The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk

By Palden Gyatso and Dalai Lama

“With this memoir by a ‘simple monk’ who spent 33 years in prisons and labor camps for resisting the Chinese, a rare Tibetan voice is heard.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
Palden Gyatso was born in a Tibetan village in 1933 and became an ordained Buddhist monk at eighteen—just as Tibet was in the midst of political upheaval. When Communist China invaded Tibet in 1950, it embarked on a program of “reform” that would eventually affect all of Tibet’s citizens and nearly decimate its ancient culture. In 1967, the Chinese destroyed monasteries across Tibet and forced thousands of monks into labor camps and prisons. Gyatso spent the next twenty-five years of his life enduring interrogation and torture simply for the strength of his beliefs. Palden Gyatso’s story bears witness to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the strength of Tibet’s proud civilization, faced with cultural genocide.
 
“To readers of this memoir, however untraveled, Tibet will never again seem remote or unfamiliar. . . . Gyatso reminds us that the language of suffering is universal.” —Library Journal
 
“Has the ring of undeniable truth. . . . Palden Gyatso’s clear-sighted eloquence (in Tsering Shakya’s fluent translation) makes his tale even more engrossing.” —San Francisco Chronicle

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9780802190000

Book preview

Chapter One

Beneath a Rainbow

IWAS BORN BENEATH A rainbow.

How many times my grandmother told me the story of my birth! With a crooked finger, she would trace the line of a rainbow through the air and describe as she did so how it reached from the river to the fields, with the whole village under its arc. Then she would tell me that my birth was accompanied by many auspicious signs. Ngodup, she would say, you might have been the Riwoche trulku! It was her favourite story and she'd tell it to anyone who would listen.

It goes something like this. A few days after my birth a search party composed of high lamas arrived from Drag Riwoche monastery, which lies two days’ walk from our village. The search party announced that I was one of the candidates for the reincarnation of a high lama who had died a year ago. There were many signs to indicate that my birth might be something special. When the monks arrived, the ravens that usually perched on the roof of the monastery were all perched on our house. And one of the chief stewards of the previous lama recalled that the lama had visited our house to carry out a religious ceremony just before he passed away. The lama had mentioned that he felt very much at home. As he was leaving the house, he came towards my mother and placed his hands on her head, saying, I will return to this house.

According to my grandmother, a few days before I was born my mother had dreamed that she was holding a dorje, a symbolic thunderbolt, in her left hand and sitting in deep meditation. The thunderbolt represented the indestructibility of Buddha's teachings. All these signs were thought to be auspicious, since they usually accompany the birth of an incarnate lama.

Grandmother would describe how Chang dzo la, the chief steward of the previous lama, had dangled two rosaries in front of my eyes, and how my tiny hands had jabbed forward and snatched one. Grandmother would shake her head from side to side and make clapping gestures, and she would tell me with great excitement that the lama had smiled and confirmed that the rosary I had picked had indeed belonged to the previous lama.

My grandmother was fond of telling me this story. She was a small woman with a tiny face. She had a habit of rubbing dollops of butter on her hair, which made it glisten with grease. Her tiny face shone beneath the tightly combed hair. I loved listening to her. She told me that when the names of all the candidates were submitted to Lhasa for approval, I was not chosen. She insisted that this was because our family had no back-door connections with powerful people there. Although I was very young at the time, I could detect traces of disappointment in her voice when she reached the high point of the story.

I, after all, came into the world with a burst of auspicious signs and great expectations. The local astrologer drew up my horoscope and told my father that I would be of great benefit to my family and to others. He did not say how. Perhaps this was what a lowly village astrologer always trumpeted to the ears of wealthy landlords. I think this pleased my father. Later he reminded me of the pronouncement.

I was named Ngodup. In Tibet, parents do not choose names for their children; instead, they usually ask a high lama to bestow a name. I do not know which lama gave me my name, although it was probably the abbot of the nearby monastery. I was born in 1933, the year of the male water monkey, in a village called Panam which lies 125 miles east of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and forty-five miles from Shigatse in the west, Tibet's second largest city.

