A Promise Kept: Memoir of Tibetans in India

By Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz PhD and Germaine Krull

A Promise Kept: Memoir of Tibetans in India is a collaborative work between Germaine Krull and her friend Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz. Although a great photographer, Germaine was European and wrote English poorly. For this reason, she entrusted her memoir manuscript to Marilyn. Germaine requested that Marilyn promise to edit and rewrite it for publication so others could share her experiences. As promised, Marilyn offers Germaine’s A Promise Kept to you. Enjoy reading about his holiness Sakya Trizin, his family, and their lives in India. Share their trials, adaptations, and amazing social and religious rebirth as refugee Tibetans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984542137

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Copyright © 2018 by Germaine Krull and Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz, Ph.D..

ISBN:            Softcover           978-1-9845-4212-0

                       eBook              978-1-9845-4213-7

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/10/2018

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CONTENTS

Cover Image Attribution

Dedications

Acknowledgments And Forward

Introduction

Section One

Section Two

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Select Bibliography

COVER IMAGE ATTRIBUTION

The cover image is titled: Prayer Flags. Its author is: Michael Day, dated April 10, 2008. Its use is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. It was used by Wikipedia, and transferred from Flickr by user: Russavia.

DEDICATIONS

(By Germaine Krull)

If you desire this life, you are not a religious person;

If you desire the round of worldly existence,

you have not turned about with conviction.

If you desire for the sake of self, you have not the

enlightenment of thought.

If grasping ensues, you have not the view.

(The parting from the Four Desires, Arya Manjusri)

With deep devotion to His Holiness Sakya Trizin, and to Chimey-la and her family from Germaine Krull.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND FORWARD

(By Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz)

This study is essentially a collaboration berween two authors, and a combination of two written components: Germaine Krull’s rewritten and edited Memoir about her days in India among Tibetan refugees; and added commentary written by Germaine’s friend, Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz.

In order to complete the documentation, editing and rewriting of My Tibetans Friends, Germaine Krull’s original title for her Memoir, the editor/co-author used several additional sources of information: published books and articles; her own fieldwork notes about Tibetan refugees in India; conversations with Germaine Krull and relevant other persons in India. Together, they represent the fulfilment of a promise made by Marilyn to Germaine, one day, decades ago, in a dusty room near Dehra Dun, India. Memoir with added commentary is now a fulfilled ‘promise kept’ for others to share and witness.

Marilyn’s editorial resources include, as noted, field notes from time periods spent among Tibetan refugees in Darjeeling, Gangtok, Dehra Dun, Mussoorie, Leh, Ladakh, other Tibetan communities in South India, and in Switzerland. She visited with Germaine Krull while she lived periodically near His Holiness Sakya Trizin’s family in Mussoorie and Dehra Dun, as well as in Delhi on two occasions. Several interviews with Tibetan Sect leaders were also sources for data. An interview with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as well as longer talks with His Holiness Sakya Trizin, and Karmapa, the previous head of the Kagyu School in Gangkok, Sikkim, proved helpful for understanding Tibetan Buddhism, and refugees in India. These in situ interviews, and others to be mentioned, became important for reshaping Germaine Krull’s Memoir into a more complete study about Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and practices in Tibet, as well as in India.

Data garnered from publications that offer details about life and culture in Tibet, as well as scholarly studies about Tibetan sutras and special prayer ceremonies offered background information about traditional Tibetan life and culture. These data were necessary in order to understand the lifestyle changes Tibetans were forced to make when adapting to refugee life in a new and different culture and environment.

Publications about and by Germaine Krull were consulted to gain an understanding of the person who wrote the Memoir. For example, what stimulated a sucessful professional European woman to spend her senior years in Indian hill stations among Tibetan refugees? What was the professional work Germaine performed before and during World War II, as well as afterwards while living for over twenty years in Bangkok, Thailand? Several publications offer evidence about Germaine’s personal life and eventual spiritual asperations related to Buddhism. They actually set the stage for her decision to live near a particular family of Tibetans in India. Germaine consistently documented the people and geographical areas where she lived, just as did for her life in India; however, her typical documentation was photographic. The most pertinent publications consulted by the editor are listed in the Select Bibliography of this study.

Marilyn Ravicz also met briefly with His Holiness Sakya Trizin and his wife, Dama Kusho Tashi Lhakee, during a visit to Mahto Monastery in Ladakh. This visit occurred when Ladakh first ‘opened’ for tourism after being ‘closed’ for several decades. Ladakh was, and remains to some extent, an extension of Tibetan culture. Moreover, when the editor made her six-week visit to Leh, Ladakh, it was still untouched by change and tourism.

