Dai Qingli, an official of the Chinese Embassy in Britain brilliantly demonstrated that quality in a letter to the Guardian (25 Nov. 2011) titled “Tibetan Deaths violate Buddhism”. Dai wrote, “The self-immolations of Tibetan monks and nuns were truly tragic. They were also a fatal violation of the spirit of peace and tolerance that defines Tibetan Buddhism. And, as such, these acts have met anger and disapproval from the local people and the religious community.”

Bhuchung K.Tsering of the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) expressed himself in a similar manner in his article “This Chinese is Right About Tibetan Self-Immolation!”

“Yesterday, i.e. December 1, 2011, I was reading an article in People’s Daily by “renowned Tibetologist” Li Decheng concerning self-immolations by Tibetans in Tibet in which he says these actions are against “core Buddhist code of ethics.” He further says, “In Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, scripture has never encouraged killings and suicide, nor has Buddhist dogma incited others to carry out killings or commit suicide.” I have no hesitation in saying I agree with him here.’

Bhuchung went on to request the Chinese that they should pay attention to the self-immolations “as it is an important social issue for China and its future.” Bhuchung also attempts to explain why Tibetans were – and I use his exact word – “indulging” in this behavior. Bhuchung and his colleagues at ICT might not approve of the self-immolations but they should realize that the monks and nuns were hardly “indulging” themselves in any way.

The Dalai Lama chose his words more carefully. In his statement to UPI on Nov 21 he said he didn’t encourage self-immolation by monks and nuns protesting China’s control over Tibet and questioned the usefulness of the acts as a protest tool. He did acknowledge that the monks and nuns had courage, but he gave the impression that it wasn’t a Buddhist thing to do.

So is self-immolation against Buddhist teachings or not?

In 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk set fire to himself at a busy Saigon intersection. The famous Pulitzer Prize winning photograph by Malcolm Browne of the burning monk sitting serenely in the lotus position surrounded by flames, became a worldwide sensation and contributed to fall of the Diem regime. At the time Beijing openly praised the action of the Vietnamese monk and distributed millions of copies of the photo (pirated of course) throughout Asia and Africa as evidence of “US imperialism”. Other Vietnamese monks and a nun subsequently set fire to themselves to protest the war.

Self-immolation appear to be an unusual though accepted Buddhist traditio in China and parts of South East Asia. There are numerous cases in Chinese history, especially during the Qing period, of such acts being performed as political protest (see Burning for the Buddha: Self-immolation in Chinese Buddhism by James A. Benn). In 1948 in the city of Harbin a monk seated himself in the lotus position on a pile of sawdust and soybean oil and set fire to himself in protest against the treatment of Buddhism by Mao Zedong’s Communists.

The main inspiration for the practice appears to be based on a teaching in The Lotus Sutra (Tib. dam chos pad-ma dkar po’i mdo). One chapter of this sutra recounts the life story of the Bodhisattva Medicine King who demonstrated his insight into the selfless nature of his body by ritualistically setting his body aflame, spreading the “Light of the Dharma” for twelve hundred years.

But I think that the spiritual motivation for the sacrifice of our young monks and nuns in Tibet might have come from another direction. Forty-five kilometers south-east of Katmandu is one of the most popular pilgrimage sites for Tibetans visiting Nepal. The hill of Namo Buddha (or Tagmo Lujin in Tibetan) is – the Golden Light Sutra (phags pa gser ‘od dam pa’i mdo) tells us – the very place where the Buddha (in a previous incarnation) gave up his body to feed a starving tigress and her four cubs. This is a popular Jataka story with all Tibetans and is often brought up in conversations whenever an example of self-sacrifice or selfless conduct is required. There are other such Jataka or Avadana stories of the Buddha giving up his life for others, a well known one from the mahakapi jataka being the tale of the Great Monkey King who died saving the lives of his “80,000” monkey subjects.

The courageous action of the thirteen self-immolators in Tibet must be seen in this specific doctrinal light. I emphatically disagree with the opinion some people are circulating that the monks and nuns burnt themselves in despair because they were not allowed to practice their religion. If that were the main concern of these monks and nuns then the logical course of action for them to take would have been to escape to India, as many others had done so before. Kirti monastery, where most of the young self-immolators had studied, even has a large branch at Dharamshala where they would have been welcome.

Hence we must see the self-immolations in Tibet as action taken for the welfare of others, for the freedom of the Tibetan people and the independence of Tibet (as some of the self-immolators expressly stated). Even the call by most of the self-immolators for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet must be interpreted as a call for the restoration of an independent Tibet, as the Dalai Lama is regarded as the legitimate sovereign ruler of independent Tibet, and should not merely be interpreted as a plea for the return of a personal spiritual leader, as those attempting to de-politicize the events have been claiming.

The deed of the thirteen self-immolators is not only Buddhist in an unquestionably absolute sense, but furthermore comes from within a heroic and action-oriented tradition of Buddhism. Some scholars have viewed this approach as truer to the original teachings of the historical Buddha, in contrast to the quietist, passive, even escapist perception of Buddhism which has gained more widespread acceptance, especially in the West.

The historical Buddha was a member of the warrior class, a Kshatriya. Though he accepted all classes and castes into the sangha he was given to addressing his followers thus “We are Kshatriya, all”. He did this, of course, not to highlight his own caste, but probably to lay emphasis on the qualities of commitment and courage that he required of his disciples. The sutra’s tell us that Siddhartha was a tall man of powerful build, trained in the martial arts, in which he excelled, even defeating other Shakya warriors to prove his worth for the hand of the princess Yashodhara. The warrior’s fearlessness and commitment were evident in his first attempt to achieve enlightenment, and which is powerfully represented in the Gandhara image of the Buddha, after six years of extreme self-mortification had seen his body reduced to skin and bone.

Even after he realized that his first attempt was a failure his warrior’s commitment and courage were never in doubt. The Buddha’s next method, the “Middle Way” was not an excuse for inaction, weakness or impotence. When Siddhartha finally sat under the Bodhi tree he fixed his resolve on the goal of enlightenment with an unshakable resolution. A beautiful and dramatic verse is attributed to him by some early compilers of the sutras. “Let blood dry up, let flesh wither away, but I shall not stir from this spot till Enlightenment be attained.”

A few of the titles by which Siddhartha was known after his enlightenment appear to acknowledge this heroic quality, as in “jina” or “conqueror” and “mahavira” or “great hero (also the title of the founder of Jainism).

The Bodhisattva as hero is delineated clearly in a passage from the Prajnaparimita Sutra where he is said to fearlessly lead all sentient beings out of the deep forests of samsara, fighting of attacks from “inimical forces”. At the end of this passage he asks his disciple Subhuti “If, then, more and more hostile and inimical forces should rise up against him in that forest, would this heroic man decide to abandon his family and take himself alone out of that terrible and frightening forest?” and Subhuti of course replies, “No, O Lord”.

The historical Buddha himself, when stalked by the bandit and murderer Angulimala, chose not to flee or leave the problems to others. Instead he confronted and subdued the killer through what has traditionally been regarded as magical power. No matter how swiftly Angulimala ran after the casually strolling Buddha, he could not catch up with him. About a hundred years earlier the Greek philosopher Zeno posited such a situation in his “time paradox” of Achilles never being able to catch up with a tortoise. These day physicists might explain it as a “Quantum Zeno effect”, the name which E.C.G. Sudarshan and B. Misra coined to describe “the suppression of unitary time evolution caused by quantum decoherence…”

Then there is the story of how in a previous life the Buddha killed a mass-murderer on a ship to save the lives of the other travelers on board. The context in which Buddha told this avadana story to his disciples is interesting and relevant to the overall point I am trying to make. One day a disciple noticed that the Buddha had received a wound on his feet. The disciple asked how this could happen to some one who had attained nirvana. The Buddha then told his disciples the above story. The lesson being that no one can wholly escape the consequence of a violent deed even if its performance is necessary and righteous. But there is another logical corollary to the story, that if the Buddha had chosen, for reasons of cowardice or ethical fastidiousness, not to kill the murderer and not to save those many lives, he would have committed a more far more immoral and evil act.

It is this essentially non-violent yet nuanced and dynamic interpretation of Buddhist action that is completely absent from the passive, comfortable, sanitized, hands-off, and inherently self-serving interpretation of the Dharma dominating much of the contemporary Buddhist world.

A noticeable aspect of this “New Age” Buddhism is its preoccupation with money, celebrity and a kind of low-maintenance intellectualism disseminated in a plethora of unreadable self-help books with catchy Zen style titles (Watching the Watcher, Silent Mind Holy Mind, Living Through Dying and so on). Something like this is, I suppose, prevalent in institutionalized religions worldwide, and is probably a waste of time to work yourself up about it. But I think Tibetans would wholeheartedly join me in condemning Buddhist teachers charging extortionate ticket prices for their sermons, and Dharma centers discouraging, sometimes forbidding, their members from participating in political action, even for the cause of Tibetan freedom and human rights.

And how can you argue with them when even the former prime-minister of the exile government, a Tibetan lama and learned geshe has not only not participated in any Free Tibet demonstrations but has even ordered Tibetans not to demonstrate against Chinese leaders visiting the West. Yet Samdhong Rinpoche was seen on European TV, in 2006, as one of the leaders of a major demonstration against the Swiss company SYNGENTA in India, a leading agri-business company that Indian environmentalists opposed. So perhaps the spiritual lesson here is that political activism is permissible so long as it is fashionable, profitable and does not upset Beijing. The Dalai Lama has publicly joined the opposition to the proposed oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas. I am enough of an environmentalist not to take issue with the Dalai Lama’s initiative, but I wish His Holiness had been as opposed to the Beijing Olympics or China’s “population-transfer” railway line to Tibet.

Yet the most cynical thing I have seen recently, especially in relation to the self-immolations, is a fund raising letter sent out by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), asking people to donate money to it because “…13 Tibetans have set fire to themselves,” This from the organization that opposes the Tibetan independence struggle, and whose senior official wrote in enthusiastic support of China’s condemnation of self-immolation as being against Buddhism.

These days whenever the Dalai Lama is received by any world leader or celebrity with a modicum of civility, Tibetans understandably become enormously pleased and gratified. In our somewhat desperate situation all publicity is regarded as good publicity. We close our eyes to the fact that the leader in question might not actually support our cause or that he or she might be – to use the jargon of the intelligence trade – “an agent of influence” pressuring the Dalai Lama to make one more concession for the “spiritual welfare” of the Chinese Empire and greater profits for international trade.

One world leader who has always received the Dalai Lama with true friendship and who was also resolutely opposed to the Communist Chinese occupation of Tibet, died two days ago. Vaclav Václav’s opposition to Beijing’s tyranny was not confined to the issue of Tibet. When Liu Xiaobo was arrested, Havel (though gravely ill) and other Czech dissidents, attempted to deliver a letter to the Chinese Embassy in January 2010 (before Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize) but found the doors closed and no one to receive it. The BBC reported that “It was an absurd scene that could have come out of one of the plays he wrote in the 1960s, poking fun at the Soviet-backed authorities who ruled his country at the time.”

For Havel was first and foremost a writer and thinker, and not a career politician. In fact under the Communists he spent four and a half years in prison for opposing Czechoslovakia’s Communist government before emerging as a leader of the Velvet Revolution that swept it aside in 1989.

This post is not intended as an eulogy or a discussion of Havel’s literary work, but rather to introduce an important, even game-changing, legacy that he left us Tibetans and other freedom fighters struggling against the oppression and violence of “post-totalitarianism”. This is a term Havel used in his long essay The Power of the Powerless which is in fact a strategic discussion on how to effectively challenge repressive regimes and systems in the post-Stalinist (and Maoist) world.

I cobbled together a simple précis of Havel’s thesis in my post “Seeking the Power of the Powerless” which I wrote after Aung San Suu Kyi was released last year. I would request readers to read (or re-read) the post, and if possible follow it up with a study of Havel’s actual essay. I think it might provide a broader theoretical perspective to our understanding of what is happening inside Tibet, and perhaps help shape the strategy we must adopt to bring about the Rangzen revolution.

Academic scholarship may not generally lend itself to moving or inspirational writing, but there are exceptions. Edward Gibbon’s, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is probably the greatest work of history written in the English language (Hugh Trevor-Roper) and a literary masterpiece praised for its narrative clarity, biting irony and elegant prose. It was a book that woke people up to a whole new way of viewing antiquity, especially in relation to the development of religious institutions – the Christian church in particular. It was also the defining work of history that came out of the European Enlightenment.

Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa’s Advanced Political History of Tibet deals with events, places and personalities that have, of course, less resonance or significance to the rest of the world, especially at the moment when China is being hailed internationally as the next global superpower, and the issue of Tibet has been relegated to a kind of oblivion, more distant and inconsequential (it sometimes appears) than a chariot race at the Hippodrome in ancient Constantinople.

But within it’s own more modest niche of intellectual relevance, Shakabpa’s history should be seen as an inspirational work, one that opened the eyes of Tibetans to their historical past, the memory of which had been systematically and near-effectively erased by Communist propaganda and mind-control (xinao, literally “brainwashing”).

History in totalitarian Tibet

Under Chinese totalitarian control, Tibetans had been subjected to an overpowering indoctrination campaign to make them believe they possessed no history of their own other than a sporadic narrative of slavery[1] and barbarism from which they had been “liberated” by the PLA in 1950. In addition to this and other forms of daily political and psychological indoctrination, the entire population, for roughly over two decades (from 1959 to the early 1980s) endured (at one time or the other) starvation, forced labor, torture, executions and a succession of mass campaigns that reached a crescendo with the savagery and destruction of the Cultural Revolution. By the time Mao died the Tibetan people had been culturally, intellectually and spiritually reduced to a near catatonic state.

A trickle of rumors and disconnected stories, vague and sporadic at best, somehow made its way out of Tibet, even during the height of the Cultural Revolution. But with the slight opening up of the country in the late seventies and early eighties the exile-capital of Dharamshala finally began to get hard information on what had really happened inside Tibet. It was also around then that people in Tibet were finally allowed to communicate with relatives and friends abroad.

An official[2] in the exile government received a message from a cousin who was a senior Communist cadre in Sichuan province. This cadre had attended a special high-level meeting where Shakabpa’s “false” history of Tibet had been discussed. He heard that the “Dalai counterrevolutionary faction” (talé lokchoe shoga) in India had published a very dangerous and subversive book. He asked his relative in India to secretly send him a copy of the book through a trusted courier.

This and other similar incidents made the government-in-exile realize that people inside Tibet wanted to read Shakabpa’s history. At the time the book was printed by the Tibet Cultural Printing Press in Dharamshala. It was cheap but the quality of the printing and paper was woefully substandard. It was also inconvenient for any sort of covert distribution as the book consisted of two thick volumes. But many copies were somehow secretly smuggled into Tibet. I was told that it was later reprinted in Japan in a compact one-volume edition, exclusively for distribution within Tibet. A special thin lightweight paper was used and the font and page size considerably reduced.

In subsequent years, in discussions with other “new arrivals” from Tibet, who had read the book, I received the definite impression that Shakabpa’s history had been not just informative or intellectually enlightening, but possibly even therapeutic in a psychological sense. One person from Lhasa described how he had felt after reading Shakabpa’s history: “nye saypa nang-shing jhe song”, or “it was like being awakened from sleep”. A well-known Tibetan scholar and incarnate lama, Rakra Thupten Chodhar, in a verse of praise for Shakabpa’s history, wrote “You who have taken up and sung this unblemished song of our history/ Have awakened many beings from enduring sleep.”

In his 1973 memoir, Awakenings, the neurologist Oliver Sacks tells the story of the victims of the 1920’s sleeping-sickness (encephalitis lethargica) epidemic, which caused them to remain in a bizarre and deep catatonic states for entire lifetimes. Sacks, who worked in a long-term care facility for these patients used the new drug L Dopa which managed to wake them up, almost miraculously, from decades of “sleep.” In a sense, Shakabpa’s book became the cultural and intellectual L Dopa for Tibetans who had manage to survive Communist Chinese rule but had been intellectually traumatized by the experience.

In the years that followed, Tibetans inside Tibetan once again began to produce works on their history, literature, culture and much else. What was impressive was not only the generally high-standard of these works but also the prolificacy, the sheer quantity of books, journals and articles that came out from Tibet, despite the repressive political atmosphere and state censorship, which though not as totalitarian as before, is still a permanent (though mutating) feature of the Tibetan intellectual landscape. Perhaps it would not be incorrect to say that Shakabpa’s history was probably one of the seminal intellectual inspirations, or at least a vital factor that contributed to the unleashing of this enormous intellectual and cultural energy in Tibet.

The advanced political history

The publication of the English translation of Shakabpa’s two-volume Advanced Political History of Tibet, (which first appeared in Tibetan in 1976), has been eagerly awaited by all students of Tibetan history, especially those like myself who, regrettably, find it easier to read English than Tibetan. Of course, we have had the English language one volume, Tibet: A Political History published by Yale University Press, since1967. It was, without doubt, the most comprehensive one volume history of Tibet we had till then.

Nonetheless, since the Advanced History was published over nine years after the ‘67 Yale history, the author had sufficient time not only to revise, correct and update his initial treatise but also enlarge on it considerably. The structures of the two works are fairly similar, but the Advanced History has a great deal more detail and information. The unhurried pace of the writing of the Advanced History allows Shakabpa to expound on his various source materials, even digressing now and then to make comparisons between some of them on certain dates or facts, which contributes to the readers understanding of the breadth and diversity of Tibetan historical writing.

The first chapter on the “Origins, Culture and Traditions of Tibet”, at more than a hundred dense pages, is by itself a substantial text-book on Tibetan civilization, providing an astonishing wealth of information that even present-day specialists on some these subjects might find useful. Of the many sections (and sub sections) in this chapter alone – all compulsive reading – my favorite is the section “Lhasa the Capital”, where Shakabpa lays out detailed accounts of all the major temples, monasteries, mosques, church (the former), stupas, public buildings, courthouses, monuments, cairns, markets, roads, alleys, bridges, dams, canals, springs, and even the history of the famous giant prayer flag poles (dharchen), which were well-known landmarks in the Lhasa of yesteryear, like the famous Cornhill maypole in London destroyed by Oliver Cromwell.

As only a Tibetan would, Shakabpa describes the various prominent features of the Lhasa landscape essentially by their preternatural resemblance to each of the eight auspicious symbols of Buddhism (tashi-ta-gye), which for all Tibetan, especially the devout pilgrims, are important components of their sacred (geo-mystical) vision of that holy city. In describing “Lhasa’s residents, of high, low, or middle station, (who) were completely carefree”, he does not forget to include the ubiquitous beggars, and recounts how they would spend their mornings begging for food, after which they would sing songs in the street and get drunk by the evening, which he regards as “a marvelous thing.” I have recounted this at some length to give the reader a feel for Shakabpa’s encyclopedic knowledge of Tibet, his traditional, non-western outlook, and the touch of humor and humaneness, present throughout the book.

English translation

The full title of the English translation is One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet, by Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa and translated and annotated by Derek. F. Maher. Published by Brill Tibetan Studies Library, Leiden in 2010, the book has been ably translated by Maher who is the Associate Professor and Director of the Religious Studies Program, at East Carolina University.

There are some minor errors in the translation: “mepo dhampa” Gandhi should not have been translated as “grandfather” Gandhi. The Tibetan term is generally used to mean “founding father” or “father of the nation.” This sentence “The governor of Sikkim, Sir Charles Bell, came to Lhasa to deliver a letter on behalf of the Indian Ambassador” should be “The Political Officer of Sikkim, Sir Charles Bell, came to Lhasa to deliver a letter on behalf of the Viceroy of India.” The phrase “Annual taxes which Castle and estates had to pay…,” should have used the word “district” or “district headquarters” instead of “castle.” The Tibetan world “dzong” can mean castle, but not in this instance. “…The phrase “British government owner of India” should be “government of British India”. Also “makchi” is commander-in-chief not “minister of defense”.

Maher has problems with some of the contractions that Shakabpa uses which is sometimes difficult even for native Tibetan speakers, if they are unacquainted with the source terms. For instance Maher translates “dochi” as Do governor. This is actually the contraction for “do-may chikyap,” or “ the Governor-General of Eastern Tibet”. In the same way Maher’s “do region” should have been translated as Eastern Tibet or Kham. Shakabpa’s contraction of Chakpori is rendered by Maher as “Jakri” mountain, and Ramoche tsuglakhang as “Rache” tsuglakhang, which might be a problem for the non-Tibetan reader.

The English spelling of people and place-names are unnecessarily confusing. Maher should perhaps have stuck to the system used in the Yale history, where Tibetan names were written in the basic phonetic system that earlier scholars on Tibet as Charles Bell, Hugh Richardson and others had used. The Yale history also provides a very useful transliteration of Tibetan names (Wylie system) in the index, which nails down the Tibetan spelling. Maher could have followed this system and used the actual Tibetan script in the index, which is possible these days.

Hence in Maher’s translation the 13^th Dalai Lama’s prime minister, Shatra Paljor Dorje, is written as Shedra or Shedrawa Peljor Dorje. The famous merchant Pangdatsang is rendered variously as Pomda, Pomdabu and Bomdawu. The Dalai Lama’s nephew Drumpa is given as Bhumpa, the resistance leader Andrug Gompo Tashi is written as Amdruk Gompa Tashi, and the Quoshot Mongol ruler of Tibet, Lhasang (or Lhazang) Khan is written as Lozang Khan.