Panam was a small village of no importance, situated in the plains of Tsang. The Nyangchu river meandered through the valley. Mountains reared up on both sides of the river. The wide plain was dotted with green fields of barley, peas and mustard. The river was deceptive; sometimes it was shallow and you could see only the shimmering ripples flowing gently towards Shigatse, where the Nyangchu merges with Tibet's largest river, the Yarlung Tsangpo. When the water was low the villagers would simply wade across to the other side and take their animals to pasture. But if a shepherd failed to bring back the animals at the right time, the river became impossible to cross, and he would have to make a long detour. It might take him two to three days to find a ford.

In the spring, when the snows melted and the ripples turned into a torrent, the river became dangerous and the villagers looked at it with fear. I remember being warned not to play by the river bank; it was said that even strong beasts like yaks had been carried away by rapids. One of my first memories is of running to the river bank as a child and seeing a group of men pulling out a dead yak that had been washed up there. Along with a number of other children, I stood watching the men cut up the bloated carcass and divide the meat on to a cloth that was spread nearby. From then on I was terrified of the river. But we were dependent on the Nyangchu: the fields were fed from it and areas not reached by the water were barren and dry. The infertile, cracked land was a constant reminder of how much we relied on the river. I can't remember a day when it rained in Panam. The areas the water reached were lush green and provided us with sustenance. From the river we fetched drinking water, and small channels were dug to lead water into the fields. All day you could see a man wandering from field to field, opening and closing the irrigation channels.

The mountains which make up the Himalayan range rose steeply towards the clear blue sky on each side of the valley. They soared to a sloping pasture-ground which stretched out into the sky. The walls of the mountains sheltered Panam on both sides. When the thaw began in the spring and the green shoots struggled to emerge from beneath the ice, the villagers took their animals to graze on the high pasture. But for almost three months, over winter, the sheep, goats, cows and even some yaks were kept in the house. Our houses were two-storey buildings made out of mud bricks. The stone foundations were almost three feet wide, forming a broad base on which mud bricks were piled to make a thick wall. These simple mud-brick walls kept the house warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

The first floor was for human habitation. On the ground floor, in the dark, the animals were kept in the winter months. I remember, as a young boy, chasing the animals out of their winter pen. They were hesitant and frightened to emerge into the open. One by one, they would stagger out on unsteady feet and blink, dazzled by the daylight. People would laugh and say that the animals were intoxicated from eating the waste from distilled alcohol: in the winter, in preparation for the Tibetan New Year, every family would brew huge quantities of chang and pour the mushy barley waste out for the cows. The animals soon adjusted to the glaring light. Then the older children would shoo them up a narrow path that led towards the high pasture-grounds. The animals and the shepherd spent the summer there, the shepherd occasionally returning to the village with cheese, butter and a donkey laden with dung, which would be used for fuel.

Panam was dependent on farming. Animals provided luxury items like meat, butter and cheese. My family kept over 600 sheep and goats, and were relatively wealthy by Tibetan standards. My father leased large tracts of land from the government and in turn leased them to other farmers. We were called government taxpayers (gerpa), because we paid taxes directly to the government in Lhasa, whereas other farmers, like my father's tenants, paid taxes to their landlords or to the monastery. My father's tax obligation was complex and I never fully understood what he paid and what duties he had to perform, though one thing I remember clearly is that my family had to supply five men to the Tibetan army. The men did not necessarily have to be family members. In fact, as far as I can remember, my father passed this obligation on to our tenants. It was up to us what arrangement we made with the tenant farmers; the government was satisfied as long as we continued to supply the five men.