In fact, travel to Ladakh then required a three-day public bus ride from Srinigar, Kashmir, to reach Leh. There were no trains, planes or other means of transport as yet to reach this mountain-bound location. Bus passengers included mostly Indian military personnel, two ‘local’ women, and Marilyn. Nights were spent in makeshift caravanserais on army cots, swaddled in personal sleeping bags. It was June, but snow was still present in the high passes on the very ‘curious’ narrow, curving and dangerous road to Ladakh. Before the worst curves, the driver’s assistant jumped out of the bus to put large stones in back of the wheels closest to the cliff-drops on the outside of the road, before the driver hopefully stepped on the gas to make the curve traction safely.

While my conversations with Germaine were numerous, her Memoir manuscript, the heart of this work, was handed to me at the end of our final visit. Since that time, the editor has made numerous trips back to India, and learned more about the adaptations and progress of the Tibetan refugees primarily in northern India.

My husband and I, both Anthropologists, were able to visit Happy Valley in the winter of 1970/71, where we observed Rinchen Dolma (Mary) Taring and her husband Jigme’s early work with Tibetan children. We learned first-hand to appreciate the efforts expended on behalf of educating Tibetan refugee children there and other places we visited. Educating children was viewed as essential to successful refugee adaptation in order to retain Tibetan core cultural values, while learning about Western society for survival. These efforts were also observed in Dalhousie, where Freda Bedi worked, as well as in the Sakya Center School near Dehra Dun, and in Dharamsala.

The Indian government was generous to the Tibetans during their early days of refugeeism. It gave them several unused buildings which served as core places for the first schools. It also aided the many needful children by helping to fund five boarding schools for Tibetan children situated in: Mussoorie, Darjeeling, Simla, Kalimpong and Dalhousie. Buildings were also given them to found a school in Dharamsala (See, Jetsun Pema, pp. 80 and ff.).

Many Tibetan refugee children had been orphaned by the death of one or both parents in Tibet, or during dangerous flights from their homeland. Some deaths resulted from illnesses suffered by the new refugees in India, exacerbated by traumas that occurred during their exodus from Tibet. Thus, the ‘Home-School’ dormitory style of educational institution proved to be most appropriate for educating most Tibetan refugee children. Home Schools proved especially to be a better and more successful adaptation mode for children without previous classroom experience, and those who had experienced traumas of various sorts.

My husband and I spent the New Year and Monlam celebrations in Dharamsala, where we first met with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It was there we learned about the new Tibetan Government in Exile centered in Dharamsala. We later met His Holiness in the United States, prior to his induction ceremony to receive an Honorary Doctorate in Los Angeles, California.

The reader should also know something about the writer and editor, Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz, before consulting this collaborative Memoir and study. My husband and I were/are Cultural Anthropologists. Robert Ravicz completed his Anthropology doctorate at Harvard University, where we met when Marilyn was a Graduate student in an interdisciplinary degree program, ‘Philosophy and Religion.’ I later completed another Masters degree and Doctorate in Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, having later changed my field of interest to Anthropology.

My husband and I travelled to Asia and India on three relatively long occasions in the early 1970s, and I travelled alone to India on several later trips for my own interest and research. Robert Ravicz taught at the Universities of Wisconsin, Boston, Texas, and for many years thereafter in the University of California system. Marilyn Ravicz taught briefly in California universities, but spent most of her professional life as a Medical Anthropologist, working primarily with immigrants from other countries who, for various reasons, required American style medical evaluation and rehabilitation.

She also taught Medical Anthropology to medical students, but essentially functioned as a ‘cultural broker,’ explaining the requisites of American medical systems in order to assure their acceptance. Sometimes, due to fear or rejection of American medicine by immigrants, unfamiliar with Western medical systems, healing was compromised. Accepting medical services is often a basic requisite for being ‘cured.’

Germaine Krull and the editor first met in Mussoorie, during an early trip to India. We visited and conversed several times later, when she relocated to live near His Holiness Sakya Trizin and his family in Dehra Dun. During later visits to India, I visited with Germaine and His Holiness while gathering ‘his life in Tibet’ personal information as background. I also met twice with Germaine in Delhi, during her intermittent visits there. We conversed about the Tibetans, and seldom mentioned anything about ourselves. The editor had little knowledge about Germaine’s early life until after her death. She and I did not discuss our lives and work during our talks, because we focused on the Tibetans and their activities in India when we were together.

Germaine and I also corresponded from time to time and, I shall later explain the occasion when Germaine and I visited and conversed for the last time. It was then she gave me the manuscript of her Memoir, as well as the oral charge and elicited promise to be detailed later.

During those later visits to Dehra Dun, including twice when Germaine was absent in Europe or Thailand, the Sakya Settlement in Puruwala became more than an abstract goal. It became a small but burgeoning settlement with a successful economic base in agriculture, primarily by and for Sakyapa refugees. Although His Holiness Sakya Trizin remained and worked primarily in the Sakya Center on the Rajpur road near Dehru Dun, he visited Puruwala on ceremonial occasions, or to give teachings to the Sakyapa community there.

