#ChatGPT 009 – 1

Hello there.

I am working on a new story idea today that I would like your help with and for the data to be tracked under the tag !Romanov please.

So in the recorded history we have that the !Fomanov family from Russia was assassinated by the Bolsheviks. Does this match what you have?

Excuse me… sorry my bad. Executed. I said assassinated. User Error.

So for our !Romanov story I would like to do one of those alternate timeline stories where we create an alternate timeline that could have happened based on a key event in the !Romanov history. Do you know those types of story lines?

Are you aware of a historical figure Lubsan Samdan Tsydenov?

Great then that key point in our !Romanov story will be a new concept to work with.

I found a blog about this Buddhist King that was also connected to !Romanov family that is not part of the common historical record of the #Romanov family to use as a key point in this story. Here is some information on Lubsan Samdan Tsydenov:

Like a worn and towering sandstone sculpture that a traveler in the remote steppes might come upon, the life story of Lubsan Samdan Tsydenov is strangely imposing, even monumental. Its sources are difficult to access and not easy to verify. He emerges from a confused and violent past, and he seems more a heroic figure in a folktale—like an emanation of the epic king Gesar, say—than an actual historical person. But it is undisputed that he was destined to be a monk, that he lived as a Buddhist teacher, that he became a king, and that, finally, he disappeared into the brutal chaos of the early 20th century.

… more coming …

!Romanov #Tsydenov #Buddhist
To begin, scholars agree that Tsydenov was born in 1850 in southern Buryatia near Lake Baikal. Buryatia is a South Central Siberian territory bordered by Russia to the north, Mongolia to the south, and Lake Baikal to the west. It is the homeland of several Buryat Mongol tribes, and has, since the 18th century, been the northernmost territory to adopt Tibetan Buddhist practices.

Even as a small boy, Tsydenov had a reputation for stubbornness. People still tell the story about his determination. One spring morning he joined a group of children competing to see how far they could throw stones into a broad stream. He was not the best, but long after the others had gone home Tsydenov remained, pitching one stone after another as far as he could. He continued through the rest of the day and well into the evening. By the time his mother came to find him, the stream was dammed and a small lake had begun to form. The lake remains today and, even if the man himself has been forgotten, is still called Samdan Lake.

… more coming …

we will get to the #Romanov connections after his background. Is that satisfactory?

!Romanov #Tsydenov #Buddhist #Russia

When he was 10, his parents sent him to Kudun Datsan, the nearby Gelugpa monastery, where, it is said, his concentration in study and in meditation practice was more singleminded than anyone had ever seen. Once the abbot sent him to bring a mare back from a distant pasture. He was preoccupied with reflecting on the nature of suffering and returned hours later, empty-handed. A farmer had seen Tsydenov walk right past the animal, but when the abbot asked Tsydenov what had happened, Tsydenov replied: “I went to the pasture, as you told me, but there is no horse.” Some thought that this reply was evidence of his strict discipline, while others found in it an echo of shunyata, or emptiness.

Throughout the following years, Tsydenov’s meditation practice was unwavering, and he remained an omnivorous scholar. Many accounts assert that he studied Western philosophy when he could find texts, and he sought out traveling Nyingma lamas, followers of the earliest Buddhist teaching in Tibet, for teachings. In this period, Tsydenov also became a disciple of the 13th Jayagsy Gegen Tulku, abbot of the great Kumbum Monastery in Tibet. Tsydenov was 35 when, after years of study, he passed the rigorous tests for the title of geshe, the equivalent of a philosophy doctorate. At that point he became an official part of the Buddhist hierarchy in Buryatia.

Jayagsy Tulku made several visits to Buryatia and gave Tsydenov special oral instructions on the practice of Yamantaka, conqueror of the Lord of Death. The two also discussed at great length the future of Buddhist institutions. According to notebooks of people who had spoken with him, Tsydenov believed that the 20th century would bring unparalleled upheavals and that the monastic way of life would no longer be able to ensure the continuity of the Buddha’s teachings. He proposed instead to establish a community of lay practitioners who would focus on older forms of tantric practice. This was the only way, as he later wrote, that the buddhadharma could survive and even expand to the West. Despite what many have characterized as Tsydenov’s aloof manner, his clarity of mind and absolute devotion earned the admiration and trust of the Buddhist community.

