Nine Lives

by William Dalrymple

  “Finally, at the village of Chi Thu Shae, we stopped to rest and to eat. We had only been there two hours when a party of Khampa horsemen turned up at the inn. Among them, to our amazement, was His Holiness, with a rifle strapped to his back. At first none of us recognised him, as he was dressed as an ordinary guard, but it was his spectacles that gave him away. He had fled Lhasa in disguise, and we were told that it was our job to escort him. None of us knew that he was heading into exile. I am not sure even he knew at that stage. All we knew was that we had to escape from the Chinese, and to stop their soldiers seizing the Dalai Lama. Of course we were very excited, and very honoured. We realised this was a great responsibility.

  “We walked for several more days through very harsh country, struggling to keep up with His Holiness, until we reached Lhuntse Dzong. It was here that we met a rinpoche in the street. We asked him to release us from our vows a second time, as we were still wearing our monastic robes, and it was clear that our duty was now to take up arms to defend His Holiness, and to slow down the PLA if they tried to follow and capture him. We obviously couldn’t do this while still wearing the robes of monks, and we felt strongly that we must end this ambiguity. The first ceremony of giving back our vows at Dakpa had seemed very inadequate and hurried, and we were not sure what our exact status was: were we monks or not?

  “So the rinpoche gave us a long lecture, almost a sermon, and said that just because we were giving back our vows didn’t mean we could indulge in loose living and worldly affairs. We were doing this to protect the Dalai Lama. If we needed to, we must fight the Chinese and even kill; but he warned us—‘Don’t do anything else which will go against your monastic vows.’

  “We shed our robes and were given ordinary chubas to wear, and guns to use. His Holiness had already left, hurrying on to escape the Chinese, who were expected at any moment. We remained behind with the Khampa fighters of the Chu-zhi Gang-drung movement, vowing to stop the Chinese if they attempted to follow him. We were very proud to do this work, and planned to make a heroic stand, and to die fighting for His Holiness. But that is not what happened.

  “Only a single day passed before a huge force of Chinese arrived. There were hundreds of them, with trucks and tanks and artillery and machine guns. Worst of all they had two fighter planes, and we were completely outnumbered. I’m ashamed to admit it, but when the planes began to strafe us, we fled into the hills after firing only a few shots, heading in the direction of the Mango-la Pass. Without food or arms or supplies it seemed pointless to stay and die. We could not fight, so we fled. Some of the Chu-zhi Gang-drung volunteers died fighting at Lhuntse Dzong, but almost all of us monks took to our heels and ran, hoping that on another occasion we might be able to redeem ourselves and do a better service to His Holiness.

  “In fact, I think we did do him a service just by running, though that wasn’t really our intention. For the Chinese patrols followed us, perhaps thinking His Holiness was with us. Many of the people I was with were shot dead. The planes were out searching for us. We hid during the day and travelled only at night, and even then the Chinese sent up flares, and shelled anyone they could see.

  “When we got higher we found ourselves trudging through heavy snow. By that time we were reduced to eating the donkeys that had died—we had nothing else—and the snowfall was very heavy. There was nowhere to shelter, and it was very cold. We lost so many on the way, zigzagging through the shells in thick snow red with blood. We were frozen, and our feet and hands were numb and senseless. By the end we were reduced to just six people, half-walking, half-sleeping.

  “After ten or fifteen days of this we finally reached the Indian border. Only then did we hear that our Precious Jewel, the Dalai Lama, had escaped. But we also heard there what had happened in Lhasa—that the Potala and Norbulingka Palaces had been shelled, and that thousands had died when the Chinese sent their tanks into the Jokhang Temple.

  “In my heart I knew that we must get our country back, and if I had to learn to fight to do so, then so be it. This had happened before, at the time of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, when the Chinese invaded for the first time, and after a while those who fled returned, and the Chinese went back to their own country. I never guessed it would take so long this time. Not only me; most Tibetans thought that in a year or two we would be back.”