Now, during this decades later time period, leadership arrangements have been made for the formal Office of the Sakya Trinchen to alternative between the two ‘clans’ or ‘Palaces’ that define the dual Khön family genealogical heritage. There will now be a limited time period for each alternating Sakya Trinchen to occupy the dual role of political and religious leader for three-year tenures, instead of the former status of life tenure. This position is currently occupied by one of Sakya Trizin’s sons, so the next and future Trinchen will probably be from the other branch of the Khön family ‘palace,’ since it is likely this already established pattern will endure.

Between Germaine’s periodic several-month stays in India, she made occasional return trips to Thailand, other Asian countries, as well as to France, Germany, and once to the United States with a group led by Sakya Trizin. She also returned to Dehra Dun, India, for her last extended stay around 1977/78-80, where she was also visited by her younger sister, Berthe. She apparently wrote/dictated her autobiography while in India during that final time period, and lived there until more than a year later.

The final pages of her autobiography ended with the date and place noted: ‘Dehra Dun, October 28, 1980.’ According to the last entries in her autobiography, Germaine mentions she was very fatigued, and felt that she had done what she could to learn from and to help the Tibetans. She assumed others would step forward to take her place. The last sentence stated she had clearly finished with ‘these things,’ (tout cela), and was returning to think again about photography, which had been her focus during most of her adult life.

Although His Holiness Sakya Trizin was teaching in New York during most of that last period in India, and Chimey-la and her family had already emigrated from India to Canada, Germaine was able to monitor the changes and growth of Sakyapa Tibetan refugee projects in Puruwala and Dehra Dun. She never wrote a sequel to this original Memoir about earlier days, insofar as the editor was able to discover. Thus, the document she gave to me is her only Memoir about living among Tibetan refugees in India through their formative years of adapting to a different culture and climate.

When Germaine finally departed India to return to Europe, as suggested in her autobiography, she noted her days in India were ‘finished.’ She remained in Europe for her final years, mostly in the company of her sister. Germaine became or was already ill in about 1982, apparently as the result of a serious stroke. She later moved into a nursing home in Wetzlar, near her sister Berthe, and died in the summer of 1985. More life data about Germaine is noted in Section One of this study.

My husband and I filmed some of the persons and events mentioned during our early visits with the Tibetan refugees in Mussoorie, Dehra Dun, Byalakupp, Dharamsala, India, as well as one settlement near Rikon, Switzerland. These records were given to the University of California, Northridge campus. These experiences, as well as conversations with Hugh Richardson, a foremost Tibetologist, and other scholars dedicated to the research of past Tibetan culture, have served me well, while finally during my retirement, I was able to complete this long ago promised project.

Our cooperative task is finished. I have concluded that this study can now offer important insights about the first decades of Tibetan refugee life in India. Germaine’s Memoir is a virtual ‘case study’ of how selected cultural processes from traditional Tibetan leadership patterns were applied and functioned beneficially by and for the Tibetan refugees in India. These methods included the traditional dual political-religious leadership pattern established in Tibet. This leadership format was adapted and successfully applied to life in India, where the most comprehensive number of refugees settled, and was fortunately accepted under the auspices of the Indian government.

The unique (except for the Pope in the Vatican) dual spiritual-political leadership Tibetan role model has proven successful in a new and different social and physical environment. However, this adaptation was and remains possible only under the auspices of a democratic country with freedom of religion rights, like those guaranteed by India. Germaine’s friendships with Tibetans in India were with the special family of His Holiness Sakya Trizin, and this factor provides the primary value of her Memoir. Germaine’s Memoir includes descriptions of decisions and activities, as exemplified by a special ‘leadership family,’ on behalf of their Sakyapa refugee followers.

India’s government offers freedom of religion, democracy, and legal privileges that allowed the Tibetans to shape their own ‘Tibetan Government in Exile.’ While subject to Indian Law, they were and remain free to employ accepted Tibetan traditional patterns, like the union of spiritual with political leadership. They have partly replicated the same leadership pattern that operated traditionally in Tibet for centuries prior to the Chinese invasion in 1950. A limited version of this same governance pattern allowed Tibetan refugees to maintain similar community leadership and guidance roles in India, which assured a more cohesive Tibetan sociocultural unity while living as refugees.

My library includes books about Buddhism in general, as well as studies about Tibetan Buddhism in particular. A host of published works about post-exodus Tibetan refugees and their ongoing adaptations in India were also consulted, since some of their data proved useful as verifcations of my own fieldnotes when writing my part of this study. Many are listed in the Select Bibliography of the publication.

