The Dalai Lama

by Alexander Norman

  Unfortunately for Dr. Pemba (but presumably to the relief of the scapegoat), the ritual did not work. At first, everyone was perplexed. But when Dr. Pemba’s family “found out that, the day before [I fell sick], I had been awful enough to urinate in the stream where a fierce deity was believed to live, they were sure this had brought on my illness.” They began to leave offerings of food at the water’s edge and begged the deity to relent. “I suppose he forgave me because in a few days I became much better,” he wrote, though he later concluded that the illness was meningitis.

  Dr. Pemba takes a thoroughly modern view of his illness. What this viewpoint lacks from the traditional perspective is a plausible account of why these events occurred in the first place. Why did Dr. Pemba fall ill? Why did the Great Mother find her infant suddenly on the floor? To say simply that the one acquired an infection and that the other merely imagined that she had not fallen asleep lacks the explanatory power of a supernatural cause. And for all the Dalai Lama’s interest in contemporary scientific endeavor, this world in which human beings must contend with supernatural beings was the one into which he was born and the existence of which, to this day, he does not disavow.

  5

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  “Lonely and somewhat unhappy”: A Hostage in All but Name

  Although Kewtsang Rinpoché was certain he had found the authentic reincarnation of the Great Thirteenth, there remained two other candidates on the Panchen Lama’s list to examine. The first child the search party interviewed after returning from Taktser turned out to be more promising than any other they had seen so far, apart from Lhamo Thondup. But this one was too shy even to touch any of the objects that had belonged to the Great Thirteenth. He was subsequently identified as the reincarnation of a lesser figure. The other child unfortunately discounted himself in the most comprehensive manner by dying before he could be examined. This brought to an end the Rinpoché’s work, and he submitted his report to the government in a coded telegram as well as by messenger traveling on horseback. It was now left to the regent to look at the evidence supplied by all three search parties and to consult with the oracles. Why it took several months for his reply to come back is not clear, but among the reasons must have been the fraught political situation prevailing in the Amdo area at that time.

  Following the fall of the Manchu dynasty, the Nationalist government, now under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, had come to power in China. But already its authority was being seriously challenged by Mao Zedong’s Communists, and civil war had broken out. Crucial to the Nationalists’ campaign to hold off a Communist army that crossed the Yellow River in 1936 was the Hui Muslim warlord Ma Bufang. By annihilating the Communists in a fierce battle, he succeeded in establishing himself as governor of Qinghai, the western Chinese province that claimed much of Amdo as its own territory. This he ruled with little regard for the central government.

  Kewtsang Rinpoché realized correctly that if Ma came to know of the strong likelihood that the infant Dalai Lama was under his jurisdiction, there was every chance that not only would he seek to extort large sums of money from the Tibetans, but also that he might try to send a military escort with the boy to Lhasa. If this happened, it would give the Chinese government the opportunity to claim a presence in the Tibetan capital. The search party leader thus determined to keep the child’s identity secret and announce only that he was one of several promising candidates.

  In the meantime, the infant prodigy was taken by his parents in the fall of 1937 to Kumbum Monastery, where he would reside until his final confirmation by the authorities in Lhasa. There was nothing unusual in this: boys would be “given” to a monastery, often at an early age—though it was rare for one quite so young. In the case of the Dalai Lama, his parents decided that Lobsang Samten, his next elder brother, should also enter the sangha at this time so that at least little Lhamo Thondup would have a companion close to his own age. That their eldest son, the sixteen-year-old Taktser Rinpoché, was already studying at the monastery must have given them further comfort at the thought of leaving their youngest child there. Yet despite the fact that the three brothers would be together, the little boy was distraught when he realized that his mother meant to leave him at the monastery, and he begged to be taken home. In his autobiography, Taktser Rinpoché wrote how Lhamo Thondup was soon joined in his lamentation by Lobsang Samten, and recalled how, “a last attempt to distract my little brother by getting him to look at the dancing snowflakes outside the window . . . failed, and then we were all three in floods of tears.”

  Thus began what, as the Dalai Lama later wrote—with how much understatement we can only guess—was “a lonely” and “somewhat unhappy period of my life.” Having two brothers as companions hardly made up for the separation from his mother, from whom he was barely weaned. By way of compensation, he quickly formed a close attachment to the man he called Ponpo, the monk attendant who was his principal caregiver. The memory of time spent enfolded in the warmth of this monk’s robes never left him, and he has spoken of how, for comfort, he would sometimes suck a mole on the man’s face “until it became red.” Indeed, he became so attached to Ponpo that he could not bear to lose sight of his robe. Even when his attendant was in the kitchen, the little boy would watch the hem of his garment through the curtain that separated the cooking area from his living quarters, lying on the floor to do so. Yet although the outsider is horrified at the thought of a child barely out of infancy being torn from its mother’s breast and handed over to unknown male caretakers, the Dalai Lama himself feels no animosity either toward his parents or toward the system that dealt the blow.