  I asked: “Did what happen damage your faith? Did you wonder how it could happen that such a catastrophe could overtake Tibet?”

  “On the contrary,” said Passang, “I gained more faith. How else could we have survived, despite the entire PLA following us? I wore amulets with religious texts to guard my life and when the bullets came, they just travelled right past me. On one occasion, when we were being shelled at night, a shell landed very close to me. For a moment in the sudden blinding light I thought I saw the protector goddess, Palden Lhamo. Though the shell landed only a few feet away from us, no one was hurt. So, no, my faith was not affected. I felt completely protected.

  “We Buddhists believe in karma, and in cause and effect. An action has consequences; we are the consequences of our acts. Perhaps because there was a time in the seventh century when we Tibetans invaded China and tortured the Chinese, so we are suffering this torture now. It is our turn to suffer for what we did in previous lives.”

  For a while Passang waited at the border, to see if the resistance needed him, and he could return.

  “We had a plan to return to Tsona, which we had heard was still free,” he said. “We thought that we’d fight the Chinese from there. But we had no food and no bullets. We thought that we’d give it a go, that someone must come and support us, and that they’d give us some supplies. We waited for two weeks, but nothing came and no one was there to organise us into a fighting force. We hesitated to enter India. We were scared that we had lost our country, and were angry that we couldn’t go back and fight. Eventually there was no alternative: it was starvation that forced us across the border. But when we decided to cross, we did so only because we thought it the most likely way for us to be able to continue the fight for the dharma.”

  In time, the Indian government gave the refugees places to stay, and was especially generous to those who had joined the resistance: Passang was lodged with other members of the Chu-zhi Gang-drung in an old British bungalow. It was only in the months that followed, when so many former monks and fighters were forced to join Indian road gangs in order to eat and survive, that the full implication of what had happened sank in.

  “It felt awful,” said Passang. “It was the lowest point in my life. At night we would talk about how everything was over. We had lost our country. We were in exile, dependent on others, with no will or right to do what we wanted. We hoped that someone would arm and help us, so that we could recapture Tibet, but nothing happened. Our only hope was in following His Holiness.”

  In time the refugees were divided up, and Passang was sent to the new Tibetan settlement that was created at Bylakuppe in the forests of Karnataka in southern India. Here Passang was taught to make carpets and handicrafts, and for two years he lived by selling these. It was not destitution; but it certainly seemed a dead end.

  However, the fortunes of the Tibetan resistance changed radically two years later, in 1962. When China attacked Indian positions in Aksai Chin in the brief 1962 Sino-Indian war, seizing the disputed border region linking Kashmir and Tibet, it left Nehru’s policy of appeasement of China in tatters. It was realised in India that the Tibetan refugees contained a large body of potential troops who would willingly fight against China and who were, moreover, accustomed to fighting at high altitude. Recruiters were sent to the Tibetan refugee settlements, and Passang was among those who were enlisted in the Indian army.

  Along with many of his former monastic brethren, Passang was persuaded to join a Tibetan unit in the Indian army known as the Special Frontier Force, or Sector 22. This secret force was jointly trained by India and the CIA in a camp near Dehra Dun. Like all the other Tibetans, Passang wa
s assured that he and his fellow monks would be parachuted back into Tibet to fight for their country and their faith.

  “We were told that we would train for a few months and then be sent back to Tibet to begin a revolution. We signed up as we thought this was the way to get our land back and re-establish the Buddhist dharma. Clearly making handicrafts in Karnataka was not going to do that, and this seemed the help we had been waiting for ever since we fled Lhasa.”

  But the promise was never realised. Instead, after many years, first of training under American officers in high-altitude warfare, then guarding the high passes and glaciers for India, and occasionally being sent over the Assam border into Tibet to do low-level intelligence work, Passang and his brethren were sent to fight in the war that led to the creation of Bangladesh.

