The Dalai Lama

by Alexander Norman

  generous supply of war matériel: Among the supplies were 370 M1 rifles with 192 rounds for each one, four machine guns with a thousand rounds apiece, and two radio sets. A month later, a second drop delivered a similar quantity of weapons, including this time three recoilless rifles (or bazookas). A third delivery, on the night of the next full moon, comprised 226 pallets with eight hundred rifles, twenty cases of hand grenades, 113 carbines (presumably M4 close-quarter rifles), and two hundred cases of ammunition, each containing ten thousand rounds. A final drop onto Pemba in January 1960 was the largest of all. Three aircraft dropped a total of 657 pallets, which, in addition to a proportionately similar number of arms as the previous three drops, also included thirty cases of various first aid items, a dozen crates of food, and a mimeograph machine for producing propaganda. Among the food rations was a special tsampa, formulated for mountain warfare by Kellogg’s. John Kenneth Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival (New York: PublicAffairs, 1999), p. 280.

  “At first we didn’t believe”: Dunham, Buddha’s Warriors, p. 339.

  “one of the greatest intelligence hauls”: John Kenneth Knaus, speaking in the documentary The Shadow Circus.

  “a remarkably effective”: Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War, p. 2.

  “Tibet had been”: Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War, p. 330.

  “Dharamsala water”: Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile, p. 173.

  “his mother, his two sisters”: John F. Avedon, In Exile from the Land of Snows (London: Michael Joseph, 1984), p. 86.

  suddenly able to enjoy: Although rumors that he occasionally listened to Beatles records and that he wore jeans in private are false, it is true that he would sometimes forsake monastic robes and don a pair of “well-pressed” (as he once mentioned to me) trousers.

  a small trekkers’ hut: Avedon, In Exile from the Land of Snows, p. 86.

  televised interviews: Both may be found on the Internet.

  “We exiled Tibetans”: Speeches of His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama (1959–1989), trans. Sonam Gyatso, vol. 1 (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2011), pp. 7–8, 3.

  “The ‘written oath’”: Speeches of His Holiness, 1:14–15, 118.

  “Our foreign”: Speeches of His Holiness, 1:29, 31.

  “They are, by nature”: Speeches of His Holiness, 1:9, 36.

  “our worst mistake”: Pico Iyer, The Open Road (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), p. 228.

  “We still have faults”: Speeches of His Holiness.

  fifty-eight villages: The number I use is that provided by the Central Tibetan Administration; see its Department of Home website, https://tibet.net/department/home/.

  “many of the Tibetans”: Avedon, In Exile from the Land of Snows, pp. 67, 85.

  “to be cautious”: Gyalo Thondup with Anne F. Thurston, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet (London: Rider, 2015), p. 213.

  less than a third: See Rinchen Sadutshang, A Life Unforeseen: A Memoir of Service to Tibet (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2016), p. 241.

  four members: Ginsberg, author of Howl, both the most celebrated and the most widely excoriated American poem of the 1950s, was a self-confessed pederast and early member of the North American Man/Boy Love Association. He later became a prominent member of the Buddhist community associated with Chogyam Trungpa. Orlovsky is probably best remembered, if indeed he is remembered at all, other than for his association with Ginsberg, for his strikingly titled collection Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs. Snyder gained a reputation as the poetic voice of Deep Ecology. Kyger, also a poet, taught for many years at Trungpa’s Naropa community. It is not entirely clear whether Orlovsky was in fact present at the audience, as he was in the habit of “lock[ing] himself in the bathroom all night and smok[ing] opium” preparatory to vomiting “all the next morning.” Joanne Kyger, The Japan and India Journals, 1960–1964 (New York: Tomboctou Books, 1981), p. 193.

  We met the Dalai Lama: Kyger, The Japan and India Journals, entry for April 11, 1962; letter to Nemi April 10, 1962, pp. 193–96.

  “a cadre of”: Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1964), p. 61.

  “in the socialist paradise”: A Poisoned Arrow: The Secret Report of the 10th Panchen Lama (London: Tibet Information Network, 1997), p. xvii.