The suffix “wa” or “pa” that often occurs at the end of a name just means “of” or “from” and perhaps should not be included in the translated English text, as they could confuse. The exception being names where such suffixes have become intrinsic through usage. I have put the suffixes in parenthesis to highlight the problem: Shedra(wa) Peljor Dorje, Ngapo(pa) Ngawang Jikme, Namse’ Ling(pa),Tsarong(pa), Gapzhi(wa), Tretong(pa), and the mouthful Troggawo(wa). But this is offered as a suggestion for the reader’s comprehension, and not as a correction.

While on the name of Tretong or rather Tethong, I think it is incumbent on Western (and Chinese) academics not to supplant the specific English spelling that Tibetans themselves have used (since the beginning of the last century) for their names, especially surnames: Tethong, Tsarong, Shatra, Surkhang, Pangdatsang and so on. Melvyn Goldstein in his The Demise of the Lamaist State also transgresses with Norbhu for Norbu, Cawtang for Chogten, Canglocen for Changlochen, Tricang for Trijang, Jayan for Jamyang and Trentong for Tethong.

Maher strays from the norm in spelling certain place-names: Pakri for Phari, Zhikatse’ for Shigatse, Du..ne’ for Thuna, “Trashi” lhunpo for Tashilhunpo, and Gulok for Golok. Tibetan pronunciation of Chinese and Indian place names should not have been carried over to the translation, as “Lendru” for Lanzhou (or Lanchow), “Drungchin” for Chongqing (or Chungking) and “Drintu” for Chengdu. Kurseong, in Darjeeling district is given as “Kharshang”, though Maher correctly renders Shakabpa’s contraction “Ka-Bug” as Kalimpong. There is also some confusion with the names of British officials. Shakabpa’s Mr. Pal and Mr. War are probably A.W. Paul and J.C. White.

Maher cannot avoid the problem that even Tibetans have with the lack of spacing between printed words, which sometimes causes people to read suffixes for prefixes (and vice versa) among other things. Maher’s Elha Gyari should be E’ Lhagyari, Tögar Pön Gapzhi should be Tö Garpon Gapzhi, Gartong Tsen should be Gar Tongtsen and Lhato Tori Nyentsen should be Lha-totori-Nyentsen.

The historian’s purpose

Shakabpa, in the introduction to this book, is clear about his purpose in writing his history. He did not see it just as a “neutral” academic work but as a means of making the world understand the true independent status of Tibet. I may be challenged on this, but I am convinced that this patriotic declaration of intent gives Shakabpa’s work its intellectual clarity and strength. Whether you agree or disagree with him on this one or other statement or opinion, it is clear that Shakabpa has no hidden agenda, nor that he is laying claims to the kind of rarified objectivity that quite a few academics in Tibetan studies insist on making about their work, which I feel only serves to demonstrates the accuracy of Lun Xun’s observation that “whoever thinks he is objective must already be half drunk.”

Shakabpa in his introduction clearly tells us that the inspiration to write his history was a patriotic one. In January 1946 he traveled to India and Nepal with his family on a pilgrimage, at the cusp of the freedom struggle, the year before India became independent. Shakabpa was in Bombay at the time when the Congress organized a mammoth political rally at the Gateway of India where Nehru, Patel, Sarojini Naidu and other nationalist leaders addressed the enormous gathering. Shakabpa was profoundly moved by the experience, and by the passion and dedication of the Indian people. It was then that the idea of writing a political history of Tibet first began to take shape.

He had earlier, in 1931 as a junior official in Lhasa, been summoned by his uncle the senior minister Trimon, who presented him with a pristine khadag and a large collection of documents relating to the 1914 Simla conference, which Trimon had attended as assistant to the Prime Minister Shatra. After a long conversation Trimon told his young nephew that he should study these important documents and consider writing a political history of Tibet. Shakabpa mentions that he enjoyed reading biographies, histories and the Gesar epic, but he did not take his uncle’s request seriously at the time. His later Indian experience finally focused his mind on the idea of writing a political history of Tibet.

This is perhaps a convenient point to provide the reader a brief account of Shakabpa’s official career. He became a tsepon or Finance Secretary, in 1939, and also headed the national mint at Drapchi. In 1947 he headed the Tibet Trade Mission that visited India, China, USA and Britain which had a “two-pronged aim to develop trade relations with the West as well as propagate (the fact of) Tibet’s independence.”[3] He met and spoke with such world leaders as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Secretary of State General George Marshal, Prime Minister Clement Attlee, and also Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. In September 1950, Shakabpa was sent by the Tibetan government to open negotiations with China, to forestall the imminent invasion of Tibet by Communist China. But his efforts were to no avail and a month later on 6th October 1950 the PLA attacked the small Tibetan force at Chamdo. Shakabpa remained in India after the invasion and began to write his political history.

In Kalimpong he also joined forces with Gyalo Thondup and another official and launched the “Tibetan Welfare Organization” to carry on the freedom struggle from outside. This clandestine organization managed to provide support to resistance groups within Tibet, and also made the first connection with the CIA. After the 1959 Uprising, Shakabpa and Gyalo Thondup travelled to New York to present Tibet’s case before the General Assembly of the United Nations. Through the sponsorship of Ireland and Malaya, and the support of the United States and other nations, three resolutions on Tibet were eventually passed. In 1963 Shakabpa resigned from official duties to complete his history. He died on February 23, 1989.

Rinchen Sadutsang, Shakabpa and Gyalo Thondup in New York

“Nationalist” historian?

Because of Shakabpa’s “patriotic declaration of intent” that I mentioned earlier, and the deep love for Tibet that manifestly pervades his work, I have on occasion heard Shakabpa being referred to as a “nationalist historian”, with the unstated pejorative that accompanies the label. Besides the fact that patriotism is here being confused with nationalism, I think that such a viewpoint demonstrates a lack of understanding of the political mentality of people who lived in a pre-modern society. Orwell wrote that “… the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written is peculiar to our own age” by which Orwell meant the age of modern nationalism – of Hitler, Stalin, even Mao – and by extension the present era of Chinese neo-nationalism: from the official minzuzhuyi to the fenqing phenomenon.

Shakabpa comes from an age far earlier than the period of the Great War that Orwell was discussing in that passage, not in time of course, but in the pre-industrial and medieval nature of traditional Tibetan society and government. Because Shakabpa is such a capable historian and moreover as his book first came out in English, many readers unconsciously assume that he was someone with a modern or Western education. And this where I find reading Shakabpa such a fascinating experience.

His patriotism is of an old fashioned kind, lacking the self-righteous vitriol of the modern nationalist. He is incapable of the kind of calculated dishonesty and aggressive, even abusive language that pervades present-day Chinese writing on Tibetan history. Shakabpa is so old world that when discussing the emperors of China, the leaders of the PRC, or even the much hated Manchu ambans, he provides proper titles and does not allow himself any passing barb or ideological labeling, so ubiquitous in “nationalist” historiography in general, and which at times, even slips through in Western academic writings on Tibet.

Shakabpa, like many other Lhasa aristocrats, seemed to have been involved in the factional politics of his time. In the forties he belonged to the group supporting the Taktra regency and was opposed to the former regent, Reting. Yet in his history he is conscientiously fair to both sides, as Hugh Richardson notes: “Tsipon Shakabpa, although to some extent parti pris as an important official and as a kinsman of the Changkyim bKa’-lon bla-ma whom the ex-regent had brusquely dismissed from office in 1940, provides well-informed and balanced information.”[4]

Later in Kalimpong, Shakabpa allied himself with the Dalai Lama’s brother Gyalo Thondup and they were sometimes in disagreement, if not competition, with the exiled Prime Minister Lukhangwa. Yet Shakabpa not only describes, at great length, the many occasions that Lukhangwa courageously stood up to the Communists in Lhasa but also his later work in Kalimpong in attempting to unify Tibetan refugees and exiles, and petitioning the government of India to allow the Dalai Lama sanctuary in India. I mention this since I had earlier written critically of the exile leadership (including Shakabpa and Gyalo Thodup) for its shabby treatment of Lukhangwa, especially during the period before his death.[5]

Corrections and revisions are part of any scholar’s intellectual regimen, though perhaps not to the point where one feels obliged to highlight earlier mistakes. But Shakabpa is painfully honest. One example, in the Advanced History Shakabpa “confesses” to an error in his previous work. “I wrote that Regent Demo was susceptible to occasional mental disorders. That statement was mistaken. The person referred to as the ‘crazy Demo’ seems to have lived from 1825 until 1860. He did not serve as the regent.”[6]

The native historians we have had in the 20^th century from Africa, India, the Middle East and even China, were (or are) all scholars educated in a modern if not Western milieu. Probably the only non-Western contemporary historian we have who was completely educated and formed in his own traditional society is Shakabpa. In this he is a rara avis, a curiosity, a genuine throwback to a pre-nationalistic age, where for all its many drawbacks, the idea “that history could be written truthfully…” as Orwell points out in his essay “Looking Back at the Spanish War”, … had not been entirely abandoned.

Tibetan historical tradition

The fact of Shakabpa being a traditional historian is important for Tibetans to appreciate. It goes to demonstrate that, accomplished as Shakabpa was as a historian, he did not emerge from an intellectual vacuum. That, despite propaganda to the contrary, Tibet had a long and sophisticated tradition of history writing, on which, in large measure, Tsepon Shakabpa built his great work.

The late scholar on Tibet and Bhutan, Michael Aris of Oxford had this to say of the Tibetan historical tradition “… it is clear that, by comparison with many other peoples of the east or west, they (Tibetans) maintain a high level of historical consciousness and a deep sense of the vitality of the living past”.[7] He also points out the intellectual rigor of that tradition “For instance when writing his monumental history of Amdo, The Ocean Annals, (dhepter gyamtso) completed in 1865, the author Dra-gon Konchog,[8] provides a list of no less than six hundred or so sources he had consulted for this work.”

To get a feel for this enormous “ocean” (gyamtso) of indigenous historical writing one should browse through Tibetan Histories[9], by Dan Martin, a former student of Taktser Rimpoche and an accomplished Tibet scholar. This bibliography provide valuable information on over seven hundred Tibetan-language historical works. The listing does not include biographies, and old Tibetan works of historical nature and documentary sources generally referred to as the Dunhuang documents. This book is out of print but you can access it on Google books. The author has also worked on updating and correcting his opus, even adding another couple of hundred entries. Dan Martin also provides a useful breakdown of the various genres in Tibetan historical writing, which readers will find enlightening. Also invaluable in this regard is “Tibetan Historiography” by Leonard W.J. Van der Kuijp in the collection, Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, a recommended vade mecum for all Tibetan scholars, historians, poets and writers.

One of the reasons that led to Gibbon being called “the first modern historian of ancient Rome” was his unprecedented and extensive use of primary sources, among other things. Shakabpa’s work is invaluable to us because of the enormous archival sources he had access to (and which he fully utilized in his tome) and which probably no Tibetan historian till then, and certainly no Western scholar had had the opportunity to use. The most important of these are, of course, the various official archives in Lhasa and other centers and monasteries, now inaccessible to exile Tibetan and international scholars, but which in recent years have been partially and intermittently opened to a select few Chinese and Tibetan academics. Shakabpa also gained access to other sources such as the royal archives in Bhutan, Kathmandu and Sikkim, the Bihar Research Society Library in Patna, the National Archives in New Delhi, and other libraries and archives in London, New York, Washington D.C., and Paris.

Though a traditional scholar Shakabpa was able to personally meet and draw upon the knowledge of international experts as Peter Aufschnieter, the anthropologist Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, Hugh Richardson, R.A Stein, Guiseppe Tucci, Rahul Sankrityayan, Turrell Wylie and Luciano Petech. He also seems to have met such present-day scholars as Mathew Kapstein and David Jackson (both of whom pleasantly surprised him by speaking to him in Tibetan) and others.

Of course Shakabpa’s access to the important Tibetan personalities in modern Tibetan history was, enviably, in a class of its own. But he was even able to consult and discuss his work with a large number of great Tibetan scholars and historians. First of all there was his uncle the minister Trimon who was a participant in the Simla conference, as well as the 13^th Dalai Lama’s physician Ngoshi Jampa Thubwang who accompanied His Holiness to Darjeeing. Later there were other eminent scholars as Trijang Rimpoche, Khunu Tenzin Gyaltsen Rimpoche, Dhingo Khentse Rimpoche, Dudjom Rimpoche, Banyak Athing, and many others that Shakabpa unfailingly acknowledges and thanks throughout his book.

Besides the affinity to Gibbon in his pioneering use of primary sources, Shakabpa’s history might be lauded for its literary merits. I am not qualified to make this evaluation but many Tibetan intellectuals whose judgment I respect, and indeed his own translator, were struck by how “The book is quite beautifully written, with rich poetic expression, extensive vocabulary, and often clever and amusing adages and similes. The Tibetan text makes very wide use of quotations, and so as the narrative moves through the centuries, it employs many distinct styles of Tibetan.”

The Shakabpa lectures

Of course, as much as I do not read Tibetan well enough to appreciate Shakabpa’s qualities as a writer, there are many young Tibetans who would find it daunting, for one reason or the other to plough through the massive Advanced History, even in its English translation. For them and for all the older Tibetans who may be literate in their own language but find it difficult to read scholarly tomes, I can provide a solution that is not only convenient and enjoyable, but eminently traditional as well.

In 1985 Shakabpa gave a lengthy series of lectures at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA) at Dharamshala. For about two months, from March 22 to May 18 he lectured daily, probably from nine to three (four?) pm, five days a week. It wasn’t really a lecture series in the Western academic sense but more of an expository teaching, of the kind that Tibetan lamas give to their follower, where using a Buddhist work, say Nagarjuna’s Commentary on Bodhicitta (jangchup semdrel), the lama will read passages from the text and then launch into lengthy explanations.

I don’t know of any lama who has done this for approximately 250 near-continuous hours as Shakabpa did in Dharamshala. He read passages from his Advanced History and then analyzed and expounded on the events and personalities at length, and explained his source materials. He also went into lengthy discussions on controversies and even associated gossip and rumors, which he could not have included in his book. Unlike religious teachings, Shakabpa also took questions, first thing in the morning, on what he had discussed the previous day. It was all wonderfully fascinating stuff. And the very fortunate thing is that the LTWA made high quality audio recordings of this work, now available on DVD/CD.

I have downloaded the digital files on my IPod and listen to them when I’m at the gym or I am driving, especially long distances. I would strongly advise all Tibetans to buy the CD’s from Dharamshala. I know many Tibetans in Europe and America have parents who feel bored, lost and isolated living in the West. Even if, let us say, your pala or amala may not be intellectually inclined, just hearing Shakabpa’s voice, his impeccable Tibetan and his Lhasa dialect, should give them much joy. He is not a dry-as-dust pedant, but someone with a great sense of fun, and a fund of amazing stories and anecdotes about their homeland, many of which they’ve probably never heard before. At one point Shakabpa even sings the old accountant’s song – for he had started his official career in the financial department. His voice quavers slightly, but considering his then 78 years, he manages surprisingly well. A notebook and pencil are essential for profitable listening. Just the incidental information he unconsciously drops throughout the lectures adds up to a treasure trove (ter-dzoe). Did you know bananas grew in Tibet and were called “hangla”?

A critical disagreement

I find it difficult to find fault with an author who has given me so much knowledge and even pleasure. Once upon a time I might have frowned on Shakabpa’s inclusion of dragons and snow-lions in his list of Tibetan fauna, but these days I am just delighted at the impressive textual references he unearths to support such improbabilities; one of them even being a pecha published by my grandfather, a biography of the 6^th Dalai Lama, in which there is mention of one of his entourage seeing such a fabulous beast.

But if I have to take issue with Shakabpa on one thing, it is on his view that the “patron-priest” (cho-yon) relationship was a mutually beneficial alliance that a free and independent Tibet maintained with the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and later the Manchu Qing Dynasty. And that only during the latter period of the Manchu Empire and under the Nationalist government “a perverse understanding of the preceptor-patron relationship between China and Tibet developed,” and Tibet’s independent status was violated.

Of course, Shakabpa was unbending in his insistence on the issue of Tibetan independence, which is directly at odds with present day advocates of cho-yon who only require Tibet to be an “autonomous entity” within the PRC. Nonetheless, what Shakabpa fails to grasp is that such a relation between a militarily and economically powerful empire and a weaker dependent state, even if the latter received some form of spiritual consideration, even respect, is essentially a relationship between unequal partners, hence a relationship between an overlord power and a protectorate or a colony.

Of course, there were instances in the relationship, as between the Ming court and the 5^th Karmapa, when Chinese sovereignty over Tibet was non-existent, as the authoritative scholar on Sino-Tibetan relations, Elliot Sperling, pointed out to me. We also have the historical case that official exile publications often cite, where the Shunzhi emperor received the 5^th Dalai as an equal sovereign. But such instances were the exception. The overriding reason why such a pernicious relationship as the patron-priest institution was accepted on the Tibetan side, besides the fact of China’s military dominance, was the economic and political advantages it conferred on the Tibetan clergy.

But Shakabpa as a traditional scholar, steeped in his Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, regarded the relationship as a unique one without parallel in Western history, and that “…(the) Westerners’ manner of approaching political affairs cannot explain this situation.” Shakabpa may be excused for this conviction as even a European writing on Tibetan history as Michael Van Walt claims that Tibet’s Cho-Yon relationship with the Yuan and Qing was sui generis, or without origins in any other system. Van Walt cites Shakabpa, but perhaps a reading of European history would have been in order.

Theodor Mommsen in discussing the Roman province of Judaea noted that the region “… had long before the Roman period developed under the government of the Selucids the so-called Mosaic theocracy, a clerical corporation with the high priest at its head, which, acquiescing in foreign rule and renouncing the formation of a state guarded the distinctiveness of its adherents, and dominated them under the aegis of the protecting power.”[10] Then we have the long conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, and every other possible variation on the patron-priest relationship being played out in European politics, up to the time of Mussolini and the Lateran Treaties (1929) when the sovereignty, power and position of the Holy See was finally settled, ending the “Roman Question.”

Criticism, “struggle” & politics

The most hostile and extensive body of critical writing on Shakabpa’s history has come largely from inside the PRC. In exile society there was, for a time, much show of appreciation for the man and his work but little intellectual discussion. In the last couple of decades, he has been studiously ignored. The Tibetan world these days is one filled with awards and honors, but I don’t think Shakabpa ever received anything, official or otherwise. Hence this review essay is my one-man Festschrift for Tibet’s greatest modern historian. Perhaps I should use the term Gedenkschrift, since this is more in the way of a memorial than a celebration.

Such a memorial, recalling his unequaled contribution to Tibetan historiography is necessary since he was attacked, posthumously, a few years ago, with a degree of viciousness and dishonesty that even his Communist Chinese critics could not quite achieve. A former member of the exile-parliament and scholar from Amdo, Hortsang Jigme, accused Shakabpa, in print[11], of basing his entire history on writings and manuscripts stolen from the great Amdo scholar and poet, Gendun Chophel (GC). He claims that the aristocrat Kapshopa had acquired drafts of GC’s historical texts and had divided up these copies of GC’s writings with Shakabpa who used them in his Political History. Hortsang Jigme does not provide anything in the way of credible evidence to back up his claims. One “proof” he offers is that that the full title of GC’s work is The White Annals: A History of Greater Tibet as Concerns its Political Traditions, but that strangely enough Shakabpa’s work “…has the title Tibet: A Political History, on the cover of his book”. The irrefutable connection between the two books presumably being the two words “political” and “history”. Hortsang Jigme sarcastically remarks “…isn’t this a sign of knowing how to steal, but not knowing how to cover it up.” The overall language and reasoning of Hortsang Jigme’s diatribe serves only to remind us of the nastiness, the dishonesty and the mind-numbing inanity of Cultural Revolution rhetoric, that even after four decades still unfortunately lingers on in Tibetan political and intellectual discourse.

Simpleminded Tibetans believe that GC had built an airplane out of leather and wood and even flown it over the Jangthang. Within this corpus of fantastic tales about GC, is one that he had written a political history of Tibet that absolutely and incontrovertibly proved Tibet’s independence and which on production before the UN would have compelled China to leave Tibet. Tragically this history was lost or stolen. Even some educated Tibetans buy into this story, or at least a part of it. Samten Norboo who translated the White Annals into English mentions in his introduction that “According to the testimony of Professor Ngawang Jinpa of St.Joseph’s College, Darjeeling, this large compilation had been completed and the manuscript in the custody of Mr. Ma-nang A-po, an associate of the author. Unfortunately we have lost track of the manuscript, following the demise of Mr.A-po.”[12]

Probably the most authoritative account of GC’s life during this tragic period is the one written by Sherab Gyatso, who was his student, close friend and constant companion, especially during the last years of his life.[13] (Note: this is not the geshe Sherab Gyatso who was GC’s dialectics teacher at Drepung) “This biography has been cited by Western and Tibetan scholars who have written about GC’s life and works.”[14] Sherab Gyatso mentions that GC’s aristocratic patron and close friend Horkhang, put together and copied such works as the White Annals from GC’s notes and jottings. During his imprisonment GC sent a message to Horkhang telling him to stop his copying and write at the end of the history, “The unfinished composition of the Tibetan history is concluded for the time being.”[15] No further reference is to made to the history by Sherab Gyatso. There are only two other biographical accounts of GC by people who actually knew him personally and were around him during this period. One is by his student and patron Horkhang (who published The White Annals), and the other Rakra Thupten Chodar, an incarnate lama who studied under him. Both biographies make no mention of GC’s manuscript being stolen, much less by Shakabpa.

