Marco Pallis
Encyclopedia
Marco Alexander Pallis was a Greek -British
-born author and mountaineer with close affiliations to the Traditionalist School
. He wrote works on the religion and culture of Tibet
.
on the 19th of June, 1895, he was the youngest son of wealthy and cosmopolitan Greek parents. Pallis was educated at Harrow School
and Liverpool University, where he studied entomology
. In 1911 he traveled to British Guiana
to study insects, and in 1912, he joined the Greek campaign against the Ottoman Empire
during the fist of the Balkan Wars
. During the siege of Ioannina
, the ancestral town of the Pallis family, he worked at a field hospital in Arta
.
During the First World War
, Pallis, initially aided the Salvation Army
in the region along the Sava River
in Serbia
. In 1916 he enlisted in the British Army
and received a commission as an army interpreter in Macedonia
. Malaria
and a severe inflammation of his right eye cut short his Macedonian service. After a lengthy convalescence in Malta
, Pallis applied to and was accepted by the Grenadier Guards. He received basic training, then advanced training as a machine-gunner. In 1918, as a second lieutenant, he was sent to fight in the trenches of the Western Front. During the battle of Cambrai
, in a charge that killed his captain and first lieutenant, Pallis was shot through the knee and was forced to retire from combat.
, Switzerland
, and the Dolomites
, and the Snowdonia
, the Peak District
, and the Scottish Highlands
when closer to home. In 1933 Pallis led a small mountaineering party to the area of Kinnaur, one of the Himalayan borderlands. Near the village of Nako, at the border with Tibet, Pallis and his team succeeded in making the first ascent of Leo Pargial (22,280 feet).
In 1936 Pallis returned to the Himalayas
at the head of another expedition. His party traveled first to Sikkim
, an “antechamber of Tibet”, where their failure to scale the summit of Simvu (22,360 feet) was, at least for Pallis, more than made up for by their encounter with the saintly abbot of Lachhen, in whom, according to Pallis, “intelligence, compassion, and initiatic authority were reflected in equal degree”.
From Sikkim Pallis had hoped to cross the border into Tibet proper, but due to political circumstances it was impossible to obtain the necessary permissions. Forced to alter his plans, he decided instead to make his way to Ladakh
. He was accompanied by his close friend Richard Nicholson and one other member of their climbing party, Dr. Robert Roaf. Once in Ladakh, they discarded Western clothes in favor of the chuba, and assumed as much as possible a Tibetan manner of living. “It was our way of saying to our hosts: ‘We wish to be as one of you. Please make no unusual arrangements on our behalf. We love your tradition, and hope it will not be rashly changed. We have found means of attuning ourselves to its ways.’”
Pallis by now saw himself as a “pilgrim” of Tibetan Buddhism
and in both Sikkim and Ladakh he received his religious education directly from qualified instructors within the living tradition. He dedicates his Peaks and Lamas to four teachers in particular, “the great contemplator, abbot of Lachhen, the venerable Dawa, bursar of Spituk, the venerable Konchhog Gyaltsan of P’hiyang, and the venerable Geshe Wangyal of Drepung, Lhasa who for my benefit and for the good of all creatures set in motion the Wheel of the Doctrine”.
The Second World War prevented further travels until 1947, when Pallis and Richard Nicholson were able to visit the Tibetan heartland before the coming Chinese invasion. They traveled widely throughout Tibet’s Tsang province, seeking to fulfill their shared desire to “absorb the spirit of the Tradition by direct experience”. Over the course of their stay they were able to make contact with each of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism (Gelugpa, Nyingmapa, Kagyudpa, and Sakyapa), visiting such holy sites as the ancient Pel Sakya monastery, seat of the Sakyapa and “a treasure-house of all the arts at their very best”, as well as the Tashilhunpo
monastery, seat of the Panchen Lama
and one of the four great monasteries of the Gelugpa.
After his departure from the Tibetan plateau, Pallis lived in Kalimpong, India
, for nearly four years before returning to England in 1951. Kalimpong was then a center of literary and cultural activity, as well as a refuge for many of those who were being forced to leave Tibet. Pallis formed many lasting relationships during this time, including an acquaintance with the then queen of Bhutan and her family, whom he later visited in England, and with the Dalai Lama’s former tutor Heinrich Harrer
, with whom Pallis later collaborated in exposing the fraudulent writer Cyril Hoskin, alias “Lobsang Rampa
”. While in Kalimpong, Pallis also met with the Dalai Lama’s Great Royal Mother, and he developed a close relationship with the abbot of the nearby Tharpa Choling monastery.
