The Jokhang temple in the heart of Lhasa symbolizes the current of eternal faith pulsing through the blood of the Tibetan people. I happened to visit it on the morning of the Zhoton festival, a religious holiday. I joined throngs of Tibetan folk making their annual pilgrimage to this, Tibet's eldest and most respected temple shrine...

The Jokhang temple was founded on this spot about 1360 years ago. It was the heart of a series of temples comprising a physical image of the "Ogress," a mythical character symbolizing the origin of Tibet and all her people. Each temple in this series was placed in different locales around Tibet, and the was believed to protect Tibet with magic potency. Songsten Gampo was the king of Tibet at the time of the Jokhang's construction. Today, he is the most revered of all Tibet's ancient kings and, like Padmasambhava the saint, his image is found in temples all over Tibet. In the seventh century he formed an alliance with the Nepalese tribes, marrying one of their princesses, Bhrikuti. It is said that her wealth built the temple. The site was chosen by another of Songsten Gampo's wives, Princess Weng-cheng. She was from the east, and her marriage to Songsten allowed Tibet to forge one of its first strong peaceful contacts with China. The consecration of the Jokhang temple was a very important event for the nation. The city of Rasa, meaning the "Place of Goat," became Lhasa, the "Place of Deity." Ill-mannered peasants became cultured kings in one fell swoop!

I enter a courtyard at 9:00 A.M., alone. It isn't the main door. There's nobody here. The only thing catching my eye are oil-lamps. They sit, three rows up and down. They do nothing but wait for someone to light them. They burn peacefully, identically, silently. I want to be an oil lamp, too - an inanimate hope - a thing that nobody can judge or dislike.

Like a much-read book, or a favorite jazz standard - even if antiquated - I could feel as loved and wanted as the comforting associations inspired by one of these prayer lamps... The shiny brass looks gold and the warm flame flickers upon the oil. Joined with this image of brass upholding the tiny ephemeral light, is a symbol for the brief physical reality within which eternal life is embodied. The lamp reminds us the world is beautiful. The lamps suggest that our world is only one world among many. So, the lamp light promises us other worlds must exist beyond this immediately visible one... There's something very idealistic about the imagery of Tibetan Buddhism. This temple yearns for spiritual perfection, peace and eternity. Ah, but it's too easy to mislead yourself with wishes and interpretations... Such images may produce a different impression upon you.

I find my way inside. Since the monks aren't manning this particular side door, I don't pay the fee. I enter the inner courtyard and it opens on the sky. Two monks sit near the main entrance - an ancient double door opening on the West. Outside several pilgrims rise then fall prone upon their tummies. A private incantation recycles. The chanting enthralls each individual's concentration. It takes a long long prayer for a true pilgrim, finally, having circled the Jokhang all day, to enter inside. I retreat into the cool dark archway that conceals the protector deities, all of them blackened with years of incense smoke.

In its heyday, this temple was known as the Rasa Trulnang, meaning, "the magical apparition of Rasa." This gate faces west in acknowledgment of Queen Bhrikuti's generosity, since her home in Nepal lies more or less in the direction of the Jokhang's front face. The entire Indian Buddhist meditational pantheon has found its way north into Tibet. Chapels here are dedicated to Indian and Tibetan versions of Buddhist deities. Several Tibetan clan leaders and kings like Songsten Gampo and Tsongkhapa also live here. Everyone who was anyone in Tibet populates this temple: images and dedications to Amitabha, Shakyamuni and the Buddha of tomorrow, Maitreya. Without a good guidebook, it's impossible to figure out anything. Since its completion in 647, the temple has been renovated at least ten times.

Beyond the old podium throne reserved for the Dalai Lama, the Shugtri Chemno, the roof is held up by some ancient stone pediments and pillars of dark wood. In one of these columns are embedded two polished stones. If you get up close, you can see them. They are black, and no bigger than a palmful each. Allegedly, they were once thrown "into the wood" by two devotees.

Like these two stones, each Tibetan relic has a fabulous story, eliciting magic. Throughout Tibet you will discover many sacred emblems left behind by famous exponents of the faith. Hundreds of years ago these saints and great teachers are said to have imprinted their feet and hands in solid stone; you will discover displays of their clothing, hair, bones and walking sticks in shrines all over the country. Even the skulls of famous masters are preserved for all to see. Yet, when you actually see them, it's apparent that these emblems are not really skulls, nor were those imprints made by real feet at all; they are all man-crafted symbols of faith. They provide surrogate evidence, and pass as emblems for faith rather than true artifacts. Such symbols preserve the heroes who propounded the wisdom of eternity for all...