Sherab Gyatso only mentions Shakabpa once and that in a very positive light “One day I received a letter from prison. GC had written, ‘I have heard that Shakabpa is well acquainted with Tagdra (the regent). See if you can ask for my release through him.’ I visited Shakabpa, who said, ‘The case has been sent to Neushar Thuptan Tharpa, the official of the Foreign Affairs office. Now it won’t take long.’ Just as he said GC got out of prison after about seven or eight days.”[16]

Sherab Gyatso mentions what happened after his friend’s release “At about this time, the cabinet of the Tibetan Government gave GC a coupon to get three khal of grain and a little money for tea and butter per month.”[17].

Professor Donald Lopez who has authored two books on GC’s writings does not mention any official conspiracy to steal GC’s manuscript or to prevent him from writing his history. Lopez states that after GC was released from prison “The government eventually provided him with rooms behind the Jokhang, above the Ministry of Agriculture, along with a stipend of money and grain, with the instruction that he resume work on The White Annals. He did not do so. Anecdotes from this period deal for the most part with his heavy drinking…”[18]

But the most convincing argument against GC’s work being stolen by Shakabpa is that whatever historical material GC had, and whatever he had written, was exclusively about the early imperial age. Shakabpa on the other hand only devotes one chapter to this period. In this chapter his sources are the standard Tibetan histories, and Western and Chinese sources. On a number of occasions he quotes from Gedun Chophel’s White Annals, and respectfully refers to the author as “khewang” or “great scholar”. The bulk of Shakabpa’s history, is based on archival material, which he had access to as an official, and which Gedun Chophel as a “mendicant” poet and scholar from distant Amdo, absolutely did not.

Why didn’t the government-in-exile speak out against this attack on its official history and official historian? In 1988, Shakabpa, in the most respectful way possible, expressed his disagreement with the Strasburg Statement. I was told he was in tears when he heard that the Dalai Lama had surrendered the cause of an independent Tibet. That same year he and another scholar, Yonten Gyatso, co-authored a small booklet that they printed and secretly distributed throughout Tibet, “urging the Tibetan people to continue their struggle for independence”.[19] In the atmosphere of sycophancy and intrigue in Dharamshala, such an initiative could have been deliberately misconstrued as “opposing the Dalai Lama” (Gyalwa Rimpoche la ngogoe), and it is possible that the attack on Shakabpa had official approval, if not encouragement. Another Tibetan who opposed the Strasburg Statement (namely myself) was also attacked by Hortsang Jigme, this time in a pamphlet in 2003.[20] This publication even featured an official introduction by the kashag secretariat, seal and all.

Re-awakening Tibetan history

Hence Shakabpa’s history can be read not merely as a record of the past but as a powerful revolutionary document, that even now, twenty-two years after the author’s death, is deeply disturbing to Beijing, and which frustrates and confounds those Tibetans attempting a final handover of Tibetan sovereignty to China.

One reason why so many in exile seem so unconcerned, so blasé about giving up the struggle for independence stems, in large part, from their appalling ignorance of Tibet’s history. It is not just that history was and is so badly taught in Tibetan schools, but also arises from the near absence (these days) of history being valued as an intellectual or literary activity. If you go to the website of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, our premier academic institution, you will find it divided into ten departments, including even a Science department – but no History.

It is this ignorance of, even contempt for, history which I feel is the source of those bizarre statements emanating from the likes of our former prime-minister Samdong Rimpoche, as that “the Tibetan issue is the internal affair of China”, and from the Dalai Lama that Tibet had to be a part of China because it was a “landlocked country.” In the past the Gelukpa church regarded history as an unnecessary distraction, and discouraged monks and geshes from reading historical works. When His Holiness visited Paris in 1988 (9?) he was received by such eminent French Tibetologists as R.A. Stein, Madame Macdonald and others at the Institut National des Langues et Cultures Orientales (INALCO), one of France’s grands établissements. They showed him the research they had been conducting on ancient Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang, a specialty field of French scholars in the world of Tibetan Studies. His Holiness, I believe, told them that it would be more useful if they studied Buddhist texts.

I began this long essay by describing how Shakabpa’s history seemed to have helped awaken all those people in Tibet who had been reduced to a “catatonic”, or to put it in Buddhist terms a near “yidak” or “preta”, condition under Communist indoctrination and oppression. But it has become evident that since 1987, 1989, 2008, and now this year, the people in Tibet are all wide-awake. Their courage, commitment and sacrifices have more than demonstrated this to the whole world.

This time around it is those of us in exile (especially the leadership) who need to be awakened from our current sleep-walk along a very treacherous path. But, of course, there is no need to look far for a bracing wake-me-up and a fresh set of directions. In the last line of the author’s preface, Shakabpa tells us exactly what he wants his history to accomplish: “It is my fondest wish that this book will be like a compass that indicates the path to recovering our independence.”

(This essay was written during my residency at the International Writer’s Program at the University of Iowa. I would like to thank the Writer’s Program and the Shelly & Donald Rubin Foundation, for their support. Professor Elliot Sperling took time off from his busy schedule to go through my work and offer valuable criticism and suggestions.)

* * *

Notes

[1] Chinese Communist propaganda has, on little evidence, insisted on describing traditional Tibetan society as a “slave society.” Marxist theory of historical materialism identifies five successive stages of human history, the second stage being “slave society”. Since pre-revolutionary China was, according to official Communist doctrine, on the more advanced third stage of “feudalism”, Tibet could be depicted as being an entire historical stage behind China – even feudal China.

[2] I received this information in a telephone conversation with Dzachutsang Sonam Topgyal, a former prime-minister of the exile government, who was the secretary of the Department of Information of the exile government, when Tibet first began to open up in the mid eighties.

[3] Karma Gyatsho, “Tsepon Wangchuk Deden shakabpa (1908-89): A Brief Biography”, Tibet Journal, Vol XVI No.2 Summer 1991, Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, Dharamshala.

[4] H.E Richardson “The Ra-sgreng Conspiracy of 1947”, in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson. Proceedings of the International Seminar on Tibetan Studies Oxford 1979. Editors Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi, Aris & Philips Ltd. Warminister England, 1980.

[5] Jamyang Norbu, “Moulting of the Peking Duck”, Tibetan Review, April 1979.

[6] Shakabpa, One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet, Brill Tibetan Studies Library, Leiden, 2010. p. 565

[7] Dan Martin (with Yael Bentor), Tibetan Histories: A Bibliography of Tibetan-Language Historical Works, Serindia, London, 1997.

[8] Brag-dgon Dkon-mchog-bstan-pa-rab-rgyas (b. 1800/ 1-1866), Deb-ther Rgya-mtsho (A mdo Chos-‘byung, Yul Mdo-smad-kyi Ljongs-su thub-bstan Rin-po-che Ji-ltar Dar-ba’I tshul Gsal-bar brjod-pa deb-ther Rgya-tsho). Published with Added English title: The Ocean Annals of Amdo, ed. By Lokesh Chandra (new Delhi 1975), in 3 volumes.

[9] Dan Martin. Ibid.

[10] Theodor Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire. First published 1885, republished 1909, Barnes & Noble, USA, Page 161.

[11] Hortsang Jigme, Drang den gyis lus pae slong mo wa. (The Beggar Beguiled by Truth), Chapter 16. “A Brief Inquiry Into the Question of Who Wrote Tibet: A Political History.”

[12] Samten Norboo, The White Annals (translation) LTWA Dharamshala, 1978. p 11.

[13] Irmgard Mengele, dGe-‘dun-chos-‘phel: A Biography of the 20^th Century Tibetan Scholar, Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, Dharamshala, 1999. This work is based on the biography of Gedun Chophel written by Sherab Gyatso in 1972 and published in the Biographical Dictionary of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, Dharamshala, 1973 .

[14] Mengele, p. 17

[15] Mengele p. 74

[16] Mengele. p. 68

[17] Mengele. p.72

[18] Donald S. Lopez Jr. The Madman’s Middle Way. University of Chicago Press, 2006. P45.

[19] Tsipon Shakabpa, & Yonten Gyatso, The Nectar of the Immortal Gods Inducing Recollection in the Bretheren Living at Home in the the Three Provinces of Tibet and Living in Exile. Published by the authors and distributed secretly in Tibet. 1988.

[20] Hortsang Jigme, Jam dbyangs nor bu rjes ‘brang dang bcas pa’i grib ma dgrar lang la brtags pa’i tshoms, Dharamshala, 2003.

In 1946 when the Muslim League declared “Direct Action Day” and some of the most horrendous and large scale Hindu-Muslim violence erupted throughout India, one of the worst hit areas was the Noakhali district of Bengal. Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot through village after village in this district, in an angry and hostile atmosphere, trying to persuade people to take a pledge not to kill others. Some strewed thorns and filth in his path and one man even physically attacked him. Gandhi was then 77, but undaunted kept on with his march for peace. Even in this darkest and seemingly most hopeless moment of his life, he was single-mindedly action-oriented. He was heard constantly murmuring to himself.

“Kya karoon? Kya karoon?” “What must I do? What must I do?” A biographer noted: “At that moment, he was magnificent.”

Tibetans all over the world are asking that question in the wake of the “fire protests” of the eight young monks and, today, of the nun, Tenzing Wangmo (age 20) in Ngaba. Demonstrations, stand-ins, vigils, marches, hunger-strikes, petitions and signature drives have been organized in Minnesota, New York, Dharamshala, Taiwan, London, New Delhi, Geneva, Paris, and other cities.

In Tibet itself the acts of self-immolation have not taken place in isolation. and protests have been reported in the surrounding region and the calls for wider protests are growing. Four days ago two Tibetans were shot by Chinese troops during a protest outside a police station in another part of Sichuan province. Woser la has been blogging incessantly and so have other Tibetan writers and bloggers in Tibet and China, Check out High Peaks Pure Earth for an English translation of a poem “Mourning” by the blogger Sengdor which appeared on October 11th.

But little notice has been paid by the world to the “fire-protests” in Tibet, there has only been some passing references on CNN, and a couple of brief reports in the BBC. Of course the world media has never been noticeably outspoken or brave when it comes to reporting on Tibet and China, but that is a given. I think that something else is using up all the available media oxygen at the moment. The “Occupy Wall Street” protests have spread to over sixty cities worldwide and show every sign of getting bigger and noisier by the week. I am completely supportive of this protest, and since the issue is one that affects everyone (whether you support the protestors or not) it is going to dominate the headlines for weeks to come. That’s why in my previous posting I suggested that our biggest demonstration of support to the people in Tibet should be five months from now on 10th March 2012. But I absolutely support the demands of feistier spirits that we have to do something right now

So what can we do?

A Tibet activist in Switzerland has come up with a brilliant idea. The beauty of the scheme is it’s unbelievable simplicity:

• It needs no more than two people to execute.
• It takes little time, about ten to twenty minutes at the most.
• It is completely legal and not unsafe in any way.
• It requires no resources other than a piece of chalk and a digital (cellphone) camera.
• Each action, like an individual brick in a building, has a definite and structurally important place in the overall success of the project.

And that’s it. I am not kidding.

Go to www.chalktibet.org If you go to the site and click on the “How does it work…?” Tab you’ll get the instructions. This action can be done on the fringes of an organized demonstration, at periodic moments during a march, or at any opportune time and place (preferably a place with a lot of foot traffic, where people will gather and look on). This action began in Switzerland and is now being taken global. Join in! And pass on the web address to all your friends, support groups or other interested parties!

Here are the instructions (from the site):

________________________

How does it work…?

The recent self-immolation protests that took place in occupied Tibet call us to action! We can’t remain silent, yet what can we do to effectively generate broad awareness of the tragic situation in Tibet that is driving Tibetans to such desperate measures? Well, here is one simple, yet thought-provoking action that can be undertaken very easily, at no cost and with little time:
Using a simple piece of chalk, let’s outline the Tibetan dead in our streets.
The objective of this action is to generate the buzz which will cause it to go viral, along the lines of guerrilla marketing. This means that your particular action in this campaign needs to be shared among your friends and, via a dedicated website, among larger online communities.

How to proceed

This powerful action requires very little: two persons, one piece of chalk and a camera. Here’s how to do it:

1. Choose a busy spot or a place with symbolic significance in your own town or city.
2. One person lies flat on the ground, as if he or she were a dead body (this should draw much attention by itself).
3. The other person draws a chalk outline of the body.
4. Tape a piece of paper with a message inside the chalk outline or write the message directly on the ground with chalk. A typical message might read “Once again this morning [or yesterday, or last week] a Tibetan committed self-immolation in Tibet in protest against China’s brutal occupation”.
5. Take a photo of the scene.
6. Post the photo on www.chalktibet.org and on your favorite social networks, requesting your friends to do the same in their own towns and cities.

_________________________

A few suggestions of mine (JN) for color, identification and variety. Just one idea per photo. Keep it simple. Think up some new ones.

• Stick a small paper Tibetan flag inside the outline. Maybe at the head?
• Put the (framed) photographs of the the nine in the outline.
• Place some flowers, wreaths and khatags inside the chalk lines
• Spread some ash or make scorch marks within the outline.
• Have a monk meditating within the chalkline.
• Try for a little background in the shot: bystanders and something to suggest the place. But don’t sweat it. The outline comes first.

I believe these and other actions and projects will draw the attention of people the world over to the sacrifice of the young nun and monks and their demands for freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet. I believe that all the many marches, protests and future demonstrations will contribute to igniting a Rangzen revolution throughout Tibet. I believe that in the not too distant future the Chinese Empire will “wither away” as all evil empires have invariably done so, and I believe I will have an opportunity to make a small contribution to the creation of an independent democratic Tibet.

Gandhi told me so. “Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

སྔ་ལོའི་ཟླ་བཅུ་གཉིས་ པའི་ཟླ་དཀྱིལ་ཙམ་ལ། སྲང་ལམ་གྱི་ཤིང་ཏོག་དང་ཚལ་རིགས་བཙོང་མཁན་གྱི་ཊུ་ནི་ཤེ་ཡའི་མི་ཉམ་ཆུང་ མོ་ཧ་མཱ་ཌི་ བྷོ་ཛི་ཛི་ཟེར་བ་ཞིག་གིས་ ས་གནས་ཀྱི་ཉེན་རྟོག་པ་དང་ལས་བྱེད་ཚོས་ཉིན་རྟག་པར་ཁོང་ལ་ཐུབ་ཚོད་དང་བརྙས་ བཅོས་བྱས་པ་དང་། ཁོང་གི་ཐོན་རྫས་རྣམས་གཞུང་བཞེས་བྱས་པ་ལ་ངོ་རྒོལ་བྱེད་ཆེད་རང་ཉིད་མེར་སྲེག་ བྱས་པ་རེད། ཁོང་གི་ལས་འགུལ་དེས་ཊུ་ནི་ཤེ་ཡའི་ས་ཆ་གང་སར་ངོ་རྒོལ་དང་འཕྲོག་བཅོམ་ཁྱབ་པར་ གྱུར་པ་དེ་ཚོ་ ཟླ་དང་པོའི་ཚེས་ ༤ ཉིན་ བྷོ་ཛི་ཛི་ཤི་རྐྱེན་གྱིས་ཤུགས་ཇེ་ཆེར་སོང་ཞིང་། དེས་ མི་ལོ་ ༢༣ རིང་བཙན་དབང་བྱས་པའི་སྲིད་འཛིན་དང་དེའི་མགོ་འཁྲིད་རྣམས་ལུང་པ་བཞག་ནས་འབྲོ་ དགོས་བཟོས་པ་རེད།

འདི་དང་དེའི་རྗེས་འབྲེལ་གྱི་ལས་འགུལ་རྣམས་ལ་ “མེ་ཏོག་ཨ་ཀར་གྱི་གསར་བརྗེ་”དང་ཡང་ན་ “ཨ་རབ་དཔྱིད་ཀ་”ཟེར་ ཞིང་། དེའི་འབྲས་བུར་ཨི་ཇིབ་ནང་གི་ཞི་རྒོལ་གྱི་གསར་བརྗེ་དང་ལི་བྷི་ཡའི་ནང་གི་དྲག་ པོའི་གྱེན་ལངས་༼དེའི་འབྲས་བུར་རང་གི་སྲིད་དབང་སྒེར་འཛིན་པ་འགྱེལ་བཅུག་པ་༽། བྷ་རཱེན་དང་སི་རི་ཡ། ཡེ་མན་བཅས་ཀྱི་ནང་དུ་མི་མང་གྱེན་ལངས་དང་། ཨི་སི་རེལ་དང་ཨེ་རག ཇོར་ལྡན། མོ་རོ་ཁོ། ཨོ་མན། ད་དུང་ས་ཆ་གཞན་བཅས་སུ་ངོ་རྒོལ་བྱུང་བ་དེ་དག་ནི་རང་རང་གི་ལས་འགུལ་སྒྲུབ་ རྒྱུ་ལྷག་ཡོད་པ་རེད།

མོ་ཧ་མཱ་ཌི་ བྷོ་ཛི་ཛི་ཤི་བའི་རྗེས་ཀྱི་ཉིན་མ་བཅུ་གཉིས་པ་དེ་ནས་མགོ་བཙུགས་ཏེ། ལོ་འདིར་བོད་ནང་དུ་ད་བར་དུ་རང་ལུས་མེར་སྲེག་ཞུ་མཁན་བརྒྱད་བྱུང་ཡོད་ལ། ད་དུང་འདི་ལས་མང་ང་ཡོང་རྒྱུ་ཡིན་པའི་སྐད་ཆ་གོ་རྒྱུ་འདུག ངས་རྩོམ་ཡིག་འདི་བྲིས་ཟིན་པའི་རྗེས་ལ། མདང་ནུབ་སླར་ཡང་བསྐྱར་འབྲི་ཞིག་བྱས་ཏེ་དྲ་དེབ་དང་དྲ་བའི་དུས་དེབ་ཁག་ལ་གཏོང་ གྲབས་བྱེད་དུས། མེར་སྲེག་གཏོང་བ་རྗེས་མ་དེ་བྱུང་འདུག དེར་བརྟེན་ངས་འདིར་དགོས་ངེས་ཀྱི་ཁ་སྐོང་བྲིས་པ་ཡིན། ཡིན་ནའང་། འཕྲལ་གྱི་གནས་ཚུལ་རྣམས་ཡོང་བཞིན་འདུག ཕྱི་ཟླ་༡༠ ཚེས་ ༡༥ ཉིན། ས་གནས་ཀྱི་ཆུ་ཚོད་ ༡༠ དང་སྐར་མ་ ༥༠ ཐོག་ཀིརྟི་དགོན་པའི་དགེ་འདུན་པ་ཟུར་པ་ནོར་བུ་དགྲ་འདུལ་ལགས་ཀྱིས་ རྔ་བ་རྫོང་གི་དཀྱིལ་དུ་སྐུ་ལུས་མེར་སྲེག་བཏང་འདུག “མེ་ལྕེའི་ཁྲོད་ནས་ནོར་བུ་དགྲ་འདུལ་གྱིས་ “བོད་རང་བཙན་གཙང་མ་ཡིན།”ཞེས་དང་། “༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་སླར་ཡང་བོད་དུ་ཕེབས་ཤོག”ཅེས་སྐད་འབོད་བྱས་འདུག”

ཉེ་ཆར་གྱི་གནས་ཚུལ་གཉིས་ནི་བདུན་གཅིག་གི་གོང་ལ་ ཕྱི་ཟླ་ ༡༠ ཚེས་ ༧ ཉིན་གྱི་བོད་ནང་གི་ཆུ་ཚོད་ ༡༡.༣༠ ཙམ་ལ་བྱུང་ཡོད་པ་དང་། ཀིརྟི་དགོན་པའི་གྲྭ་ ལོ་ ༡༩ ཅན་གྱི་ཆོས་འཕེལ་དང་། ལོ་ ༡༨ ཅན་གྱི་མཁའ་དབྱིངས་གཉིས་ཀྱིས་རྔ་བ་རྫོང་གི་གྲོང་ཁྱེར་དཀྱིལ་དུ་རང་གི་ལུས་ མེ་ལྕེའི་ཁྲོད་ཕུལ་ཡོད། བཙན་བྱོལ་གྱི་མི་སྣ་ཁག་ལ་གནས་ཚུལ་དངོས་སུ་མཐོང་མཁན་རྣམས་ཀྱིས་བརྗོད་པ་ལྟར་ ན། མེ་ལྕེའི་ནང་ཐིམ་ཡོད་པའི་སྐུ་ཞབས་གཉིས་ཀྱིས་ བོད་མི་རྣམས་ལ། རྒྱ་ནག་གི་བཙན་འཛུལ་ལ་ངོ་རྒོལ་བྱེད་ཆེད་ཆིག་སྒྲིལ་དང་ཡར་ལངས་བྱེད་དགོས་ཞེས་ རེ་འབོད་བྱས་ཡོད་པ་དང་། བོད་རང་དབང་དང་༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་བཙན་བྱོལ་ནས་སླར་ཕེབས་དགོས་པའི་སྐད་འབོད་ གནང་འདུག

