Julian of Norwich and Other Tibetan Lamas

Early in his first prayer to St. Mary, Anselm presents himself to the Mother of Mercy as one made unclean by the disease of his sins: “I long to come before you in my misery, sick with the sickness of vice, in pain from the wounds of crimes, putrid with the ulcers of sin.” ₁ As the prayer continues, Anselm deepens the presentation of himself as one outcasted and exiled by his malady, as a type of leper, whose very condition can cause others who happen to gaze upon it to shutter and to turn away their eyes. And yet, with a terrible tentativeness, it is for that very gaze that Anselm pleads: “What I want to ask you, Lady, is that by a glance from your mercy you will cure the sickness and ulcers of my sins…” ₂    

The place of the leper in the Christian tradition can be traced back to the Gospels themselves. Indeed, in the first chapter of the earliest Gospel, Jesus is approached by a leper, who falls at his feet, begging to be made clean. And moved with a deep compassion, Jesus “stretched out his hand and touched him,” declaring the afflicted man clean. ₃ A thousand years later, one who has been revered as best following the teachings of Jesus also came to be known for his commiseration with lepers. Indeed, in a very brief document, “dictated shortly before his death,” Francis of Assisi (1181/2-1226) places lepers at the very heart of his conversion:

The Lord gave it to me, Brother Francis, this way to begin doing penance. Because, when I was in sins, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers. And the Lord himself brought me amongst them and I made mercy with them. And when I withdrew from them, what had seemed bitter to me changed to sweetness of body and soul to me. And after this, I stayed a little while and left the world. ₄

As Buddhism in Tibet began to reflower in 11^th and 12^th centuries with the gracious work of Atisa and his followers – who were called “Kadam” masters or “Kadampas” – lepers emerge has having a distinct presence in that spiritual movement. Scholar Thupten Jinpa explains that it appears that leprosy was “a major health concern during the lifetime of the early Kadam masters” and “countering people’s prejudices against lepers features prominently in their teachings.” ₅ In this way, an early Kadampa, Potowa Rinchen Sel (1027–1105), speaks of a leper and his family who needed help getting across a river and several people walk past without helping them. These responses are criticized by Potowa. But the master praises the actions of a monk who carried a woman who was suffering from leprosy across a river, even though monks were not allowed to touch women. Such, Potowa teaches, is the behavior of a true Bodhisattva. ₆

The Kadampa, Chekawa Yeshe Dorje (1101-1175), composed the important text, “Seven-Point Mind Training,” in the “lojong” or “mind training” tradition. This genre of spiritual writings teaches “a disciplined process for radically transforming our thoughts and prejudices from natural self-centeredness to other-centered altruism.” ₇ An early Kadam source text reports that Chekawa “imparted this [teaching] to some lepers … One told another, and they received the teaching. Thus, it acquired the label ‘leper’s teaching.’” The same text states that “Chekawa would carry on his back, with the assistance of his younger brother … a leper woman who had lost her limbs. He gave the lepers food and taught them Dharma.” He even shared his clothes with them, covering a woman suffering from leprosy with his cloak. ₈ “Take upon yourself all leprosy and sickness in the world,” Chekawa taught his disciples. ₉  