Visit Samye monastery and observe a whole cabinet full of mythical emblems. The "skull" of Padmasambhava, the famed Indian master who brought his knowledge of Buddhism into Tibet, appears to grin broadly, as if he has just cracked a good joke and wants us to laugh, too. Then again, maybe the artisan who crafted this "skull" wants us to smile as we realize that we're looking at an emblem, not the brain-box of a real human being. One is likely to have a very distinct impression about the Tibetan mentality at this point: that it's possessed of a joyful sense of humor about life. Cynical critics are apt to misinterpret this kind of idealized skull emblem as another kind of resignation, and a dilution of myths. But I prefer to see Padmasambhava's skull in a completely different light: the artist's smile on the hero's skull suggests that we must see through the immodesty of mortal attachment. So, his emblem projects joy before solemnity. Personality must belie his sanctity: the man was merely a man, not a god... That's really what the teacher's skull says to me. He may have been wise, but true wisdom wouldn't need to be proud... Padmasambhava was happy to share what he knew with the Tibetans.

The inner sanctum of the Jokhang is dark. My eyes are fond of bright light since I like to see what I'm looking at. I walk slowly inside; many people are here with me, walking ahead. Almost everyone present is Tibetan. It's a holiday. Can't get inside the side chapels because locals are lined up into the entrances and out the exits, too. They all wait to go through and pray in them. Everyone's Tibetan and they smile and look sheepish. I get the feeling that they've crowded into the chapels so I can't get in! Maybe I'm a devil, and they don't think it so wise to let me in...My paranoia vanishes because the Tibetans really look quite happy today. It's a wholesome duty for them to come here and pay their respects. The ancient truths of a culture always reflect its sublime continuity. I'm superfluous, a great nothing. Nobody is going to judge me, least of all the Tibetans. That's what I like about them: they're free of the false prejudices that afflict people like me. Their only complaint comes from being victimized... Westerners look at the world darkly and often complain about imaginary and very small problems. But Tibetans preserve some innate modesty, a simpler way of acceptance. They are beyond me.

The assembly hall is crowded yet silent. Usually, it's a place only for the monks to gather for daily meditations and prayers. Imagine melting some dairy butter for your popcorn and then forgetting to clean up the pot: the butter lamps smells too ripe, it's a pungent odor that permeates deeply into the nasal passages. Despite this, the Tibetan faithful lug around big yellow bags of this stuff, imported from India and labelled, "Ghee." Replenishing the temple lamps is part of their devotions.

Some monks are present today. They live here, in the northeast wing of the temple. One young monk sits at a low wooden table. He has a serious mien and writes on some scraps of paper. He scrawls prayers in Tibetan script. Then I see he isn't doing it for himself. His verses are made especially for pilgrims eager to pay for the privilege. I don't know what they expect to do with these prayers, perhaps recite them as they walk round the temple.

I pause beside the entrance of the main image housed in the temple, a statue of the Buddha at age twelve...

As with so many of Tibet's sacred relics, this statue has a history longer than any single dynasty. The original version dates to the time of Songsten Gampo. It's believed to have been damaged or replaced and maybe buried in the sand as power changed hands. The rulers of Tibet were very fickle in their favors; so, even if a contemporary king was adored for his reverence of Buddha and the Jokhang, the next one was liable to spite his memory by shutting up the temple, plastering pictures of drunken monks on the walls outside while reverting favor back to a Bon style god-shop. Tibet's history is longer than you can imagine. Buddhism was imported much later. Folk religion and the Bon faith predate the influence of India by several hundred years.

On the way upstairs I meet a friendly young Tibetan boy. He speaks English and offers to show me round the temple. The boy is sixteen, wide-eyed and talkative, as if he knows how curious I am. Instantly, he relieves all my anxieties about being alone. He offers to show me all the little shrines. Of course, with a companion, I cannot behave inconspicuously and conceal myself in a slow shuffle from one dim-lit room to another. (This clamor for self-promotion beggars my dreams... The integrity of personality is all that an artist can wish for. But we're forced to distract ourselves from good work - just so we can sell something - so we can succeed. But all we "succeed" to do is to remove ourselves from what we really wanted to do. Forget it...) I'm walking up to the third floor with my new friend. He wants to show me the chapels upstairs. There's room to move. Groups of ladies go in and out of the chapels to pray. Turning down their eyes in humble submission, they place their hands together then bow quickly forward. They scamper away to the next chapel.

Finally, I discover the most important shrine on the second floor: the Chogyel Songsten Lhakhang, dedicated to Songsten Gampo. It is small. The life-size king stands straight between his Chinese and Nepalese wives. In front of him sits a huge pewter flagon for his ale. It's difficult to fathom how this shapely vessel could have been preserved intact for so many hundreds of years. A small trace of a smile plays over Songsten's lips. Did you know that some scholars attribute the flowering of Buddhism in Tibet to his wives?