དེའི་ཉིན་གསུམ་གྱི་སྔོན་ ལ། སྤྱི་ཟླ་ ༡༠ ཚེས་ ༣ ཉིན་ཆུ་ཚོད་ ༢ པ་ཙམ་ལ། སྐུ་ན་གཞོན་པའི་རབ་བྱུང་སྐལ་བཟང་དབང་ཕྱུག་ཞུ་བ་ཞིག་གིས་ ༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེའི་སྐུ་པར་བསྣམས་ཏེ། རྔ་བ་རྫོང་གི་སྲང་ལམ་ལྟེ་བ་དེར་ཕེབས་ནས་ བོད་ལ་རྒྱ་ནག་གི་དབང་བསྒྱུར་བྱས་པ་ལ་ངོ་རྒོལ་གྱི་སྐད་འབོད་བསྒྲགས་པ་དང་། དེ་ནས་ཁོང་གིས་རང་ཉིད་མེར་སྲེག་བཏང་འདུག

ཟླ་སྔོན་མའི་ནང་། སྤྱི་ཟླ་ ༩ ཚེས་ ༢༦ ཉིན། ཀིརྟི་དགོན་པའི་དགེ་འདུན་པ་ན་ཆུང་བློ་བཟང་སྐལ་བཟང་ཞུ་བ་དང་། བློ་བཟང་དཀོན་མཆོག་ཞུ་བ་གཉིས་ཀྱང་རྔ་བའི་གྲོང་ཁྱེར་དཀྱིལ་དུ་རྒྱ་ནག་ལ་ངོ་ རྒོལ་ཆེད་རང་ལུས་མེར་སྲེག་བྱས་ཤིང་ ཁོང་གཉིས་ཆ་དགུང་ལོ་ ༡༨ ཙམ་ཡིན་པ་རེད། ཁོང་གཉིས་ཀྱི་གནས་སྟངས་གང་འདྲ་ཡིན་པ་དང་། གང་དུ་ཡོད་པ་སོགས་ཀྱི་ཐད་གསལ་ཆ་མེད།

ཟླ་བ་གཅིག་གི་གོང་སྟེ། སྤྱི་ཟླ་ ༨ ཚེས་ ༡༨ ཉིན་ དགུང་ལོ་ ༢༧ ལ་ཕེབས་པའི་ཁམས་རྟའུ་ཡི་ཉི་མཚོ་དགོན་པའི་དགེ་འདུན་པ་ཚེ་དབང་ནོར་བུ་ལགས་ ཀྱིས་ “ཆོས་དད་རང་དབང་དང་། བོད་རང་དབང་རང་བཙན། དེ་བཞིན་༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་སླར་ཕེབས་དགོས་པའི་”སྐད་འབོད་གནང་ནས་ རང་ལུས་མེར་སྲེག་གནང་སྟེ་གྲོངས་ཡོད་པ་རེད།

ལོ་འདིའི་ལོ་མགོ་ལ། སྤྱི་ཟླ་ ༣ ཚེས་ ༡༦ ཉིན་གྱི་ཕྱི་དྲོར་ ཀིརྟི་དགོན་པའི་དགེ་འདུན་པ་དགུང་ལོ་བཅུ་དྲུག་ལ་སོན་པ་ཞིག་གིས་རང་ལུས་མེར་ སྲེག་གནང་ཡོད་པ་རེད།

གཟིགས་མཁན་རྣམ་པར་དྲན་ གསོ་ཞུ་རྒྱུ་ཞིག་ལ། ལོ་གཉིས་ཀྱི་གོང་ལ། ༢༠༠༩ ལོའི་ཟླ་བ་ ༢ ཚེས་ ༢༧ ཉིན་ཀིརྟི་དགོན་པའི་དགེ་འདུན་པ་རྟ་བྷེ་ཞུ་བ་ཞིག་གིས་རང་ལུས་ལ་མེ་སྒྲོན་དུས་ ཉེན་རྟོག་པས་མེ་མདའ་བརྒྱབ་ཡོད་པ་དང་། དེ་ནས་ཉེན་རྟོག་པས་ཁོང་འཁྲིད་ཡོད་པ་རེད། ཁོང་ སྐུ་གསོན་ཡོད་པར་བཤད་མོད་གང་དུ་བཞུགས་ཡོད་མེད་ཐད་གསལ་ཆ་མེད།

བཙན་བྱོལ་བོད་མིའི་འཇིག་རྟེན་གྱི་གསར་འགྱུར་དང་མཆན་འགྲེལ་རྣམས་སུ་ ལས་འགུལ་འདི་དག་གི་“གོད་ཆག་”དང་ “འཇིགས་རུང་།” “ཡིད་སྐྱོ་བ།” “འུ་ཐུག་པའི་”ཆ་ རྣམས་ནན་བརྗོད་བྱས་ཡོད་ཅིང་། ཆབ་སྲིད་དང་ལས་འགུལ་གྱི་ཚོགས་པ་ཁག་དང་དེ་བཞིན་ཕྱི་རྒྱལ་གྱི་རོགས་ཚོགས་དག་ གིས་ རྒྱལ་སྤྱིའི་ངོས་ནས་འདི་ལ་མཚམས་འཇོག་ཡོང་ཐབས་བྱེད་དགོས་པ་དང་མཉམ་འབྲེལ་ རྒྱལ་ཚོགས་ཀྱི་ངོས་ནས་འདི་ལ་འགོག་སྡོམ་བྱེད་དགོས་པའི་འབོད་སྐུལ་བྱས་ཡོད། མར་མེ་ཁྲོམ་སྐོར་དང་ཟས་བཅད་ངོ་རྒོལ། ཁྲོམ་སྐོར་སོགས་སྣེ་མང་ཞིག་བྱེད་བཞིན་ཡོད། རང་ལུས་མེར་སྲེག་གི་གནས་ཚུལ་ཇེ་མང་ལ་འགྲོ་སྲིད་པ་དང་། འདི་འདྲའི་ལས་འགུལ་མཚམས་འཇོག་བྱེད་པ་དང་ཡང་ན་དེ་ལྟར་མི་བྱེད་པའི་སྐུལ་མ་ བྱེད་དགོས་པའི་སེམས་འཚབ་ཀྱང་སླེབས་བཞིན་ཡོད།

བཀའ་མོལ་འདི་དག་དང་ དེ་བཞིན་བློ་འཚབ་ཡོང་བ་དང་རྒྱབ་སྐྱོར་བྱེད་པ་བཅས་ནི་ཧ་ལས་པ་ཞིག་རེད་ལ། ངོ་མ་བཤད་ན། བོད་ནང་དུ་འབྱུང་བཞིན་པའི་གནས་ཚུལ་ལ་འཛམ་གླིང་གིས་དོ་སྣང་བྱེད་པ་ཡོང་ཆེད་ དུ་དེ་འདྲའི་རྒྱབ་སྐྱོར་ཞིག་དགོས་པ་ནི་ཧ་ཅང་གལ་ཆེན་པོ་རེད། གལ་སྲིད་རྒྱབ་སྐྱོར་བ་རྣམས་རང་གི་ཐོག་མའི་ཧང་སངས་པའི་རྣམ་འགྱུར་དང་འཇིགས་ སྣང་བཅོས་མ་མ་ཡིན་པ་དེ་བརྒལ་ནས་འགྲོ་མ་ཐུབ་པའམ། ཡང་ན། དགེ་འདུན་པ་འདི་དག་གིས་རང་གི་བློས་གཏོང་དེ་དག་ཇི་བཞིན་མཐོང་བར་འདོད་པ་སྟེ། དཔེར་ན། བོད་རང་དབང་རང་བཙན་གྱི་ཆེད་དུ་ལས་འགུལ་སྤེལ་དགོས་པའི་སྐུལ་མ་བྱས་པ་ལྟ་བུར་ གཟིགས་མ་ཐུབ་ཚེ། ཁོང་ཚོ་ནི་ཅུང་ཟད་ལམ་ལོག་ཏུ་འཁྲིད་པའམ་མཐའ་ན་ཤེས་བཞིན་མ་ཡིན་པའི་ཐོག་ནས་ ཁྱད་གསོད་བྱས་པར་འགྱུར་སྲིད། ད་དུང་ན་གཞོན་འདི་དག་གི་ལས་འགུལ་རྣམས་འགྲོ་བ་མིའི་ཐོབ་ཐང་དང་། ཆོས་ལུགས་དད་མོས་རང་དབང་ཙམ་ཞིག་གམ། མཐའ་ན་ རྒྱ་ནག་མི་དམངས་སྤྱི་མཐུན་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་ཀྱི་ཁྱབ་ཁོངས་སུ་ “རང་སྐྱོང་”ཞེས་ རྩོད་ལེན་བྱེད་ཀྱི་ཡོད་པ་ཞེས་ དབྱིན་ཇིའི་ཚགས་པར་ དཱ་ ཨིན་ཌི་པེན་ཌན་ཊི་ ༼རང་བཙན་༽ཞེས་པའི་ནང་དུའང་ཆེས་ཐབས་སྡུག་ཅིག་གི་ངོས་ནས་བཀོད་ཡོད་པ་ལྟར་ འགྲེལ་བརྗོད་ལོག་པར་བྱས་ནའང་ལྡོག་ཕྱོགས་ཀྱི་གྲུབ་འབྲས་འབྱིན་རྒྱུ་ཡིན་པ་ རེད།

ཁོང་ཚོས་འུ་ཐུག་ཐབས་ཟད་ དང་རང་གི་མི་ཚེ་མུ་མཐུད་བསྐྱལ་མི་ཐུབ་པའི་ཐོག་ནས་ལས་འགུལ་སྤེལ་བའམ། དེ་བཞིན་ཁོང་ཚོས་བོད་རང་དབང་བརྩོན་ལེན་གྱི་ལས་འགུལ་ནི་མཇུག་སྒྲིལ་ཟིན་པ་ ཞིག་ལ་ངོས་འཛིན་གྱིས་ལས་འགུལ་སྤེལ་བ་ཞིག་མིན་པ་ནི་དྭོགས་པ་བྱེད་མི་དགོས་པ་ ཞིག་རེད། མེར་སྲེག་གི་སྐོར་ལ་ཐོན་པའི་གསར་འགྱུར་རྣམས་ནི་རབ་རིབ་ཅིག་རེད། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་། ག་རེ་ཁ་གསལ་པོ་འདུག་ཅེ་ན། ཁོང་ཚོས་“བོད་རང་དབང་རང་བཙན་”ཞེས་ སྐད་འབོད་དང་ལྷན་དུ་ བོད་ནང་དུ་རྒྱའི་དབང་བསྒྱུར་བྱས་པ་དེ་ལ་ཆབ་སྲིད་ཀྱི་ངོ་རྒོལ་ཅིག་བྱས་པ་དང་། ༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་བོད་དུ་སླར་ཕེབས་རྒྱུར་འབོད་པ་ནི་གསལ་པོ་རེད། ༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་སླར་བོད་དུ་ཕེབས་པའི་དགོས་འདུན་བཏོན་པ་འདི་ནི་ངེས་པར་དུ་ དེའི་ཆབ་སྲིད་དང་ལོ་རྒྱུས་ཀྱི་གནས་བབས་དང་བསྟུན་ནས་ཤེས་པར་བྱེད་དགོས་པ་ཞིག་ རེད། གང་ཡིན་ཟེར་ན། ཆེས་ཐོག་མར་ཤེས་དགོས་པ་ནི། ནམ་ཡིན་ཡང་༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་ནི་བོད་རང་བཙན་གྱི་དོན་གྱི་བདག་པོའི་དབུ་ འཁྲིད་ཅིག་ཏུ་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱས་ཡོད་པ་དང་། དེ་ཡང་། ཁོང་ཆོས་ཀྱི་དབུ་འཁྲིད་ཅིག་ཏུ་ངོས་འཛིན་ཞུ་མཁན་རིགས་ཙམ་མ་ཡིན་པར། རང་རང་ལ་ཐུན་མོང་མ་ཡིན་པའི་ཆོས་ཀྱི་དབུ་འཁྲིད་ཡོད་པའི་བོན་པོ། བོད་པ་ཁ་ཆེ་བ་དང་ཡེ་ཤུ་བ་སོགས་ཀྱིས་ཀྱང་དེ་ལྟར་ངོས་འཛིན་པ་རེད།

བྷང་ལ་ཌེ་ཤ་བཅིངས་འགྲོལ་ གྱི་དམག་ཁོངས་སུ་ཞུགས་མྱོང་མཁན་དང་དེ་བཞིན་བོད་ཀྱི་དྭང་ཟུར་ཡིན་པའི་ཐུབ་ བསྟན་དངོས་གྲུབ་ལགས་ཀྱིས་ ༡༩༩༨ ལོའི་ཟླ་ ༤ པའི་ནང་ རང་ལུས་མེར་སྲེག་གནང་བ་དེས་ སྐབས་དེའི་བོད་ཀྱི་འཇིག་རྟེན་གྱི་མི་ཕལ་མོ་ཆེ་ཞིག་ལ་སྐུལ་ལྕག་ཐེབས་པ་བྱས་ ཡོད་པ་ནང་བཞིན། ན་གཞོན་འདི་དག་ལའང་ཧ་ལམ་སྐུལ་ལྕག་ཐེབས་ཡོད་པ་རེད། ཁོང་གིས་ཏན་ཏན་དེ་ལྟར་བྱས་ཡོད་པ་རེད། ཁོང་བདེ་ཐང་ཡིན་པ་མ་ཟད་བགད་མོ་འཚེར་འཚེར་ཡིན་ལ། ད་དུང་དངུལ་གྱི་དཀའ་ངལ་ཡང་མེད་ལ། རང་དབང་ལུང་པ་ཞིག་གི་ནང་དུ་མེ་ཏོག་གིས་མཐའ་བསྐོར་བའི་མཚམས་ཁང་ཆུང་ཆུང་ཞིག་ ཏུ་བཞུགས་ཀྱི་ཡོད། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་། ཁོང་གིས་ བོད་རང་དབང་རང་བཙན་གྱི་ཆེད་དུ་དེ་ལྟར་གནང་བ་རེད།

ན་གཞོན་བརྒྱད་པོ་འདིས་ མོ་ཧ་མཱ་ཌི་ བྷོ་ཛི་ཛི་སྐོར་ལ་ཡང་ཏན་ཏན་ཉན་ཀློག་བྱས་ཡོད་པ་རེད། ལྷག་པར་དུ་ལོ་འདིའི་ལོ་མགོར་རྒྱ་ཡིག་དྲ་དེབ་འབྲི་མཁན་དང་ལས་འགུལ་བ་དག་གིས་ ཨ་རབ་ཀྱི་དཔྱིད་ཀའི་སྐོར་གྱི་གནས་ཚུལ་རྣམས་ རྒྱ་ནག་ཁྱོན་ཡོངས་སུ་བསྒྲགས་སྤེལ་བྱས་པ་མ་ཟད། རྒྱ་མི་རྣམས་ལ་ཡང་རང་གི་མེ་ཏོག་ཨ་དཀར་གྱི་གསར་བརྗེ་མགོ་འཛུགས་དགོས་པའི་ སྐུལ་མ་བྱས་པའི་རྗེས་སུ་ཁོང་ཚོས་དེ་དག་གཟིགས་ཡོད་པ་རེད། སྤྱི་ཟླ་ ༥ པའི་ནང་ “རྒྱ་ནག་གི་དབང་འཛིན་པ་དང་ཕྱི་རྒྱལ་གསར་འགོད་པའི་བར་གྱི་མི་ལོ་ཉི་ཤུའི་རིང་གི་འགལ་ཟླ་ཆེ་ཤོས་དེའི་ཁྲོད་”དུ་ ཕྱི་རྒྱལ་གྱི་གསར་འགོད་པ་བཅོ་ལྔ་འཛིན་བཟུང་བྱས་པ་རེད། གསར་བརྗེའི་འབོད་སྐུལ་འདི་དག་ནི་གྲོང་ཁྱེར་ཁག་བཅུ་གསུམ་༼དེ་བཞིན་ཧོང་ཀོང་ དང་ཐའེ་ཝན་དུ་ཡང་༽དུ་ཁྱབ་ཅིང་ཏན་ཏན་རྒྱའི་དཔོན་པོ་ཚོ་ལ་ཉེན་བརྡ་ཕོག་ཡོད་པ་ རེད། ཌཱ་ ཨེ་ཊི་ལན་ཊིག་ཅེས་པའི་ཚགས་པར་གྱིས་ཨ་རིའི་ཕྱི་སྲིད་དྲུང་ཆེ་ཧེ་ལེ་རེ་ ཁི་ལིན་ཊོན་ལུང་འདྲེན་བྱས་པ་ལྟར་ན། “ཁོང་ ཚོ་སེམས་འཚབ་ལངས་འདུག ཁོང་ཚོས་ལོ་རྒྱུས་འགོག་ཐབས་བྱེད་ཀྱི་ཡོད་རེད་ལ། དེ་ནི་ལྐུགས་པའི་བྱེད་སྟངས་རེད། ཁོང་ཚོས་དེ་ལྟར་བྱེད་ཐུབ་ཀྱི་མ་རེད། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་ཁོང་ཚོས་གང་ཐུབ་ཐུབ་ཀྱི་བར་དུ་འགོག་གི་རེད།”ཅེས་ བཤད་འདུག ནིའུ་ཡོག་ ཊེའམ་སི་ ༼དུས་བབ་༽ཡིས་གནས་ཚུལ་བཀོད་པ་ལྟར་ན། པེ་ཅིན་གྱི་ཉེན་རྟོག་པས་ མེ་ཏོག་ཁྲོམ་ས་ཁག་ཏུ་ཨ་དཀར་གྱི་མེ་ཏོག་བཙོང་མི་ཆོག་པའི་བཀག་རྒྱ་བྱས་པ་དེས་ སྡེབ་ཚོང་གི་གོང་ཚད་ལྡིབ་ཏུ་བཅུག་ཡོད་པ་རེད། དེའི་རྗེས་འབྲེལ་དུ་འགྲོ་བ་མིའི་ཐོབ་ཐང་གི་ལས་འགུལ་བ་སུམ་ཅུ་སོ་ལྔ་འཛིན་ བཟུང་བྱས་ཡོད་ཅིང་། འཛིན་བཟུང་གྲགས་ཆེ་ཤོས་དེ་ནི་སྙིང་སྟོབས་ཅན་གྱི་སྒྱུ་རྩལ་རི་མོ་བ་ཨེ་ཝེ་ཝེ་ ཡིན་པ་རེད།

མོ་ཧ་མཱ་ཌི་ བྷོ་ཛི་ཛི་ཡིས་ རང་ལུས་མེར་སྲེག་དེས་ ལོ་བཅུ་ཕྲག་མང་པོའི་རིང་གི་འཇིགས་སྣང་དང་ཚོར་མེད། ཁྱད་གསོད། ངལ་དུབ་བཅས་ཀྱི་འོག་ཡོད་པའི་ཤར་དཀྱིལ་གྱི་མི་རྣམས་སད་བཅུག་ནས་ མི་ཚེ་གཅིག་ལྕོགས་ཀྱི་སྲིད་འཛིན་དང་ཆེས་མཐོའི་མགོ་འཁྲིད། བཙན་གནོན་མགོ་འཁྲིད་བཅས་ཀྱི་གོ་གནས་འབེབས་བཅུག་པ་ཇི་བཞིན། བོད་ཀྱི་དགེ་འདུན་པ་ན་གཞོན་བརྒྱད་ཀྱི་སྐུ་ལུས་མེར་སྲེག་གནང་བ་ནི། བོད་མི་རྣམས་གཉིད་སད་དེ་ལས་འགུལ་སྤེལ་ཆེད་ ཆེས་རྩ་ཆེའི་བློས་གཏོང་གི་གསར་བརྗེའི་ལས་འགུལ་ཞིག་ཡིན་པ་རེད།

དབུ་འཁྲིད་གསར་པ་ཞིག

༢༠༠༨ ཚུན་དང་ དེ་བཞིན་ལོ་འདིའི་ནང་བོད་ནང་དུ་སྤེལ་བཞིན་པའི་གསར་བརྗེའི་ལས་འགུལ་འདི་དག་ གིས་ བོད་ཀྱི་འཐབ་རྩོད་ཀྱི་ཁ་ཕྱོགས་དེ་ ད་ཆ་ཏན་ཏན་བོད་ནང་ལོགས་ནས་ཡོང་གི་ཡོད་པ་དེ་གསལ་པོར་མཚོན་གྱི་འདུག ངས་ རང་དབང་འཐབ་རྩོད་ཀྱི་ “ཁ་ཕྱོགས་”དེ་ ལ་ཟེར་བ་ལས། བཙན་བྱོལ་བོད་མིའི་དབུ་འཁྲིད་ལ་ཟེར་གི་མེད། བཙན་བྱོལ་ནང་ལ། བཤད་སྟངས་གཅིག་བྱས་ན། གྲང་དམག་གི་དུས་རབས་འདིར་ཧ་ལམ་རྒྱུན་རིང་ཤོས་ལ་གནས་པར་གྱུར་པའི་བཙན་བྱོལ་ གཞུང་སྟེ། སྔོན་མའི་བཙན་བྱོལ་བོད་གཞུང་དེ་ད་ཆ་གཞུང་འབྲེལ་མིན་པའི་འཛིན་སྐྱོང་ཞིག་གིས་ ཚབ་བྱས་ཡོད་པ་རེད།

