February 4, 2004
What the Will of a Woman Can Do
Alexandra David-Neel was the First European to enter Tibet
by Barbara Foster
Alexandra David-Neel (b.1868 in Paris), a prolific author, explorer, pioneer feminist, and authority on Tibetan Buddhism was called by Lawrence Durrell, "the most astonishing Frenchwoman woman of our time". In midwinter disguised as a beggar, ignoring hunger, cold, wild animals, bandits, and hostile British imperial officials, David-Neel crossed the Trans-Himalayas on foot to become the first foreign woman to enter Tibet's forbidden capital, Lhasa. In 1924, at fifty-six, she succeeded while most male explorers were either turned back or died on the way
The Frenchwoman benefited from extensive knowledge of Tibet and its customs gained after more than a decade of hob-nobbing with learned hermits, nomads, and brigands. Few have led a life of adventure equal to hers. David-Neel's My Journey to Lhasa (1927) became a worldwide bestseller and classic of the travel genre. Indeed this scholar-adventurer, who lived over one hundred years, merits superlatives. Alan Watts praised her "wonderfully lucid" writing, which she demonstrated in twenty-five books on eastern themes; Allen Ginsberg credited her with converting him to Buddhism.
If in middle age David-Neel boasted that her eyes "shone with the clear light of the Himalayas," in childhood, as her parents moved back and forth from Paris to Brussels, her mood remained glum. Miserable in a bourgeois home, the child-anarchist frequently ran away from her governess in a break for the freedom she craved above all else. Introspective, she became a left winger given to philosophical speculations. The rebel tried hashish, kept a revolver hidden in her drawer and briefly contemplated suicide.
In Belle Epoque Paris normally two choices were available to a middle class woman: wife or courtesan. Refusing to join the ranks of either of the above, David-Neel audited courses in Eastern Studies at the Sorbonne where women were not permitted to formally matriculate. Observing male students push females who dared intrude on their exclusive domain downstairs converted her into a lifelong feminist. In front of a large golden statue of the Buddha in the Guimet Museum, Alexandra underwent a conversion experience.
In 1909, a crusader for the feminist cause, Alexandra wrote a pioneering essay advocating housewives be paid for their housework, single mothers be treated as worthy members of society, and all notions of illegitimacy of birth be banished from the law and social custom. This polemic stemmed from a personal compromise she made in 1904: a marriage of convenience to Philip Neel, a prosperous French engineer resident in Tunisia. In France legally wives were treated little better than minors, not permitted to purchase property on their own or act independently of their husbands.
Philip Neel shared his wife's Protestant background, if not her passion for adventure. To Alexandra the married state was equivalent to a being a kept woman. Chafing to be on the road for Asia, she described herself as a "phenomenon who explodes in the civilized world." Eventually it dawned on Neel that this rebel would not warm his fireside or bear his children.
By 1911 Neel packed his wife off to India "to perfect her Oriental languages." This departure set her on the right road both intellectually and spiritually. Alexandra's letters to her husband mix Buddhist wisdom and homey advice. At a distance the couple maintained their liberated "marriage of correspondence" for almost twenty years. The connection enriched both of them -- particularly Alexandra since Neel's financial contributions funded her travels.
Traveling around India lifted David-Neel's spirits. In Benares she studied Sanskrit, the key to ancient texts she intended one day to translate. Meanwhile she published articles on local manners and customs in the Parisian journal Mercure de France. Once she caught a glimpse of the "land of snows," India could not hold her. Or as she expressed it, "a powerful attraction draws me toward this strange and desolate country" -- Tibet.
In 1912 David-Neel engineered an interview with the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, an unheard of honor for a western woman. While the Dalai Lama praised her Buddhist erudition, political considerations made it impossible for him to invite the Frenchwoman to visit Lhasa. If the forbidden capital was closed to her, Sikkim beckoned in the person of a handsome young prince, Sidkeong Tulku. These two meetings In northern India Tibetanized David-Neel, introducing her to illustrious representatives of the culture she would embrace and explicate the rest of her life.
In 1913 David-Neel visited Sidkeong in Gangtok, Sikkim's capital. The soon-to-be maharajah -- upon his father's death -- rolled out all the Tibetan carpets in his possession to welcome the foreign Buddhist whose philosophy matched his own. Smitten, the Oxford educated prince showered gifts on his visitor-mentor, including a necklace of priceless gold coins. At last David-Neel found a peer informed enough to discuss the most abstruse philosophical points yet able to make her laugh by playing pranks; for example, he brought a baby yak outside her window. Deftly, in her letters she allayed any jealousy that might plague Philip-Neel -- homebound in Tunisia.