  “The first time we really saw action was the 1971 war,” said Passang. “From Dehra Dun they flew us to Guwahati, and then drove us in trucks up into Manipur. We crossed a river into Bangladesh, and managed to surround the Pakistani army from three sides. It was a great victory, at least as far as the Indians were concerned. But for me, it felt like a total defeat.

  “I had to shoot and kill other men, even as they were running away in despair. They would make us drink rum and whisky so that we would do these things without hesitation and not worry about the moral consequences of our actions. Every day I saw corpses. Sometimes even now at night I see them—the whole scene: people shooting, others being shot, airplanes dropping bombs and missiles, napalm, houses burning and men and women screaming. War is far worse than you ever imagine it to be. It is the last thing a Buddhist should be involved in.

  “Despite all this, we tried to behave as much like monks as we could. We brought our short Buddhist texts with us and recited our mantras, even in battle. In between the fighting we continued praying—when we were marching, when we were fighting. If anything I prayed more in the army than I did as a monk. Even when we were digging trenches in the jungle we carried holy images in our packs, and lit butter lamps to honour them.

  “But within my heart, I knew I was going against ahimsa, and the most important Buddhist principles—it was not to fight the Pakistanis that I gave up my monastic vows. I knew that I wouldn’t free Tibet, however many Pakistanis I killed. It was for the Tibetan cause and to defeat China that I joined the army; but it occurred to me that now I was no better than the Chinese. They also blithely shot people with whom they had no argument. It was only their guns and bullets that gave them power. The same was true of us in Bangladesh.

  “We weren’t happy doing this fighting, but what could we do? It is almost impossible to leave the army once you are signed up. I used to feel I would not get a good rebirth, as I wasn’t doing any good with my life—just learning to kill, and then putting those skills to use, actually killing people. And I felt sorry, because the war didn’t seem to be about right and wrong, and it certainly wasn’t about the dharma. It was because of some high politicians in Delhi and Islamabad that people had to suffer and to kill.”

  I asked if he felt he had been misled by the Indians into joining the army.

  “For refugees like us who had no rights, the Indian army was a life commitment, though of course we didn’t really realise that when we first joined up. My conscience was very troubled by what I had seen, and by what I had done in Bangladesh. On my annual leave, in expiation, I had begun touring the Buddhist pilgrimage sites of India and Nepal, searching for peace of mind. I went to Bodhgaya, Varanasi, Sarnath and Lumbini. There I spent my time praying and meditating, performing prostrations in an attempt to gain back some of the merit I had lost. I went to the place where the Lord Buddha lived, to where he was born, to where he attained Enlightenment, and where he preached his first sermon. And I swore that the very day that I was able to leave the army I would try to make up for what I had done as a soldier.

  “It was not until 1986 that my papers came. I retired and caught a bus the same day to Dharamsala. As chance would have it, I arrived in the middle of the Monlam ceremony, when the Dalai Lama gives his public teachings—the same ceremony I had seen in Lhasa in 1959, nearly thirty years earlier. As I listened to the sermons, I wondered what I could do to make up for all I had done. Then I saw some prayer flags attached to the temple, and thought, this is something I can do: I can make prayer flags.

  “Compared to Tibet, there are relatively few prayer flags in India, even in Dharamsala, and many are very badly printed: you can’t read the mantras, and often they are not correctly written. I knew all the mantras from my training as a monk and I decided I would try to make well-printed prayer flags. I decided I would really take trouble over them so that they earned good rather than bad merit. In this way I could help the Lord’s dharma and do service to the community. I thought I could live a calm and peaceful life, and also make a little money to supplement my army pension.

  “I found a small wooden hut in which to live. It had a tin roof and was mounted on four small wooden chocks. I also found an old lama who taught me the techniques of printing. As part of my penance and reparation for what I have done, I have made it a point that every single flag should be perfect, that every word should be correct and legible. When someone buys my flags they are putting their faith in them, and I don’t want to cheat them. It is like when we used to draw thangka paintings when I was a boy in the monastery in Dakpa. If you miss something, or have the wrong number of fingers, or give the wrong Bodhisattva the wrong mudra, we were told that that would be a great sin. So when I make the flags, I try to think of the person who will buy them, and of the merit they will earn by flying them, and I always pray that they may find the right path and not make the same errors as me.