After the political upheavals in Tibet in the 1950s, Pallis became active in the affairs of the Tibetan Society, the first Western support group created for the Tibetan people. Pallis also was able to house members of the Tibetan diaspora
in his London flat. Pallis also formed a relationship with the young Chögyam Trungpa
, who had just arrived in England. Trungpa asked Pallis to write the foreword to Trungpa’s first, autobiographical book, Born in Tibet. In his acknowledgment, Trungpa offers Pallis his “grateful thanks” for the “great help” that Pallis provided in bringing the book to completion. He goes on to say that “Mr. Pallis when consenting to write the foreword, devoted many weeks to the work of finally putting the book in order”.
, the distinguished reviver of early English music, composer, and performer, and was considered “one of Dolmetsch's most devoted protégés”. Pallis soon discovered a love of early music—in particular chamber music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—and for the viola da gamba. Even while climbing in the region of the Satlej-Ganges watershed, he and his musically-minded friends did not fail to bring their instruments.
Pallis taught viol at the Royal Academy of Music
, and reconstituted The English Consort of Viols, an ensemble he had first formed in the 1930s. It was one of the first professional performing groups dedicated to the preservation of early English music. They released three records and made several concert tours in England and two tours to the United States.
According to the New York Times review, their Town Hall concert of April 1962 “was a solid musical delight”, the players having possessed “a rhythmic fluidity that endowed the music with elegance and dignity”. Pallis also published several compositions, primarily for the viol, and wrote on the viol’s history and its place in early English music.
The Royal Academy of Music, in recognition of a lifetime of contribution to the field of early music, awarded Pallis an Honorary Fellowship. At age eighty-nine his Nocturne de l’Ephemere was performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
in London; his niece writes that “he was able to go on stage to accept the applause which he did with his customary modesty.” When he died he left unfinished an opera based on the life of Milarepa
.
or perennialist school of comparative religion founded by René Guénon
, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and Frithjof Schuon
, each of whom he knew personally. As a traditionalist, Pallis assumed the "transcendent unity of religions" (the title of Schuon's landmark 1948 book) and it was in part this understanding that gave Pallis insight into the innermost nature of the spiritual tradition of Tibet, his chosen love. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Studies in Comparative Religion
(along with Schuon, Guénon, and Coomaraswamy), writings on both the topics of Tibetan culture and religious practice as well as the Perennialist philosophy.
Pallis published three books over a span of almost forty years. His first, Peaks and Lamas (1939), mentioned previously, tells the story “of how access was gained, across the varying episodes of Himalayan travel, to a traditional world, still complete and vigorous, that of Buddhism in its Tibetan branch”. This was followed by The Way and the Mountain (1960) and by A Buddhist Spectrum (1980), both collections of essays that attempt to deal “with a number of Buddhist themes of prime importance in such a fashion as to make up . . . a coherent view of the world and of a human destiny realizable in this world as seen through Buddhist eyes” Several of Pallis’ essays were also included in Jacob Needleman’s The Sword of Gnosis. After his final journey to Tibet, while living in Kalimpong, Pallis wrote a short book in the Tibetan language addressing the dangers posed to Tibet by the encroachment of modern culture. In addition to penning his own writings, Pallis translated Buddhist texts into Greek, and translated works of fellow traditionalist writers René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon from French into English. Some of Pallis’ own works have also been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, and Turkish.