གྲང་དམག་དུས་རབས་ཀྱི་བཙན་ བྱོལ་གཞུང་རྣམས་ལ་ སྔོན་མ་རང་ཉིད་བྲོས་ནས་འགྲོ་དགོས་བྱུང་བའི་ལུང་པར་ལོག་ནས་བཅིངས་འགྲོལ་བྱས་ པའི་ལོ་རྒྱུས་ཅུང་སྐྱོ་པོ་ཡོད་རེད། མཐའ་ན་གཞུང་འདི་ཚོའི་གྲས་མང་ཆེ་བ་ལ་སྟོབས་ཆེན་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་ཨ་རི་དང་ཨིན་ཇི་ལྟ་ བུའི་རྒྱབ་སྐྱོར་དང་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱས་ཡོད་ནའང་དེ་འདྲ་ཡིན་པ་རེད། པཱོ་ལེན་ཌཱི་ཡིས་འཛམ་གླིང་དམག་ཆེན་གཉིས་པའི་སྐབས་དང་ཕྱིས་ཀྱི་ཨུ་རུ་སུའི་ བཙན་འཛུལ་སྐབས་སུ་ ལོན་ཌཱོན་དུ་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་ཞིག་འཛུགས་གཉེར་བྱས་པ་རེད། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་པཱོ་ལེན་ཌཱི་ནང་ཁུལ་གྱི་རང་དབང་ཚོང་འབྲེལ་སྤྱི་མཐུན་སྟེ། ཡུན་རིང་བའི་མི་མང་གྱེན་ལངས་ཀྱི་ངོ་རྒོལ་དེ་ལ་བརྟེན་ནས་ གཞི་ནས་ ༡༩༩༠ ལོར་ཨུ་རུ་སུའི་བཙན་གནོན་ལས་ལུང་པ་རང་བཙན་ཐོབ་པ་རེད།

ཅེག་ལ་མཚོན་ལ་ཡང་དམག་ཆེན་ གྱི་སྐབས་སུ་ལོན་ཌོན་དུ་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་ཞིག་ཡོད་པ་དེ་ ༡༩༤༥ ལོར་ཅེག་ཁོ་སི་ལོ་ཝི་ཡར་ལོག་པ་རེད། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་ལུང་པ་འདི་ཨུ་རུ་སུའི་ནང་ཤུགས་ཆེར་ཐིམ་ཟིན་པ་རེད་ལ། ལྷག་པར་དུ་ ༡༩༦༨ ལོར་རྒྱལ་ས་པཱི་རཱག་གི་ནང་རཱ་ཤི་ཡའི་ཐན་འཁོར་བསྐོར་བ་ནས་བཟུང་དེ་ལྟར་ཡིན་པ་ རེད། དེ་ཡང་ཅེག་ཁོ་སི་ལོ་ཝི་ཡའི་ནང་གི་ཅེག་མི་དམངས་ཀྱིས་ “ཝེལ་ཝེ་ཊཱི་གསར་བརྗེ་”ཞེས་པ་བརྒྱུད་ནས་བློས་གཏོང་དང་འབད་བརྩོན་བྱས་པ་ཁོ་ན་ལ་བརྟེན་ནས་ ༡༩༨༩ ལོར་ལུང་པ་རང་དབང་ཐོབ་པ་རེད།

མཐའ་ན་ཨུ་རུ་སུའི་བཙན་ འཛུལ་གྱི་འོག་ནས་ཀྱང་ བྷོད་ཊིག་གི་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་ཁ་ཤས་ཀྱིས་ཡུ་རོབ་ཀྱི་ནང་དུ་ཕྱི་འབྲེལ་སྐུ་ཚབ་སྒེར་ བདག་ཅན་འཛིན་ཐུབ་པ་བྱུང་ཡོད་པ་རེད། ལི་ཐུ་ནི་ཡ་ལ་གྲོང་ཁྱེར་ཆི་ཀ་གོ་དང་རོམ་གྱི་ནང་དུ་སྐུ་ཚབ་དོན་གཅོད་ཁང་ཡོད་ པ་རེད་ལ། ལེ་ཐི་ཝི་ཡའི་ཕྱི་འབྲེལ་ཞབས་ཞུ་ཁང་གིས་ ལོན་ཌོན་དང་ནིའུ་ཡོག་གི་རང་གི་ལས་ཁུངས་སུ་ལེ་ཐི་ཝི་ཡའི་རང་བཙན་ཆེད་སྐུ་ཚབ་ ཉར་ཡོད་པ་རེད། ཨི་སི་ཊཱོ་ནི་ཡ་གཅིག་པུར་ ༡༩༥༣ ལོ་ནས་ ༡༩༩༢ བར་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་ཞིག་སི་ཝི་ཌེན་ནང་དུ་ཡོད་པ་༼ནིའུ་ཡོག་ཏུ་སྐུ་ཚབ་དོན་གཅོད་ ཁང་ཡོད།༽རེད། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་བྷོད་ཊིག་གི་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་དེ་ཚོའི་ནང་རང་དབང་ནི་ ༡༩༨༠ སྨད་དུ་བྱུང་བའི་ལུང་པའི་ནང་གི་མི་དམངས་ཀྱི་ངོ་རྒོལ་སྐད་འབོད་ཁོ་ན་ལས་བྱུང་ ཡོད་པ་རེད་ལ། དེའི་གྲས་ཀྱི་གཅིག་ནི་ “གླུ་ལེན་གྱི་གསར་བརྗེ་”ཞེས་ པ་དེ་རེད། མིང་དེ་ཡོད་པའི་དངོས་བརྗོད་ཀྱི་གློག་བརྙན་ཞིག་ ༢༠༠༧ ལོར་བཀྲམས་ཡོད་ཅིང་དེ་ནི་བོད་དོན་ལས་འགུལ་བ་ཚང་མས་བལྟ་དགོས་པ་བཟོས་ཡོད། ཧ་ཅང་བློ་ཡུལ་ལས་འགོངས་པ་དང་གྲགས་ཆེ་བའི་སྐད་འབོད་དེ་ནི་ “བྷོད་ཊིག་གི་ལྕགས་ཐག་”༼ཡང་ ན་རང་དབང་གི་ལྕགས་ཐག་༽ཅེས་པ་སྟེ། ༡༩༨༩ ལོའི་ཟླ་ ༨ ཚེས་ ༢༣ ཉིན་བྱུང་བའི་ཞི་བའི་ཆབ་སྲིད་ཁྲོམ་བསྐོར་དེ་ཡིན། ཧ་ལམ་མི་འབོར་ས་ཡ་གཉིས་ཙམ་གྱི་མི་དམངས་ཀྱིས་ལག་སྦྲེལ་བྱས་ཏེ་བྷོད་ཊིག་གི་ རྒྱལ་ཁབ་གསུམ་གྱི་ཁྱོན་དུ་སྤྱི་ལེ་ ༦༠༠ ཡི་རིང་ཚད་ལ་ཁྱབ་པའི་མིའི་ལྕགས་ཐག་ཅིག་བསྐྲུན་པ་རེད། དེ་འདྲའི་མཚོན་དོན་ཡོད་ལ་ད་དུང་སྟོབས་ཆེ་བའི་ལས་འགུལ་གྱིས་གནའ་བོའི་རྒྱལ་ ཁབ་འདི་དག་ལ་རང་དབང་འཁྱེར་ཡོང་བ་ཙམ་དུ་མ་ཟད། ཨུ་རུ་སུ་མཉམ་འབྲེལ་འཐོར་བཤིག་ཏུ་འགྲོ་བ་ལ་ཐད་ཀར་ཤུགས་རྐྱེན་ཐེབས་ཡོད་པ་ རེད།

ལམ་ལྷོང་ཅན་གྱི་གསར་ བརྗེ་འདི་དག་གི་ཁྲོད་ཀྱི་བློ་ཡུལ་ལས་འགོངས་པ་ཞིག་ནི། ལུང་པ་འདི་དག་མཐར་བཅིངས་གྲོལ་གཏོང་བར་བྱེད་པའི་མི་དམངས་གྱེན་ལངས་དེ་ལ་བཙན་ བྱོལ་གཞུང་དེ་དག་གིས་གྲུབ་འབྲས་སྨིན་པར་བྱས་པའམ་ཡང་ན། དེ་ལ་ཤུགས་རྐྱེན་ཙམ་ཡང་ཐེབས་མེད་པ་འདྲ། བཙན་གནོན་འོག་ཚུད་པའི་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་འདི་རྣམས་ཀྱི་མི་དམངས་ལ་རང་དབང་ཐོབ་པ་ནི་ཁོང་ ཚོ་རང་ཉིད་ཀྱི་འབད་བརྩོན་དང་སྙིང་སྟོབས། བློས་གཏོང་བཅས་བརྒྱུད་ནས་ཡིན་པ་རེད། ལོ་རབས་བརྒྱད་ཅུ་དང་དགུ་བཅུའི་ནང་འཛམ་གླིང་ཁྱོན་དུ་བྱུང་བའི་ཡུལ་བབས་ཆབ་ སྲིད་ཀྱི་འགྱུར་བ་ཆེན་པོ་དེ་དག་གིས་འཐབ་རྩོད་འདི་དག་ལ་ཕན་ཐོགས་བྱུང་ཡོད་པ་ ནི་ཞུ་མ་དགོས་པ་ཞིག་རེད།

ང་ཚོ་རང་གི་བཙན་བྱོལ་བོད་ གཞུང་གིས་ལོ་འདིའི་དབྱར་ཁར་ རང་མཇུག་རང་གིས་བསྒྲིལ་བའི་རྐྱེན་གྱིས། ངས་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་འདི་དག་དང་རང་དབང་འཐབ་རྩོད་འདི་དག་གི་ལོ་རྒྱུས་སྔོག་འདོན་ བྱས་པ་ཡིན། ༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེས་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་མཇུག་སྒྲིལ་རྒྱུ་དང་ཚོགས་པ་ལྟ་བུ་ཞིག་ གིས་དེ་ཚབ་བྱེད་རྒྱུའི་ཐག་གཅོད་བྱས་པ་དེས་ ངའི་ངོ་ཤེས་པ་མང་པོ་དང་དེ་བཞིན་གཞུང་ཞབས་ཟུར་པ། རང་བཙན་ལས་འགུལ་བ་བཅས་ནི་ཤིན་ཏུ་ཧ་ལས་པ་དང་དཀའ་ངལ་ཅན་དུ་གྱུར། དྷ་རམ་ས་ལའི་རྙོག་གླེང་ལ་བརྟེན་ནས་ བོད་དོན་དང་བོད་རང་དབང་འཐབ་རྩོད་འདི་ཡང་མཇུག་སྒྲིལ་རྒྱུའི་ཉེན་ཁ་བཟོས་ཡོད་ པའི་ཉེན་བརྡ་དང་སེམས་འཚབ་ཀྱང་སླེབས་པར་གྱུར།

ང་ཚོའི་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་ གི་ལོ་ངོ་བཅུ་ཕྲག་དང་པོ་དང་དེའི་ཡས་མས་ནི་ རང་དབང་འཐབ་རྩོད་དམ་ཡང་ན་བོད་ཀྱི་རིག་གཞུང་རྒྱུན་འཛིན་ཙམ་མ་ཡིན་པར། ང་ཚོའི་རང་གི་ངོ་བོ་དམར་རྗེན་མ་དེ་ལ་འཐམས་ནས་སྡོད་རྒྱུ་ལ་ཡང་དངོས་གནས་གལ་ གནད་ཆེ་བ་ཞིག་ཡིན་པ་ནི་ཞུ་མ་དགོས་པ་རེད། ངས་སྔོན་ནས་བྲིས་མྱོང་བ་ལྟར། ནང་ཁུལ་གྱི་རྩོད་རྙོག་ཡོད་མེད་ལ་མ་ལྟོས་པར་ ༡༩༥༩ ལོའི་རྗེས་ཀྱི་ལོ་ངོ་བཅུ་ཕྲག་འགའ་ཞིག་གི་རིང་ལ་ བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་གིས་ལས་ཀ་ཧ་ལས་པའི་ཡག་པོ་ཞིག་གནང་ཡོད་པ་ནི་དྭོགས་པ་མེད་པ་ ཞིག་རེད། ༡༩༦༨ ལོ་ནས་བཟུང་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་ལ་ལས་ཀ་བྱེད་མགོ་བཙུགས་པ་ཡིན་མོད། དེའི་སྔོན་དུ་ རང་གི་སློབ་གྲྭའི་དགུན་ཁའི་གུང་གསེང་དང་བསྟུན་ནས་ལོ་ཤས་རིང་དྭང་བླངས་དགེ་ རྒན་གྱི་ལས་ཀ་བྱས་པ་ཡིན། བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་གི་སྒྲིག་འཛུགས་དང་དེའི་ལས་བྱེད་རྣམས་ཀྱི་ལྷག་བསམ་གྱིས་ང་ནི་ ཡ་མཚན་པ་དང་སེམས་ཤུགས་འཕར་བཅུག་སོང་། ཉིན་མ་གཅིག་ལ། ངས་བཙན་བྱོལ་བོད་མིའི་མི་ཐོག་དང་པོ་རྣམས་ཀྱིས་དཀའ་ངལ་ཆེས་མང་པོ་ལ་གདོང་ལེན་ གྱིས་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་ཇི་ལྟར་བཙུགས་པ་དང་། རིམ་གྱིས་གཞུང་འདིས་ཅིའི་ཕྱིར་རང་གི་རྩ་བའི་དམིགས་ཡུལ་དོར་ནས་སྒྲིག་འཛུགས་ ཤིག་ཆགས་པ་དང་། ཕྱི་ཚུལ་དུ་སྒྲིག་འཛུགས་དེའི་དམིགས་ཡུལ་ངོ་མ་དེ་ཡང་མར་རྒྱས་ཀྱི་རྣམ་པས་ཧ་ ཅང་དགོད་བྲོ་བ་དང་ཐབས་རྡུགས་ཀྱི་ངང་སྒྲིག་འཛུགས་དེ་རང་སྲ་བརྟན་དུ་བྱེད་ རྒྱུ་དེ་རང་ཡིན་པ་འདྲ་བ་དེ་དག་གི་ལོ་རྒྱུས་ཆ་ཚང་བ་ཞིག་འབྲི་ཐུབ་པའི་རེ་བ་ ཡོད།

དྲ་དེབ་འདིར་ངས་རྩོམ་ སྔོན་མ་ མགོ་འཛུགས་ཆེད་ཀྱི་མཇུག་སྡོམ། ཞེས་བྲིས་པའི་ནང་དུ། ངས་༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེས་བོད་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་ཆེན་པོའི་དབུ་འཁྲིད་ཀྱི་མཚན་གནས་ཙམ་ཞིག་ འཛིན་དགོས་པའི་རེ་སྐུལ་ཞུས་པ་མ་ཟད། བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་དེ་སྒྲིག་འཛུགས་ཤིག་ཏུ་བསྒྱུར་རྒྱུར་འགོག་རྒོལ་བྱས་ཡོད། སྐབས་དེར་ངས་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་གི་ཆབ་སྲིད་ཀྱི་མི་ཚེ་དེས་རང་གི་རང་བྱུང་གི་ལོ་ དུས་རྫོགས་ཟིན་པ་ཙམ་དུ་མ་ཟད། གཅིག་བྱས་ན། ༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེས་དགོངས་ཞུ་གནང་བ་དང་བཙན་བྱོལ་བོད་གཞུང་མཇུག་སྒྲིལ་བ་དེ་ དག་དུས་ལ་རན་པ་ཡིན་པའི་གནད་དོན་ཞིག་མ་མཐོང་བ་རེད།

གལ་སྲིད་ང་ཚོས་ ༢༠༠༨ ལོའི་གསར་བརྗེའི་ལས་འགུལ་སྟེ། ལྷ་ས་མེ་ལྕེའི་ཁྲོད་ཡོད་པའི་ལོ་དེ་ལ་ཕྱི་མིག་ཅིག་བལྟས་པ་ཡིན་ན། བོད་ཀྱི་ས་ཆ་ཁྱོན་ཡོངས་སུ་བོད་མི་སྟོང་ཕྲག་མང་པོ་རང་རང་གི་དགོན་པ་དང་ཁྱིམ། སྦྲ་གུར་ནས་ཕྱིར་རྒྱུགས་ཏེ། རི་ངོགས་ནས་ཐུར་དུ་རང་གི་རྟ་ལ་ཞོན་ནས། བོད་ཀྱི་རྒྱལ་དར་འཕྱར་སྟེ། བོད་ཀྱི་རང་དབང་དང་རང་བཙན་གྱི་འབོད་སྒྲ་བསྒྲགས་པ་དེ་ང་ཚོས་ཏན་ཏན་དྲན་ངེས་ ཡིན། ད་དུང་བཙན་བྱོལ་ནང་གི་ཚོགས་པ་ཆེ་ཁག་ལྔ་མཉམ་འབྲེལ་གྱིས་བོད་མིའི་གྱེན་ལངས་ ལས་འགུལ་སྤེལ་ཏེ་བོད་དུ་ཞི་བའི་གོམ་བགྲོད་བྱས་པ་ཡང་ཏན་ཏན་དྲན་གྱི་རེད། བཙན་བྱོལ་བོད་མི་དང་༼གྲོགས་པོ་༽ཚོས་ པེ་ཅིན་གྱི་ཨོ་ལིམ་པིག་རྩེད་འགྲན་དང་དེའི་དཔལ་འབར་འཁྱེར་བ་ལ་ངོ་རྒོལ་དང་ བོད་ཀྱི་གྱེན་ལངས་ལ་རྒྱབ་སྐྱོར་ཆེད་ “རིག་རྩལ་ཅན་གྱི་ལས་འགུལ་”གཞི་རྒྱ་ཆེ་ཞིང་ངར་ཤུགས་འཛོམས་པའི་ངོ་རྒོལ་འཛམ་གླིང་སྟེང་གི་ས་ཆ་གང་སར་སྤེལ་བ་ཡང་དྲན་གྱི་རེད།

ང་ཚོས་རང་གི་དྲན་པའི་ཡུལ་ དུ་སྣང་མེད་ཀྱི་ཚུལ་དུ་བཀག་ཡོད་པ་ནི། ༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེས་ བོད་མི་ཚོས་ལྷ་སར་འཕྲོག་བཅོམ་བྱས་པའི་རྒྱུ་རྐྱེན་གྱིས་ངོས་རང་དགོངས་པ་ཞུ་ གི་ཡིན་ཞེས་གསུངས་ཡོད་པ་དེ་རེད། ༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེས་ད་དུང་ཚོགས་པ་ཁག་ལྔ་ལ་བཀོད་ཁྱབ་བཏང་ནས་བོད་དུ་ཞི་བའི་ གོམ་བགྲོད་མཚམས་འཇོག་གནང་དགོས་པ་དང་། དེ་བཞིན་བཀའ་བློན་ཁྲི་པ་ཟམ་གདོང་རིན་པོ་ཆེས་ “ཆིག་སྒྲིལ་ཚོགས་པ་”བཙུགས་ཏེ་ངོ་རྒོལ་བྱེད་མཁན་གྱི་ཚོགས་པ་དག་གི་ནུས་པ་ཉམས་པར་བྱེད་པ་དང་། དེ་བཞིན་ངོ་རྒོལ་པ་དག་གིས་ རྒྱ་མིའི་རྒྱལ་དར་སྲེག་པའམ་ཡང་ “བོད་རང་བཙན་”དང་ “རྒྱ་མི་བོད་ནས་ཕར་རྒྱུགས་ཤིག་”ལྟ་ བུའི་སྐད་འབོད་བྱེད་པ་རྣམས་འགོག་ཐབས་བྱས་པའང་ང་ཚོས་བརྗེད་ཡོད་སྲིད་པ་རེད། དེའི་ལོ་ཤས་ཀྱི་སྔོན་ལ་ཟམ་གདོང་རིན་པོ་ཆེས་རྒྱ་ནག་གི་དཔོན་རིགས་རྣམས་ཨ་རིར་ ལྟ་སྐོར་སྐབས་བོད་མི་རྣམས་ཀྱིས་ངོ་རྒོལ་བྱེད་པ་བཀག་ཡོད་པ་རེད། ༢༠༠༨ ལོའི་ལས་འགུལ་ཚང་མ་དེ་ལས་ཀྱང་གལ་གནད་ཆེ་བ་ཞིག་ཏུ་འདྲེན་ཐུབ་བམ། ལས་འགུལ་དེ་དག་གི་ནུས་སྟོབས་དང་ཁྱབ་ཤུགས་དེ་ཧ་ལས་པ་ཞིག་ཡིན་པ་དེ་ངས་གསལ་ པོར་དྲན་གྱི་འདུག དེ་ནི་གསར་བཏོད་ཀྱི་མགོ་འཛུགས་དང་གང་ཡང་ཡོང་སྲིད་པ་ཞིག་ཡིན་པའི་ཚོར་སྣང་ཏན་ ཏན་བྱུང་། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་ད་ཆ་ང་ཚོས་ཅི་ཡང་ཤེས་མི་ཐུབ། ཤེས་ཐུབ་བམ། དྷ་རམ་ས་ལ་ཡིས་རྒྱུན་ལྡན་གྱི་ཚོར་བ་དང་ཆོས་ལུགས་ཀྱི་སྡིགས་སྐུལ་བྱེད་ཀྱིན་ ཡོད་ལ། རིམ་གྱིས་མི་ཚང་མའི་རེ་བ་དང་ཆོད་སེམས་ཀྱི་རླུང་བུ་ཤོར་བཅུག་ནས། ལོ་དེའི་ལོ་མཇུག་དེ་སྤྲེལ་ལད་དང་ཟོག་རྫུ་མཉམ་འབྲེལ་གྱི་རྣམ་པ་ཞིག་གི་ཁྲོད་ བསྡུས་ཡོད་པ་དེ་ལ་ཟླ་བཅུ་གཅིག་པའི་དམིགས་བསལ་ཚོགས་ཆེན་ཞེས་ཀྱང་འབོད།