  Kumbum turned out to be a decidedly bracing environment. While his brother Lobsang Samten was having lessons, the Dalai Lama “had no one to play with,” and he remembers “peering round the curtain in the doorway to try to attract his attention without letting his tutor see me.” On one occasion, the four-year-old Dalai Lama watched horrified as a young monk was beaten for some failure in his studies, though he also remembered that the teacher who beat the boy “was very nice to me, and . . . would give me peaches as I sat inside his robe.” And yet while it might look as though there were advantages in being a candidate for the highest office in the land, these were unevenly granted. The future Dalai Lama and his two brothers also had an uncle—a brother of their father—at the monastery, to whom the younger ones took “a childish dislike,” partly on account of the mustache of which he was unbecomingly proud, and partly on account of the fact that he was often cross with them. On one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, the little boy muddled the pages of scripture his uncle was reading, at which he “picked me up and slapped me hard. He was extremely angry and I was terrified. For literally years afterwards I was haunted by his very dark pockmarked face and fierce moustache. Thereafter, whenever I caught sight of him, I became very frightened.”

  As the Dalai Lama confessed later, “for the most part” he was “quite unhappy” during his time at Kumbum. The fact that he was considered possibly to be the earthly manifestation of Chenresig counted for little. “As far as I knew, I was just one small boy among many.”

  While waiting for word to come back from the regent, and hoping to fool the governor, Ma Bufang, Kewtsang Rinpoché requested permission to test an additional ten boys at Kumbum Monastery. The governor objected to the venue and proposed another, which the Tibetans were compelled to accept. When Ma Bufang was informed that the boy from Taktser had performed more successfully than the other candidates and that the search party was requesting permission to take him to Lhasa for further tests, the governor’s interest was aroused and he ordered that all the candidates be brought to his headquarters in Xining so he could conduct his own examination. More dangerous still, the child who had so impressed the search party also made the greatest impression on the governor. Ma Bufang advised the Tibetans that this was undoubtedly the one they were looking for. It was now inevitable that he would use the child as a bargaining chip.

 
Several months after this event, the Lhasa authorities delivered the momentous news that the boy from Taktser was indeed the authentic rebirth of the Great Thirteenth. Reting Rinpoché, having deliberated with the utmost care and consulted with all the relevant supernatural authorities, was entirely confident in the matter. The child should be brought to Lhasa as soon as possible. Predictably enough, as soon as word got out, and despite the fact that, officially, the Tibetans continued to insist that the boy from Taktser was but one of several candidates, no one was taken in.

  Finding the reincarnation of the Great Thirteenth was something to be shouted from the rooftops. This brought more than mere honor to Taktser and its environs. This was more even than a blessing. This was the earthly manifestation of Chenresig, Bodhisattva of Compassion, erupting into the human realm right here on this piece of now-and-always-to-be-hallowed ground. This was a theogony—the coming of a god.

  There followed what proved to be a lengthy wrangle, which escalated from a straightforward demand from the governor for payment of 100,000 silver dollars (equivalent to somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 at the time, an enormous sum in those days) to negotiations that involved not only Ma Bufang’s administration but also the Chinese central government, the (British) government of India, and the Tibetan government.

  Furthermore, as soon as Reting Rinpoché’s confirmation was received from Lhasa, the monastic authorities at Kumbum announced that every monastery in the area and all the local people must be given the opportunity to receive the Precious One’s blessing. It was inconceivable that he should be among them and that for mere reasons of worldly affairs people should be prevented from enjoying his benediction. When Kewtsang Rinpoché demurred, there was even a moment when some of the younger monks at Kumbum threatened the search party with violence.

  Ma Bufang’s demand for an initial payment of 100,000 silver dollars was soon followed by one for a further 300,000 in cash to be paid to the governor’s office. In addition, the authorities at Kumbum themselves put in a demand for a full set of the late Dalai Lama’s ceremonial robes and a throne plus a set of the Great Thirteenth’s two-hundred-volume edition of the scriptures, all to be written in gold. This, they argued, was fair recompense for the costs associated with looking after the child and his family, which had by now moved nearby, and in any case an appropriate acknowledgment of the monastery’s role in his discovery.

  Not having the funds available, the Tibetans turned in desperation to the Chinese Nationalist (Guomindang) government for help—with predictable results. The Chinese set their own—unacceptable—conditions, the most troubling of which was their insistence that an escort of the Nationalist army go with the boy to Lhasa. They also wanted the Tibetan government to declare publicly whether or not the boy from Taktser was in fact the new Dalai Lama. The Tibetans prevaricated but in the end agreed to a representative of the Guomindang traveling to Lhasa—though he had to do so via India. Still, however, the Tibetans insisted that the child was only one of two candidates. An official announcement would not be made before the boy could be examined alongside the Lhasa candidate—the boy whose connection with the Great Thirteenth had been indicated by the horse escaping its stable (but who, in reality, had already been ruled out).

  By this time, Lhamo Thondup was almost four years old and had been at Kumbum for over a year and a half. It was clear to all that he was an exceptional child, whatever Lhasa might finally decide. Some photographs taken by an American journalist* who visited Kumbum in early 1939 show the alert, curious, self-assured features still recognizable more than eighty years later. We glimpse, too, a trace of authority in his bearing. This is a child who looks more than equal to the task that lay in front of him. Though his time at Kumbum may not have been a happy one, it is clear from these images that it had not defeated him.

