A Finnish Thriller, the Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum Mantra, and the Samye Monastery in Tibet

I was just reading the thriller “The Vengeance Commission” (Koston komissio) by Taavi Soininvaara in German [1], and to my surprise, the “Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum” mantra (ཨོཾ་ཨཱཿཧཱུྃ་བཛྲ་གུ་རུ་པདྨ་སིདྡྷི་ཧཱུྃ།) is mentioned on pages 207–208 [2]. This piqued my curiosity, quickly taking me from Finland to Tibet—though by that point in the story, the action had already moved through Spain, Italy (Capri), and Hungary in addition to Finland.

“Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum” is the heart mantra of Padmasambhava (पद्मसम्भव), also known as Guru Rinpoche. He lived during the 8th and 9th centuries AD and is considered the founder of Buddhism in Tibet. The word “Vajra” also appears in the name of the Tibetan form of Buddhism: Vajrayāna (वज्रयान), or the Diamond Vehicle [3]. There is little historically verified information about Padmasambhava [4]. He played a key role in the first wave of translations of Indian texts into Tibetan. In the Nyingma tradition, he is revered as a second Buddha. He is said to have had six female companions and is reputed to have subdued spirits and demons using tantric powers. I also recall a story I brought back from Paro Taktsang (Dzongkha: སྤ་གྲོ་སྟག་ཚང་)—better known as Tiger's Nest—in Bhutan, which I quote below [5].

Padmasambhava was instrumental in establishing the first Buddhist monastery, Samye, around 769 or 775. Samye Monastery (Tibetan: བསམ་ཡས་, Chinese: 桑耶寺) [6] is located south of Lhasa, near the Yarlung Valley. The monastery was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution but was rebuilt starting in 1988. I visited the monastery in 1998. What do I still remember? Back then, there were no bridges, and the settlements one can see on Google Maps today, for instance, were merely small hamlets. The Yarlung Zangbo (Tibetan: ཡར་ཀླུངས་གཙང་པོ་, Chinese: 雅鲁藏布江) is the upper reach of the Brahmaputra River [7]. In 1998, the river had burst its banks, and we made a long crossing over the water, which had a strong current. On the north side of the river, we climbed onto the back of a truck that took us to the monastery. According to Wikipedia, the first monks were ordained there in 779 AD. After the Cultural Revolution, monastic life had ceased to exist. Following his visit in 1982, Heinrich Harrer described Samye as seen from an airplane: “...a Samye of which only ruins remained. The entire monastery had been razed to the ground...” [8]. Back to my own impressions: I had noted in my travel diary at the time that we were heading toward the ferry. A car had driven into the river at the very spot where we had stopped the day before to climb a hill. As it turned out, the vehicle belonged to the solo traveler we had met in the restaurant the previous evening; she was quite unlucky and was retracing the steps of Alexandra David-Néel. We had a pleasant crossing on a small ferry boat over the Brahmaputra/Yarlung Zangbo. This was followed by a 30-to-40-minute ride on the back of a truck—navigating potholes, water, and sand dunes—to Samye Monastery. Once there, I took extensive photographs in one of the rooms until my battery was nearly dead. The figure of Avalokiteshvara, re-erected here after its destruction, is also beautiful. After visiting the monastery, the route led through the village and across the fields.

In 2023, I took all my APS [9] analog images to a professional scanning service to have them converted into digital images. The photos from my 1998 trip to Tibet were among them. Despite some compromises, I am happy with the result. The camera itself, however, was not of the highest quality. Here is a selection of these photographs.

 

Links and Annotations:
[1] Taavi Sioninvaara: Finnisches Requiem. Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 2006. ISBN: 3-7466-2190-9. Original title: Koston komissio. English Translation of the title: The Vengeance Commission. The book has only been translated into German.
[2] https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Vajra_Guru_mantra 
and for very interested souls: https://www.facebook.com/jorlek3/posts/guru-rinpoches-principal-mantra-is-om-ah-hung-benza-guru-pema-siddhi-hung-which-/25612478701710041/ 
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajrayana 
[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmasambhava and 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmasambhava 
[5] Paro Taktsang Dzongkha: སྤ་གྲོ་སྟག་ཚང་) is better known as Tiger's Nest in the west; for more name look up the Wikipedia article, from which I take much of the information [a]. Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche) meditated and practiced in one of the 13 caves (Taktsang Senge Samdup cave), later the monastery complex was built around this cave on the cliffside of the upper Paro valley in 1692 and by and by it became a sacred Vajrayana Himalayan Buddhist site. On April 19, 1998 (2 1/2 years before I visited Taktsang for the first time [b]) a fire broke out in the main building of the monastery complex. The cause of the fire is unclear, but an electrical short-circuiting or flickering butter lamps were discussed. But everything has been reconstructed.
A legend tells us, that Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche) flew from Singye Dzong to these caves on the back of a tigress. I've found a picture from a trip to Tibet in 2018, which illustrates this legend. In an alternative legend a former wife of an emperor transformed herself into a tigress and carried Guru Rinpoche on her back from Tibet to the Taktsang and so the place got its name.
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paro_Taktsang 
[b] https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2020/09/glimpses-into-bhutan-in-year-2000_10.html  
The Tiger's Nest or Taktsang near Paro in Bhutan 
https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-tigers-nest-or-taktsang-near-paro.html 
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samye 
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarlung_Tsangpo 
[8] Heinrich Harrer: Wiedersehen mit Tibet. Bertelsmann Lizenzausgabe von Pinguin-Verlag, Innsbruck 1983. No ISBN. Cited in [6]  Harrer, Heinrich (1985) [1984]. Return to Tibet: Tibet After the Chinese Occupation. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ISBN 9780140077742
[9] Advanced Photo System 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Photo_System  

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