Marco Pallis

Marco Pallis (1895-1989) was a Renaissance man: a gifted musician, composer, mountaineer, translator, and a widely respected author on Tibetan Buddhism and the Perennial Philosophy. Pallis was a regular contributor to the British journal Studies in Comparative Religion and was a distinguished member of the “Traditionalist” or “Perennialist” school of comparative religious thought. His eloquent writings focus on Buddhist doctrine and method, but are noteworthy for their universalist outlook.

Marco Alexander Pallis was born in Liverpool, England, in 1895, the youngest son of wealthy and cosmopolitan Greek parents. He was his mother’s favorite child — different, more sensitive than his other siblings — and from an early age was interested in religion. While studying at the exclusive all-boys school Harrow, he asked the chaplain to give him special Bible lessons. As a young man studying at Liverpool University he became deeply attracted to Roman Catholicism, though this met with strong disapproval from his Greek Orthodox parents. While Pallis’ life seemingly began far removed from the land of Chenrezig, Vajrayana, and Tantra, there was one exception: his parents, who had lived in India for several years, decorated the house in which the young Marco was raised with works of Indian and Oriental craftsmanship. For an artistic and receptive youth, it was a subtle first beckoning from the East.

Still young during the Great War, Pallis, after having briefly aided the Salvation Army in Serbo-Croatia, enlisted in the British Army. His first commission was in 1916 as an army interpreter in Macedonia. Malaria and a severe inflammation of his right eye cut short his Macedonian service. After a forced, lengthy convalescence in Malta, Pallis applied and was accepted to the Grenadier Guards. He first 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; for Pallis the war was over. 

Following the war, in addition to family duties, Pallis occupied himself with what were then his two loves: mountaineering and music. He climbed and explored whenever and wherever he could, and this despite the fact that doctors had told him that he might never walk on his injured knee again. He went on expeditions to the Arctic, Switzerland, and the Dolomites, while Snowdonia, the Peak District, and the Scottish Highlands provided him with opportunities closer to home. At the same time Pallis studied music under Arnold Dolmetsch, the distinguished reviver of early English music, composer, and performer.[1] Under Dolmetsch’s influence, 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. Dolmetsch also influenced Pallis intellectually, through pointing the way to the writings of the traditionalist metaphysician and critic of the modern world René Guénon, and the great Indologist and historian of sacred art Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. These authors helped Pallis to see the indispensable role tradition plays in perpetuating the transcendent and foundational ideals of a civilization. This understanding of tradition per se, was to inform Pallis’ later writings on Tibet and its traditions

His love of mountains was destined to help guide Pallis to his third — ultimately all-encompassing — love: Tibet and its civilization. In 1923, for purposes of climbing, Pallis visited Tibet for the first time. He returned to the Himalayas for a more prolonged climbing expedition in 1933 and again in 1936. His best-selling book Peaks and Lamas describes these latter treks and the transformation that he underwent. “In the Tibet we visited . . . the whole landscape was as if suffused by the message of the Buddha’s Dharma; it came to one with the air one breathed, birds seemed to sing of it, mountain streams hummed its refrain as they bubbled across the stones, a dharmic perfume seemed to rise from every flower.… The India of King Ashoka’s time must have been something like this; to find it in mid-twentieth century anywhere was something of a wonder.” From being an outsider, sympathetic but merely looking on, he penetrated ever deeper into the heart of Tibetan life. “I never felt that I was among strangers; rather was it a return to a long-lost home.” He discarded his western clothes in favor of Tibetan dress, and furthered his study of the Tibetan language, culture, and religion. Often staying in monasteries, he received his religious education directly from lamas from within the living tradition.[2] The Second World War[3] prevented further travels until 1947, when, in what proved to be a last-minute opportunity, he and his friend Richard Nicholson were able to visit Tibet a final time before the coming Chinese invasion. Already a practicing Buddhist since 1936, while in Shigatse, Tibet, Pallis was initiated into one of the orders; he was fifty-two years old. By the time he left Tibet, one could say that Marco Pallis — now Thubden Tendzin — had completed the inward journey to his spiritual home. He continued to be a faithful practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism — and a tireless advocate for Tibet — until his death some forty-three years later.

After his 1947 journey to Tibet, Pallis lived in Kalimpong for several years, returning to England in 1952. Kalimpong was then a center of literary and cultural activity, as well as a refuge for those who were being forced to leave Tibet, including the tutor of the Dalai Lama, Heinrich Harrer, who, immediately upon his arrival in Kalimpong, began to write his Seven Years in Tibet. Pallis formed many lasting relationships during this time, including an acquaintance with the then queen of Bhutan and her family, with whom he later visited in England, and with Heinrich Harrer, with whom Pallis later collaborated in exposing the fraudulent writer Lobsang Rampa. While in Kalimpong, Pallis also met with the Dalai Lama’s Great Royal Mother, and he developed a close relationship with the elderly abbot of the nearby Tharpa Choling monastery.