ངའི་འཇིགས་སྣང་ཆེ་ཤོས་དང་ ངའི་གསང་བའི་གཉིད་ལམ་འཚུབ་པོ་དེ་ཡང་ངའི་མི་ཚེའི་རྨི་ལམ་གྱི་ནང་དུ་གནས་བཅས་ ཡོད་པ་རེད། ངའི་རྨི་ལམ་ནི། མ་འོངས་པའི་ལོ་དུས་ཧ་ཅང་མི་རིང་བ་ཞིག་ལ་རྒྱ་ནག་གི་དཔལ་འབྱོར་ཉམས་རྒུད་དུ་ འགྲོ་བའི་སྐབས་ཤིག་ཏུ ། ནང་ཁུལ་གྱི་འགལ་ཟླ་ཆེན་པོ་འགའ་༼མཐའ་ན་གསར་བརྗེ་ཡང་༽དང་ལྷན་གཅིག་ཏུ། རང་བཙན་གྱེན་ལངས་དེ་བོད་ཀྱི་ས་ཆ་གང་སར་༼ཤིན་ཅང་དང་སོག་པོ་ལ་ཡང་ཡོང་སྲིད་པ་༽ ཁྱབ་འགྲོ་གི་རེད་ལ། མཐའ་མཇུག་བོད་རང་བཙན་དེ་ལེན་པའི་གོ་སྐབས་ཤིག་ང་ཚོའི་ལག་པར་ཡོང་གི་རེད། གནས་སྟངས་འདི་འཆར་སྣང་ལྟར་སྣང་མོད་འཆར་སྣང་ཞིག་མ་རེད། ༡༩༡༢ ལོར་ཡང་རྒྱ་ནག་གི་ཁྱོན་ཡོངས་ལ་དེ་བྱུང་མྱོང་ཡོད་པ་རེད།

དེ་ནས་ངའི་རྨི་ལམ་འཚུབ་ པོ་ཡོང་གི་རེད། མ་འོངས་པའི་དུས་ཤིན་ཏུ་མི་རིང་བ་ཞིག་ན། གསར་བརྗེ་སླེབས་པའི་དུས་དེར། རང་གི་མ་རྩའི་སྒམ་ཆུང་ལ་ཕོག་ཐུག་མི་འགྲོ་སླད་རྒྱ་ནག་གི་དཔལ་འབྱོར་གྱི་ལྒང་ བུ་མ་བརྡོལ་བར་སྡོད་འདོད་ཡོད་པའི་ནུབ་ཕྱོགས་ཀྱི་སྦྱིན་བདག་རྣམས་ཀྱིས་ བོད་ཀྱི་མགོ་འཁྲིད་ཚོ་ “བཀུག་”སྟེ། བོད་ནི་རྒྱ་ནག་སྤྱི་མཐུན་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་ཀྱི་ཆ་ཤས་ཤིག་ཡིན་པ་དང་། བོད་མི་རྣམས་ལ་རྒྱ་ནག་གི་རྒྱལ་གཅེས་ཅན་གྱི་མི་སེར་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ལས་གཞན་པའི་ འདོད་པ་མེད་ཚུལ་བསྒྲག་རྒྱུ་དེ་རེད། དེ་ནི་ཁོང་ཚོས་ད་ལྟ་གསུངས་བཞིན་པ་དེ་དང་ཧ་ལམ་གཅིག་པ་རེད། འུ་ཐུག་པའི་རྒྱ་ནག་གིས་ད་དུང་དྷ་རམ་ས་ལ་ལ་རུས་པ་གཅིག་ཀྱང་གཡུགས་ནས་སླར་ཡང་ སྐུ་ཚབ་ཚོགས་པ་ཞིག་༼ཐེངས་ཉེར་གསུམ་པ་ཡིན་ནམ༽པེ་ཅིན་དུ་ཡོང་དུ་འཇུག་སྲིད་ལ། མཐའ་ན་༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་ཡང་རི་བོ་རྩེ་ལྔར་ཕེབས་འཇུག་སྲིད་པ་རེད། འོན་ཀྱང་། དེས་ཏན་ཏན་གསར་བརྗེ་འདི་རྩ་མེད་དུ་གཏོང་གི་རེད།

ད་ལྟའི་ཆ་ལ་༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་ པོ་ཆེས་རང་ལུས་མེར་སྲེག་གཏོང་བ་དེའི་ཐད་ལ་ཐད་ཀར་བཀའ་སློབ་གནང་མ་སོང་ལ། བཙན་བྱོལ་སྒྲིག་འཛུགས་ཀྱིས་ཀྱང་དེ་དག་མཚམས་འཇོག་ཡོང་བའི་འབོད་སྐུལ་བྱས་མ་ སོང་། ངས་གུ་བཤངས་འདིའི་དྲིན་ཤེས་མོད། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་ངས་དེ་ལ་ཡིད་ཆེས་བློ་འགེལ་བྱེད་ཀྱི་མེད། ཡིན་ན་ཡང་། གཅིག་བྱས་ན་མཐའ་མ་འདིར་འཐབ་རྩོད་ཀྱི་དབུ་འཁྲིད་ནི་རང་སྲོག་གཏོང་འདོད་ཡོད་ མཁན་ཚོར་དངོས་གནས་སྤྲད་ཟིན་པ་རེད།

མདུན་བསྐྱོད་ཀྱི་ལམ།

མདུན་བསྐྱོད་ཀྱི་ལམ་ནི། རང་བཙན་ནི་བོད་དུ་བཞུགས་པའི་སྤུན་ཟླ་ཕོ་མོ་ལ་འབྲེལ་བ་ཡོད་པའི་ཡིད་ཆེས་བྱེད་ མཁན་བཙན་བྱོལ་བ་ང་ཚོ་ལ་མཚོན་ན། ཡོང་རྒྱུ་བསྡད་པའི་གསར་བརྗེ་འདི་དག་ལ་ཕན་ཐོགས་སྒྲུབ་པའི་ལམ་ཞིག་འཚོལ་རྒྱུ་ དེ་རེད། ང་ཚོ་ལ་སྒྲུབ་དགོས་རྒྱུའི་ལས་འགན་ཏན་ཏན་ཡོད་པ་རེད། དེ་ནི་ཨ་རི་དང་ཡུ་རོབ་ཁུལ་དུ་སྡོད་པའམ་ཡང་ན་སློབ་སྦྱོང་བྱེད་བཞིན་ཡོད་པའི་ ཨ་རཱབ་ཀྱི་ལོ་གཞོན་ཚོས་ ལི་བྷི་ཡ་དང་ཨི་ཇིབ། ཊུ་ནི་ཤེ་ཡ་བཅས་ཀྱི་གྱེན་ལངས་ཁྲོད་ཞུགས་ཏེ། འབྲེལ་མཐུད་དང་སྨན་བཅོས། གསར་འགོད་དང་དེ་མིན་གྱི་ལག་རྩལ་དག་སྤྱད་ནས་ཨ་རཱབ་ཀྱི་དཔྱིད་ཀ་ལམ་ལྷོང་ཡོང་ བཅུག་པ་དེ་དང་གཅིག་པ་རེད།

ད་ཆ་ང་ཚོས་དེ་དག་ཚང་མ་ ཞིབ་ཕྲ་དབྱེ་ཞིབ་བྱེད་མི་ཐུབ། དེ་ནི་རང་བཙན་ལ་སེམས་ཤུགས་ཡོད་མཁན་རྣམས་ཀྱི་འདུ་འཛོམས་ཤིག་བརྒྱུད་དེ་བསམ་ ཞིབ་གོ་བསྡུར་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ཞིག་རེད། འདི་ནི་མི་རིང་བར་ཡོང་རྒྱུ་ཡིན་པ་དེ་ལ་ང་རང་གདེང་ཚོད་ཡོད། དེ་བཤད་ཟིན་པའི་རྗེས་ལ། དྲ་དེབ་འདིའི་ཐོག་ན་ད་ལྟ་རང་ང་ཚོས་བྱེད་དགོས་པའི་ལས་ཀ་ཁག་ཅིག་ཡོད། ང་ཚོའི་ལས་འགན་དང་པོ་ནི་བོད་ནང་གི་བོད་མི་ཚོར་བརྡ་ལན་ཞིག་སྤྲོད་རྒྱུ་དེ་ རེད། ཁོང་ཚོས་༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེས་དགོངས་ཞུ་གནང་བ་དང་བཙན་བྱོལ་གཞུང་སྒོ་བརྒྱབ་པ་ དེ་ཏན་ཏན་གསན་ཡོད་པ་རེད། མི་མང་པོ་ཞིག་ཏན་ཏན་མགོ་འཐོམས་ཡོད་ཀྱི་རེད་ལ། ཁ་ཤས་ཤིག་གིས་བཙན་བྱོལ་བ་ཚོས་རྩ་དོན་ཡལ་བར་དོར་ཟིན་པའི་ཐག་གཅོད་བྱས་ཡོད་པ་ ལ་ཐེ་ཚོམ་ཡོད་པ་མ་རེད། བྱས་ཙང་། ང་ཚོས་ཁོང་ཚོ་ལ་བརྡ་ལན་ཞིག་ ཁ་གསལ་པོ་དང་སྐད་མཐོན་པོའི་ཐོག་ནས བསྐྱལ་དགོས་པ་རེད། དེ་ཡང་ དྷ་རམ་ས་ལ་ནས་གནས་ཚུལ་རྣམ་པ་སྣ་ཚོགས་གང་འདྲ་ཞིག་ཐོན་ན་ཡང་། རང་བཙན་བརྩོན་ལེན་གྱི་ལས་འགུལ་ནི་འཛམ་གླིང་སྟེང་མུ་མཐུད་ནས་འགྲོ་གི་རེད་ལ། བོད་ནང་གི་བོད་མི་ཆེས་མང་པོའི་བློས་གཏོང་དང་སེམས་ཤུགས། སྙིང་སྟོབས་བཅས་ཀྱིས་རང་བཙན་ལས་འགུལ་འདི་ལ་ངར་ཤུགས་བསླངས་པ་མ་ཟད་ཡིད་འགུལ་ ཐེབས་པའི་སྐུལ་ལྕག་ཐེབས་ཡོད་ཅེས་པ་དེ་རེད། བརྡ་ལན་འདི་བསྐྱལ་བའི་དུས་ཚོད་དང་གོ་སྐབས་ཧ་ཅང་རན་ཤོས་དེ་ནི་ ༢༠༡༢ ལོའི་སུམ་བཅུའི་དུས་དྲན་སྲུང་བརྩིའི་སྐབས་རེད། ད་ལོའི་སུམ་ཅུའི་དུས་དྲན་ནི་དམིགས་བསལ་གྱིས་མི་འདྲ་བ་ཞིག་རེད། འདི་ནི་ང་ཚོས་རྒྱ་ནག་གི་གོང་མ་ལ་གྱེན་རྒོལ་བྱས་ཏེ་རང་བཙན་དང་རང་དབང་གི་བོད་ ཅིག་བཙུགས་ནས་ལོ་ངོ་ ༡༠༠ འཁོར་བའི་སྐབས་ཡིན་པ་རེད།

༡༩༡༡ ལོའི་ཟླ་ ༡༠ པའི་ནང་རྒྱ་ནག་ཏུ་གསར་བརྗེ་ལངས་པ་རེད། བོད་སྡོད་རྒྱ་དམག་རྣམས་ཡུལ་མི་འཕྲོག་བཅོམ་གྱི་ལས་ཀར་ཞུགས་ཤིང་ལྷ་ས་གྲོང་ ཁྱེར་གྱི་མི་རྣམས་སྐྱི་གཡའ་བ་བཟོས་པ་རེད། རྒྱལ་རབས་པ་ཆེན་པོ་ཞྭ་སྒབ་པ་ལགས་ཀྱིས་ང་ཚོར་བཤད་པ་ལྟར་ན། རྡོ་རྗེ་གླིང་དུ་བཙན་བྱོལ་དུ་བཞུགས་པའི་༧རྒྱལ་བ་སྐུ་ཕྲེང་བཅུ་གསུམ་པས་ཁོང་ གི་ལས་བྱ་བྱམས་པ་བསྟན་དར་དང་ཁྲི་སྨོན་ནོར་བུ་དབང་རྒྱལ་གཉིས་ གྱེན་རྒོལ་གྱི་སྣེ་འཁྲིད་བྱེད་ཆེད་ ལྷ་སར་བཏང་བ་རེད། ༡༩༡༢ ལོའི་ཕྱི་ཟླ་ ༣ ཚེས་ ༢༦ ཉིན་ཁོང་ཚོས་བོད་སྡོད་རྒྱ་དང་མན་ཇུའི་དམག་མིའི་ཐོག་དམག་འདྲེན་པའི་གསལ་བརྡ་ བཏང་བ་དང་། གྲོང་ཁྱེར་གང་སར་དམག་འཐབ་དྲག་མ་བྱུང་བ་རེད། དཀའ་སྡུག་དང་གདུག་རྩུབ་ཀྱི་དམག་འཐབ་ལོ་གཅིག་བྱས་ནས་ལོ་ངོ་གཅིག་མ་ཟིན་ཙམ་ གྱི་རྗེས་སུ། རྒྱ་མི་ཚོས་མགོ་སྒུར་པ་དང་རྒྱ་གར་བརྒྱུད་ནས་རྒྱ་ནག་ཏུ་མཐའ་སྐྲོད་བྱས་པ་རེད། དེའི་ལོ་རྗེས་མ་དེར་༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་རང་བཙན་ཅན་གྱི་བོད་ལ་ལོག་ཕེབས་པ་རེད།

འཆར་ལོའི་ སུམ་ཅུའི་དུས་དྲན་ཉིན་བོད་མི་དང་བོད་ཀྱི་གྲོགས་པོ་ཚོ་ལྷན་ཅིག་ཏུ་འཛོམས་ནས་ དེ་སྔ་བྱུང་མ་མྱོང་བའི་ཁྲོམ་སྐོར་དང་དུས་དྲན་སྲུང་བརྩི་རྒྱ་ཆེན་པོ་ཞིག་ བྱེད་དགོས་པ་རེད། ལྷན་འཛོམས་འདི་ཧ་ཅང་གི་རྒྱ་ཆེ་བ་དང་སྐད་གཟེངས་མཐོན་པོ། གསར་བཏོད་ཆེ་བ། དོ་སྣང་འདྲེན་པ་ཞིག་ཡིན་དགོས་ལ། དེས་འཛམ་གླིང་དང་། ལྷག་པར་དུ་གལ་ཆེ་བ་ཞིག་ལ། བོད་ནང་གི་ང་ཚོའི་སྤུན་ཟླ་ཕོ་མོ་རྣམས་ཀྱིས་ ཁོང་ཚོས་བོད་ཀྱི་རྩྭ་ཐང་དང་རི་མཐོན་པོའི་ངོས་ནས་ང་ཚོར་བཏང་བའི་རང་བཙན་དང་ རང་དབང་། གསར་བརྗེའི་བརྡ་ལན་དེ་ལ་ང་ཚོས་མཉམ་འབྲེལ་གྱི་རམ་སྐྱོར་འབུལ་བ་དེ་གོ་གི་རེད། ཁོང་ཚོས་ ལོ་ངོ་དེ་དག་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀྱི་རིང་ལ་བརྡ་ལན་ནི་ཁོང་ཚོའི་གླུ་གཞས་དང་སྙན་ངག རྩོམ་ཡིག ཁྲོམ་བསྐོར། རྒྱལ་བསྒྲེངས་པ་བཅས་དང་། ད་དུང་ཁོང་ཚོའི་མིག་ཆུ་དང་། ཁོང་ཚོའི་ན་ཟུག ཁོང་ཚོའི་དཀའ་སྡུག་ཆེ་བའི་མི་ཚེ། མེ་ལྕེའི་ཁྲོད་ཀྱི་བློས་གཏོང་བཅས་བརྒྱུད་ནས་ ང་ཚོ་ལ་བཏང་ཡོད་པ་རེད། ལྡི་ལི་དང་ཀིརྟི། དཀར་མཛེས་བཅས་སུ་མཆེད་པའི་མེ་ལྕེ་དེ་ད་ཆ་ཤི་ཡོད་ན་ཡང་། ༧རྒྱལ་བ་རིན་པོ་ཆེའི་གསུང་ཚིག་ཅིག་དྲངས་ན། “་་་བདེན་པའི་མེ་ལྕེ་ནི་རྩ་བ་ཉིད་ནས་གསོད་ཐུབ་ཀྱི་མ་རེད།” དུས་ལ་མ་བབ་ཀྱི་བར་དུ་ཧ་ཅང་རྩ་ཆེ་བའི་རང་དབང་དང་རང་བཙན། བདེན་པ་བཅས་ཀྱི་མེ་རོ་འབར་བཞིན་པ་འདི་དག་སྲུང་ཞིང་གསོ་བ་ནི་ང་ཚོའི་ལས་འགན་ རེད་ལ། མི་རིང་བར་དུས་ལ་བབ་པའི་སྐབས་ཤིག་ལ། ང་ཚོས་མཐོ་སྒང་བོད་ཀྱི་ས་ཁྱོན་ཡོངས་སུ་མི་རྣམས་ཀྱི་སྙིང་ཁོངས་ལ་སླར་ཡང་མེ་ རོ་འོད་འཚེར་འཚེར་དུ་སྦར་ཆོག

(RANGZEN MERO* PARWA)

In mid-December last year, Mohamed Bouazizi, a humble Tunisian street-vendor of fruits and vegetables, set himself on fire to protest the confiscation of his produce and the daily harassment and humiliation inflicted on him by police and local officials. His act set of demonstrations and riots throughout Tunisia which intensified following Bouazizi’s death on January 4, leading the authoritarian regime and its leader to flee the country after 23 years of repressive and corrupt rule.

This and the events that followed, called the “Jasmine Revolution” or the “Arab Spring”, resulted in a peaceful revolution in Egypt, an armed uprising in Libya (resulting in the fall of its dictator), civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen, and protests in Israel, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman and elsewhere, that have yet to run their courses.

Just this year, in Tibet, starting twelve days after the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, we have had eight self-immolations – so far. And there are unsettling rumors of more to come. The latest happened after I had actually finished writing this post and late last night was doing some rewrites before forwarding it to other blog-sites and web-journals. This gave me the opportunity to put in the necessary addition – but the immediacy of it was unsettling. On October 15, 11.50 local time, a former monk of Kirti monastery Norbu Damdul set himself on fire in the central town of Ngaba. “Engulfed in flames, Norbu Damdul raised slogans demanding ‘Complete Independence for Tibet’ and ‘Return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet’”.

Two self-immolations took place a week ago, on October 7th “At around 11.30 am Tibet time today, Choephel age 19 and Khayang 18, monks of Kirti monastery, set themselves ablaze in the central town of Ngaba district”. “Eyewitnesses have told sources in exile that as they were engulfed in flames they called for Tibetans to unite and rise up against the Chinese regime and raised slogans for Tibet’s freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama from exile.”

Three days before that, on October 3 at around 2 pm local time, a very young novice monk “Kesang Wangchuk walked out onto the main street of Ngaba town holding a photo of the Dalai Lama and shouting slogans protesting Chinese rule over Tibet. He then set himself ablaze.”

Last month, on September 26, two teenage monks of Kirti Monastery, Lobsang Kalsang, and Lobsang Kunchok, both around 18 years of age “set themselves on fire in an anti-China protest in the central town of Ngaba. Their whereabouts and condition are not yet known.”

The month before, on August 18, in A Tibetan monk, 29-year old Tsewang Norbu, a monk from Nyitso monastery in Tawu, died after setting fire to himself and calling for “freedom of worship, freedom and independence for Tibet, and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet”.