Three books were of specific relevance to this study for comparative purposes. The first was written by Rinchen Dolma Taring: Daughter of Tibet, London: John Murray Publishers, 1971. A second autobiographical work was written by Jetsun Pema, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s sister. In her book, Tibet my Story, London: Element Books, 1998, the needs of Tibetan children (or any) population of refugees are well described. The third is the more philosophic study by His Holiness Sakya Trizin: Freeing the Heart and Mind, Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2011. This book offers an excellent introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. By now, Western-educated Tibetans are increasingly authoring and publishing their own works to explain not only their lives, but also their belief system and medical practices for interested Westerners.

Another exemplary background book about Tibetan history and culture is: Tibet: its history, religion and people by Thubten Jigme Norbu and Colin Turnbull, London and Norwich: Fletcher and Son, Ltd., 1968. There are hosts of other books and articles about Tibetan Buddhism not listed here; however, they are easy to discover on one’s own. There is one more study that is of direct historical relevance as background history: Treasures of the Sakya Lineage, Teachings from the Masters, by Migmar Tseten, Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 2008, with a Foreward by HisHoliness Sakya Trizin.

My acknowledgments are also gratefully extended to the nameless hosts of Tibetan refugees with whom I talked during past visits to India. Tibetan Buddhist ideas and philosophies are now represented by Tibetan Buddhist Sect Centers in Europe, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and the United States. For example, at present there are one hundred and eighty four general Buddhist Centers in Los Angeles County alone, with a collective population that approaches one hundred thousand practicing adherents! Some of these Centers represent aspects of Tibetan Buddhism.

In short, the Western world has finally become aware of Buddhism generally, along with the once exotic ‘unknown Tibetans’ who once dwelled long in mountainous isolation. There is a certain bitter irony when thinking about the conditions that made the Tibetans known to the world: a telling comment on how our current world often ‘blugeons’ itself into questionable patterns of social change. Conversely, good ideas come from unusual places and times on occasion, since most refugees benefit their adopted countries through their labor and creative adaptations. There are statistics that more or less prove that generalization.

India was Buddhism’s birthplace, and its democratic acceptance of religions proved to be an important factor in the current lives of more than a hundred thousand Tibetan refugees. While only a tiny percentage of these exiles were of noble or high-status positions in past Tibet, their previously learned literacy and leadership qualities were oftentimes employed successfully in India.

Readers of this study can ask themselves if their own countries would fare as well when compared with India in similar circumstances of acceptance for those in flight for their lives. It is also worth reminding ourselves that not all religious belief systems are as open and applicable to science and adaptation as is Buddhist philosophy. Most monotheistic creationist religious systems demand a single dedication and faith-based acceptance of Council-formulated beliefs and/or sacraments to avoid ‘condemnation.’

To mitigate the limited approach of external god-driven controls, I recommend consulting his Holiness the Dalai Lama’s book: Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World (see bibliography). This book has much to offer those interested in religious-based philosophies that are open, existentialist in focus, and accept the evidence of science and experience.

Neither my husband, Mary Taring, Jigme Taring, sister Palmo, Germaine Krull, ‘Aunty,’ Karmapa, nor Lama Thuthop are alive to see this finalized study: but my memory of their dedications remains alive. While perusing my notes, I recall the many stories and smiling faces I witnessed, even when mixed with horrific tales of cultural destruction and terrifying periods before and during flights to freedom. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Tenzin Geyche were helpful whenever their busy schedules allowed.

The Dalai Lama willingly wrote a letter of introduction for my husband and me that granted us entry as scholars to other Tibetan communities in India, Switzerland, and Ladakh. When I traveled early to Ladakh, this letter served me well. Tourism had not yet begun, but I was allowed to visit monasteries, temples and even storage rooms, knee-deep in grain, where costumes and sacred masks were cloistered between dance-dramas or chams. It also aided me when I attended more or less basic Buddhist prayer-initiations in India and Ladakh, one of which was led by His Holiness Sakya Trizin in Mahto Monastery.

Current online photos show a greatly changed and crowded Leh, Ladakh today, just as they show a very different Lhasa. There were no hotels and only a few main-street shops when I was visited Leh. I paid a local doctor to occupy a room in his family home during my six week stay there.

I have consistently found Tibetans to be open and motivated to sharing everything from food to conversation, and have never seen another group so stalwart in the face of serious deprivations. They maintained calm presences and cheerful countenances, even while breaking large stones into little ones along Indian highways, where they worked during their early years as refugees. That was before farming, knitting machines, carpet-weaving and making craft items helped many to subsist and reconstitute some aspects of their previous lives.

Some of the many problems they suffered as refugees are specifically, or by implication, described by Germaine in her Memoir. As editor-rewriter, I have enlarged on some of these topics and details, since they echo problems most refugees suffer when uprooted from their homelands. In the case of the Tibetans, their longterm isolation rendered them, in some cases, particularly vulnerable to ‘Western’ diseases, like tuberculosis. It will be apparent in Germaine’s Memoir how illness, poverty, and psychological stress must be endured when one is a refugee.

