youth
Childhood in Pukhet By way of a preface and in rather broad strokes, I have begun to paint a picture of Guru Chod's familial background. His father, as a liege official obedient to Chulalongkorn, the Fifth Rama King, found grace with his sovereign and gained favoured posting on the tranquil Andaman Sea island of Phuket, an important Siamese trading port of the day. It was here amid the tropical splendor of Koh-Phuket that the saint retained his earliest memories.
The Wide-Open Universe
One fine morning just before his passing I visited Guru Chod's garden ashram, as I did so often in those coolest hours, sitting at his feet and practicing the various articulate yogas. Now it just so happened that on this day the master told a story from his distant childhood. The anecdote related to a pivotal event towards the child's conversion to the philosophical life.
This event took place in the very early years of the twentieth century when again – we repeat – the child was living on the island of Phuket off the southwest coast of the kingdom of Siam. Here is the story that Guru Chod told:
One afternoon when I was still a little boy attending the local temple school, the teacher started telling the class about a mysterious thing called the "Universe." But it wasn't easy for us eight-year olds to understand. The teacher then pointed to the big world map that was hanging on the wall with the Kingdom of Siam right in the centre.Next the teacher tried to make us understand how small we were compared to the "Universe." He said, "Listen. If the Sun were the size of a watermelon, then the Earth would only be the size of a pea." Then he paused. "So tell me then," he said. "If the Sun was the size of a watermelon and Earth was only the size of a pea..., then how big would you be?"
Answers from the class were not forthcoming. There was even a long unsettling silence.
"Never mind," he told us. "I'll just let you think about it." Then he laughed to himself and let us go home early.Later that night, though, while lying in my bed, I began to ponder what our teacher had said. I tried with all my might to comprehend the "Universe." I reasoned like this: "If the Sun were the size of a watermelon and the Earth were only the size of a pea, then I must be smaller than a tiny speck of dust. A tiny speck of dust," I tried to imagine that, "compared to the whole wide open Universe!... 'That means I'm not "important at all,' I thought to myself. 'That means I'm nothing!'"
The old man smiled, even beamed with delight having finished recounting his precious little tale. Then he rose to his feet and casually said to me, "You can write that in your book."
'My book?' I thought with a quizzical look. A prudent pause of silence followed. Then he smiled at me again, and with a raised brow of knowing said,
"You can put it in the preface."
British Education
Guru Chod's father held a very high esteem for western education and accordingly sent the child away to boarding school on the nearby island of Penang – "The Pearl of the Orient. " Penang was at that time was a part of British-ruled Malaya. There the young Chod obtained his middle-school education at the British founded Free School in Georgetown. Later for demanding prep-school studies the academic teen was sent overseas, to Bombay, India where he entered the British public school. That was around the year 1916.
"The journey by steamer took nearly a month," the Master told me one quiet morning. "It was odd," he said. "Indian students weren't allowed to study in the British schools in India at that time; but for some reason Siamese students were. But there were only about five of us studying in India then. Occasionally we would meet, but we had to travel far because some were studying in Darjeeling, some in Madras, and other places. Travelling by train wasn't easy in those days. It's the same today. You know what I mean."
After completing his studies in Bombay, Chod set sail for the British Isles where he had won admission to Trinity College, Cambridge.
Mahārāja or Street Beggar
His work in journalism taught him to view all levels of society with equal vision. "In the morning I would interview the Mahārāja of Hyderabad," he said. "That same afternoon I would start a story on local street beggars and scavengers. To write a good story on scavengers and beggars you have to mix with them for a couple of weeks."
By observing first hand the appalling inequities that still continue to plague modern India, Chod arrived to his ethical outlook on life. "Everybody is looking for the same thing," he told me. "Everybody is looking for happiness. But don't mistake ethics for morality." He cautioned. "Ethics is concerned with one question only: What is happiness."
World Congress of Faiths
By 1936 Chod was back in England to attend the highly publicized World Congress of Faiths, which convened at University College, London from July 3-18 that same year, and where the illustrious Indian scholar Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was a principal speaker.
In the later part of the following year the journalist also met Theos Bernard, the daring young American traveller-cum-writer who gave a public talk in London. Bernard was on his return voyage to America after completing an extensive tour of India and Tibet. The Master recounted this meeting for me. He described how Bernard had come to the talk "oddly dressed in traditional Tibetan clothes." He related with humor how Bernard had reproved a panel of journalists when they "incorrectly" referred to him as an American. "I am not an American," Bernard insisted. "I am a Tibetan!"
While touring Tibet, Bernard apparently received confirmation from certain high lamas that he was the tulku or "saintly-reincarnation" of the extremely revered eighth-century teacher named Padmasambhāva. Padmasambhāva is adored as nothing less than the Father of Tantra in the Land of Tibet, where tradition has it he was solely responsible for introducing the sacred tantric texts from India. One can only infer that this was the reason why Bernard so insistently maintained he was not an American, but a Tibetan. Though a comical irony emerges from the fact that Padmasambhāva was not Tibetan, but Indian!
Hitler's Rise
Already, however, by 1933 an ambitious young German named Adolf Hitler had cunningly hijacked the German State. For the next six years he managed to keep his neighbours and the whole wide world in a constant state of astonishment. On March 10, 1939 German troops quietly annexed Czechoslovakia. Now for documentation purposes they brought along their film crews, and just like that a monochromatic spell of surreality was cast across the European continent. Regional leaders were loath to take action and responded like somnambulists shackled to the nightmare. It ultimately took the September 1st 1939 invasion of Poland to rouse them up from their collective stupor. The Führer could no longer be taken lightly; nor was he about to be humoured. Alarms were sounding... Fuelled by deranged utopian visions of a German National Socialist World Order, the whole of Europe was poised to be sucked into a grisly Theatre of the Holocaust. Xenophobic sentiment was steadily on the rise: those with money and a prudent sense of self-preservation conveyed themselves accordingly.
The Master himself had already beheld the phenomenon of Hitler addressing a massive Nazi Party rally in Berlin. "I went there on assignment," he told me one day. "I was standing so far back in the crowd that Hitler was just a tiny speck. But I could hear him very well because they had excellent loudspeakers."
Now, one should also be reminded that Chod was no descendent of Nordic folk. To make things worse, the foreign scribe's health was teetering at the brink of utter ruin. At nearly forty years of age, the roaring years of his bachelor youth were apparently catching up with him fast. He was already suffering from acute diabetes. Then a doctor in London diagnosed a fistula and rheumatism. In fact, there were also signs that he might become the victim of coronary thrombosis if he wasn't extremely careful. But when the doctor advised him to enter a hospital and undergo surgery for the fistula, Chod grew apprehensive and refused the operation. And besides, with Hitler intent on keeping his promise to unleash his bombers on the British capitol, it was hardly the time to be confined to hospital. There was one more hitch as well. Though a resident of Britain, Chod was not a British subject; a fact that was was rudely brought to bear while suffering two days of interrogation as a suspected enemy spy. Now one thing was clear: it was time to leave Europe. But where could he go? Timing was crucial.
[Note: For most recent edition see pdf file saint guru chod (1900-1988).]