My father also acted as the village headman and he was often called upon to settle disputes between villagers. He was regarded as a fair man and our tenants and the villagers called him Bari Jho la, a term that implies endearment and respect. He defended the villagers from absentee landlords who resided in Shigatse and Lhasa and extracted unfair taxes. My family name was Bari Lhopa, meaning Bari in the South. There was another family in the upper part of the valley called Bari Jang, or Bari in the North. We must have been related once, but everyone had forgotten how the family became split between the north and south.

In the eighteenth century Panam achieved some fame as the birthplace of the seventh Panchen Lama, the second most important religious figure in Tibet. It was said that when the sixth Panchen Lama died, the oracles foretold that the child would be found in happiness and sitting in the lap of the sun. Lamas were sent all over Tibet to search for the new incarnation of the Panchen Lama. One such search party arrived in Panam with the oracle's pronouncement fresh in their minds.

The search party approached the first house in the village and found a woman sitting with a newborn infant in her arms. When the search party asked the mother's name, she replied, Nyima, which means sun. They did not need to look any further. In the arms of Nyima was the seventh Panchen Lama.

The Panchen Lama was born in the house next to ours. It was the wealthiest house in the village. The family were elevated to the ranks of the Tibetan aristocracy and became rich. The villagers called this trungzhi, meaning birth estate. Trungzhi was held in great esteem by all the families in the locality. By the time of my birth, excitement had spread to the whole village. They said that Panam was a blessed village to have seen the birth of another lama. But their excitement did not last long.

My family, like most Tibetans, were very religious and took their religious commitment seriously. Our large house was dominated by the Kangyur lhakang, or chapel, which contained the 101 volumes of the Kangyur, the teachings of the Buddha. No one else in the village could boast such a collection. I don't know how my family had acquired these priceless volumes, which were hundreds of years old. The lhakang was on the top floor of the house and also contained many images of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and thangkas, or religious banners. Some of these were also hundreds of years old. On top of our roof there stood a large solitary brass parasol called a gyaltsen, or victory banner. The banner was a unique privilege reserved for a house which possessed a complete set of the Kangyur. Whenever other families in the village held religious ceremonies they came to borrow one of the volumes.

Every year the village performed one important religious ceremony. In July, when the crops began to ripen and did not need much tending, it was time for everyone to relax and celebrate what they hoped would be a bumper harvest. But it was also a time to propitiate the local spirits and invite them to protect the crops from malevolent forces. The village observed a ceremony called Choe-khor, which means, literally, circling the teaching of Buddha.

The monks from the local monastery would come down to our house and bring out each volume of the Kangyur, wrapped in yellow cloth and raised high above their heads. Outside the house, villagers and family members fought among themselves to carry the volumes on their backs. When all 101 volumes had found an eager back to rest upon, the monks would lead a procession, followed by the villagers, each carrying one volume of the Kangyur. The procession traced the outermost edge of the village.

The party would stop in a secluded place we called the abode of the village spirit (yul-lba). The malevolent village spirit resided here and our wellbeing depended on making offerings to it. It was said that harm would befall the village if the spirit were not regularly appeased. Although the crops were growing well, they still needed to be strengthened by spiritual means. An unexpected hailstorm could fall on the village and destroy all the crops. The farmers in Tibet feared hailstorms as others feared drought. Some villages even had a resident hailstorm stopper, believed to have magical powers. Whenever someone fell ill in the family, we also made offerings to the spirit.

The spot was marked with a high pile of stones and animal horns half hidden beneath a mesh of tangled prayer flags. The flags depicted the five elements: yellow for earth, red for fire, blue for sky, white for cloud and green for water.

Every year each family would leave a new prayer flag. I never ventured near the spot alone. The musty smell and decaying heap of prayer flags made for a haunting atmosphere. The place made me shiver. Everyone feared the yul-lha. The Choe-khor ceremony was meant to symbolise the village's faithfulness to the spirit and demarcate the village boundary. After the ritual was completed the villagers felt safe and protected.