Since the publication of his first book, sixty-six years ago, generations of scholars and students have turned to Pallis for insight into Buddhism and Tibet. His work is cited by such writers as Heinrich Harrer
, Heinrich Zimmer
, Joseph Campbell
, Thomas Merton
, Robert Aitken
, and Huston Smith
. Despite such scholarly acclaim, it is also true, as Harry Oldmeadow states, that “Pallis had no interest in research for its own sake, nor in any purely theoretical understanding of doctrine: his work was always attuned to the demands of the spiritual life itself. [His essays] should be of interest not only to those on the Buddhist path but to all spiritual wayfarers.” Huston Smith expresses a similar judgment when he declares: “Though Pallis respects scholarship, he doesn’t consider himself a Buddhist scholar. . . . What he does is focus on key Buddhist teachings and mine their essential and existential meaning. In the course of this project he regularly refers to other traditions, especially Christianity. . . . The result is completely satisfying. For insight, and the beauty insight requires if it is to be effective, I find no writer on Buddhism surpassing him.” Wendell Berry
, Gary Snyder
, and Robert Aitken
gave encouragement to the reprinting of Pallis’ classic Peaks and Lamas, which Wendell Berry has called, “The best book, in my limited reading, in connecting a form of Buddhism with its sustaining culture. . . . [It is] useful to anybody interested in what a traditional culture is or might be, and how such a culture might preserve itself.”
It remains to risk a brief comment: that he was and remains a great teacher . . . who made sense of life and of the life to come; in whose presence insuperable difficulties became less daunting; who took endless troubles to help those who brought their problems to him; someone to whom the spiritual quest in prayer was the one thing needful, who by his own life demonstrated the validity and truth of traditional teachings; and that, however emasculated by modernism, these remain the only valid criteria for those who, as he would put it, have ears to hear. His life was a celebration of “The Marriage of Wisdom and Method”: which is the title of one of his essays.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
-born author and mountaineer with close affiliations to the Traditionalist School
Traditionalist School
The term Traditionalist School is used by Mark Sedgwick and other authors to denote a school of thought, also known as Integral Traditionalism or Perennialism to denote an esoteric movement developed by authors such as French metaphysician René Guénon, German-Swiss...
. He wrote works on the religion and culture of Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
.
Early life: Education, Travels, and Wartime Experiences
Born in LiverpoolLiverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
on the 19th of June, 1895, he was the youngest son of wealthy and cosmopolitan Greek parents. Pallis was educated at Harrow School
Harrow School
Harrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...
and Liverpool University, where he studied entomology
Entomology
Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology...
. In 1911 he traveled to British Guiana
British Guiana
British Guiana was the name of the British colony on the northern coast of South America, now the independent nation of Guyana.The area was originally settled by the Dutch at the start of the 17th century as the colonies of Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice...
to study insects, and in 1912, he joined the Greek campaign against the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
during the fist of the Balkan Wars
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...
. During the siege of Ioannina
Ioannina
Ioannina , often called Jannena within Greece, is the largest city of Epirus, north-western Greece, with a population of 70,203 . It lies at an elevation of approximately 500 meters above sea level, on the western shore of lake Pamvotis . It is located within the Ioannina municipality, and is the...
, the ancestral town of the Pallis family, he worked at a field hospital in Arta
Arta
Arta may refer to:Places*Arta, Azerbaijan, a village and municipality*Arta Region, Djibouti*Arta, Djibouti, capital city of Arta Region*Arta Prefecture, Greece*Arta, Greece, capital city of Arta Prefecture*Medieval Despotate of Arta...
.
During the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Pallis, initially aided the Salvation Army
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
in the region along the Sava River
Sava River
The Sava is a river in Southeast Europe, a right side tributary of the Danube river at Belgrade. Counting from Zelenci, the source of Sava Dolinka, it is long and drains of surface area. It flows through Slovenia, Croatia, along the northern border of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and through Serbia....
in Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
. In 1916 he enlisted in the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
and received a commission as an army interpreter in Macedonia
Macedonia (region)
Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but nowadays the region is considered to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, as...
. Malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
and a severe inflammation of his right eye cut short his Macedonian service. After a lengthy convalescence in Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
, Pallis applied to and was accepted by the Grenadier Guards. He received basic training, then advanced training as a machine-gunner. In 1918, as a second lieutenant, he was sent to fight in the trenches of the Western Front. During the battle of Cambrai
Cambrai
Cambrai is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department.Cambrai is the seat of an archdiocese whose jurisdiction was immense during the Middle Ages. The territory of the Bishopric of Cambrai, roughly coinciding with the shire of Brabant, included...
, in a charge that killed his captain and first lieutenant, Pallis was shot through the knee and was forced to retire from combat.
