Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

by William Dalrymple

‘But then everything worthwhile in life takes time.

I have no possessions, so I have no worries.’

‘Once you learn to restrain your desires,’ he said, ‘anything becomes possible.’

I have tried to show rather than tell, and to let the characters speak for themselves.

At its purest, Jainism is almost an atheistic religion, and the much venerated images of the Tirthankaras in temples represent not so much a divine presence as a profound divine absence.

‘We believe that all attachments bring suffering,’

the Home Ministry about his allowance, so I offered to help him down the hill. We wandered down together, and while he was there I took the opportunity to visit the library and archive which stood next door. This contained some of the most precious texts and artefacts that had been smuggled out of Tibet. Like the Parliament building which it abutted, it was modest in scale, but built in the style of a Tibetan gompa with sloping walls and wooden pillars vaguely modelled on those of the Potala Palace.