  “poisoned arrow”: A Poisoned Arrow, pp. xx–xxi.

  protective talismans: Trijang, Magical Play, p. 260.

  16. “We cannot compel you”

  a “villain,” a “liar”: Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), pp. 199–200.

  deemed to have married: Tubten Khetsun, Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule, trans. Matthew Akester (Delhi: Penguin for Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 138.

  as the disparity: Khetsun, Memories, p. 107.

  “the last priests”: Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1964), p. 50. One wonders what the Gelders would have made of Drepung today, with its ten thousand mostly young monks.

  “because they knew”: Melvyn C. Goldstein, Dawei Sherap, and William R. Siebenschuh, A Tibetan Revolutionary: The Political Life and Times of Bapa Phünto Wangye (Berkeley: University of California Press 2004), p. 245.

  tens of millions died: Today, the Chinese government admits to around 15 million, though, for example, Frank Dikotter in Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010) argues for a figure three times higher.

  “three years”: Sumner Carnahan and Lama Kunga Rinpoche, In the Presence of My Enemies: Memoirs of Tibetan Nobleman Tsipon Shuguba (Santa Fe, NM: Heartsfire Books, 1998), p. 162.

  we began to look for: David Patt, A Strange Liberation: Tibetan Lives in Chinese Hands (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 1993), p. 182.

  Great Leap: Another story from this time that deserves to be better known is that of Tashi Tsering. Born into a polyandrous peasant farming family in 1929, Tashi Tsering was sent off at the age of ten as a candidate for the Dalai Lama’s personal dance troupe. His district was one of those obliged to supply young boys as a sort of tax. But although this tax was hugely resented, a position in the troupe was a sure way of entering government service once the term of engagement was up, even if conditions were harsh. As he explained, “the teachers’ idea of providing incentives was to punish us swiftly and severely for each mistake. They constantly hit us on the faces, arms and legs.” As a way both to escape these harsh conditions and to further improve his prospects, Tashi Tsering accepted the offer of becoming a senior monk official’s drombo, or catamite.

  This relationship enabled him to obtain an education that would not otherwise have been available to him, such that, when his term in the dance troupe came to an end on passing his eighteenth birthday, he was able to obtain a good job as a clerk in the Potala treasury. Subsequently, he married then divorced before traveling to India during the 1950s with the intention of learning English. There he came into contact with Gyalo Thondup and, through him, became involved in the oral histories project of the International Commission of Jurists. As a result of this work, Tashi Tsering came to know a wealthy young American who agreed to help him continue his education in America.

  Although he did well in his studies, Tashi Tsering decided that above all he wanted to serve his people in their hour of need. He dreamed of setting up a kindergarten for his home village. Deciding that he must return to Tibet, he relinquished a comfortable academic’s life in America in exchange for a place at the Chinese-run Tibetan Minority Institute, not far from the Dalai Lama’s birthplace in Amdo. Subsequently he taught at a remote provincial school before falling under suspicion of being a spy. In 1970 he was denounced as a counterrevolutionary and imprisoned.

  Writing of his experiences later, he recounted how he was interrogated “day after day” before being compelled to write a
nd rewrite accounts of his life in America, of his relationship with Gyalo Thondup, and of his reason for wanting to return to Tibet. When finally sentenced, he was transferred to a prison for political prisoners. “Our daily routine was rigorous,” he recalled. “We were made to get up early in the morning, given some watery rice soup, and then sent to the fields to do intentionally demeaning manual labour. We worked in the pig pens or carried human excrement or urine . . . to the fields, where it was used as fertiliser. We also, of course, were still subject to relentless and systematic indoctrination to correct our thinking.” This entailed giving an account of their “daily, hourly and minute-by-minute mental activities.” Small wonder that many broke under the strain. Tashi Tsering’s story is told in Melvyn C. Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tashi Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), p. 121. Finally released, Tashi Tsering went on to found more than seventy schools in central Tibet.

  a certain “guardedness”: Robert Thurman, Why the Dalai Lama Matters (New York: Atria, 2008), p. 5.