When the whole village had been circled, the procession would come to rest in an open meadow near the river. Here, by the river, each family would pitch a tent. For the next few days there would be dancing and singing. The older men would gamble while the young men competed in an archery contest. It was a time to rest and enjoy the summer weather. Two or three months later the crops would be ready for harvesting and each of my father's tenants would have to send a man to work in my father's fields. It was the busiest time in the life of the village and there were many chores to attend to. No one sat idly. When the crops had been harvested, threshing began. Then the grain was piled high and women began to winnow it to separate out the husks. As the villagers were busy winnowing, my father would invite ten monks to the house and they would, simultaneously, begin to read aloud each volume of the Kangyur. It would take five to ten days for the monks to read it from first word to last. I remember my father saying that our family had sponsored this ritual every year for hundreds of years and thus our house had been lucky and blessed with the merit of all the good deeds of our forefathers.

But I felt that this luck had not rubbed off on me. My mother died shortly after my birth, leaving my father to care for three daughters and two sons. I do not know how she died. My grandmother once said that my mother looked so healthy and contented immediately after my birth but then one evening fell ill and never recovered. Tibetans believe that when good fortune falls on a family, the same family will also experience misfortune. Perhaps this is an explanation. Since I was considered a possible reincarnation of a high lama, the misfortune fell on my mother.

I never knew my mother's name but she was referred to as Ama la. She was only forty when she died. I have no memory of her. Nor do I have a picture of her. In old Tibet there were no photographs and no portraits were painted of a living person. The only photograph I ever saw was one of the thirteenth Dalai Lama which sat on our family altar. Once my aunt took it down and placed it on my head. I wanted to touch it and feel its texture and examine the image, but it was precious and my aunt quickly returned it to the altar. The photograph was bought from a Nepalese merchant; even then only two families in the village could afford it. I don't think a photograph of my mother existed. I once asked one of my relatives what my mother was like and he simply replied, She was a nice woman. My father never spoke about her and I in turn never raised the subject with him. I think he must have felt a great loss. My father had married at the age of fourteen and my mother was a year younger than him. Like all marriages in Tibet at the time, theirs had been arranged by their families.

My sisters were also very young and could not be expected to look after me, so I was sent to live with my paternal aunt. Her name was Zangmo and she lived in a village six hours’ walk from Panam, called Gyatso Shar. She had gone there as a bride many years before. My aunt's family were called Namling and there must have been over twenty people in my new household.

My aunt was in her late thirties when I went to live with her. She had two sons, whom I called Tho la, or older brother. They were already grown up; one was sixteen and about to be married. My aunt was a very resourceful woman and in effect the head of the household. She kept a huge bundle of keys to all the storerooms in her amba, a fold in the traditional dress which is used as a pocket. Whenever the servants wanted provisions, they had to ask her first. She had a large, round face and wore bright red corals in her ears. Her hair was long and she kept it plaited and tied around her head. I was sent to live with my aunt because a few months earlier she too had given birth, to a daughter called Wangmo. She could breast-feed the two of us.

Gyatso Shar was not much different from Panam. The houses were just the same and, like the rest of the inhabitants of the Nyangchu valley, the people in Gyatso Shar were farmers. Life revolved around farming. Everyone worked on the land. Their skills had been refined over centuries. There were no machines, so everything was done by hand. Today, when I think back, it seems strange that we had no need for the wheel. The Land of Snows had no use for that great invention.

My aunt's family were also gerpa, paying taxes to the government. It was said that the accumulated grain from their estate would be enough to dam Tibet's mightiest river, the Yarlung Tsangpo. I grew up thinking of my aunt as my mother. I called her Ama la and her house was home. Later, in prison, each interrogation would begin with my name, my age and my parents’ names, and I'd have to pause and think carefully to give the right answer. My aunt cared deeply for me. Sometimes she wrapped her arms around me and whispered, The motherless child.