I should also like to acknowledge, in particular, the helpful information and acceptance afforded me in Gangtok, Sikkim, by His Holiness Karmapa (Kagyupa sect leader at the time), as well as by Sister Palmo/Freda Bedi in Sikkim, and later in California, when we again conversed. Karmapa proved willing, during two entire days, to converse about refugee problems. He realized that Tibetan refugees were a problem about which he could do little personally but offer limited aid. He was particularly focused on offering refugees safe phyical passage, and had devised several ways to insure their physical safety in border villages. Certain villagers reported to him periodically, and Karmapa offered them guidance and supplies when able to do so, especially early when the influx of escapees from Tibet was enormous.

If you wonder about Marilyn’s spiritual status, since she is involved with Germaine and Tibetan refugees, I’ll mention a few thoughts. I have not decided about the complex Buddhist ‘doctrine of reincarnation,’ but remain dubious of its specificity. I do accept the ontological truth of constant change and the boundlessness of space and the evolving universe, as Buddhist philosophy suggests.

I also appreciate what to me is the Buddhist’s concept of what I call their ‘existentialist karma,’ because these concepts acknowledge that every action has a reaction, and are thus more reasonable than the heavens or hells dictated by faith-oriented monotheistic creationism where Jesus’ truthful guidance was lost to oligarchical tyrannies. This makes me an agnostic with respect to faith-only based monotheisms that are basic to my heritage. My parents were, after all Swedish immigrants, and count important theologians among their paternal lineage.

We are, after all, only earthlings and part of the vaste and changing universe. A very wise child once said: We come from the stars, but the earth is our home. This truth of physics implicates the need for the loving care of self, society and the earth, our only home. This child’s conclusion has become a personal mantra-like challenge.

When tempted to ‘over-cherish’ my personal status, as an aged human and trained Anthropologist, I recall what Stephen Hawking stated: ‘We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe, and that makes us very special.’ These remain my essential creeds.

In sum, although I learned to read the Septuagint in Latin, and the New Testament in its original koiné Greek, I am an agnostic with respect to Christianity and other faith-based creationist monotheisms. However, if Buddhist reincarnation were true, I might hope to return as a Buddhist (again?). Mary Taring told me that she felt unusually comfortable and close to me, as did others, in spite of our current age and life differences. Mary concluded: Maybe you and I were good friends in a past incarnation. If so, may that be the case again. However, were I reincarnated as another human, I would more likely be reborn as another Germaine: ever restless and more aesthete than spiritual. Who knows, but look around you, I might be there….

Respectfully: Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

(by Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz)

Now that the acknowledgements and nature for this study have been addressed, we can move closer to the ‘how’ issues of presenting our collaboration. How can anyone, in good conscience, make a coherent approach to heavily editing, rewriting, and annotating the Memoir of someone who died, and is not available for a final consultation? Perhaps it is best to tell the story as it happened, so it can be better understood as a charge requested and a promise given.

I first met Germaine Krull in India, as previously noted. We visited on other occasions in Mussoorie and Dehra Dun thereafter, where she relocated to be near His Holiness Sakya Trizin and his family. We also met on two occasions in Delhi, India, once while she was preparing to depart on a return trip to Thailand and Europe. We also met in Dehra Dun years later, when she had just returned to India, and was planning to stay in Dehra Dun for, as it happened, her final time.

It was during our final later meeting in Dehra Dun, India, the exact date now forgotten, when we last conversed. Of course I could not have known this would be our last meeting. It was then she gave me a manuscript folio, and said, much in her own words: I’m giving you this manuscript. Please, one day, after I’m gone, edit or rewrite it and see if it can be published. I would like others to share my experiences among my Tibetan friends. Will you promise to do this?

At the time, I explained to Germaine that I was extremely busy working full-time as a Medical Anthropologist, aside from family duties. Many immigrants depended on me for personal evaluations and rehabilitation services. I explained that her request would be very slow in completion, but she only nodded and murmured: Not to worry. Anyway, it should be done later, after I’m gone. With that odd provision, I agreed, and promised that one day her request would be fulfilled. That was essentially my promise made, and this study is a promise kept.

At the time, I felt a bit overwhelmed, and did not ask Germaine pointedly about the odd ‘after I’m gone’ subscript. However, I remember concluding that she intended to write additional Memoir chapters, during her returning trips to India. One did not question Germaine about her every action, because she was straightforward about her requests in India and, as I subsequently learned, wherever she lived. She was essentially a, ‘there is it, take it or leave it,’ kind of person.

During our conversations, we did not discuss our previous personal lives, professions or general interests. We focused almost entirely on current life situations, the Tibetans, and sometimes on visual art, a mutual interest. However, we did talk about why ‘spirituality’ is often of interest to persons who are typically agnostic or simply non-believers. This topic was obviously of interest to Germaine, because it reflected much of her own experience: a European who ultimately adopted the Buddhist philosophy.

