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monks went to bed at dark and stayed there until dawn. To us they
seemed soft and effete, and although we grumbled to ourselves, we
would have grumbled still more if our schedule had been altered
to bring us to the inefficient level of the others. The first year was
particularly hard. Then was the time to weed out those who were
failures. Only the strongest could survive on visits to the frozen
highlands in search of herbs, and we of Chakpori were the only
men to go there. Wisely our leaders decided to eliminate the un-
suitable before they could in any way endanger others. During the
first year we had almost no relaxation, no amusements and games.
Study and work occupied every waking moment.
One of the things for which I am still grateful is the way in
which we were taught to memorize. Most Tibetans have good
memories, but we who were training to be medical monks had to
know the names and exact descriptions of a very large number of
herbs, as well as knowing how they could be combined and used.
We had to know much about astrology, and be able to recite the
whole of our sacred books. A method of memory training had been
evolved throughout the centuries. We imagined that we were in a
room lined with thousands and thousands of drawers. Each
drawer was clearly labeled, and the writing on all the labels could
be read with ease from where we stood. Every fact we were told
had to be classified, and we were instructed to imagine that we
opened the appropriate drawer and put the fact inside. We had to
visualize it very clearly as we did it, visualize the  fact and the
exact location of the  drawer . With little practice it was amaze-
ingly easy to in imagination enter the room, open the correct
drawer, and extract the fact required as well as all related facts.
Our teachers went to great pains to ram home the need for good
memories. They would shoot questions at us merely to test our
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memories. The questions would be quite unrelated to each other
so that we could not follow a trend and take an easy path. Often
it would be questions on obscure pages of the sacred books
interspersed with queries about herbs. The punishment for forget-
fulness was most severe; forgetting was the unforgivable crime and
was punished with a severe beating. We were not given a long time
in which to try to remember. The teacher would perhaps say:  You,
boy, I want to know the fifth line of the eighteenth page of the
seventh volume of the Kan-gyur, open the drawer, now, what is
it? Unless one could answer within about ten seconds it was as
well not to answer, because the punishment would be even worse
if there was any mistake, no matter how slight. It is a good system,
though, and does train the memory. We could not carry books of
facts. Our books were usually about three feet wide by about
eighteen inches long, loose sheets of paper held unbound between
wooden covers. Certainly I found a good memory to be of the
utmost value in later years.
During the first twelve months we were not allowed out of the
lamasery grounds. Those who did leave were not permitted to
return. This was a rule peculiar to Chakpori, because the discipline
was so strict it was feared that if we were allowed out we should
not return. I admit that I should have  run for it if I had had
anywhere to run. After the first year we were used to it.
The first year we were not permitted to play any games at all,
we were kept hard at work the whole time and this most effectively
weeded out those who were weak and unable to stand the strain.
After these first hard months we found that we had almost for-
gotten how to play. Our sports and exercises were designed to
toughen us and be of some practical use in later life. I retained my
earlier fondness for stilt walking, and now I was able to devote
some time to it. We started with stilts which lifted our feet our own
height above ground. As we became more adept we used longer
stilts, usually about ten feet high. On those we strutted about the
courtyards, peering into windows and generally making a nuisance
of ourselves. No balancing pole was used; when we desired to stay
in one place we rocked from foot to foot as if we were marking
time. That enabled us to maintain our balance and position.
There was no risk of falling off if one was reasonably alert. We
fought battles on stilts. Two teams of us, usually ten a side, would
line up about thirty yards apart, and then on a given signal we
would charge each other, uttering wild whoops calculated to
frighten off the sky demons. As I have said, I was in a class of
boys much older and bigger than myself. This gave me an advant-
age when it came to stilt fights. The others lumbered along heavily,
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and I could nip in among, them and pull a stilt here and push one
there and so send the riders toppling. On horseback I was not so
good, but when I had to stand or fall on my own resources, I
could make my way.
Another use for stilts, for us boys, was when we crossed streams.
We could wade carefully across and save a long detour to the
nearest ford. I remember once I was ambling along on six-foot
stilts. A stream was in the way and I wanted to cross. The water
was deep right from the banks, there was no shallow part at all. I
sat on the bank and lowered my stilted legs in. The water came to
my knees, as I walked out in midstream it rose to nearly my waist.
Just then I heard running footsteps. A man hurried along the
path and gave the merest glance at the small boy crossing the
water. Apparently, seeing that the stream did not reach my waist, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]