Endnotes

1. Anselm of Canterbury, “Prayer to St. Mary (1).” The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm. Translated by Sister Benedicta Ward, S.L.G. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973, page 107, ll. 12-15). The power of Anselm’s writing invites an extended quotation: “Life-bearer, mother of salvation, shrine of goodness and mercy, I long to come before you in my misery, sick with the sickness of vice, in pain from the wounds of crimes, putrid with the ulcers of sin.” Latin: “[T]ibi, o genitrix vitae, o mater salutis, o templum pietatis et misericordiae, tibi sese conatur praesentare miserabilis anima mea, morbis vitiorum languida, vulneribus facinorum scissa, ulcerbius flagitiorum putrida.” (Anselm of Canterbury, “Oratio ad sanctam Mariam cum mens gravatur torpore.” S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia. Volume 3. Ed. F. S. Schmitt. 6 vols. Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1946, page 13.) Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/sanselmicantuari03anse/page/12/mode/2up?view=theater
2. Anselm of Canterbury, “Prayer to St. Mary (1).” The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm. Translated by Sister Benedicta Ward, page 108, ll. 45-47). Latin: “Rogare enim te, domina, desidero, ut miserationis tuae respectu cures plagas et ulcera peccatorum meorum …” (S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia. Volume 3. Ed. F. S. Schmitt. 6 vols. Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1946, page 14.) Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/sanselmicantuari03anse/page/14/mode/2up?view=theater In a presentation entitled, “Leprosia: The Lost Leprosy Hospitals of London,” Professor Carole Rawcliffe teaches: “Between the late 11^th century, that is just after the Norman Conquest, and 1350, a bare minimum of 300 hospitals and refuges were set up in England for the accommodation of people suffering from a disease called “lepra” or leprosy.” (YouTube, March 19, 2012. Minutes 0:15-0:32: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_M-EHmtF-Q Image One below is the cover of Carole Rawcliffe’s study, Leprosy in Medieval England. Lanfranc (1005-1089), Anselm’s mentor at Bec Abbey in Normandy and his predecessor as the Archbishop of Canterbury, founded a hospital for lepers near Canterbury. (Carole Rawcliffe, The Hospitals of Medieval Norwich. Norwich, UK: Centre of East Anglian Studies, 1995, page 45.) Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/hospitalsofmedie0000rawc/page/44/mode/2up?view=theater A 7th-century biblical commentary, which was quite popular due to an incorrect attribution to Saint Jerome (c. 347 – 420), makes the following statement: “[L]epra nostra peccatum primi hominis est.” [Our leprosy is the sin of the first man.] Quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea in Marcum. Chapter One, Lecture Thirteen. Latin text based on the Marietti edition (1953). Transcribed by Robert Busa, S.J. Edited by The Aquinas Institute: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~CaMark.85695.n85705.2
3. See Mark 1.40-45. The Vulgate translates a key moment in the passage as: “Iesus autem misertus eius extendit manum suam et tangens eum ait …,” which the Wycliffe Bible translates as: “And Jhesus hadde mercy on hym, and streiyte out his hoond, and towchyde hym, and seide to hym …” (Emphasis mine.)
4. The English translation of Francis’ words is that of Bernard McGinn in his The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism – 1200-1350. Volume III of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: A Crossroad Herder Book, 1998, page 43. And in note # 71 on page 340, Professor McGinn also provides the original Latin text: “Dominus ita dedit mihi fratri Francisco incipere faciendi poenitentiam: quia cum essem in peccatis nimis mihi videbatur amarum videre leprosos. Et ipse Dominus conduxit me inter illos et feci misericordiam cum illis. Et recedente me ab ipsis, id quod videbatur mihi amarum, conversum fuit mihi in dulcedinem animi et corporis; et postea parum steti et exivi de saeculo.” I am very grateful for his revealing translation of “feci misericordiam cum” as “made mercy with.” In a comment on his translation, the Professor states: “I translate as literally as possible to try to give some flavor of Francis’ own voice.” (Ibid. note # 71 on page 340.) Historian Raoul Manselli (1917–1984) offers the following insights into Francis’ encounter with the leper: “Here, then, we shall present, the moment of Francis’s conversion as the primary fact and the profound source of everything that will follow. As he himself indicates, and as has been said many times, this moment was not the experience of poverty, but rather the meeting with the leper. From this we can immediately draw a conclusion to point the way for us, one which seems of decisive importance. Francis felt that the starting point of his conversion and reversal of values was his realization of the existential fact of the human condition as common to each person, and that over each person loomed the possibility of an identical fate. By the fact that there is one leper, we are all lepers, and we are not exempt from the duty to feel as he feels, because any one of us could be that leper. From this flows another conclusion, no less significant … The leper’s condition, like that of many others at the margins of society, is not solely a fact of the human condition. It is also the condition which draws us closest to Christ, the incarnate God, who in His coming upon earth did not choose to be among the powerful or great ones, but wanted instead to live in the most modest human condition, even to the point of the humiliation and suffering of the cross. Francis experienced fully what Paul had expressed so concisely: “He emptied himself unto death, even death on the cross.” [“Letter to the Philippians”] (Raoul Manselli, “The Spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi.” Greyfriars Review, Vol. 3, no. 1, April 1989, page 44. (Emphasis mine.) Online: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1017/5297/files/GR_III_1.03_Manselli.pdf?102
5. Mind Training: The Great Collection. Compiled by Shonu Gyalchok (ca. fourteenth-fifteenth centuries) and Konchok Gyaltsen (1388-1469). Translated and edited by Thupten Jinpa. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2006, note # 114, page 586. In the same note, Geshe Jinpa shares the following information that emerged in the tradition related to Atisa’s primary disciple, Dromtonpa (1005-1064): “According to Tibetan sources, Dromtonpa was so deeply affected by people’s prejudices against those suffering from the disease [leprosy] that he dedicated the latter part of his life to nursing many lepers, eventually losing his own life to the illness.” (Ibid. note # 114, page 586)
6. I am very grateful to have received this rich information about Potowa (1027-1105) in an email exchange with Ulrike Roesler, Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at the University of Oxford. Professor Roesler identified the textual source as Potowa’s “Dharma Exemplified, a Heap of Jewels” (Tibetan: Dpe chos rin chen spungs pa). There is apparently no English translation of this text at the present time. For more information on Potowa, see “Potowa Rinchen Se.” The Treasury of Lives: https://treasuryoflives.org/biographies/view/Potowa/TBRC_p3442 For “an overview of the emergence of the Kadampa movement during the formative period of Tibetan Buddhism in the 11th-12th centuries,” see Professor Roesler’s essay “Atiśa and the Kadampa Masters,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. II., editor-in-chief Jonathan Silk. Leiden, Boston: Brill, pp. 1145-1158.
7. “Introduction.” Mind Training: The Great Collection. Compiled by Shonu Gyalchok (ca. fourteenth-fifteenth centuries) and Konchok Gyaltsen (1388-1469). Translated and edited by Thupten Jinpa. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2006, page 1.
8. Sangye Gompa (1179-1250), “Public Explication of Mind Training.” In Mind Training: The Great Collection. Compiled by Shonu Gyalchok (ca. fourteenth-fifteenth centuries) and Konchok Gyaltsen (1388-1469). Translated and edited by Thupten Jinpa. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2006, page 318.
9. See Se Chilbu Chokyi Gyaltsen (1121-1189), “A Commentary on the ‘Seven-Point Mind Training.” In Mind Training: The Great Collection. Compiled by Shonu Gyalchok (ca. fourteenth-fifteenth centuries) and Konchok Gyaltsen (1388-1469). Translated and edited by Thupten Jinpa. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2006, page 104. Geshe Jinpa explains that while the author here is identified as one Se Chilbu, the commentary “is as much Chekawa’s as it is Se Chilbu’s, since it was essentially complied from the notes taken at Chekawa’s oral teaching.” (Mind Training: The Great Collection, note # 154, page 589).