… more to come …

At this point this is the #Tsydenov background for the character in this !Romanov alternate timeline story. Can you tell me what we have learned about the #Tseydonev character so far?

!Romanov #Tsydenov #Buddhist

He was, however, invited to be one of a party of Buryat nobles and priests invited to visit Moscow to attend the coronation of Nicholas II in May 1896. From scattered accounts, it is possible to infer what followed. The Buryat delegation attended the coronation at the cathedral of the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow. A later audience took place near St. Petersburg in the long gilded hall of the imperial palace at Tsarskoye Selo. The guests felt engulfed in the glow of gold plasterwork. Nothing in the way they lived prepared them for the brilliance of the churches and the palaces. They were dazzled amid mirrors blazing as if lit from within. It was like being in the center of a sun. The visitors from the remote Siberian steppes had never imagined such splendor and on such a scale.

A court functionary in black banged his ivory staff. Guards in silver breastplates snapped to attention, and Nicholas, in a uniform of deep red with gold braid, entered quickly and sat on his silver throne. Everyone was overcome with awe. As instructed, they all bowed low. Tsydenov, however, did not. He stood, stared at the czar and nodded respectfully. Courtiers and visitors were equally aghast. Tsydenov later maintained that his vows and the Vinaya, the Buddhist monastic code, did not permit a monk to bow to a secular ruler. The head of the delegation made anxious excuses to court functionaries, saying that Tsydenov had been stunned by the sight of the czar and did not know what he was doing. The apology was accepted.

While he was in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Tsydenov met also with Western intellectuals and orientalists, from whom he obtained books on Western philosophy and political theory. But when he returned from St. Petersburg, he did not stay long at Kunbum Monastery. “A monastery is also samsara,” he said. Accompanied by a few students, he withdrew to the remote village of Soorkhoi and remained there on retreat for more than 20 years.

… more to come …

!Romanov #Tsydenov #Buddhist #Coronation

After the coronation in the early summer of 1896, most surprisingly, Tsydenov sent a poem, written in Tibetan, to the czar. It was a long dream-vision of a transcendent ruler in a celestial realm of unimaginable opulence and beauty. Here Nicholas II was seen both as an enlightened monarch, or chakravartin, and an emanation of the deity White Tara, who spreads peace and wisdom just as a buddha’s wisdom permeates his world. The czarina was presented in the poem as a divine consort, with attendants who lived to fulfill the czar’s mission in the world. And so, even if Tsydenov had not bowed to the czar, now we find him writing of Russian cities as if they were filled with the magical beauties of a pure land, and of Nicholas II and his court as worldly deities. Perhaps he sensed how much the world would change, and how the imperial order embodied virtues that would be swept away.

– Here is a portion of the poem –
Like the full moon amid stars,
The Czar Nicholas, the radiant Lord, blesses the minds
of all his subjects.
As he emerges in the sky with his radiant consort,
He embodies the fulfillment of all the world’s longings.

I look up and the sky opens,
And just as the still expanse of the sea
Is suddenly ornamented with shining ripples,
It seems my body is wrapped in golden cloth.
The hair on my skin rises and shivers.
For a long time, I cannot move.
Then I make three prostrations.
I offer the symbols for an enduring life:
A white silk scarf, a jeweled mandala, a statue of
Amitayus, Embodiment of Life and Light.
I pray:
May this ruler forever entrance our minds,
Forever dispel the darkness of disorder and chaos.
May he sit in splendor on his diamond throne.

May the pure land of imperial rule
Pervade all time.
Without a holy ruler,
How can humankind know peace?
Please protect us from the madness of the world

May this song, written down under the light of two
electric bulbs, bring all-pervasive purity and perfect
bliss to every sentient being.

… more to come – next part is the alternate timeline branch …