Everyone in the house was equally generous and I was showered with affection. I can't remember a time when I felt that I had another home, or that my family weren't my real family. Once I heard someone refer to the boy's father. I thought they were talking about my uncle, whom I also called Pa la. I'd always regarded him as my father. So when I heard The boy's father is coming to visit, I was confused. Then I heard people referring to the boy's home. As far as I knew, I had only one home, and that was where I was living. So I was troubled and knew that some revelation was to come.

I was happy in Gyatso Shar. Life revolved around the village and the family. Childhood was simple. The boys were left to their own devices, while the girls followed their mothers around, working with them, observing and acquiring the skills they had learned from their own mothers. If our parents were working in the fields we followed them and learned by imitation. That was our education. I carried and fetched things. I helped with the weeding. I wandered around the fields, opening and closing water channels.

But my favourite pastime was listening to stories. Tashilhunpo was one of the biggest monasteries in the region and one of my uncles was a monk there. He spent the winter at my aunt's house. He was good with children. He summoned us to listen to his stories. He told us about Tigten Chag-tsul: the creation of the world. He described, in a solemn voice, how the world had been covered by water, and how the water slowly evaporated to form the land and mountains. Then Chenresig, Buddha of Compassion, was incarnated in the form of a monkey, and his consort, Dolma, appeared in the form of an ogress. The coupling of the monkey and the ogress resulted in the first human beings. Their six children represented the six types of creatures that lived in the world: gods, demigods, human beings, ghosts, animals and fiends. They multiplied and that was how, my uncle told us, the first Tibetans came into being.

Some of this was terrifying. He told us about other worlds and about hells where people were boiled alive or lived in perpetual hunger. My uncle taught us that when we die, our good and bad actions are weighed against each other in black and white pebbles on a scale. The white pebbles were our good deeds; the black pebbles were all our negative actions. If the scales tipped towards the black then you would go to hell, but if they tipped towards the white then you would go to heaven. My uncle would lean forward, so that his face was close to the faces of the children, and say, If you don't want to go to hell, you must not accumulate black pebbles.

My uncle was respected by everyone in the village and people sought his advice on all sorts of matters. Once he took me to his monastery, Tashilhunpo, in Shigatse. This was not so much a religious experience as a genial introduction to the monastic life. And I became aware for the first time of a world outside the village, beyond the mountains. I remember my uncle was sharing a room with a monk from Ladakh who gave me a piece of toffee in the shape of a fish. He told me it was from India. Later that evening I saw a torch for the first time and learned that this too was from India. I thought what a wonderful place India must be, so full of magical things. Tibetans regarded India with the same reverence with which Christians regard Jerusalem. But I was confused by stories about Buddha's life in the land of Pag-pa. Pag-pa was pronounced the same as the Tibetan word for pig and I used to wonder why India should be called the Land of the Pig. I imagined thousands of pigs roaming through its jungles. When I asked why India was called the Land of the Pig, my uncle and the other monks roared with laughter. Uncle told me it was time I learned to read and

Reviews for The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk

[kaelirenee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is essentially 'Night' from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective. This is a well-written and compelling look at the horrors of the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the Cultural Revolution, and one monk's ordeal. This book certainly helps give a face and a story behind the 'Free Tibet' movement. My only criticism is that it could benefit from a glossary in the back; it got a bit tough keeping track of the Tibetan words.

[davetherave_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A harrowing story of the suffering of the gentle Tibetan monks at the hands of their Chinese masters, and particularly the 31 years of brutal imprisonment of the author by the Chinese PLA. An "unputdownable" read.

[mojumi_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The impact of this book was made more profound by the great honor of meeting the author in person at a college reading. It is incredible to imagine the terrible descriptions of torture happening to this gentle man.

[aannttiiiittnnaa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A real eye opener. Brutal, tear-rending revelations of how one portion of humanity is treating another, told with a steady and enlightened perspective. A very valuable piece of biography that every public library would benefit from holding. Read this book and you will be an instant convert to the Tibetan cause. Don't be surprised if you want to pass it on to others as soon as you finish the last page.