A group of ten aging Tibetan ladies has gathered in front of the chapel. They're all dressed in neat aprons and new dresses and stand in three rows facing the image of Songsten Gampo. One grey-haired old lady steps forward boldly. She's a little shy and hesitates for half an instant. Then she breaks into song. Her voice, like all Tibetan female singers, is smoothly high-pitched and joyful. What skill she has! The other women join with her singing and rapturous smiles play over their faces. I listen to them sing for ten minutes. The song celebrates the long-dead king who so audaciously married the world and invited a new faith into Tibet. They sing his name longingly, as if he gives hope to them. I wonder if that song isn't all we need to be happy... They stop singing and seem shy. Some women even appear a little nervous, as if they don't know what to expect... I guess they think that I don't know about all those innocent Tibetan people in jail, some of whom ended up there merely for singing freedom songs exactly like this one... I wonder if we can really care about people who are so far from our own way of life?

We are born with names and faith. We don't need to go further than the place we're given by birth to know who we are. I feel that's what their presence says. Maybe these women can do nothing more than uphold a memory of what their home used to be, long ago. But they are brave women. Even if Tibet is no longer theirs - their hearts reveal a deep resilience, like a pure innocence.

How can we go on without facing questions - without feeling lost? People are proud - too proud - to be who they are. To each individual it can't matter much that the modern world is mad with fake politics and unnatural social coercion. To be free is still to be caught in the beautiful predicament of life. But to be imprisoned in a jail is to live without hope; in a prison you miss freedom until you despair. But if you're a typical law-abiding Westerner, never having been deprived of your liberty, lucky enough to have a job, you cannot possibly understand the predicament of Tibetans caught between economy and the dictatorial politics of China's ideological technocracy. People get left out and opportunities are few and unfairly administered. Corruption is rampant and the local people must endure the butt-end of that frustrated self-repression so inimically unique to the stiff old Chinese.

Imposed from outside come the rules and decrees, complete with their administrative overlords. Technocracy combines with the many social and cultural presumptions to displace the freedoms and ideas of the Tibetans' inborn, naturally independent character. The imposed social forms have become more entrenched, and the technocracy sends down its artificial roots and grapples the souls of the common folk with an enforced order of impersonal institutions. Inevitably, this Chinese system employs the newly imposed social-group identity to defeat the Tibetans' original cultural identity... The Tibetans are forgetting who they were.

We could simply try to abide closer to each other - if it were possible to appreciate and respect differences as beautiful, instead of assuming they are something low, fit only for replacement with your familiarities... Yet in this, many Asians seem horribly behind the times, and the Chinese will refuse to see others as they are, since their regime so needs to shore up their ideological isolation and blind racial faith. The rigid and official character of intolerance and the sheer concentration and centralization of authority is too deeply ingrained among most Oriental and Indochinese societies. Sometimes these societies appear lawless and chaotic - exactly because expression is perpetually repressed among and between individuals and their communities. The uniformly sanitized lines of ideological "truth" cannot mask the soulless and crass hypocrisies upon which they have been erected. The centralization of control and the breakdown of power into splinters of desperation and despotism is nothing new. It's a hard, vicious circle, that old and sadly dumb grip on power...

It's a great mystery to me, this insecurity that comes from differences of creed and color, time and place... We need not be the same. What would be the point of making someone become more like you? How could that "free" anyone? Any such idea is already defeated by being one individual: you. Considered in such a light, the desire to convert people from one religion or ideology to another new one appears horrifyingly pointless. Socially speaking of course, among the mass movement of people called Asia, harmony is often conceived as a reflection of social homogeneity; and the outward semblances of stability are usually equated with uniform behavior. Pretty dull.

As suddenly as they began, the Tibetan women cease singing for the second time. While I've had enough of chapels to last a lifetime, that singing could go on forever. I want to hear their melody, that sweet, high harmony - again and again. But they have stopped. So I leave, climbing to the roof of the temple overlooking Barkhor square. Some women will love you no matter what: but you have to find them...

I'm only one more poor artist. There are too many of us. We're all deadly boring. We all suffer from a big head that doesn't make up for the talent we lack. As for those of us with even a little talent, we try hard to ignore the funny fact that we outnumber one another. As ever, the artist and failure prefers to imagine that solitude, imagined integrity and insignificance reflect the fact that we may live a life no longer possible anywhere on Earth! If you want to understand exactly why I'm thinking and writing like this in the first place, please read the next section... However, if obtuse, monkeyish and critical discussions of art don't do it for you, just skip to the end... (I know - it's either good or bad art - we can see that. But it comes as no surprise that bad art does so well because the career of self is more important than mere content, talent and imagination. Performing the all-important, "professional" role is more than everything now...)