A brief but informative glimpse into Pallis’ domestic life in Kalimpong is provided to us by Urgyen Sangharakshita (born Dennis Lingwood): “The bungalow was situated at the top of a flight of irregular stone steps, and what with trees looming up behind and shrubs pressing in on either side it was a sufficiently quiet and secluded place. Here Thubden La, as he liked to be called, lived with his friend Richard Nicholson, otherwise known as Thubden Shedub, the companion of the travels recorded in Peaks and Lamas. As lunch was not quite ready, he showed me around the place. Tibetan painted scrolls hung on the walls, and the polished wooden floors were covered with Tibetan rugs. There were silver butter-lamps on the altar, and massive copper teapots on the sideboard, all gleaming in the shuttered semi-darkness. In one room I could just make out the unfamiliar shape of a harpsichord.”[4]

The overthrow of independent Tibet by the Communist Chinese marked one of the saddest events in Pallis’ life. In response, Pallis did what he could, mostly through his writings, which helped to raise public awareness of the wonder that was Tibet. It must have also given Pallis much pleasure to be able to help members of the Tibetan diaspora in England. On multiple occasions, Pallis opened up his London flat to house visiting Tibetans. He offered his help through other ways as well, such as with the young Chögyam Trungpa. Pallis traveled with and encouraged Trungpa, who had just arrived in England, and had not yet garnered the world renown he was soon to achieve. Some years later, Pallis was asked to write the foreword to Trungpa’s first, seminal book, Born in Tibet. In his acknowledgement, Trungpa offers Pallis his “grateful thanks” for the “great help” that Pallis gave 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.”[5]

At the same time that Pallis was writing about Buddhism and religion in general, he was continuing with his musical career. He 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 made three records[6] and performed on several concert tours in England and abroad. When on a tour to the United States in 1964, Pallis had the opportunity to meet with Thomas Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky. “Yesterday Marco Pallis was here. . . . I was glad to meet him.”[7] They spoke of Zen, Shiva, and the plight of Tibet. It was their first face-to-face encounter, although the two knew each other from prior correspondence and from an acquaintance with each other’s published writings. One reads from Merton’s journal before they met: “Yesterday, quiet — sunny day — spent all possible time in the woods reading and meditating. Marco Pallis’ wonderful book Peaks and Lamas was one.”[8]

Pallis described “tradition” as being the leitmotif of his writing. He wrote from the perspective of what has come to be called the traditionalist or perennialist school of comparative religion founded by René Guénon, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and Frithjof Schuon, each of whom he knew personally.[9] 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.

Marco Pallis published three books devoted primarily to tradition, Buddhism, and Tibet: Peaks and Lamas (1939); The Way and the Mountain (1960); and A Buddhist Spectrum (1980). Several of Pallis’ articles are featured in Jacob Needleman’s The Sword of Gnosis published by Penguin; he was also a regular contributor to the English journal Studies in Comparative Religion. After his final journey to Tibet — while living in Kalimpong, India — 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 were translated into French and Spanish. Since the publication of his first book, generations of scholars and students have turned to Pallis for insight into Buddhism and Tibet. His ground-breaking work is cited by such writers as Heinrich Harrer, Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell, Thomas Merton, Robert Aitken, and Huston Smith. In Huston Smith’s judgment: “For insight, and the beauty insight requires if it is to be effective, I find no writer on Buddhism surpassing him.”

Pallis’ musical career was no less accomplished. The Royal Academy, in recognition of a lifetime of contribution to the field of early music, awarded Pallis with an Honorary Fellowship. He continued composing and playing, adding to this certain scholarly articles of a musical nature. His article “The Instrumentation of English Viol Consort” was published when he was seventy-five. At age eighty-nine his String Quartet in F# was published and 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.”[10] When he died two weeks short of his ninety-fifth birthday (his vegetarian diet perhaps contributing to his long and active life), he was working on a project that brought together his twin loves of music and Tibet: an opera based on the life of Mila Repa.

Pallis’ niece recounts a fascinating story: “Marco mentioned that once, emerging from the underground in South Kensington, a saffron clad monk had walked up to him holding a piece of paper and had asked, in Tibetan, to be directed to the address written thereon. Marco was able and delighted to do so. It didn’t seem to strike him as in the least odd that the monk had singled out probably the only Tibetan speaker in that London rush hour throng.” But is it so strange that a Tibetan monk should single Pallis out of a crowd? A fellow countryman most often knows one of his own.

Marco Pallis “retired to the Heavenly Fields” on June 5th, 1989.

Adapted from Joseph A. Fitzgerald, “Introduction”, in Marco Pallis, The Way and Mountain: Tibet, Buddhism, and Tradition (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2008), pp. xiii-xxi.