At noon, we finally arrived at the lama temple, which Chen Xuehan had been chattering about. I had visited many lama temples before and seen various types and sizes of temples, but this was my first time encountering one like this.
First, there was an extremely dilapidated temple door, very small, with the wooden door being only half a person’s width. Behind it was a small courtyard, swept clean of snow, revealing many stone mills and stone tables and chairs.
At the end of the courtyard, I saw a temple built against the mountain, with buildings extending several kilometers upwards, looking somewhat spectacular. Even so, I knew that there wasn’t much space inside these temple buildings. Although they appeared to cover a large area, the internal space was quite small due to being built against the mountain.
Three young lamas were sitting around the stone mills, warming themselves by the fire. When they saw us enter, they didn’t show much surprise and remained silent and still.
Chen Xuehan stepped forward to explain our purpose, speaking in Tibetan, which I couldn’t understand. One of the lamas then led us inside.
The first building was the largest, serving as a place for the lamas to perform rituals. Behind the building was a wooden ladder that led upwards. We climbed layer by layer, not knowing how long we had been climbing or how many rooms we had passed, until the leading lama finally stopped. I realized we had arrived at a completely dark room.
Chen Xuehan and the lama walked down respectfully, leaving just me and two companions standing in the pitch-black room. As I looked around, I discovered that this seemed to be a meditation room. The entire room had only one place that was lit.
We cautiously walked over, and as we gradually adjusted to the light, I slowly began to see many vague shadows in the darkness, all piles of scriptures. We navigated around them until we reached the lit area, which turned out to be a window.
The window was covered with a very thick blanket, but the blanket was so old that it had rotted and developed many tiny holes, allowing light to seep through.
I was contemplating whether to pull the blanket aside to let the daylight in when I suddenly heard a voice from the darkness say, “No light, come here.”
I was startled by the voice and turned to see a spark of fire light up in a dark corner. Then, in the shimmering light, I gradually saw five lamas, who became fully illuminated. These five lamas must have been there for a long time; I couldn’t see them in the darkness, perhaps because they had some special meditative practice, and we seemed to have disturbed them.
Remembering what they had said about coming here, I walked over. As I approached, I noticed that a few of the younger lamas had their eyes closed, while only one older lama was staring intently at us. After we explained our purpose, the old lama also closed his eyes and said, “He has indeed been to your place.”
In the old lama’s bedroom, we drank freshly brewed butter tea while he gradually recounted the events. The room was warmed by a charcoal stove, making it quite cozy. I listened, slightly sweating, as the young man shared his experiences of his first appearance in the human world.
Twenty years ago, the scene from that night is still vivid in the old lama’s memory. It was the third week of heavy snowfall, and it had become very dangerous to descend the mountain. All the lamas were preparing for a winter of rigorous meditation. At that time, the old lama was only sixty years old, and his cultivation was far from what it is now. Although he was already a well-known master in the lama temple, the head lama at that time was not him.
To make it easier to distinguish, we will refer to the younger old lama as Tashi, while the name of the head lama in the temple back then was Derin. Derin, the head lama, was eighty-four years old at the time, and it seemed as if he had some kind of premonition. That day, he had already instructed Tashi to clear all the snow in front of the temple and to place three large charcoal stoves at the temple entrance to prevent snow from covering the ground again.
This was the first time such an action had been taken since the temple was built. Although Tashi did not understand the meaning of this, he sensed that Derin seemed to have perceived something. That night, when Tashi went for the fourth time to add charcoal to the stoves, he saw a young man standing in front of the stove warming himself.
The young man was wearing a particularly strange outfit, which appeared to be an extremely thick military coat, but the patterns on the coat were Tibetan. He was carrying a large backpack on his back, which looked incredibly heavy.
He was a young Han man, dressed in a heavy coat, and appeared particularly robust. At that time, Tashi had the following conversation with him:
Tashi: “Where do you come from, esteemed guest?”
Young man: “From the mountains.”
Tashi: “Where are you going, esteemed guest?”
Young man: “Going outside.”
Tashi: “Did you come from the village on the opposite side of the mountain?”
Young man: “No, I came from deep within the snow mountain.”
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