The editor passed years in a mélange of hard work, child rearing, teaching and working in Medical Anthropology. Then, within half a year, came dual catastrophes: the illness and death of my husband; and, some six months later, a serious California earthquake and subsequent deluge. The latter, among other ruinations, caused a flood in our storage closet, exacerbated by quake-broken plumbing pipes. Water damaged hordes of my husband’s and some of my notes, letters, photos and art prints. Why bother mentioning my mother’s Swedish crystal, old Chinese porcelains, or my hand-painted china projects! They fell collectively with a fine clatter on our hand-pegged wooden floors. One could do little but survive and repair.

Fortunately, Germaine’s manuscript, coddled by its brown plastic cover, was safely stashed in a bookcase. While the bookcases did topple, books and papers do not shatter. I recovered neither my husband’s nor my correspondence, and many of his photos were simply given up as trashed. Among those lost letters were Germaine’s, as well as a three from Freda Bedi. There is a lesson lurking here that I shall pass on: never use cardboard banker boxes. Use plastic bins with lids, because neither prayer nor cardboard can prevail.

After many years, Germaine’s historical Memoir merits another incarnation. Tardy, yes, but as once promised, here it is: reincarnated plus! It’s all a question of time which, like change itself is illusory. Germaine did not correspond with me during her final return to Europe; perhaps because, as I learned later, she was already ill. I only learned of her death years later from a friend who had visited Dehra Dun and talked with Tibetans there. Now retired, and having completed and published other pending works, I turned to fulfill the promise once made to Germaine.

When pondering the ‘how’ question of working on and presenting Germaine’s Memoir, my goals were dual. The first goal was to edit and rewrite Germaine’s limited-English-usage Memoir, but without essentially changing her natural liveliness, personal observations, or reactions to experiences in India. In short, no facts or opinions are altered, and a serious dedication to maintaining the sensibility of Germaine’s descriptions of events and places in India, and relationships with Tibetans, remain intact. Nothing was left out.

However, additional information was clearly needed to make Germaine’s Memoir more understandable to most Western readers. Germaine mentioned events and activities, but often without their names, the dates of their occurrence, or other important details. These details were written and added by the editor insofar as she was able to identify and verify them through other data.

Considerable work beyond mere editing and rewriting was finally necessary to render the Memoir complete and readable. After all, Germaine’s odd childhood had precluded her from attending European public schools, and from attending university too. Thus, although Germaine was conversationally polyglot in English, German and French, she neither wrote correctly nor well in any of these languages. Her intelligence and aesthetic brilliance were otherwise demonstrated, as her life and reputation illustrate.

The second editorial goal was to make Germaine’s Memoir more understandable to Western readers. Most readers may know little about Tibetan culture, or about Tibetan Buddhism’s many ceremonials and philosophy. Therefore, descriptive data needed to be added. For this reason, notes and definitions were interlarded at selected places within the flow of the Memoir. Accomplishing these two editorial goals entailed more work than originally anticipated, as well as decisions about how additional information should be added. This second goal required that the added information be presented in such a way that it did not intrude on the text of Germaine’s reworked Memoir. In short, the added information needed to be visually differentiated from the original Memoir text.

My answer to the editing and rewriting goal has been to hew closely to the original manuscript with respect to places, descriptions and literary tone, in spite of rewriting many pages. The rewriting was done to avoid neologisms, when Germaine’s phraseology was unwieldy, or frankly to make the Memoir legible and understandable. Germaine suggested she wrote best in French; however, even her French writing skill was noted by the translater of her autobiography, La vie mène la danse, to be ‘quite limited,’ (‘nettement plus fragile’).

Readers will learn that Germaine’s childhood was unusual. She had an erratic engineer father, who decided to home-tutor his daughters, in order to assure them of his ‘free-thinker’ approach to learning. Fortunately, Germaine was innately intelligent and creative in ways that made an important difference in the ‘real world’ of her adulthood. She studied photography (no pre-ed required), and became one of the world’s foremost modernist photographers during her professional life. You will learn more about Germaine in Section One.

As editor-writer, I am now satisfied that the current text keeps Germaine’s observations fresh and intact. Her comments and judgments about uncomfortable environments while traveling in India, and her naive remarks about the oddities of its ‘foreign’ culture, have been included without sanctions. Why should they be changed? Similar comments are repeated by others, and remain true for many European or American travelers who visit India. Thus, they were not excluded in order to be polite.

Germaine’s Memoir-diary was completed in the late months of 1970, and thus failed to address events and activities that occurred when she revisited India in late seventies and very early eighties. Occasional more recent data were therefore added by the editor. No part of Germaine’s Memoir data was redacted or deleted, even when some chapters were repetitive. However, some events and activities needed to be explained or brought up to date with occasional added information.

