Akhedil Toishanüli /PhD/
Literary critic, Mongolian cultural attaché in Kazakhstan
 
The famous Russian scholar Nicholas Roerich searched for Shambhala, famed as an amazing magical, hidden land, he journeyed far and wide, to the snow-covered peaks of the Himalaya, he summoned his muses and sketched the region, protected as it was at the horizon by a blueish-grey mist.
A myriad of scholars and travelers have exhausted themselves to discover this center of power, working on the basis of “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Unfortunately, nobody has yet located it and even the scholar Ts.Damdinsüren once wrote a popular piece entitled “Where is the fabled land of Shambhala?”
As I read the work of the poet G.Mend-Ooyo, I have an extraordinary feeling, as though I am standing at the gate of this secret land. There is a multimensional interweaving of space and time in his poetry: from the present time, into the antiquity of our earth, from ancient times and the first humans into the future, he leads you from moment to moment, and from age to age, revealing to you clear and striking images. For instance:
 
Each note of the horsehead fiddle’s unending melody
opens up Shambhala’s mandala…
 
In the melodic rhythm of this horsehead fiddle image, Mend-Ooyo depicts the paradisiacal land of Shambhala. In doing so, he discovers in an instant what the romantic Nicholas Roerich had failed to discover, as a gift for his readers he engenders in them a deep feeling for the magic of Shambhala. Lord Byron wrote of a harp’s melody, “Its sound aspired to Heaven, and there abode,” and led onwards by the deep feeling inside the human heart, swimming in the rhythm of wisdom, Mend-Ooyo imagines a time of purity, in which we enjoy mental peace, and want for nothing!
 
We do not cross this earth simply on the wings of desire and longing.
Our minds are illumined, and our wings carry us across the darkness.
Who illumines himself from within will find freedom.
Even bound within a fortress, he will be unbound.
 
This is the song which releases from harm the divine soul held in the complex of elements in the human body of the poet Mend-Ooyo, and places it in the boundlessness of freedom, this perhaps is the potential of poetry which senses and creates all things. As the great Kazakh poet Abai Khünanbaiüli wrote: “When you purify the heart within, human wisdom is boundless.”
In this way, Mend-Ooyo searches within the human mind for divine human qualities, and leads his readers to their pure protector deities. He searches for Shambhala, not in the transcendent, but among the mirages on the great steppe, in the Gobi desert where he was born and raised. Reading his poems purifies the mind, and we understand on an ever deeper level that the land of Shambhala is the place where we humans are born. that we have the magical inner quality of mental peace. And every time we read this poetry, we look around us with a mind of love, it is wondrous how it draws back for us the curtains of the palace of beauty.
 
Tie your steed to the golden nail of the Pole Star.
Guide the Plow into the place of honor in the wild steppe.
Somewhere, the gates of Shambhala are open.
 
Mend-Ooyo’s poetry create a short-cut for his readers today into the symbolism of ancient stories, they bring to them a contemporary understanding and engender an intimacy as though addressing what his readers themselves are experiencing. When the Turco-Mongol peoples first appeared, swallows brought to them from Heaven the waters of eternal life, and as they traveled, they were beset by demons who supplied the demonic monster Mangas with human blood. When, without thinking, they poured the waters of eternity onto trees such as the spruce, these trees became evergreen, while human lives grew shorter. Stories like ths are scattered throughout Mend-Ooyo’s work.
Indeed, our parents and grandparents told us these stories. From the time when Mend-Ooyo first heard these stories, he has been led by the childlike desire to find the waters of eternal life. He resolved to give his father just a drop of this magical water.
 
...My father is no longer here, his son has never found the waters of eternity.
The swallows turn in flight about me,
as though asking after the waters of eternal life.
 
Mend-Ooyo is leaving this testament for future generations. Yes, the future development of culture and scientific research into medical cures will certainly be able to transcend sickness. The philosopher-poet of the steppe Horhut Mergen sought to save humanity from death, and he believed that one would be found in the future. It is likely that readers will believe this, when they read the magical poetry of Mend-Ooyo and have their spirits lifted.
For instance, when the swallows take the water of eternal life into their mouths, they themselves cannot sip from the pure waters. After this, even these little birds experience the distress of death. Out on the road, among the light blue mirages, do even these little birds, who have come across the generations, seek the waters of eternity, are they the dear friends of human beings? Whenever a person hears the words, “The swallows fan the waters with their wings,” their hearts jump a little.
For the readers who read Mend-Ooyo’s poetry, their narrative brings ever closer the intertwined traditions of nomadic people’s past and present, their customs and their way of life, and makes their destiny all the happier.
This poet, who has the eye of wisdom, and who can predict the wonders of the ages to come, faithfully trusts that he will find the waters of eternity. As he has written:
 
...Since life is not eternal, I too will go.
I’ll leave the story of the swallows to my children.
When the story is fulfilled, they’ll find the waters of eternity,
and gain eternal life, my friends!
Please give a taste of the waters of eternity
to the storied swallows of the steppe, where the wish remains!
 
The great poets of the steppe, who told epics and stories have left us unparallelled cultural jewels about many things, such as the waters of eternity and Shambhala. In the twenty-first century, the subjects of such stories have become true, and we are witnesses to this happy ending. If we are able to purify and educate our human hearts, then there will be peace throughout our world. I am confident that we can confirm that these stories are true to life, and that every gentle heart which loves the swallows flying down the tracks beats for humanity.
I say that the poetry of G.Mend-Ooyo, a poet who is able to gather into the little body of a swallow his expression of love for Mother Earth, is a new form of stories and tales. Such is the fine universe of the power and extraordinary beauty of poetry…