Mountaineering, the Himalayas, and Introduction to Buddhism
Following the war, Pallis climbed and explored against doctor's orders for his injured knee. He went on expeditions to the ArcticArctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, and the Dolomites
Dolomites
The Dolomites are a mountain range located in north-eastern Italy. It is a part of Southern Limestone Alps and extends from the River Adige in the west to the Piave Valley in the east. The northern and southern borders are defined by the Puster Valley and the Sugana Valley...
, and the Snowdonia
Snowdonia
Snowdonia is a region in north Wales and a national park of in area. It was the first to be designated of the three National Parks in Wales, in 1951.-Name and extent:...
, the Peak District
Peak District
The Peak District is an upland area in central and northern England, lying mainly in northern Derbyshire, but also covering parts of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, and South and West Yorkshire....
, and the Scottish Highlands
Scottish Highlands
The Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands". It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands...
when closer to home. In 1933 Pallis led a small mountaineering party to the area of Kinnaur, one of the Himalayan borderlands. Near the village of Nako, at the border with Tibet, Pallis and his team succeeded in making the first ascent of Leo Pargial (22,280 feet).
In 1936 Pallis returned to the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
at the head of another expedition. His party traveled first to Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayan mountains...
, an “antechamber of Tibet”, where their failure to scale the summit of Simvu (22,360 feet) was, at least for Pallis, more than made up for by their encounter with the saintly abbot of Lachhen, in whom, according to Pallis, “intelligence, compassion, and initiatic authority were reflected in equal degree”.
From Sikkim Pallis had hoped to cross the border into Tibet proper, but due to political circumstances it was impossible to obtain the necessary permissions. Forced to alter his plans, he decided instead to make his way to Ladakh
Ladakh
Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...
. He was accompanied by his close friend Richard Nicholson and one other member of their climbing party, Dr. Robert Roaf. Once in Ladakh, they discarded Western clothes in favor of the chuba, and assumed as much as possible a Tibetan manner of living. “It was our way of saying to our hosts: ‘We wish to be as one of you. Please make no unusual arrangements on our behalf. We love your tradition, and hope it will not be rashly changed. We have found means of attuning ourselves to its ways.’”
Pallis by now saw himself as a “pilgrim” of Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
and in both Sikkim and Ladakh he received his religious education directly from qualified instructors within the living tradition. He dedicates his Peaks and Lamas to four teachers in particular, “the great contemplator, abbot of Lachhen, the venerable Dawa, bursar of Spituk, the venerable Konchhog Gyaltsan of P’hiyang, and the venerable Geshe Wangyal of Drepung, Lhasa who for my benefit and for the good of all creatures set in motion the Wheel of the Doctrine”.
The Second World War prevented further travels until 1947, when Pallis and Richard Nicholson were able to visit the Tibetan heartland before the coming Chinese invasion. They traveled widely throughout Tibet’s Tsang province, seeking to fulfill their shared desire to “absorb the spirit of the Tradition by direct experience”. Over the course of their stay they were able to make contact with each of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism (Gelugpa, Nyingmapa, Kagyudpa, and Sakyapa), visiting such holy sites as the ancient Pel Sakya monastery, seat of the Sakyapa and “a treasure-house of all the arts at their very best”, as well as the Tashilhunpo
Tashilhunpo
Tashilhunpo Monastery , founded in 1447 by Gendun Drup, the First Dalai Lama, is a historic and culturally important monastery next to Shigatse, the second-largest city in Tibet....
monastery, seat of the Panchen Lama
Panchen Lama
The Panchen Lama , or Bainqên Erdê'ni , is the highest ranking Lama after the Dalai Lama in the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism...
and one of the four great monasteries of the Gelugpa.
After his departure from the Tibetan plateau, Pallis lived in Kalimpong, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, for nearly four years before returning to England in 1951. Kalimpong was then a center of literary and cultural activity, as well as a refuge for many of those who were being forced to leave Tibet. Pallis formed many lasting relationships during this time, including an acquaintance with the then queen of Bhutan and her family, whom he later visited in England, and with the Dalai Lama’s former tutor Heinrich Harrer
Heinrich Harrer
Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer, sportsman, geographer, and author.He is best known for his books Seven Years in Tibet and The White Spider .-Athletics:...
, with whom Pallis later collaborated in exposing the fraudulent writer Cyril Hoskin, alias “Lobsang Rampa
Lobsang Rampa
Cyril Henry Hoskin , more popularly known as Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, was a writer who claimed to have been a lama in Tibet before spending the second part of his life in the body of a British man. Hoskin described himself as the "host" of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa...