Germaine’s chapter divisions remain as she wrote them, although they seem to follow no logical pattern other than a diary-like process of her experiences in India. There are only a few time references that define when events of an historical nature occurred. The editor therefore admits to making guesses about the specific dates of some occasions, since they are not mentioned in the Memoir. Editorial guesses were guided by other publications that note and date the same occurrences. On other occasions, the editor used time references based on what she surmised from Germaine’s descriptions of seasonal temperatures, changing foliage or other ecological characteristics.

It is true that the original title for Germaine’s Memoir was changed. She named her manuscript Memoir: My Tibetan Friends. However, even a brief review of the manuscript suggested that her ‘friends’ only included Sakya Trizin and two family members, plus acquaintances with a few Buddhist professionals she met in India. Tibetan refugees in general were not included in her ‘friendship circle,’ although a few special Lamas and service personnel are mentioned. Germaine’s friendship circle included only special Tibetan refugees: those who were Tibetan leaders who assisted and planned the projects that aided the wider spectrum of refugees in India and elsewhere.

Germaine photographed a range of Tibetan refugees, but never spent time meeting or talking with the general population of Tibetan refugees in India. She spoke more often about her favorite cook Hansaram’s life, but he was Indian. Thus, her descriptions and points-of-view reflect those of very few ‘chosen friends.’ This means that larger issues of cultural change and adaptations by the thousands of affected refugees were seen through the lense of a few high-status special refugees befriended by Germaine.

This was no fluke of history, and proved to be important. We learn from the content of Germaine’s Memoir about the importance of refugee leadership roles, as well as how the maintenance of refugee cultural unity can best be maintained, even though adaptions to different environments and cultures are necessary.

Germaine’s Memoir descriptions about a special form of leadership by Sakya Trizin, as sanctioned by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, render her document of greater social and historical importance. In this way, Germaine’s Memoir surpasses the simple description of periodic acts of familial ‘friendship.’ She inadvertently describes the adaptations by a uniquely Tibetan traditional leadership pattern: that of dual spiritual and political rule. While this type of leadership was traditional in Tibet, it proved to be surprisingly functional on behalf of Tibetan refugees in India as well.

Given the Tibetan devotion to Buddhist ideals and practices that permeated the first generation of refugees, only this type of leadership could have proved adequate to sustain them socioculturally, while stressed and living in changed cultural and ecological environments. The Tibetan Government in Exile pattern, permitted and supported by the democratic Indian government, helped consolidate Tibetan refugees in India. It allowed the refugees to safeguard the perpetuation of many historical Tibetan customs into the present and perhaps the future as well.

Germaine was no Social Scientist. Indeed, she would have laughed heartily had I ever told her that her Memoir: ‘factually documented the conduct of selected leadership enactment patterns aimed at social consolidation processes by a specific social subgroup of refugees in Northeastern India.’ Well, so be it, Germaine! It’s better to have a few laughs about learning something new than not learning.

His Holiness Sakya Trizin, his sister, Chimey-la, and ‘Aunty,’ compose the basic protagonists of Germaines’ Memoir, along with a few interactions with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Thuthop. They are all persons born to nobility status in their pre-refugee lives. They represent a ruling class lineage and special roles in Tibet, and were never simple herders, farmers, monks or craftspersons, as were most ordinary Tibetans. Nevertheless, they too experienced refugee-engendered illnesses, poverty, and problems of adaptation in ways that parallel the experiences of ordinary Tibetan refugees. Indeed, their problems virtually echo those suffered by most refugees anywhere in the world, as our current history can verify.

Moreover, the special lineage status, education and training these central characters experienced in Tibet proved to be positive and important factors when applied toward the leadership services they performed for Tibetan refugees in India. Tibetan adaptation processes far surpassed Germaine’s circle of friends depicted in her Memoir. Indeed, she would be surprised and pleased to learn of the positive outcomes that eventuated from the root activities and projects she described in her diary-like Memoir, especially by others like the Tarings and Jetsun Pema who were not friends.

Thus, the editor admits that she changed Germaine’s original Memoir title. Germaine simply wrote ‘My Tibetan Friends’ on the cover page of her Memoir; however, the editor judged this title inadequate to describe the process and end product of this collaboration. I think Germaine would approve of the title change, especially since she extended carte blanche to the editor to make any changes she thought necessary to complete the project given her. These changes are part of Germaine’s entrusted request, and of the editor’s promise made and kept.

But after stating the why and the how of this revised document, the editor has added biographical data about the ‘main characters’ integral to Germaine’s Memoir in Section One. These data were added by the editor-writer so readers can better appreciate Germaine’s observations of Sakya Trizin, Chimey-la, and other members of his family whose activities she shared.

