We arrived early that day, the air very frosty and cold, and were met by friendly representatives who led us into a crowded small room in somebody’s house, made festive as a guest room, and there we were offered cakes and tea. Though it was so early, the entire population, even the children, looked clean and rosy, the babies amazingly fat and round-faced and wrapped like little papooses against the cold. After two hours or so the services began. We were invited into the tiny temple and given places of honor behind ropes at the right side of the altar.
How strange the familiar Buddhist gods looked to me that day! I had never seen them before in an American setting, or even in so simple a building, but here they were, sitting in a row behind the altar, and before them were heaped the offerings of the people, food of every sort including boxes of crackers and breakfast cereals, and I daresay the gods had never been given such gifts before, either. Of course, actually, they were gifts to the lamas. But it was all very solemn and to me inspiring as well as touching. My old friend, the Dilowa Hutukhtu, who is the eighteenth recorded incarnation of the Indian saint Tolopa and is therefore the primate of all the Mongol Buddhists in our country, officiated in the brief half-hour ceremony. To his right and slightly lower sat nine lamas, who had come, I think, with the Kalmuks. The Dilowa himself is a tall man, now growing old, and his wide Mongolian face is as peaceful here as though he were not an exile. On that day in the little garage temple he was quietly radiant, though once he had been the head of nine hundred lamas in three great lamaseries, one in Outer and two in Inner Mongolia. But that was in the days before the Communists drove him out and before Owen Lattimore saved his life.
Now in the new little temple he put on his yellow silken hat, which signified his rank, comparable, perhaps, to the red hat of a cardinal in the Catholic Church, the Dalai Lama in Tibet being comparable to the Pope. He sat cross-legged on a high seat when we came in, then he rose and walked slowly to the altar, his robes flowing about him. He sounded a delicate small bell, and the other lamas gathered beside him and in chorus they began the sacred chants. When this part of the service was ended the Dilowa made a short sermon, and these, translated, are among the words he spoke:
“This day, by the saving grace of Buddha, is a day of great rejoicing for the completion of a deed of blessed merit.
“All ye Kalmuk Mongols of pure faith did succeed in escaping from the dreadful circumstances of Red Russia, where false beliefs prevail, and did come to this great America where peace and happiness are broadly based and you have built a new temple in the pure sincerity of your devotion, to affirm your faith in the Buddha, which you held from of yore, and now invoke its consecration. That you have founded a congregation of the faith, that verily this day you have completed a palace of the Lord Buddha to be his dwelling, to uphold and accomplish that which is in the heart of Buddha, a place of prayer and sacrifice, a place for the sowing of the harvest of blessedness, is your reward because in previous incarnations you were valiant in the faith….
“Upon all of you, the Kalmuk Mongols, who, in raising this temple, have perpetuated in it the name of Arashi Gimpling, your temple in your ancient homeland, I invoke this blessing: That, having fulfilled all that you sought and all that you hoped for, in the fulness of the Law and to your heart’s desire, your happiness may be overflowing, your words of merit ever increasing, your very rebirth bring you together with the religion of the Buddha, and that speedily and in peace and without toil you may be united with the pure saints on high.”
When the services were over we all went out into the cold and brilliant sunshine, and there on the tiny porch of the temple I saw a pleasant sight. Five-year-old Sally, the small but extremely beautiful daughter of my friend, the Mongol prince, had paused to give voice to the exuberance of her soul. She was dressed in gorgeous red and green satin robes from her throat to her feet, as were all her family, and thus attired she stood beneath the American and the Buddhist flags, and overcome with religious feeling, she burst into spontaneous song. The hymn? It was “Jesus Loves Me.” I retired behind the building and enjoyed private and soul-shaking laughter, but the Kalmuks seemed to find nothing either amusing or strange in the incident.
“How nicely Sally sings,” they said, admiring this little Sunday-school princess.
The next event was a mighty dinner, given by the White Russian colony at Rova Farms to the Kalmuks and their friends. We sat down, three hundred of us, to a feast such as only Russians know how to provide, and while excellent food and drink progressed from course to course, speeches began and went on. Russians rose and spoke with great vitality and vigor, and I listened, unable to understand except as a neighbor translated hastily. What was most moving, however, was the final speech which the leading Kalmuk gave, a sturdy moonfaced man in a grey business suit. He held a paper before him and after he had expressed his thanks for the dinner and also for the great kindness otherwise shown the new colony by the White Russians, he went on to give thanks to the gods that his people had been brought safely to the United States, where, he said, they were doing well. Not only, he told us, had they built the temple consecrated this day, but thirty families owned their own houses, more than twenty had cars, and, he was glad to say, more than fifty had television sets!
Tremendous applause followed these figures of achievement, and after the speeches people really fell upon the food.
It was a wonderful, heart-warming, soul-inspiring day. My many worlds came together for the space of it, at least, and I think something like this happened to us all. The Countess Alexandra Tolstoi was there, and we clasped hands, and looking into her honest and good face, I saw reflected my own feelings.
And I remember, like another painting, an evening when Asia was in my house again, this time in the shape of beautiful young women who had come to contribute their presence in a fashion show that my friend and neighbor Dorothy Hammerstein was giving for the benefit of Welcome House. They had spent the afternoon at her house, had modeled their stunning costumes on the platform by the swimming pool, and having visited the Welcome House children had come to spend the night with us. Japan had given me Haru Matsui and the famous young actress, Shirley Yamaguchi, on her way to Hollywood to make a film. Both were lovely to see, but Shirley Yamaguchi had a French grandmother, and the foreign blood had made her eyes larger and more lustrous than any I have ever seen, her skin pure cream, and her features clear as carved marble, but still all Japanese. A pretty girl from Pakistan, a big handsome Chinese girl, the daughter of a famous war lord, a graceful Indonesian, a tall young beauty from India — they grouped themselves on the couches in the living room after dinner, and no men being present they prepared themselves for female chatter and good talk, eagerly turning to one another to ask how life was in their separate countries. The Chinese girl was the least cultivated, I suppose, not because Chinese girls are so, but being the daughter of a war lord, she had not had the advantages of scholars and artists in her lineage. She came of the plains people of the North and her big body, her handsome heavy features, her broken English, for English was their only common tongue and all the others spoke it with silvery perfection, set her somewhat apart. I noticed that she was restless, and I asked her if she were not feeling well. She replied that she had eaten too much. The night before, in New York, friends in exile had made a feast for her because her father was a high general in Formosa, and tonight she had enjoyed the fried chicken and rice at my dinner table, and now her girdle was too tight.