”. While in Kalimpong, Pallis also met with the Dalai Lama’s Great Royal Mother, and he developed a close relationship with the abbot of the nearby Tharpa Choling monastery.
After the political upheavals in Tibet in the 1950s, Pallis became active in the affairs of the Tibetan Society, the first Western support group created for the Tibetan people. Pallis also was able to house members of the Tibetan diaspora
Tibetan diaspora
The Tibetan diaspora is a term used to refer to the communities of Tibetan people living outside Tibet. Tibetan emigration happened in two waves: one in 1959 following the 14th Dalai Lama's self-exile in India, and the other in the 1980s when Tibet was opened to trade and tourism. The third wave...
in his London flat. Pallis also formed a relationship with the young Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Shambhala vision.Recognized...
, who had just arrived in England. Trungpa asked Pallis to write the foreword to Trungpa’s first, autobiographical book, Born in Tibet. In his acknowledgment, Trungpa offers Pallis his “grateful thanks” for the “great help” that Pallis provided in bringing the book to completion. He goes on to say that “Mr. Pallis when consenting to write the foreword, devoted many weeks to the work of finally putting the book in order”.
Musical career
Pallis studied music under Arnold DolmetschArnold Dolmetsch
Arnold Dolmetsch , was a French-born musician and instrument maker who spent much of his working life in England and established an instrument-making workshop in Haslemere, Surrey...
, the distinguished reviver of early English music, composer, and performer, and was considered “one of Dolmetsch's most devoted protégés”. Pallis soon discovered a love of early music—in particular chamber music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—and for the viola da gamba. Even while climbing in the region of the Satlej-Ganges watershed, he and his musically-minded friends did not fail to bring their instruments.
Pallis taught viol at the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
, and reconstituted The English Consort of Viols, an ensemble he had first formed in the 1930s. It was one of the first professional performing groups dedicated to the preservation of early English music. They released three records and made several concert tours in England and two tours to the United States.
According to the New York Times review, their Town Hall concert of April 1962 “was a solid musical delight”, the players having possessed “a rhythmic fluidity that endowed the music with elegance and dignity”. Pallis also published several compositions, primarily for the viol, and wrote on the viol’s history and its place in early English music.
The Royal Academy of Music, in recognition of a lifetime of contribution to the field of early music, awarded Pallis an Honorary Fellowship. At age eighty-nine his Nocturne de l’Ephemere was performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
Queen Elizabeth Hall
The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a music venue on the South Bank in London, United Kingdom that hosts daily classical, jazz, and avant-garde music and dance performances. The QEH forms part of Southbank Centre arts complex and stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival...
in London; his niece writes that “he was able to go on stage to accept the applause which he did with his customary modesty.” When he died he left unfinished an opera based on the life of Milarepa
Milarepa
Jetsun Milarepa , is generally considered one of Tibet's most famous yogis and poets. He was a student of Marpa Lotsawa, and a major figure in the history of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.- Life :...
.
Writings on Buddhism and Tradition
Pallis described "tradition" as being the leitmotif of his writing. He wrote from the perspective of what has come to be called the traditionalistTraditionalist School
The term Traditionalist School is used by Mark Sedgwick and other authors to denote a school of thought, also known as Integral Traditionalism or Perennialism to denote an esoteric movement developed by authors such as French metaphysician René Guénon, German-Swiss...
or perennialist school of comparative religion founded by René Guénon
René Guénon
René Guénon , also known as Shaykh `Abd al-Wahid Yahya was a French author and intellectual who remains an influential figure in the domain of metaphysics, having written on topics ranging from metaphysics, sacred science and traditional studies to symbolism and initiation.In his writings, he...
, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and Frithjof Schuon
Frithjof Schuon
Frithjof Schuon, was a native of Switzerland born to German parents in Basel, Switzerland. He is known as a philosopher, metaphysician and author of numerous books on religion and spirituality....
