A Russian Lama's Body, and His Faith, Defy Time

October 1, 2002
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

IVOLGINSK, Russia - A miracle has occurred here in Siberia.
Or it may be a hoax. Others believe science can explain it.
It is a question, it seems, of faith.

The story begins in 1927, when a spiritual leader of
Russia's Buddhists gathered his students and announced his
plans to die. The leader, Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, the 12th
Pandito Hambo Lama, then 75 and retired, instructed those
gathered around him to "visit and look at my body" in 30
years.

He crossed his legs into the lotus position, began to
meditate and, chanting a prayer for the dead, died.

The years that followed were difficult for all faiths in
Russia, including the Buddhists here in Buryatia, a rugged,
impoverished Siberian region on the Mongolian border. The
Soviet Union, under Stalin, repressed most manifestations
of religion, executing hundreds of lamas and destroying 46
Buddhist temples and monasteries.

After World War II, Stalin relented somewhat and allowed
the Buddhists to rebuild their monastery outside Ivolginsk,
along a low, desolate valley 22 miles from Buryatia's
capital, Ulan-Ude. But religious practice remained tightly
restricted.

When the 30 years had passed - it might have been 28; the
details are murky - Itigilov's followers did what he had
asked, exhuming his remains from a cemetery in
Khukhe-Zurkhen.

What they found, as the story goes, was Itigilov's body,
still in the lotus position, still perfectly intact, having
defied nature's imperative to decay.

Stalin was dead, but Soviet power remained absolute, and so
the Buddhists reburied Itigilov - and the secret - in an
unmarked grave, packing his wooden coffin with salt. (That
may be important, or not.)

"Nobody could talk about it then," said the current Pandito
Hambo Lama, the 25th, Damba Ayusheyev. "To bring him back
to the temple - it was forbidden, impossible. So he was put
back."

Unlike supreme Tibetan lamas, who are considered
reincarnations of previous lamas and are enthroned for
life, Pandito Hambo Lamas are elected by other lamas, serve
relatively short terms and are free to step down.

The story might have ended with the reburial had not a
young lama, Bimba Dorzhiyev, turned his curiosity for
history into a quest to resolve the mystery of Itigilov.

He found an 88-year-old believer, Amgalan Dabayev, whose
father-in-law had been there when the coffin had been
opened and who himself had seen Itigilov. He led them to
the grave.

On Sept. 11, 75 years after Itigilov's death, the body was
once again lifted from the earth. This time there was a
record of the event: a dozen witnesses, including two
forensic experts and a photographer.

The lamas who opened the coffin wore surgical masks, but
they need not have. Itigilov's body remained preserved.

The current Hambo Lama ordered the body brought to
Ivolginsk, where it was greeted with fanfare, ringing bells
and lulling chants. He ordered the body placed on the
second floor of one of the monastery's four temples, where
it remains today, secreted behind heavy curtains and locked
doors.

The monastery's 150 students keep a vigil on the first
floor, praying around the clock, though only the lamas may
see the body.

"To me it is the greatest miracle in life," said Hambo Lama
Ayusheyev, the spiritual leader since 1995. "It turns out
there are things on which time has no power."

The 12th Hambo Lama was born in 1852 in Czarist Russia and
orphaned early, according to the Buddhists' history. At 16
he studied to become a lama and served in several
monasteries in Buryatia. In 1911 he was nominated along
with nine other candidates to become the Hambo Lama and he
was ultimately appointed by the czar's governor in Irkutsk.


During his time as Hambo Lama, Itigilov is said to have
strengthened the faith, especially among the Buryats, a
nomadic people of Mongol descent who have lived in the
region for more than 30 centuries. He published religious
tracts and teachings and united many of the religion's
factions.

Most of Russia's Buddhists - estimated today at one million
- adhere to the "yellow hat" sect that is predominant in
Tibet. The Dalai Lama is their highest spiritual leader.

In the years since the Soviet collapse, Buryatia has
remained a republic of the Russian Federation. Across
Russia the Buddhists have begun to thrive again, rebuilding
lost temples, opening schools and attracting new followers,
even among ethnic Russians.

The Ivolginsk monastery is Russia's Lhasa, attracting
hundreds of believers a day to its temples and monuments.
Hambo Lama Ayusheyev said he had not yet decided what to do
with Itigilov's body, but others say it will become a relic
that will attract still more visitors.

In Moscow, Vladislav L. Kozeltsev, an expert at the Center
for Biomedical Technologies, the institute that keeps the
body of Lenin - who died in 1924 - in state on Red Square,
said the salt in the coffin might have slowed the decay but
could not alone explain the preservation of the lama's
body.

Other factors may include the soil and the condition of the
coffin. More likely, Mr. Kozeltsev said, Itigilov suffered
from a defect in the gene that hastens the decomposition of
the body's cellular structure after death.

He added, "You cannot rule out some secret process of
embalming." Hambo Lama Ayusheyev says the body was
preserved because Itigilov achieved a heightened state of
existence through meditation known as shunyata, or
emptiness.

He acknowledged that there would be skepticism. When
greeted with it, he relented on his own order and led a
visitor into the temple, up a flight of narrow wooden
stairs, past a locked door and into the darkened chamber
where Itigilov sits atop a simple table, surrounded by
candles and metal bowls holding oils.

The lamas have dressed his body in a golden robe, with a
blue sash laid across his lap. His eyes are closed, his
features blurred, though the shape of his face and his nose
certainly resemble the 1913 photograph. His hands remain
flexible, his nails perfectly trimmed. His skin is leathery
but soft. His head is still covered in short-trimmed hair.

"Many people don't see what's obvious," Hambo Lama
Ayusheyev said. "Many people won't understand even if they
see him."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/international/europe/01BUDD.html?ex=1034518854&ei=1&en=066062147dd5084c