Pic: Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, in the days before the Chinese takeover.
The Lama sat in his tiny cell for a week, in darkness, waiting for his turn. Lacking sight, his hearing grew acute and he used it to build a virtual image of the cell block. There were 10 cells opening off a corridor with a heavy door at the end. He knew morning from night by the rattle of keys opening that main door and the momentary band of light under his cell door. The quiet sobs and groans of the night froze at the sound of those keys. The heavy door creaked open, the strip of light brightened, then dimmed as the door clanged shut and weak bulbs came to life in the corridor. There were footsteps, a cell door opening. The sound of pleading, then thuds and screams. After that, it was quiet till the process was repeated the following day. He could see no pattern in the selection of victims for these beatings and he concluded the apparent randomness was simply another tool for maintaining terror. Red Guard efficiency.
The Chinese first entered Tibet via the eastern provinces of Kham. The warrior spirit of an older wilder Tibet still sang in the veins of the Khampa nomads and with the first rapes, beatings and murders by the occupying forces, that spirit awoke. Rebellious nomads gathered bows and arrows, ancient swords and a few Lee Enfield rifles left behind by the earlier failed British mission. With these, they mounted a resistance. They were mosquitoes bothering the flanks of a tiger. By the time the army reached the Lama’s monastery the violence had escalated well beyond the random excesses of soldiers. Control through terror was always the unwritten intent and it soon became official policy, as reflected in the systematic brutality of the new prisons.
The army arrived in clouds of dust. Over two days they filled the valley with the stink of diesel motors and the shouts of soldiers setting up camp outside the monastery walls. On the third day, they rounded up villagers and nomads that they might bear witness to Chinese authority. The soldiers hung speakers from the monastery walls and in raucous garbled Tibetan a Political Officer shouted and frothed his way through a bewildering speech.
“China, the Motherland, has come to free the peasants from the yoke of Lamaist oppression. Liberation for the workers enslaved by the monasteries. Freedom from the monk class that grows fat on the people’s labour.”
The soldiers then entered the monastery en masse, bent on destruction. They ripped down thangkas, trashed alters, scattered offerings. They built fires in the courtyard and fed them precious texts, ancient wood block prints and artworks. A thousand years of spiritual and artistic heritage trampled and burnt. They collected the statues of various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, to pry out their jewels and melt down their gold. The fires burnt through the night. Screams and the occasional bark of gunfire drifted through the cold night air and echoed around the valley.
The apocalypse had come to Tibet.
In the morning the soldiers loaded the Abbot and senior Lamas on to the backs of trucks and paraded them, battered and bruised. Some of the younger monks shouted their protest only to be dragged out and beaten in front of the crowd.
The Lama had been recognized early in his life as the reincarnation of a great teacher. He was returned to the monastery at the age of 6, to be educated and to continue the work of his previous self. Now in his 50’s, he had studied and meditated his whole life. His intelligence and wit established him as a great debater in his youth and later he gained renown as a teacher and occasional tutor to the Dalai Lama himself. He spent years in solitary retreat, sheltering in mountain caves, before returning to teach and write extensive commentaries.
The Lama embodied the true wealth of Tibet and as such, he was everything that the Chinese wanted to crush.
The first stage in the re-education of the masses involved the Red Guard targeting the high lamas, mostly old men. The random daily beatings and ‘struggle sessions’ were part of the process of breaking them down. They were forbidden any images, their malas (prayer beads) were broken and scattered. If they were caught moving their lips in private prayer they were beaten.
Chairman Mao had called religion “The Opiate of the Masses” and the Chinese regarded Tibet as a superstitious and primitive backwater. They intended to wipe out Buddhism and replace it with communism, their own one true faith.
The morning began like all the others. The human sounds of the night immediately ceased as a clang of metal announced the arrival of the guards. The fear was palpable, sweeping through the cells. Whose turn would it be today? Each prisoner visualised the progress of the guards, three of them from the sound of their boots. The rising terror as they approached, the relief when they passed. The Lama waited, the boots approached, slowed, and stopped outside his cell. His heart beat like a drum as the fear took hold. Time dripped like slow melting ice. The guards were playing. They just stood there, outside his cell door, in silence. The Lama waited for the bolt to slide back. Nothing. Then, like a broken spell, the guards casually strolled on to his neighbour’s door instead.
What the guards didn’t know, could never comprehend, was that while they played out their perverse little game a revolution was taking place in the mind of the Lama. In the darkness he was entirely focused on the door, acutely tuned like a cat focused on a mouse hole. Suddenly, within that crystal clarity, the thought arose; “Where is this focus when I try to meditate on emptiness?”
The absurdity of this wayward thought, in this situation, struck the Lama like a blow. For as long as he could remember he had meditated on this riddle, seeking this thing called “the self”, but he could not find it. The harder he tried to grasp the apparent self, the self the Buddha said was an empty illusion, the more it slipped away. Like mercury under a pin. Now, confronted with the terrible danger lurking outside his cell, the vision came to him of the guards attempting to beat up a ghost in a fog. The lama chuckled to himself.
In that instant, a flash of satori like a brilliant sun illuminated his mind. His heart was blown open in a rapture of clarity, the self exposed for the empty illusion it always was. Everything in the Lama’s life, his training, the endless hours of meditation, the accumulation of merit, everything had led to this shattering moment.
Oh bliss.
Here, in this cell, the prison of self collapsed and the Lama was entirely free.
There was no time for celebration though. With his own liberation assured, the Lama was acutely aware of the great danger now facing his neighbour. All fear of personal suffering had dissolved in the realisation of emptiness, but that fear was still very real for his neighbour. The Lama determined to save him from the imminent beating by taking it upon himself. Before the guard could pull the bolt on the cell next door, the Lama began a loud recitation of Chenrezig’s mantra of compassion.
Om Mani Padme Hum
Om Mani Padme Hum
Om Mani Padme Hum
Taken aback by this obvious rebellion, the soldiers immediately returned to the Lama’s cell and threw open the door. When they entered the Lama smiled, joined his hands in prayer, and greeted the first guard. “Tashi Delek.” Infuriated, the guard lashed out with his baton and swept away the prayerful gesture. The first blow broke two of the Lamas knuckles. The second broke his nose.
The Lama had no idea how much time had passed when he came to in his cell. He did an internal survey. He was a mess, but alive. Satisfied, he propped himself against the wall and relaxed. He settled into the meditation techniques that were second nature to him and dropped into a blissful sea of one pointed concentration, a place where pain was just another sensation and no bother at all.
The sun rose and the Lama waited patiently for the approach of the guards. Considering his situation, he was extraordinarily happy. All fear was gone, he was centred and overwhelmingly grateful. When the guards came he repeated his actions of the day before, loudly reciting his mantras. Drawing their attention and subsequent beating onto himself, he protected the others for another day. He kept this up for a week.
One morning his cell was silent. Curious, the guards opened the door. In the night the lama had propped his broken body against the wall, crossed his legs, and died in meditation pose. He wore a beatific smile, and a faint perfumed odour emanated from the body.