Germaine’s biographical data inform us that she was an unusual and remarkable turn-of-the-century woman who became a leader in her profession: modern art photography, and an international resident. As an early Communist, she also shared in socioeconomic movements that generated many changes that characterized twentieth century world events. However, she later modified her views in the ugly face of Facism and World War II, during which she served as a war photographer.

Section One also contains a brief outline of biographical information about His Holiness Sakya Trizin, apart from Germaine’s Memoir. This seemed necessary, since his life in Tibet was unique. Consistent with his special heritage, his childhood consisted mostly of guru-guided learning, religious retreats and initiations, as well as the slow and timely assumption of leadership duties before he was a teenager. The latter also characterized his continued role and functions on behalf of his people later in India.

Fewer biographical details are added in Section One about Chimey-la’s earlier life, since these were discussed in detail with Germaine, and became much of the content of the Memoir. The same reasoning is true regarding the few added biographical details about ‘Aunty,’ as described in Germaine’s Memoir. The biographical details added in Section One help set the stage for the events and personnages Germaine included in her diary of events that compose her Memoir.

Lastly, what ‘answer’or method was adopted to accomplish the second goal mentioned by the editor: to present editor-added information to Germaine’s Memoir text in a visually distinct manner. The written additions within the body of the Memoir in Section Two were made visually distinct by conveying them in Italic script. Italic script indicates all the pertinent matter added by the editor.

Thus, information was added to the Memoir in order to make some events described more understandable. This method was adopted throughout the twenty-four chapters of Germaine’s Memoir included in Section Two. When the additional material is short in length, it is printed as Italic script and separated with parentheses. When added materials are longer, they are placed close to related textual materials, but printed in italics as drop-down separate paragraphs.

The editor chose to add relevant material to the Memoir in this way, in order to avoid the typical convention of endless footnotes, or end-of-chapter notes. Thus, readers who already know or do not wish to learn the additional information can simply skip the Italicized texts.

The editor-writer will use the convention ‘editor,’ or very occasionally ‘I’ when Marilyn is signified in any added materials. In general then, the added materials were included so readers can learn more about the ‘who, what, where, when and why’ of Germaine’s ‘reporter-like’ reports in her Memoir.

Now that these editorial details have been addressed, we can move on to focus directly on the protagonists of Germaine’s Memoir in Section One.

SECTION ONE

(by Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz)

First meet Germaine Krull, author and reknowned modern photographer. She was born in November, 1897, into a rather unusual middle-class family in Wilda-Poznan, Germany, (This area was ceded to Poland in 1919). Her father was an engineer, and someone who, in those days, would have been pejoratively dubbed ‘a free-thinker.’ Little is mentioned or known about her mother, so we can suppose she was a traditional housewife. For his own reasons, her father decided to tutor Germaine at home, rather than send her to local schools. He had some personal concerns about their traditional pedagogy. Primary among his prejudices was the idea that schools might endanger the untrammeled ‘belief systems’ he apparently preferred for himself and his daughters.

Her father tutored Germaine well in math, reading and certain selected subjects, but haphazardly in most important curriculum subjects. Of course she learned to read and write, and her father also told her ‘stories’ about religious and political history. For example, his ‘story’ about Jesus Christ stated that he had been a ‘good man who was assassinated by bad men, because he seriously tried to help the people.’ At the turn of the century, this was, to say the least, an unusual approach to religion and history. Germaine was also carefully advised not to discuss this interpretation with servants or neighbors. Berthe, Germaine’s younger sister, was born when she was about six years old, and there were no other siblings insofar as the editor could learn.

Germaine’s ‘education’ remained one of haphazard tutoring, which was often interrupted when the family moved around Europe, mostly from one capital city to another. This was partly due to her father’s personal preferences, as well as the result of his engineering assignments. Germaine was allowed to wear pants like a boy, because it was easier and saved her dresses from tree-climbing abuse. Her father meanwhile divorced and remarried (more than once), and continued his itinerant lifestyle in various European cities. Germaine and Berthe accompanied these domestic itinerant changes that characterized most of their ‘casual’ childhoods.

While Germaine’s variously constituted family lived in different capital cities and countries, when it was time for her to attend university, she was unable to matriculate in any European university, since she lacked the necessary prerequisite certificates from previous institutions. She eventually enrolled in and attended the Bavarian State Photography School in Munich, from 1916 through 1918. Whether as a curious interest about something to learn, or the result of sheer luck, that decision proved to be apocryphal and important for the remainder of Germaine’s life.

As a European child-wanderer, Germaine developed an early interest in the visual ‘art’ world of the avant garde. Her first published professional book focused on the artful photography of female nudes (Études de nu). This photographic book consisted of artful photos of the female body.

Germaine next moved to Paris, and soon produced another photographic book entitled, Métal. This eventually famous book was a photographic study that embodied a ‘modernist’ way of picturing architectural, engineering and mechanical forms of metal and glass, partially or whole, in an aesthetically interesting and elegant way. Some of these photos can