  “Finally, in 1995, I decided to become a monk again. It wasn’t a difficult decision. I only gave back my vows so that if the need came I would be able to kill to protect the dharma. But in my heart I never really gave up my vows. I was always a monk in my heart—it was just that sometimes my duty led elsewhere. I talked about it with several of my old army colleagues, including two who had been monks with me in Dakpa, and we decided to take our habits again together. His Holiness gave us our vows, and gave us new names to signal the new beginning we were making, even though it was so late in our lives.

  “The period since I rejoined the religious life has been the happiest time—at least the happiest since my days as a nomad in the mountains, or when I went to the cave in Dakpa to live as a hermit. It may seem odd: many people think that old age is an affliction. But from youth I have always accepted that I had to grow old—it comes to everyone. I now have the time to read all the scriptures, which I could never do in the army. What is done is done, and I can’t undo my actions in Bangladesh. But I feel very fortunate that I had this second chance. Now at least I can die as a monk. It may be more difficult to memorise and learn by heart the scriptures than when I was young; but there are many less distractions in old age, and concentrating becomes easier. It is tough getting all the readings for the day done at my age—I have to start at 3 a.m. or I don’t finish, but at least my mind no longer goes off like a yak that has escaped its herder.

  “The veterans’ home is a good place, and almost like a monastery. Certainly there is some loss of freedom, but I know that if I get sick now I will be looked after. Everything is taken care of, and you can concentrate on your prayers. Like in the old days, I get up at 3 and pray and meditate until 6:30. At 8:30 I go to the temple here. Then we have tea, and after that I do the first circumambulation of the Dalai Lama’s residence. Two others follow in the afternoon and evening.

  “For the first time in thirty years I feel that I spend my day practising the dharma again. I have no material goods, and no temptations. I think of the time I will die and how best to embrace this. I am here in Dharamsala, near His Holiness. Whenever the Dalai Lama preaches, I can attend, and listen to him, and learn from his wisdom.

  “And I am especially fortunate that of late I feel I have conquered the hate I used to feel for
the Chinese. His Holiness is always preaching that it is not the Chinese, but hate itself that is our biggest enemy. Ever since the Chinese tortured my mother, I felt a deep hatred for them, and was always striving for violent retaliation. Whenever I saw a Chinese restaurant in India, I would want to throw stones at it. Even the colour red could make me boil with anger at what the Chinese have done. But after I heard His Holiness say we must defeat hatred, I determined that I would try to eat a Chinese meal in a Chinese restaurant to try to cure myself of this rage. I wanted to wash my anger clean, as His Holiness puts it, to wash clean the blood.

  “So one day when I was on pilgrimage in Bodhgaya, I saw a small Chinese restaurant by the roadside. It was run by two Chinese women—an old woman of seventy and her daughter, who must have been around forty. I went in there one evening and ordered some noodles. I have to say that they were delicious. After I had eaten, I thanked the mother and asked her to sit down with me, so we could talk. I asked, ‘Where are you from?’ and she replied, ‘Before the Communists, I was from China.’ It turned out her father had been tortured and killed by Mao’s soldiers at the Cultural Revolution, and her relations had fled to Hong Kong and from there to Calcutta. By this stage, she was weeping: crying and crying as she told me what her family had suffered. I told her, ‘Before the Communists, I was from Tibet, and my mother was also tortured, and died from what Mao’s soldiers did to her.’ After that, we both burst into tears and hugged each other. Since then I have been free from my hatred of all things and people Chinese.

  “There is another reason I feel very fortunate. Three years ago, I was doing the parikrama when I saw a man from my village. I hadn’t seen him for over fifty years but I recognised him immediately. He had only just come to India from Tibet, and he was able to bring me news of my family, and told me that one of my elder brothers was still alive. Even more than that, he knew his telephone number.