During this halcyon period, David-Neel perfected her Tibetan. Hiking in the Himalayas with the handsome Sidkeong taught her to navigate and camp out in high mountains, a crash course that prepared her to take on the roof of the world. In 1914 the mysterious murder of her admirer plunged David Neel into a despair that made her want to leave the world forever. Instead, she secluded herself in a cave for two years with Sidkeong's guru, a local hermit-magician who initiated her into the Tibetan mysteries.
Earlier occult studies in London and Paris made David-Neel suspicious of sham occultists. The Gomchen of Lachen (his mountain village) proved genuine: both learned in Buddhist philosophy and master of a range of "psychic sports, among them trance walking and breathing practices to keep warm in high altitudes." Peasants in the Gomchen's mountain village believed he could fly through the air, kill men at a distance and command demons.
At the end of her apprenticeship the fifty-six-year-old was in top form for the thrilling walk which involved begging from remote house to house, in desperation boiling up shoe leather in lieu of other food. The initiated French lama would later publish certain of the Gomchen's teachings in Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1931) -- still in print.
In retreat the hermit actually took giant steps toward Lhasa by listening to the Gomchen describe: "people he had known, repeating their conversations and telling me about their lives. Thus while seated in his cabin or mine, I visited the palaces of rich lamas, entered the hermitage of many an ascetic, I travelled along the road meeting curious people. I became in that way closely acquainted with Tibet, its inhabitants, customs and thought."
A young man that David-Neel met in Sikkim eventually rose from being her servant to her adopted son. Lama Yongden, an initiated lama in his own right, accompanied David-Neel in retreat as he would on the journey to Lhasa. Before setting out, from 1918 to 1921 both resided at Kum Bum monastery in Northeastern Tibet. During this interlude, David-Neel translated Buddhist texts from Tibetan into French and English -- a language she knew fluently. These translations are significant contributions to Tibetan scholarship, a compliment to her more popular work,
By 1921, determined to show "what the will of woman can do," the seasoned traveler warned her husband not to contact her because she was "going beyond pos toffices". A round about route forced on her by Lhasa's being so forbidden and the inquisitive nature of local officials made it appear she would not reach her destination. Auspiciously, in January 1924, she attained Lhasa in time for the New Year's festival -- an opportunity to blend in with crowds of pilgrims.
The arduous voyage to Lhasa, the culmination of years of study and a familiarity with Tibet beyond the comprehension of most westerners, reduced David-Neel almost to a skeleton. Nevertheless, she boasted that she would see all Lhasa's wonders, which she did thoroughly in two months. The pilgrim returned to acclaim in Paris where she lived in a tent outside the Guimet Museum as though she were still in the Tibetan wilderness. Homesickness for her spiritual homeland made Paris difficult to endure.
Briefly, Alexandra contemplated settling in America but instead bought a home in Digne, France. From 1927 on, aside from a trip to China in the 1930s, Alexandra and Yongden lived at Samten Dzong ("Fortress of Meditation" ), Finally, settled in a permanent home, she synthesized years of data gathered in their rambles. Occasionally they were joined by the stalwart Philip Neel, appreciative of the well heated bedroom reserved for him. At his death, Alexandra moaned that she had lost the best of husbands and her only friend.
Since Yongden predeceased David-Neel, her final years were lonely ones. Much honored, she died in 1969 at one-hundred-and-one years; in process were two projects: biographies of Mao-Tse-Tung and Jesus. Grateful readers from generation to generation are her beneficiaries. Her legacy is authenticated by the Dalai Lama whose comment "she knew the real Tibet " testifies to the caliber of her research.
Samten Dzong now is a charming museum. Visitors can view David Neel's armchair, cane, meditation beads from the Gomchen, the necklace of gold coins from Sidkeong; among the myriad travel souvenirs a magic dagger she hoodwinked from monks who found it too hot to handle is perhaps the most arresting. Walking through Samten Dzong, the visitor enters a bygone Tibet "the Sage of Digne" preserved in her final home and heart.
Barbara Foster is an Associate Professor in the Library Department at CUNY. She is a world traveler in the tradition of the heroic women she writes about. She has acted as a referee for the Royal Geographical Society (London). She is co-author of the biography The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel (Overlook Press, 1998).