SCOTCH ON THE ROCKS

Ross Clark visits Lhasa on the Clyde

and discovers a large number of Glaswegian Buddhists

THINK OF Buddhism and what comes into your mind? Fat Tibetans sitting cross- legged under trees staring into space, drunk on the thin airs of the Himalayas. But it is also going down rather well in Scotland, with lads from the Gorbals and the sons of Morningside doctors. They are deserting their Catholic and Presbyterian parents by the dozen and taking vows with a Scottish-Buddhist sect: an act the Bud- dhists themselves euphemistically call 'tak- ing refuge'.

Few monastic orders have found the late 20th century an easy time for recruitment, but the Samye Ling Buddhists have no such problem; founded at the height of hippie culture in 1968, the movement has for the past 25 years been operating from a temple at Eskdalemuir in Dumfriesshire. Their MP, David Steel, is often to be heard making approving noises about them. Now they are on the march. Two years ago they quickly produced 1350,000 to buy an island in the Firth of Clyde. Holy Island — not to be confused with its Northumbrian namesake — had been the semi-derelict second home of a Glaswe- gian couple; and, incidentally, the destina- tion of many a pair of lovers from the Isle of Arran prepared to brave the almost constant mist and to risk their undersides on the thorny gorse bushes.

Visiting the dozen monks who live there now is not an easy business. A mile-long dark backbone of rock rising to 1,000 feet, the island lies amongst strong currents just to the east of Arran, close to where the nuclear submarines pass. When I first rang the man who runs an irregular ferry service there he replied in a dour Scots tone, 'You won't be getting across there tomorrow; the weather's bad'. Next day he said the same. And the day after. This continued for a week.

When I did finally find a convenient calm day, five months later, I arrived five minutes too late for his scheduled service. I had to pay £15 to persuade him to take me across; making the mile-long- crossing to this spartan isle just about the most expensive form of travel in the world, Tokyo's taxis not excepted. We set off, bows bursting through the waves, until we reached the shore. I soon found out the reason for the delay; the Buddhists have not got round to building a proper jetty. The ferryman has to land among perilous, knuckle-like rocks, and so refuses to sail unless the sea is as smooth as glass.

I arrived in time to catch the shaven- headed, purple-clad monks at their evening prayers — called Puja. Their tem- ple is not gilded or gabled; it is an old storeroom attached to a disused light- house cottage. Half of it is piled high with floorboards reeking of sickly preservative. Squeezed up the other end the monks, and several nuns, were kneeling on inflat- ed lifeboat jackets, chanting a repetitive prayer from photocopied sheets. Facing them was a makeshift altar, adorned with eight bowls of water: offerings to Buddha. Nobody seemed to mind when a pigeon flew through the open doors and started drinking them.

There was only one Tibetan among the mainly Scottish congregation: a rounded, jolly fellow called Lama Yeshe Losal. As well as a fondness for Welsh rarebit, of which he ate several rounds at breakfast, he had a penchant for manual labour, the more back-breaking the better. He spent eight hours a day scything the bracken in a field just above the lighthouse cottages where the monks live. His paler, younger but less muscular charges were raking up the debris, some with garden forks as there were not enough rakes to go round.

It was strange to see them in the drizzle, against the background of a windswept mountain; they must be the only Buddhists in the world who wear baseball caps and, when the weather really closes in, yellow oilskins. They were only too happy to chat, though finding a subject was not always easy. They were not interested in current events, not caring in the least when I tried to tell them how the Natural Law Party had done in the European elections; natural law, it transpired, is part of the transcen- dental meditation movement, which is Hindi, not Buddhist, in origin. The only flicker of interest in the outside world came when the monks were told, by a wild-eyed Dutch visitor, that insurance companies in the Netherlands now offer reduced premi- ums for those who meditate.

Instead, the monks told me in thick Glaswegian accents of the stresses, disap- pointments and drug experiments which had led to their becoming monks. 'I started my photography business at the worst pos- sible time during the recession,' I was told by a monk called Kepa, or 'Kipper' as he insisted on pronouncing it.

As the monks and nuns began to tire of their work later in the day they broke out into spontaneous bouts of meditation, dropping their tools and sitting cross- legged on the damp Scottish grass, staring into space — though not withdrawing so much they were unable to hear the call for lunch.

I went over to Pema, a bespectacled nun, to ask her about the meditation.

'It's all about clearing the mind,' she said warmly, 'letting thoughts pass through your mind but not grabbing hold of them.'

'But that sounds rather a shame,' I said. 'I always enjoy thinking.'

'It's very difficult,' she said. 'It's about learning to live in the present and not mak- ing plans.'

That, at least, is the theory. A few sen- tences later she was talking of the £10 mil- lion 'long-term retreat centre' which Samye Ling hopes to build on the island.

'We've so much work to do if we are to finish it by the year 2,000,' she said excited- ly.

Last year Samye Ling launched an archi- tectural competition for the project. The winner of the £8,000 prize was a Dutch partnership which designed a four-storey concrete block of monastic cells at the foot of a cliff overlooking a bay where the seals now like to sit, flapping, and snorting like pigs.

I read the competition brief and found a somewhat unusual requirement: 'each room must have space for a box, one cubic metre, in which the retreatants can sit and sleep.'

The idea is that the monks will be able to spend three years, three months and three days sitting in their cutaway, lidless boxes meditating, coming out only twice a day, to take communal meals in silence. Even then they will sit facing the walls, With their backs to each other.

It might sound an unappealing prospect to most of us, but many have been there before and claim to have enjoyed it. Tashi, a monk with the unlikely attribute of a Brummie accent, spoke fondly of the years 1989-93 which he spent in retreat. 'I knew something was going on in the Middle East,' he said, 'because suddenly all these planes flying overhead had been resprayed In a sandy colour.'

Lama Yeshe himself spent five years in retreat in a monastery in upstate New York. Surprisingly, I thought, for so jolly a man, he claims to be happier that way, Speaking to nobody and making repeated protestations to Buddha — a flamboyant form of bowing which ends with the Bud- dhist coming down on all fours. At his peak Lama Yeshe was doing 1,300 of them each morning.

'I was making my protestations so eager- ly,' he explained, 'that I had to be given a large leather mat. I was breaking the floor- boards.'

During the next session of prayers I examined the planks stacked in the temple, there to replace the rotten floor of one of the cottages. Soon, I hoped, the boards would be thick enough.