  “he would invariably”: Thurman, Why the Dalai Lama Matters, p. 6.

  “strong” disappointment: Robert A. F. Thurman, “The Dalai Lama’s Roles and Teaching,” in Understanding the Dalai Lama, ed. Rajiv Mehrotra (Delhi: Viking India, 2004), p. 12. Leary himself had been briefly encountered by some of the CIA’s Tibetan recruits. Recognizing that “one of the most serious problems facing the Tibetans [was] a lack of trained officials equipped with linguistic and administrative abilities,” the agency funded a program whereby selected candidates were enrolled at Cornell University. On one occasion they attended a seminar given by Leary, a psychologist and advocate of hallucinogenic drug use, during which he “raced around a darkened auditorium chanting and beating drums.” This, we are told, left his Tibetan audience “completely baffled.” See John Kenneth Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival (New York: PublicAffairs, 1999), p. 285.

  lack of “spiritual depth”: The Magical Play of Illusion:The Autobiography ofTrijang Rinpoche, trans. Sharpa Tulku Tenzin Trinley (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2018), p. 292.

  “We divided our culture”: John F. Avedon, In Exile from the Land of Snows (London: Michael Joseph, 1984), p. 92.

  “religion and philosophy”: Thomas Merton, The Asian Journals (London: Sheldon Press, 1974), pp. 100–101.

  “the real meaning”: Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile, p. 207.

  recent liaison: See Mark Shaw, Beneath the Mask of Holiness (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2009).

  “the establishment”: Merton, The Asian Journals, pp. 125, 124.

  “inhuman treatment ": Speech of March 10, 1962, https://www.dalailama.com/messages/Tibet.

  “passive struggle”: Speech of March 10, 1963, https://www.dalailama.com/messages/Tibet.

  “naked horror”: Speech of March 10, 1969, https://www.dalailama.com/messages/Tibet.

  “Tibetan courage”: Speech of March 10, 1971, https://www.dalailama.com/messages/Tibet.

  significant “problems”: Speeches of His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama (1959–1989), trans. Sonam Gyatso, vol. 1 (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2011), p. 65.

  casualties inflicted on the Chinese: The March 10 statement for 1971 claims at least a thousand; https://www.dalailama.com/messages/Tibet.

  “an astonishing, exciting”: Thurman, Why the Dalai Lama Matters, p. 7.

  “lucid and lyrical”: Thurman, “The Dalai Lama’s Roles and Teaching,” p. 12.

  “and other substances”: Trijang, Magical Play, p. 336.

  To induce lucid dreaming: John Crook and James Low, The Yogins of Ladakh: A Pilgrimage Among the Hermits of the Buddhist Himalayas (1997; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2012), p. 196.

  coupled in the “union of bliss”: Crook and Low, The Yogins of Ladakh, p. 196.

  skeptical at the outset: Crook and Low, The Yogins of Ladakh, p. 69.

  raise their core temperature: Herbert Benson, Your Maximum Mind (New York: Avon Books, 1991), pp. 16–22.

  “found that without gloves”: Crook and Low, The Yogins of Ladakh, p. 90. What “amused the monks very much was that the Americans . . . never asked them how to do it!” It should be noted that a later study by other scientists found that heat gains could be produced by non-meditators just using the breathing exercises. It was found that the main effect of meditation was to prolong the effects of the exercises. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3612090/.

  “the practitioner sits”: Crook and Low, The Yogins of Ladakh, p. 220.

  startling enough: See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kelb5IGbLXM.

  in a vision: William Meyers, Robert Thurman, and Michael G. Burbank, Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet (New York: Tibet House, 2016), pp. 135, 161–65. Each bodhisattva is considered to have one or more wrathful forms. These they manifest when required to clear accretions of karmic negativity.

  one of those military men: When he met the Dalai Lama for the first time, General Uban touched the monk’s feet and ever afterwards wore a ring that the Dalai Lama gave him; https://talesfromanoasis.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/indias-phantom-warriors-part-ii-maj-gen-uban-and-his-beloved-two-twos/. The centurion mentioned in chapter 7 of the Gospel of Luke and chapter 8 of the Gospel of Mark was presumably another such soldier. Yet although Uban’s career with the Special Air Service is widely cited, the archivist of 22 SAS regiment informs me that no one of this name is known to have served either in the regiment or in its predecessor, the Long Range Desert Group.

