Bones Of The Master – George Crane

Amito fu.” The old man dropped to his knees; his forehead touched Tsung Tsai’s shoes. The night before, Tsung Tsai had given his nephew the mountain boots that had bought him in anticipation of our climb to Shiuh Deng’s cave. Looking up at the mountain now, I was worried. The old man was kissing the t’ai chi slippers Tsung Tsai had glued together in Woodstock. “Amito fu,” Tsung Tsai said, helping him up. “Amito fu.

Amito fu,” I repeated. His name was Bo Ying, caretaker of Mei Leh Geng Jau. He would show us the Buddha and take us to the hermitage of Bae Er, the old lama. He shouted over his shoulder to some- one we couldn’t see, removed the chain, and pulled open the temple doors. He motioned, and we followed. The entrance hall was littered with rubble; on its walls were tapestries of faded scarlet and blue, embroidered with mandalas and texts.

“This place is amazing,” said, oure, said lsung Isai. Bo Ying pulled a scroll from a niche near the door. He unrolled it with a flourish, holding it up for Tsung Tsai to translate. It was crude and childish. It looked like it had been written with a crayon stub. Tsung Tsai opened one of his safety-pinned pockets and pulled out his glasses. Even with his yellow cap pulled down to his eyebrows, the glasses made him look very much the sage. He ran his finger down the scroll, reading it to himself.

“Hard to read,’ he said. “Part Chinese, part Mongolia language. The person who writes this has poor education.” He translated it for me in bits and pieces. Mei Leh Geng Jau, first called Chi Yua Mei, was built in 1705, half a century after the fifth Dalai Lama’s thousand- room palace, the Potola, which sits on Red Hill above the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.

Buddhism arrived in Mongolia in the thirteenth century when miracle-working lamas from Tibet, traveling east on the The Old Lama’s Lap Silk Road, came to Xanadu, the fabled court of Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan.

A Buddhist Monks Search for the Lost Heart of China A fascinating, beautifully written account of a great (and delightful) Clfan return pilgrimage to remote Inner Mongolia after forty years of exile —Peter Matthiessen, author of The Snow Leopard George Crane IN U.S. $25.95 IN CANADA $39.95 They are -the most unlikely of friends: one an American poet in love with words, a self- described ne’er-do-well and sensualist with a finely honed suspicion of authority.

The other an aging Chinese monk steeped in an ancient tradition and devoted to the memory of his ascetic meditation master. Their lives come together in this extraordinary journey that takes us from the still-medieval villages of Inner Mongolia to a modern Hong Kong of black magic and stunning materialism. Bones of the Master The journey begins in 1959, as a young monk named Tsung Tsai (Ancestor Wisdom) escapes the Red Army troops that destroy his monastery, and flees alone three thousand miles across a China swept by chaos and famine.

Hidden under his peasant jacket he carries a book of poetry and his monk’s certificate, either of which means death if discovered. His mission: to carry on the teachings of his Ch’ an Buddhist master, Shiuh Deng, who was too old to leave with his disciple. Nearly forty years later Tsung Tsai—now an old master himself—travels with his skeptical friend r \ me back to his birthplace at the edge of the Gobi Desert.

China is stirring with spiritual renew ad, and Tsung Tsai is determined to find Seu.T Deng’s grave and build a shrine in his honor, ignoring visa restrictions, tLADESH BURMA (Continued on back via;: Saucafit* Pubik Library 420 llth© St. SauwSito, CA (4#2te9-gl SAUSALITO PUBLIC LIBRARY 94963 ° > c 5n sal s E 3 11 0 847 654 M O N G O L 1 A AREA OF INSET scape ivoure \> N ‘ O.V 1 1 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from China-America Digital Academic Library (CADAL) https://archive.org/details/bonesofmasterbudOOgeor Bones of the Master A Buddhist Monk’s Search for the Lost Heart of China George Crane A LIVING PLANET BOOK BANTAM BOOKS NEW YORK TORONTO LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND Mb.

a 9 & \ BONES OF THE MASTER A Bantam Book / March 2000 Images appearing in photo sections were provided by the author unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2000 by George Crane. Book design by Maura Fadden Rosenthal. Endpaper map by James Sinclair. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any infor- mation storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the pub- lisher.

For information address: Bantam Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crane, George (George L.)

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: eb26dc7b31000f28
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 22,533,666 bytes (21.49 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 0553106503
• Pages: 327
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 397.02 minutes
• Total Words: 79,404
• Total Characters: 438,434
• Average Words per Page: 242.83
• Average Characters per Page: 1340.78

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