At the beginning of this year on March 16, afternoon, Phuntsog, a 16-year-old monk at Kirti monastery set himself on fire.

Readers should be reminded that two years earlier in February 27, 2009, A Kirti monk called Tapey was shot by police when he set himself on fire on. The police immediately took him away. He is said to have survived but his whereabouts are unknown.

All reports and comments in the exile Tibetan world have stressed the “tragic”, “terrible” “heartbreaking” and “desperate” aspects of these actions. Calls for international condemnation and UN intervention have been made by various political and activist organizations as well as foreign support groups. A number of demonstrations, vigils and hunger-strikes have taken place. Some concerns have been expressed that more self-immolations could happen and that a way to prevent or at least discourage such actions should be sought.

All these statements and acts of concern and support have been tremendous, and in fact such responses are crucial to make the world take notice of what is happening in Tibet. They only become somewhat misguided, even unconsciously condescending, if supporters fail to overcome their first natural reaction of dismay and horror, and are unable to view the sacrifices of the monks in the way that those young men wanted them to be seen: as calls to action for the cause of a free and independent Tibet. It is also counterproductive if the actions of these young men are misinterpreted as merely a call for human rights, religious freedom or even “autonomy” within the PRC as has been most bizarrely reported in the British paper, The Independent.

There can be no doubt that the men acted not out of despair, not because they could not go on living any longer, and not because they thought it was all over for the Tibetan freedom struggle. The reports on the immolations have been sketchy but what is clear is that they are all clear acts of political protest against Chinese rule in Tibet, with slogans calling for “Tibetan freedom and independence” (bhod rawang-rangzen) for Tibet and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet. The last demand must also be understood in its proper historical and political context, since the Dalai Lama has always been regarded, first and foremost, as the sovereign ruler of independent Tibet, not only by those who acknowledge him as their spiritual leader, but by Tibetans from other Buddhist sects, by Bonpos, Tibetan Muslims and Christians who have their own distinct spiritual leaders.

It is more than likely that the young men were inspired, as were nearly everyone in the Tibetan world then, by the sacrifice of Thupten Ngodup, former paratrooper and one of the liberators of Bangladesh, who set himself on fire in April 1998. He did it stone cold. He was fit and healthy, of cheerful disposition, with no money problems, and living in a free country, in a small meditation hut surrounded by flowers. But he did it for bhod rawang-rangzen, for Tibetan freedom and independence.

The eight young men must also have heard or read of Mohammed Buazizi, especially after Chinese bloggers and activists, at the beginning of this year, spread the news of the Arab Spring throughout the PRC and began calling on the Chinese people to start their own Jasmine Revolution. Fifteen foreign journalists were arrested on 6th March, in “the biggest showdown between Chinese authorities and foreign media in more than two decades.” This call for revolution spread to about thirteen cities (as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan) and definitely alarmed China’s leaders. The Atlantic quoted Hilary Clinton: “They’re worried, and they are trying to stop history, which is a fool’s errand. They cannot do it. But they’re going to hold it off as long as possible.” The New York Times reported that Beijing police had banned the sale of jasmine flowers at various flower markets, causing wholesale prices to collapse. Subsequently thirty-five prominent human rights activists were arrested, the highest-profile arrest being that of the courageous and protean artist Ai Weiwei.

The self-immolations of the eight young monks were revolutionary acts of ultimate sacrifice to rouse the Tibetan people to action, in much the way as Mohammed Buazizi’s self-immolation, woke up the oppressed people of the Middle East from many many decades of fear, apathy, cynicism and weariness – and goaded them to overthrow their dictators, supreme leaders and presidents-for-life.

A New Leadership

These revolutionary acts taking place in Tibet this year, and from 2008 onwards, seem to indicate that the direction of the Tibetan struggle is now definitely coming from inside Tibet. I mean the “direction” of the freedom struggle, not the leadership of the refugee community for which there is now a non-governmental administration to replace the earlier Tibetan government in exile – probably the longest running-exile government of the Cold War period, in a manner of speaking, while it existed.

Exile governments in the Cold War era have had a fairly dismal record of returning to liberate the countries they had earlier been forced to flee, even when most of these governments were recognized and supported by such great powers as USA and Britain. Poland maintained an exile government in London during World War II and later the Soviet occupation, but it was only the long civil resistance movement of Solidarność (Solidarity), the independent trade-union movement within Poland that freed the country from the Soviet yoke in 1990.

The Czechs also had an exile government in London during the war, which returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945, but the country was effectively absorbed into the Soviet block, especially after ‘68 when Russian tanks rolled into Prague. Czechoslovakia only became free in December 1989, entirely through the efforts and sacrifice of the Czech people in Czechoslovakia through the “Velvet Revolution” (sametová revoluce).

Even under Soviet occupation the Baltic States managed to retain a few independent diplomatic representatives in Europe. Lithuania had consulates in Chicago and Rome, while the Latvian Diplomatic Service maintained representation for independent Latvia in their offices in New York and London. Only Estonia had an exile government in Sweden from 1953 to 1992 (and a consulate in New York). But freedom came to the Baltic states entirely through indigenous campaigns of civil resistance in the late 1980s, one being “The Singing Revolution.” A documentary film (now on DVD) with that title was released in 2007 and is required viewing for all Tibetan activists. The most spectacular (literally) and best-known of these campaigns was the “Baltic Chain” (or the Chain of Freedom) a peaceful political demonstration that occurred on August 23, 1989. Approximately two million people joined hands to form a human chain spanning over 600 kilometers across the three Baltic states. Such symbolic yet powerful actions not only brought about the freedom of these ancient nations but directly contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

What is striking about all these successful revolutions is that exile governments in no way brought about, or even seem to have contributed to, the civil uprisings that eventually liberated these countries. Freedom came to the people of these occupied nations through their own effort, courage and sacrifice. Of course, these struggles benefited from the major geopolitical shifts that occurred throughout the world in the eighties and nineties.

I’m dredging up these accounts of freedom struggles and exile governments, since our own Tibetan government-in-exile pulled the plug on itself this summer. Many acquaintances of mine, former officials and Rangzen activists were deeply shocked and troubled by the Dalai Lama’s decision to end the exile government and substitute it with a kind of NGO. There was even concern and alarm that the Tibetan issue, the cause of Tibetan freedom itself, might have been fatally harmed, because of the crisis in Dharamshala.

Of course in the first decade or so of our exile the exile government was truly indispensable, not just for the freedom struggle or the preservation of Tibetan culture, but for us to just hang on to a bare-bones identity. In spite of the internal wrangling, that I have written about before, there can be no doubt that the exile government did an amazing job in the first couple of decades after March 1959. I started working full-time for the exile government in 1968, though I worked as a volunteer teacher a few years earlier, during my school winter vacations. I was really surprised and impressed by the organization of the exile government and the dedication of its officials. I hope one day to put together as full an account of how the first Tibetan refugees overcame so many formidable obstacles to set up the exile government, and – why (over time) this government gave up its core mission, and became an organization whose sole apparent purpose appears to be to perpetuate itself, in regressively more ignominious and farcical ways.

In the last piece I wrote in this blog, Ending to Begin, I argued for the Dalai Lama retaining a symbolic role as head of state of the Tibetan nation, and condemned the downgrading of the exile government to the role of an NGO. I did not clearly see then that not only had the political life-span of the exile government run its natural course, but that the perhaps the resignation of the Dalai Lama and the ending of the government-in-exile was a timely event.

If we cast our minds back to the revolutionary events of 2008, the year when Lhasa was in flames, I am sure we can recall the thousands of Tibetans throughout the plateau rushing out of their monasteries, homes and tents, riding their horses down the mountainsides, all waving the national flag and all calling for Tibetan freedom and independence. We also surely remember the five major exile organization that united to create the People’s Uprising Movement and launched the peace march to Tibet. Exile Tibetans (and friends) the world-over staged enormous adrenalin charged protests and “creative action campaigns” supporting the Tibet uprisings and opposing the Beijing Olympics and the Torch Relay.

What we may have subliminally blocked out of our memory is the Dalai Lama’s statement that he would resign because Tibetans in Lhasa had rioted. We might have also forgotten the Dalai Lama ordering the five organizations to halt their march to Tibet, and prime-minister Samdong Rimpoche creating “Solidarity Committees” so as to take over the protest organizations to emasculate them and stop demonstrators from burning Chinese flags or shouting such slogans as “Free Tibet” or “China Out of Tibet.” A few years earlier Samdong Rinpoche had forbidden Tibetans from demonstrating against Chinese leaders visiting the USA. Could all the events of 2008 have led to something bigger? I clearly remember they were extraordinary in their sweep and energy. There was a definite feel of new beginnings and radical possibilities. But we will never know now, will we? Dharamshala, exercising the usual spiritual and emotional blackmail, gradually let the air out of everyone’s hopes and high-spirits, and concluded that year with an orgy of collective hypocrisy and sycophancy that was also called the November Special Meeting.

My biggest fear, my secret nightmare, is also rooted in my one lifelong dream. My dream is that in the not too distant future during an economic downturn in China, concurrently with some major internal conflict (even a revolution), rangzen uprisings will break out all over Tibet (and possibly Turkestan or Mongolia) and a real opportunity to seize Tibetan independence will finally come our way. This scenario is not as fanciful as it appears. It has happened before, in its entirety, in 1912.

But then my nightmare takes over. In the not too distant future, when the revolution happens, the Tibetan leadership, “persuaded” by its sponsors in the West who want to keep the Chinese economy afloat so their investment portfolios don’t take a hit, declare that Tibet is a part of the PRC and that Tibetans have no other aspiration except to be loyal citizens of the PRC. Pretty much what they are saying right now. A desperate China might even throw Dharamshala a bone and allow another delegation (the 23rd ?) to visit Beijing or even allow the Dalai Lama a visit to Mt. Wutaishan (riwo-tsenga). But it would kill the revolution stone-dead.

This time around the Dalai Lama has not made any direct statement about the self-immolations, and the exile-administration has not called for it to be stopped. I am grateful for this reprieve, but I’m not holding my breath. Yet perhaps, finally, the leadership of the struggle has truly passed on to those willing to die for it.

The Way Forward

The way forward for those of us in exile who believe in Rangzen is to connect with our brothers and sisters in Tibet, and find a way to contribute to the coming revolution. And we have a definite role to play, the same way that many young Arabs who had lived or had studied in the USA or Europe joined the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and provided the communication, medical, media and other skills that enabled the success of the Arab Spring.

We cannot go into all that now. It will have to be deliberated thoroughly in a forum of those committed to rangzen. I am confident this will happen soon. That said, there is some outstanding business that must be taken care of right now, here in this post. Our first task is to send a message to the people in Tibet. They have definitely heard of the resignation of the Dalai Lama and the closure of the exile government. Many must be confused and some have no doubt concluded that exiles have given up the cause. So we must send them a message, very clearly and very loudly, that whatever the mixed messages from Dharamshala, the rangzen struggle goes on, world over, and that it has become profoundly inspired and energized by the courage, commitment and sacrifice of so many inside Tibet. A most fitting moment and occasion to send this message would be the 10th March commemoration in 2012. This coming March will be particularly significant as it marks exactly 100 years when we rose up against the Chinese empire and created a free and independent Tibet.

On October 1911 revolution broke out in China. Chinese troops in Tibet went on a looting spree and terrorized the population of Lhasa city. The great historian Shakabpa tell us that the 13th Dalai Lama, in exile in Darjeeling, sent two of his officials Jampa Tendar and Trimon Norbu Wangyal, to Lhasa to take charge of the resistance. On the 26th of March 2012 they declared war on the Chinese and Manchu troops stationed there and fierce fighting broke out throughout the city. After nearly a year of hard and brutal fighting, the Chinese surrendered and were deported to China, via India. The 13th Dalai Lama entered a free Tibet the next year.

This coming March 10th, 2012, all Tibetans and friends should gather together in super demonstration/commemoration/festival events, like we have never had before. These gatherings should be so enormous, expressive, innovative, and attention-getting, that the world, but far more importantly, our brothers and sisters in Tibet will hear our collective refrain (ramgyo) to the message of revolution, freedom and independence they have sent us from over the high mountains and grasslands of Tibet. The message they have sent us all these years through their songs, poems, writings, demonstrations and flag-raisings; and also through their tears, their pain, their devastated lives and fiery sacrifices. The fires that were lit in Delhi, Kirti and Kanze have died down now, but to paraphrase His Holiness “…the flame of truth will never be fully extinguished”, and it is for us to guard and nurture these precious burning embers of truth, freedom and independence till the moment comes, and soon, when we can re-ignite them brightly in the hearts of all our people throughout the entire Tibetan plateau.

* * *

*Tibetan historians use the expression “nurturing the embers of the dharma” (tempae mero solwa) to describe the lonely but heroic struggle of a few dedicated scholars and teachers who kept the Buddha dharma alive in Tibet after the breakup of the Tibetan Empire, and eventually brought about the second or “later transmission” (tempa chidhar) of Buddhism to Tibet.

Ganden Phodrang labrang, Drepung Monastery

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

These lines from “The Second Coming” have often been pressed into service in political writing (of the despairing kind) though they are generally misemployed to introduce or set out events that don’t quite come up to the urgency of Yeat’s doom-laden metaphysical vision. I once saw them leading an op-ed in a British paper, the day after Margaret Thatcher’s third electoral victory.

But what is happening these days in the Tibetan world can, unfortunately, only be described accurately in the most dire of apocalyptic terms. And I don’t just mean inside Tibet, where the unrelenting oppression, violence, population transfer, cultural genocide and environmental devastation has now taken on an eschatological turn with the rapid marginalization and pauperization of the Tibetan people in the face of large-scale Chinese (and foreign) mining and development projects.

The latest addition to this “end of days” scenario is the unmistakably ethnocidal “Nomad Resettlement Program”. According to an official Xinhua news report 25,000 new units are being built in Qinghai for 2011, in addition to the previous 46,000 resettlement units already up and running. It has been estimated that the five year program would entail a total of about 134,000 herding families (approximately half a million individuals) to be forcibly removed from their grasslands and interned in bleak housing camps that bear a disturbing resemblance to Stalinist gulags: row after row of identical grey cider-block huts surround by high stonewalls, the perimeters patrolled by police cars.

But no. Grim as all that is, I don’t just mean what is happening inside Tibet but also what is happening outside, particularly in Dharamshala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile has, to all intents and purposes, gone ahead and pulled the plug on itself.

One could say that it began in 1988 with the Dalai Lama’s Strasbourg Proposal where he surrendered the cause of Tibetan independence, but a more immediate starting point for this current crisis was certainly this year’s 10th March statement by the Dalai Lama where he announced his decision to resign. I posted a blog criticizing the timing of his statement which came just ten days before Tibetan national elections. I also repeated a suggestion I made some years ago in a previous article in Phayul.com, that although the Dalai Lama’s decision to fully democratize the exile government was undoubtedly welcome, it was vital for reasons of political continuity and the morale of the Tibetan people inside Tibet, that he remain the head of state of the Tibetan nation – although in a purely ceremonial capacity. An insightful editorial in Tibetan Political Review made a similar recommendation outlining legal and constitutional reasons why such a step was necessary and why the exile parliament should not rush into any “hasty decision” on this issue. All such counsel and concerns were lost on Dharamshala, if it had even faintly registered there to begin with. The Tibetan parliament made an emotional request to the Dalai Lama asking him to continue in his role as “…the supreme political and spiritual leader of Tibet.”

The Dalai Lama categorically rejected the appeal during a religious teaching at the Tsuglakang temple in Dharamshala on March 19th. One aspect of the Dalai Lama’s statement that some people did not seem to grasp at first was that he was not only resigning as the political leader and head of state, but that he was also absolutely ending the role of the Dalai Lama as a national institution of Tibet. A report in Phayul.com made that clear: “His Holiness further said that it was his voluntary decision to end the political role of the Institution of the Dalai Lama that dates back to 1642, when the Great Fifth Dalai Lama assumed Tibet’s political leadership role.”

Viewing a video of the speech I was struck by the Dalai Lama’s claim that he was ending the institution of the Dalai Lama “victoriously” (gyalge nang nay). The Dalai Lama went on to say that the name of the Tibetan government Ganden Phodrang (Joyous Palace) was originally the name of the 5th Dalai Lama’s labrang or personal sub-monastery within Drepung monastery, and that he was going to take the name back – clearly intimating that the exile government could no longer use that name and that it was his personal property. The Dalai Lama’s stipulation was somewhat disconcerting at first. Didn’t he realize that he couldn’t just reach back some 370 odd years in history to reorder events to suit his current plans anymore than he could realistically demand the Chinese return to him the actual Ganden Phodrang building (which still exists).

When the Great Fifth took the name of his personal monastery and bestowed it on the new government of a free Tibet, united for the first time since the fall of the old Tibetan empire, it was an irrevocable political act and a profound historic event. I think we can all be certain that the Fifth was not having second thoughts that somewhere along the line he might want to take back the Ganden Phodrang name, just in case he had a change of plan in the future. Anyway the Dalai Lama got a new and vastly greater palace, the Potala, that the Tibetan people built for him with their sweat and devotion, and a new personal monastery, the Namgyal monastery (which he still has). Since coming into exile he has a modern private secretariat (kugyer yiktsang) which has more resources and political clout than the exile-government. Isn’t that enough?

Since 1642 the Ganden Phodrang has been the government of Tibet, and the legitimacy of the present exile-government rests in the minds of all Tibetans on the fact that it is an unbroken continuation of the same government that ruled in Lhasa before. If you took the name away you, in effect, ended the legitimacy of the government. If the exile government was not Ganden Phodrang anymore, then the 49,184 exile Tibetans who cast their votes this year were not participating in democratic election for a new prime minister and parliament, but rather in elections for the chairman and board of directors, or something on those lines, of a refugee organization or administration.

The inherent contradiction in the Dalai Lama’s demand may have prompted the next step in this farce. A five member Charter Re-drafting Committee was shortly created, which included the prime minister Samdong Rimpoche and Parliament Speaker Penpa Tsering, Taking its cue from the Dalai Lama’s withdrawal of the Ganden Phodrang name, the committee proposed that the old term “government” be dropped and the term “organization” be substituted.

The committee even came up with a strange touchy-feely (but on second thoughts perhaps a profoundly cynical)  motto for the new organization, “May Truth-ness Be Very Victorious” (denpanyi nampar gyalgyur chig) to replace the former title and motto “The Government of Tibet, the Joyous Palace, Completely Victorious Everywhere (bhoshung ganden phodrang choglas namyal). This old formulation has a wonderful resonance to it, and I’m probably not the only one who thinks so. The government of Bhutan adopted something similar: “Palden Drukshung Choglas Namgyal. The Glorious government of Bhutan, Completely Victorious Everywhere.”

In an unusual fit of efficiency and energy the five-man committee even had the new motto engraved on the seal of the Tibetan government.

To discuss and endorse these proposals a national conference was called for May 20. Tenzing Sonam la, the filmmaker and essayist, in an article in Himal magazine, described this as “an historic occasion, as participants would debate the nearly 400-year-old political authority of the institution of the Dalai Lamas and the very existence of an official Tibetan government-in-exile.” Tenzing Sonam stresses how important this meeting was.

“418 Tibetans from around the world gathered in Dharamsala, constituting as representative a body of exile Tibetans as could be quickly mustered. After four days of intense discussions, the meeting unanimously requested the Dalai Lama to maintain a symbolic presence in the government as a ceremonial head of state, much like the system of constitutional monarchy in the UK. In the minds of the participants, there was no apparent contradiction in requesting this of the Dalai Lama as it did not impinge on his wishes to give up political authority. The name-change amendment was overwhelmingly rejected in favour of retaining ‘Tibetan Government-in-exile’.” (my italcs JN)

“When the participants had an audience with the Dalai Lama to present their conclusions, their first surprise was his firm refusal to even consider their recommendation that he remain as ceremonial head of state. But it was his response to their second point, the retention of ‘Tibetan Government-in-exile’ as the official name, that really shook them. He made a strong and emotional case against this proposal, saying that if the name was retained leading to a problem in the future, he would not be able to help them. He also suggested that the new name could be changed to something like ‘Tibetan People’s Administration’.

And that was exactly what was done in a following session of the Tibetan parliament. Steered and “chided” by Samdong Rimpoche, the parliament near unanimously voted to change the name of the Tibetan exile government to “Bhod Me Drik Tsuk” (lit. Institution/Organization of the Tibetan People).

Tenzing Sonam la’s article is required reading for anyone wanting to make sense of the tragic and farcial events played out in Dharamshala and the profoundly undemocratic, cynical and arbitrary manner in which decisions were made that led to them. A poignant obituary of the Ganden Phodrang government by Sherab Woeser la appeared in Phayul.com. Other commentaries on various aspects of this issue that provide valuable insight and analysis are those by Wangpo Tethong, Christophe Besuchet, and Prof. Elliot Sperling (in Jane’s Intelligence Review).