, each of whom he knew personally. As a traditionalist, Pallis assumed the "transcendent unity of religions" (the title of Schuon's landmark 1948 book) and it was in part this understanding that gave Pallis insight into the innermost nature of the spiritual tradition of Tibet, his chosen love. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Studies in Comparative Religion
Studies in Comparative Religion
Studies in Comparative Religion was a quarterly academic journal published from 1963–1987 that contained essays on the spiritual practices and religious symbolism of the world's religions. The journal was notable for the number of prominent Perennialists who contributed to it...
(along with Schuon, Guénon, and Coomaraswamy), writings on both the topics of Tibetan culture and religious practice as well as the Perennialist philosophy.
Pallis published three books over a span of almost forty years. His first, Peaks and Lamas (1939), mentioned previously, tells the story “of how access was gained, across the varying episodes of Himalayan travel, to a traditional world, still complete and vigorous, that of Buddhism in its Tibetan branch”. This was followed by The Way and the Mountain (1960) and by A Buddhist Spectrum (1980), both collections of essays that attempt to deal “with a number of Buddhist themes of prime importance in such a fashion as to make up . . . a coherent view of the world and of a human destiny realizable in this world as seen through Buddhist eyes” Several of Pallis’ essays were also included in Jacob Needleman’s The Sword of Gnosis. After his final journey to Tibet, while living in Kalimpong, Pallis wrote a short book in the Tibetan language addressing the dangers posed to Tibet by the encroachment of modern culture. In addition to penning his own writings, Pallis translated Buddhist texts into Greek, and translated works of fellow traditionalist writers René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon from French into English. Some of Pallis’ own works have also been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, and Turkish.
Since the publication of his first book, sixty-six years ago, generations of scholars and students have turned to Pallis for insight into Buddhism and Tibet. His work is cited by such writers as Heinrich Harrer
Heinrich Harrer
Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer, sportsman, geographer, and author.He is best known for his books Seven Years in Tibet and The White Spider .-Athletics:...
, Heinrich Zimmer
Heinrich Zimmer
Heinrich Robert Zimmer was an Indologist and historian of South Asian art, most known for his works, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization and Philosophies of India. He was the most important German scholar in Indian Philology after Max Müller...
, Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
, Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. was a 20th century Anglo-American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion...
, Robert Aitken
Robert Baker Aitken
Robert Baker Dairyu Chotan Aitken Roshi was a Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. He co-founded the Honolulu Diamond Sangha in 1959...
, and Huston Smith
Huston Smith
Huston Cummings Smith is a religious studies scholar in the United States. His book The World's Religions remains a popular introduction to comparative religion.-Education:...
. Despite such scholarly acclaim, it is also true, as Harry Oldmeadow states, that “Pallis had no interest in research for its own sake, nor in any purely theoretical understanding of doctrine: his work was always attuned to the demands of the spiritual life itself. [His essays] should be of interest not only to those on the Buddhist path but to all spiritual wayfarers.” Huston Smith expresses a similar judgment when he declares: “Though Pallis respects scholarship, he doesn’t consider himself a Buddhist scholar. . . . What he does is focus on key Buddhist teachings and mine their essential and existential meaning. In the course of this project he regularly refers to other traditions, especially Christianity. . . . The result is completely satisfying. For insight, and the beauty insight requires if it is to be effective, I find no writer on Buddhism surpassing him.” Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...
, Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
, and Robert Aitken
Robert Baker Aitken
Robert Baker Dairyu Chotan Aitken Roshi was a Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. He co-founded the Honolulu Diamond Sangha in 1959...
gave encouragement to the reprinting of Pallis’ classic Peaks and Lamas, which Wendell Berry has called, “The best book, in my limited reading, in connecting a form of Buddhism with its sustaining culture. . . . [It is] useful to anybody interested in what a traditional culture is or might be, and how such a culture might preserve itself.”
Death
Marco Pallis “retired to the Heavenly Fields” on 5 June 1989. Writing for The Independent, Peter Talbot Wilcox concludes the obituary of his friend with these words:It remains to risk a brief comment: that he was and remains a great teacher . . . who made sense of life and of the life to come; in whose presence insuperable difficulties became less daunting; who took endless troubles to help those who brought their problems to him; someone to whom the spiritual quest in prayer was the one thing needful, who by his own life demonstrated the validity and truth of traditional teachings; and that, however emasculated by modernism, these remain the only valid criteria for those who, as he would put it, have ears to hear. His life was a celebration of “The Marriage of Wisdom and Method”: which is the title of one of his essays.