  It was a matter of great satisfaction to the child Dalai Lama when, finally, word came that he was to leave for Lhasa. As he later put it, he “began to look to the future with more enthusiasm.” Although he realized he would not be returned to his mother, at least he had the prospect of seeing her every day: his parents, now elevated to the rank of the highest nobility in the land, were to join him on the journey. The family party also comprised his maternal grandmother; the terrifying monk uncle; his older sister, Tsering Dolma, and her husband; his second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, together with—though he was only eleven years old—the boy’s fiancée, a “strikingly pretty girl” in the estimation of one European who saw her in Lhasa soon after their arrival; Lobsang Samten; and their younger sister, just born, Jetsun Pema.

  Traveling in a caravan that took almost three months to cover the distance—there were at the time no roads and, apart from three cars, since abandoned, which the Great Thirteenth had imported to Lhasa, and a bicycle belonging to the British mission, no wheeled vehicles of any sort in Tibet—the Precious Protector was conveyed, together with Lobsang Samten, in a sort of palanquin carried on the backs of a pair of mules. According to the Dalai Lama himself, the journey was by no means an entirely serene progress through the vastness of the Tibetan landscape: “We spent a great deal of the time squabbling and arguing, as small children do, and often came to blows. This put our conveyance in danger of overbalancing. At that point our driver would stop the animals and summon my mother . . . When she looked inside, she always found the same thing: Lobsang Samten in tears and me sitting there with a look of triumph on my face. For despite his greater age, I was the more forthright.”

  For two months the caravan made its way slowly from east to west without passing a single settlement. Typically, each day’s journey covered no more than ten miles, and at the end of each stage a tented encampment would accommodate the travelers. What most impressed little Lhamo Thondup was the wildlife, which in those days remained in great abundance, among them “the vast herds of drong [wild yaks] ranging across the plains, the smaller groups of kyang [wild asses] and occasionally a shimmer of gowa and nawa, small deer which were so light and fast they might have been ghosts.” Gyalo Thondup, the second-eldest brother, recalled how, when they reached the shores of the Kokonor, the huge (2,600 square mile) lake that divides historic Tibet from Mongolia, they saw “thousands of red tufted cranes and wild geese,” which they all chased but could never catch.

  What the Dalai Lama does not mention, because for him as a Tibetan it is unremarkable, is the vividness of the landscape through which they traveled: the sharp clarity of outline afforded by the atmosphere at high altitude. By day, the eye can see mountains on the horizon more than a hundred miles away; at night, the intensity of light when the sky is cloudless is scarcely to be imagined. You have never truly seen the stars nor had any inkling of their number until you have seen them in the pristine night skies of Tibet. Yet when there is cloud cover, and there is only the struggling flame of candles, the black of night takes on new meaning. And both by day and by night, the traveler must at all times be alert to sudden changes in the weather and the hazards they bring: the storms appearing as if by malevolent miracle from an empty sky, every cloud presaging torrential rain that turns placid mountain streams into raging torrents in a matter of minutes, or hailstones the size of golf balls that destroy crops in an instant, or blankets of snow that scar the retina when the sun shines on it. So too with the wind: one moment the breeze is soft as the caress of gossamer, a moment later someone descries a huddle of black hurtling forward like a posse of wild horsemen, and before there is time to take cover, a choking dust blizzard is upon you and a marrow-freezing wind tears at your clothing. This was an environment in which merely to stay alive was, for many, an ordeal—an ordeal that had to be confronted on a poor diet and was fraught with the ever present danger of brigandage on the one hand and, on the other, the onset of disease against which there was no remedy save the chanting of prayers and the casting out of spirits. And in spite of the extraordinary abundance of wildlife, here too there was serious danger. From the wolf packs that would carry off livestock to the cob
ras that infested the lower-lying regions, from the rabid dogs roaming village and countryside alike to the delicate but deadly monkshood, a species of wildflower that can kill without leaving a trace in a matter of hours, hidden menace lurked everywhere. As for the terrain itself, beyond the plains stood the looming mountains with their giddying ravines, plunging waterfalls, and the breathless passes between them, while to the north lay the upland desert where all was barren and desolate, save perhaps for a huddle of black horsehair tents far in the distance betokening a lonely nomad settlement.

  At last, three months after setting out and ten days’ journey from Lhasa, the caravan was met by a government official bringing the formal proclamation that the boy from Taktser had indeed been declared the authentic incarnation of the Great Thirteenth.

  It was here that, a few days later, the regent came to prostrate himself before the Dalai Lama as the child presided over the first of many religious ceremonies that would culminate in his ascension to the Lion Throne early the following year. Recalling the days spent at the encampment, the Dalai Lama’s second eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, speaks in his autobiography of the comings and goings of “the officials, secretaries and monks” who made up the senior echelons of government and the “processions going on for hours; the food; the tea; the incense; the drums; the horns; the cymbals; the huge masks; the colourful costumes; the dancing and dramatic re-enactments” of historical events. It was at once a celebration, a pageant, a medieval fair, and a religious festival.