  “carry out reconnaissance”: Adapted from Mikel Dunham, Buddha’s Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004), p. 385. See also Claude Arpi, “A Two Two as Army Chief,” Indian Defence Review, http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/a-two-two-as-army-chief/ (accessed March 28, 2019).

  “We cannot compel you”: http://tibetwrites.in/index.html%3FNot-their-own-wars.html (accessed January 24, 2018).

  Regretfully giving: See The Autobiography of Dasur Ratruk Ngawang of Lithang, vol. 2 (Dharamsala: Amnye Machen Institute, 2008), p. 131.

  “After that”: Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002),pp. 244–45.

  “everyone lived”: Trijang, Magical Play, p. 341.

  “And do you know why”: Dunham, Buddha’s Warriors, pp. 385–86.

  “the gallant officers”: Sujan Singh Uban, Phantoms of Chittagong (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1985), p. iv.

  From Trijang Rinpoché: Trijang, Magical Play, pp. 345, 346.

  “a very special Cittamani initiation”: Dalai Lama, The Life of My Teacher: A Biography of Kyabje Ling Rinpoché (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2017), p. 275.

  17. “Something beyond the comprehension of the Tibetan people”

  the Buryato-Russian explorer: Tsybikov is quoted in Isabelle Charleux, Nomads on Pilgrimage: Mongols on Wutaishan (China), 1800–1940 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 36.

  “to fulfil”: Speeches of His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama (1959–1989), trans. Sonam Gyatso, vol. 1 (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2011), p. 3.

  The book: See Raimondo Bultrini, The Dalai Lama and the King Demon (New York: Tibet House US, 2013), p. 122.

  “not so different”: Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), p. 215.

  “not want to spoil”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwwfj_5A3S8.

  upset the mind: Dalai Lama, The Life of My Teacher: A Biography of Kyabje Ling Rinpoché (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2017), p. 298.

  “they wandered around crying”: Mikel Dunham, Buddha’s Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet (New York: Jeremy
P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004), pp. 388–89, tells the story, which the Dalai Lama partially corroborates in Freedom in Exile, p. 211.

  advised him to cease: William Meyers, Robert Thurman, and Michael G. Burbank, Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet (New York: Tibet House, 2016), p. 138.

  “so long as he stood”: Quoted in Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 370.

  “it would be excellent”: Dalai Lama, Life of My Teacher, p. 310. In so doing, the protector was encouraging the Dalai Lama to align himself with the ris med, or nonsectarian, movement, which had flourished during the first third of the twentieth century.

  Ma Chig Labdron: Her story is told in, e.g., John Crook and James Low, The Yogins of Ladakh: A Pilgrimage Among the Hermits of the Buddhist Himalayas (1997; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2012), chap. 15.

  “Better to see”: Shakya, Dragon in the Land of Snows, p. 376.

  “fifty for a start”: Mary Craig, Kundun: A Biography of the Family of the Dalai Lama (London: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 308.

  “the present standard”: Craig, Kundun, p. 306.

  “watched over”: Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile, p. 296.

  His aides reported: Daniel Goleman, A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), p. 56.

  18. From Rangzen to Umaylam

  “burden”: See John Kenneth Knaus, https://case.edu/affil/tibet/tibetanSociety/documents/usstuff.PDF, p. 78 (accessed March 28, 2019).

  a message for the United States: Marcia Keegan, The Dalai Lama’s Historic Visit to North America (New York: Clear Light Publications, 1981), unpaginated.

  “almost keeled over”: Pico Iyer quoting Thurman in “Making Kindness Stand to Reason,” in Understanding the Dalai Lama, ed. Rajiv Mehrotra (Delhi: Viking India, 2004), p. 54.