stored it away with their other nice things. But others,
like Ali, the Turkish tour guide, were deeply touched.
As Lao Tsu wrote: “More words count less”.
A few days later, before I returned to Malaysia,
I wrote to Ali from Istanbul, but because I knew neither
his full name or address, I sent my letter to the
hotel—ANZAC HOUSE—that had arranged the
tour, hoping it would reach him, but not knowing if
it would. I will have more to say about this in the
next article, COROLLARY.
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