As much as I admired Tenzing Sonam la’s piece I must disagree with one of his main premises, repeated by many Tibetans and also such non-Tibetans as Pico Iyer, Patrick French and others, that “Ever since coming into exile in 1959, the Dalai Lama has tirelessly promoted democracy” but failed because Tibetans were too conservative, religious, and unquestioningly devoted to the Dalai Lama. This, I have I said before “is essentially a pious fable that frustrated exile-Tibetans repeat like a mantra to berate themselves for the crushing stasis of their society and political movement.” His Holiness may have initially started his democratic quest on a sincere note but his inability to tolerate criticism or even a modicum of loyal opposition essentially ensured that the Tibetan political experiment would soon degenerate into something like Nepal’s old one-party “Panchayat democracy”.

And I do not agree with Tenzing Sonam la that the Dalai Lama’s resignation was “A far-sighted and bold initiative by the Dalai Lama to decisively impose the responsibilities of democracy on the diaspora.” First of all I think it is evident that the Dalai Lama was not really resigning and retiring in the traditional sense of the term, like president George Bush going back to his ranch in Crawford Texas to clear brush or whatever, or in the tradition of many great lamas in Tibet who go into meditation retreats (tsam) on withdrawing from spiritual or administrative duties. Charles Bell was told in Lhasa that the Great Fifth Lama “conducted the secular affairs of his State for no more than three years. He then retired into religious seclusion.”

The Dalai Lama was not so much retiring as undertaking a major career change. Less than a month after his resignation he was in Ireland dispensing advice to the Irish on their economic crisis, telling them that “The ultimate source of happiness, peace of mind, cannot be produced by money,” Then he was in Australia where he took on an idiot talk-show host’s pizza joke, and consoled the people of Queensland on the deadly flood and cyclone disaster they had recently endured. In July he was in Washington DC to give a Kalachakra initiation to be followed by a public talk and discussion in Chicago. In the following months he has more commitments in France, Estonia, Finland, Canada, Monterrey Mexico, Mexico city, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo (Brazil). This is not counting the four or more major teachings he is giving in Dharamshala, which will be attended by hundreds of devotees from Taiwan and South Korea. Going through the schedule section of the website dalailama.com leaves you tremendously impressed by the Dalai Lama’s stamina. It also makes you realize that His Holiness has for some time now been far more busy in his global spiritual quest than with the issue of Tibetan freedom.

It has been argued by many of the Dalai Lama’s devotee’s, Tibetan and non-Tibetan, that his teachings and travels benefit the Tibetan cause as they bring much needed international attention to it. There is undoubtedly some truth to this assertion, but the bottom line is that such spiritual junkets bring in only as much publicity to the cause as the Dalai Lama is actually willing to talk about. When he does not raise the issue during his travels (which is increasingly becoming the norm) the media is perfectly happy to ignore the hard political issues (why annoy China when you don’t have to?) and instead write about spirituality and world-peace.

Of course, the Dalai Lama’s has a right to do as he pleases on retiring. If he wants to spend his time providing spiritual guidance to the world, his decision is not only worthy of respect but even praise and admiration. I have no doubt that the Dalai Lama’s spiritual ministrations provide tremendous solace and direction to thousands of people around the world and that is certainly a very positive thing.

My only objection is to his deliberate decision to strip away the historic name and motto of the Tibetan government, essentially shutting down the institution as a political entity by reducing it from an “exile-government” to a refugee administration or organization. Many Tibetans, especially old officials and ministers in retirement were absolutely shattered by the Dalai Lama’s decision. I spoke to some of them and they appeared confused and bewildered as to why the exile-government had to end just because the Dalai Lama was retiring.

I was also puzzled at first but on some reflection it became fairly obvious. Tibetans overwhelmingly feel that the Dalai Lama’s policy to seek dialogue with Beijing has failed. Most feel that the failure has been disastrous and humiliating. Only the Dalai Lama active management of this issue and the effort of Samdong Rimpoche and other loyalists have kept the “Middle Way Approach” afloat – but even then, just barely. Without the Dalai Lama’s hands-on leadership and with the ultimate decision-making powers being transferred to a democratically elected exile-government, it could be reasonably expected that a Rangzen based political party would come into power, sooner or later. Possibly sooner, with all the unrest and uprisings within Tibet.

Therefore to ensure the permanence of the Middle Way policy within exile society – to set it in concrete as it were – it was vital that the exile-government be politically emasculated and converted into a body only capable of managing the settlements, schools etc, and not able to make decisions regarding the future of the Tibetan nation. Right now although the Dalai Lama is said to have completely retired and the claim has been made by the parliament that all political powers have been transferred to new “Tibetan People’s Organization” (TPO), it is not clear whether the various offices of Tibet and representatives and envoys of the Dalai Lama all over the world are under his authority of that of the TPO. Nearly all our dealings with other nations and also much of our externally generated funding is received by these unofficial “embassies”. The Dalai Lama’s international travels and programs are also managed by them.

It was also vital to the implementation of this plan that the Dalai Lama not remain as the symbolic head of state, even though requested by nearly all Tibetans. Any such connection would benefit the TPO through the Dalai Lama’s prestige and international standing. Moreover if he became the ceremonial head of state he would be constitutionally bound (as the Queen of England, the Emperor of Japan, and the King of Thailand are) not to publicly disagree with whatever policies that the elected organization had enacted, even if they included the rejection of the Middle Way.

The Dalai Lama has said that on retirement he would continue to promote the Middle Way Policy, and the new preamble of the amended charter gives him the standing to do so. So what you actually have now is someone with more political clout than a ceremonial head of state, but with no requirement to support the policies of the new elected Tibetan organization. And since the Dalai Lama will be situated in Dharamshala with his own private monastery and private secretariate, which will presumably henceforth be called Ganden Phodrang, no new administration or TPO, even one elected by a landslide majority, would be able to do anything the Dalai Lama did not approve.

The present kalon tripa, Lobsang Sangay la, appears to have fully absorbed the new reality. In his first interview since winning the elections he declared that “he stood for the Middle Way”, and that he “..will strive for the genuine autonomy of Tibet within the Chinese constitution.” He has also stated that he would abide by the advice and guidance of the Dalai Lama. Earlier when he was campaigning, he had been careful to always declare that he supported both independence as well as the Middle Way. In fact he coined a new term “u-rang“, combining the first syllable from umay-lam or Middle way and the first syllable from rangzen to define his unique position.

The conviction that the Middle Way must always remain the only political ideology of Tibetans, even if that status quo can only be maintained in the most undemocratic, cynical and self-destructive manner, is an article of faith for many of the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way loyalists. They openly argue that the Dalai Lama’s international travels, meeting with various heads of states, public lectures and teachings, would come to a crashing halt if Tibetans began to advocate for independence, and some Western followers of the Dalai Lama also assert this. A Brazilian diplomat who came to a talk of mine at Tibet House in New York city told me so to my face and I wasn’t too sure whether she was giving me a bit of advice or making a threat. Another justification cited is that the financial support the exile administration receives from the EU, US Congress and other organizations would stop if exiles adopted the goal of Rangzen. These people are of course absolutely mistaken, and are just buying into a classic instance of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I won’t go into that now. The important thing to note is that it is a real belief on their part, one that the Dalai Lama also genuinely holds.

There is an additional reason, crucial but not openly discussed, why the Dalai Lama seeks to ensure that the Middle Way is never supplanted in exile polity. I wrote this in 2007 “Over the last decade, a delusion has been cultivated in Tibetan leadership circles that Tibetan Buddhism could become the dominant, perhaps even the state religion of China. An unspoken corollary to this eventuality is that the Dalai Lama could somehow be accorded the larger role of spiritual leader of the Chinese people.” Victor Chan who has co-authored a book with the Dalai Lama The Wisdom of Forgiveness, and founded the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education jointly with His Holiness, told me during an interview that he “… felt sure that His Holiness could become the leader of China’s Buddhists, but that in order for that to happen Tibetans had to renounce their demand for independence, since the Chinese “people” would never accept an independent Tibet.” His Holiness has put it more modestly “I would like to perform a Kalachakra in Tiananmen Square.”

The Dalai Lama’s special emissary, Lodi Gyari in an interview in Rediff.com made this claim: “One of the most decisive factors in the Tibetan issue is this newly found interest for Buddhism in China. In the same interview, Gyari claimed that there was a great “extent of reverence” for the Dalai Lama throughout China, even among officials in the Chinese government and the Communist Party. Gyari felt that this reverence even extended to China’s entrepreneurs and business community who believed “that what China really needs is the presence of His Holiness.”

It’s clear that His Holiness and those around him are convinced they are playing for enormous international stakes. Hence their impatience with those who still cling to such outdated, unprofitable and inconsequential institutions and issues as the exile-government and Tibetan independence. Yet, inside Tibet people continue to rise up for freedom and suffer the consequences. In exile, confused and heartbroken as most Tibetans are, demonstrations, hunger-strikes and marches go on. Shouldn’t someone be telling these people to go home; that it’s all over? And especially to those inside Tibet, to stop putting themselves at such enormous risk and danger for a cause that has been officially abandoned. Or do these people know something that we don’t? That perhaps far from being over the struggle may just be beginning? I don’t know, but I’d like to investigate this in Part II. A concluding observation.

Only two Dalai Lamas are known to Tibetans as “The Great” (chenmo). The Great Fifth (kuntreng ngaba chenmo) reunited a Tibet fragmented since the collapse of the Tibetan Empire, and the Great Thirteenth, (kundreng chuksumpa chenmo), freed Tibet from Manchu domination in 1911 and created an independent nation. The present Dalai Lama has received many distinguished international titles and honors “Nobel Laureate”, “Congressional Medal of Honor Holder” and so on, but the simple yet ultimate accolade from his own people has so far eluded him. His courtiers routinely address him as “The Great Helmsman of World Peace” (zamling shide dhipon), which is, I suppose, a title more in keeping with his current aspirations, but I wish they hadn’t used the same Tibetan word for “Helmsman” (dhipon) as the one used in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution to honor Mao, “The Great Helmsman”.

I called up a couple of old official acquaintances in Dharamshala who are better informed on Tibetan politics than most. They dutifully endorsed His Holiness’s decision but did not seem too happy about the timing of the announcement nor the absence of any official or unofficial consultations regarding the process.

His Holiness’s statement came, quite literally, on verge of an election for a new prime minister. Everyone in the Tibetan world had assumed that this particular election was going to be for the same office of kalon tripa or prime minister, as we had had before. This office was one whose main responsibility, as the outgoing PM, Samdong Rimpoche, had earlier described, was “to carry out the wishes of the Dalai Lama.” No one had thought they would have to vote for someone to actually replace His Holiness as a political and national leader.

Common sense suggests that the announcement should have been made at least a year or two earlier so that people could have prepared themselves to elect a political replacement for the Dalai Lama. Or, the announcement could have been made some time after the elections when the Dalai Lama had gotten to know his new prime minister and cabinet and had gauged if they were capable of taking over his political powers, or at least serving as an interim government to prepare for the elections of a new national leader. To be fair, His Holiness had on some earlier occasions talked of retiring, but such general speculations made to the Western or Indian press are clearly very different from an official announcement of an actual decision to retire.

His Holiness’ announcement has been deeply unsettling for Tibetans in exile, and perhaps even traumatic for Tibetans living under Chinese oppression, for whom He is the living symbol of their hope for freedom. The current Prime Minister, Samdong Rimpoche, attempted to explain to the Tibetan public that his administration had repeatedly requested the Dalai Lama not to step down.” His exact words were “We have been urging His Holiness not to give up the political leadership.” But he admitted that it was to no avail. The current Parliament immediately convened and passed a resolution urging his Holiness not to retire. But on March 19th at a public gathering, His Holiness rejected the resolution by the Tibetan Parliament and declared that he stood firm on his initial decision to resign. And he sounded very final about it.

So what can Tibetans do now?

On December 18, 2007, Phayul.com published an article of mine “The Jewel in the Ballot Box“, which I wrote in response to an earlier such statement by His Holiness’s about retiring and about seeking new ways to select a future incarnation of the Dalai Lama. In the article I laid out, in some detail, a possible solution to, yes, this very crisis Tibetans are facing right now. I described how the Dalai Lama could retire from the day-to-day task of being the political leader of Tibet but yet, maintain a symbolic leadership role which would maintain the continuity of the Tibetan governmental system and also stabilize, and I believe even strengthen, the present structure of Tibetan governance in a genuinely democratic manner.

For details readers should go through the original article on Phayul.com and also on my blog Shadow Tibet where I re-posted it a couple of years later. I’m just going to reproduce an excerpt here:

But no matter how important we Tibetans may regard the institution of the Dalai Lamas, and would like nothing better than to see it continue unchanged, His Holiness himself has, on a number of occasions, made it clear that he would like to retire. Constitutionally this might create a problem since Dalai Lamas are not appointed or elected, so the question of retiring should not really arise. The Dalai Lama’s position is not even like that of a king, who does not become one until his coronation. Rather, the Dalai Lama’s is a lifetime job. He is born a Dalai Lama, and it is assumed that he is one even if the search party hasn’t yet made it to his village and found him. Even in his minority when he does not have the authority to skip a calligraphy lesson, he is still the Dalai Lama. Being the Dalai Lama does not seem to require that he have actual political powers.

And this is where I can begin to make out a single overall solution to these numerous problems that Tibetan society now faces: of His Holiness wishing to retire, of searching for a new Dalai Lama, of maintaining the tradition as the people in Tibet would want it, of countering Chinese efforts to control the reincarnation process, and of maintaining unity in exile society till the next Dalai Lama returns to his people.

The Dalai Lama should not retire and should remain head of state, but he should modify his role to that of a constitutional one like the King of Thailand’s. In this way His Holiness need not be burdened with the routine problems of government or with the unpleasant squabbles and strife of political life, but still retain a constitutional role to advise perhaps even arbitrate, in the case of a major national crisis. Political power should rest entirely with the Tibetan people, as His Holiness has repeatedly said was his intention.”

I think the exile parliament and the cabinet made a mistake by requesting His Holiness to completely reverse his decision and continue to assume his role as the political ruler of Tibet – exactly as before. We all know His Holiness is very strong-minded and not amenable to reversing or changing a decision after he has made it.

Hence, if I may offer a suggestion, the Tibetan cabinet or Parliament, or both together, should once again approach His Holiness and inform him that they now understood and appreciated the fact that His Holiness had carried the enormous political and administrative burden of the Tibetan nation for over sixty years and that it was more than timely for him to retire from political office. Then they should follow up that statement with this request that in order to ensure the continuation and eventual success of His Holiness’s legacy of democratizing Tibetan society, he should assume just the symbolic role of head of state, which would not encumber him with burdensome duties or responsibilities, but help to bring stability and continuation to the democratic process.

They should present this as a compromise solution to the current crisis, in keeping with Holiness’s own Middle Way approach to political strategy. I think that His Holiness, in keeping with his philosophy of moderation and compromise, could not refuse this middle-ground solution, if presented in a completely genuine and sincere way by ministers and members of parliament, and not as a ruse, a roundabout way, to get him to rescind his earlier decision.

If we are unable to convince his Holiness of the need for him to accept the role of a titular or constitutional head of state, I am afraid that, going forward, the government-in-exile will face a number of constitutional, perhaps even existential problems. Some of these will most certainly prove to be damaging to the national struggle itself, even within Tibet. I am not a constitutional scholar so any corrections or additions to the few points I am raising below would be much appreciated.

1. If His Holiness resigns from office as he has announced, we would have to change our system of government fundamentally. We cannot maintain our present parliamentary and prime-ministerial system if we do not have a separate head of state. In a parliamentary system like ours there is a clear differentiation between the head of government and the head of state, with the head of government being the prime minister and the head of state often being a president (as in India or France), a hereditary monarch (as in Thailand or Britain) or representative of a monarch as a Governor-General (in Canada or Australia).

Hence it is necessary for His Holiness to remain at least as the titular or symbolic head of state, if we are to continue with our present system of government, otherwise we would have to elect a separate figurehead president as we have in India, or change our system completely to a presidential system as in the United States.

2. Then there is the more important question of legitimacy. Our present exile government had its genesis on the 29th of March, 1959, when the Dalai Lama made a formal proclamation at Lhuntse Dzong establishing the legitimate government of Tibet (which subsequently became the government-in-exile). The proclamation (reproduced from Tsepon Shakabpa’s great history) clearly states that “…the re-founding of the independent Ganden Phodrang government, with religious and political authority, has been undertaken in the Yugyal Lhuntse Dzong.” The proclamation also noted that the two former prime ministers of Tibet, Lukhangwa and Lobsang Tashi who had been forced to resign from office because of Chinese pressure had been officially reinstated.

This proclamation was read out to all government officials, soldiers and populace assembled at Lhuntse Dzong. Copies of the proclamation, signed and sealed by His Holiness, were sent to district headquarters all over Tibet. The traditional investiture ceremony was conducted by the Dalai Lama’s two tutors, and such traditional dances as the Droshay, or the Dance of Propitious Fortune, performed by the people. In My Land and My People, the Dalai Lama writes that the proclamation was made to counter the announcement by the Chinese that they had dissolved the Tibetan government in Lhasa.

And this claim has been maintained ever since. The government in exile was not merely the administrative authority for Tibetan refugees but also the true government of Tibet. Hence the name Ganden Phodrang (or Joyous Palace) was kept, along with the old seal, but most important of all, its sovereign head, the Dalai Lama. Without these the claim of the exile-government to represent the legitimate government of Tibet, a claim that is hard enough to maintain internationally even with his Holiness at present, would be impossible to establish in the future. Even the fact of the exile-government being elected would merely make it the elected administrative body of Tibetans living outside Tibet.

3. Then there is the matter of Tibetans inside Tibet. The two most recurring slogans shouted by demonstrators in Tibet have been “The Dalai Lama must return to Tibet” and “Full Independence for Tibet.” I don’t believe that this pairing of the two demands is merely a coincidence. For those Tibetans struggling to survive, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, under the unrelenting and pitiless tyranny of Communist China, the Dalai Lama is not only a religious “tsawae lama” or “root guru” (of which there are many great ones in the Tibetan world). For Tibetans in Tibet he is unquestionably and preeminently the sovereign ruler and living symbol of a free and independent “Land of Snows” – a land to which they stubbornly believe he will surely return one day.

Another great man, George Orwell, annoyed at the prevailing snobbery around French cuisine and the routine dismissive charges that “English food was the worst in the world”, was driven to write an essay, “In Defence of English Cooking”, for the Evening Standard. I am attempting to follow in the master’s footsteps with this exploration of Tibetan culinary culture. Some years ago I wrote a piece on Khabsay or New Year cookies which many readers wrote in to say they enjoyed. Since Losar is rolling around again I hope this essay on Tibetan cuisine will provide some reading pleasure to Tibetans during this season when, no matter how cruelly the political winds are blowing in Tibet, we might take a brief time off from the struggle and enjoy good food and drink in convivial company.

The Incomparable Tsampa

The fundamental staple food of Tibet is, of course, not borrowed from China at all. Tsampa or roasted barley meal is so different from the Chinese staple of rice and wheat, that when Chinese Communist soldiers first came to Tibet and tried to eat tsampa they choked and gagged on the powdery stuff – much to the amusement of Tibetan bystanders.

But as tricky as it can be to eat without mastering the proper technique, tsampa is the foundation of a noble diet, similar in part to what people ate in the classical world. In H.D.F Kitto’s remarkable introduction to ancient Greece (The Greeks) he tells us that “Barley meal, olives, a little wine, fish as a relish, meat only on high holidays – such was the normal diet.” Pliny tells us that gladiators in Rome were also called hordearii, barley men, because of the amount of barley, a muscle building food they ate. Hordeum vulgare being the Latin for barley.

In the Odyssey (T.E. Lawrence’s translation) when Odysseus returns home to Ithaca he is given a meal by Eumaeus the swineherd, who does not recognize the hero as his old master. “When the two roast piglets were done he carried them to Odysseus and set them in front of him, still on the spits and piping hot. He dusted them over with barley meal….”. Tibetans prefer boiling to roasting meat but I suppose like the Greeks they don’t like loosing the fatty juices. I’m not sure if this common practice but I once saw a Khampa man in Mustang skewer a large chunk of boiled mutton out of a pot with his knife. He then dusted the meat with tsampa so that the juices wouldn’t drip down his chin when he went to work on it.

If you think I’m trying a little too hard to elevate the culinary or cultural status of tsampa with all my references to Greece and Rome, check out this passage from Food Civilization by Carson Ritchie:

Roasted corn was one of the great culinary inventions. It was still in use in Tibet until the Chinese communist invasion, in the form of tsampa or roasted barley corns, ground into meal. It would keep indefinitely, and could be prepared by adding cold or hot water to it. Homer’s heroes even added barley meal to wine. It could be mixed with other foods, such as broths, and was so light that it could easily be carried about. Husked grain, whether parched or toasted or not, became the great food of antiquity.’

Ritchie also informs us that making tsampa was one of the ways in which Neolithic man grappled with the considerable problems posed by moving to different foods from those eaten by the earlier hunters. Various ingenious processes were carried out by Neolithic man to get to the edible part of cereals – threshing, boiling the heads, and so on, but roasting barley-corn and then milling it, in effect making tsampa, was one of the first ways.

The Virtues of Tsampa

Older Tibetans need little encouragement to hold forth on the wonderful properties of tsampa. But in colonial times, snooty European travelers in the Himalayas had less elegiac views of our national staple. An English lady in Ladakh was horrified to see the natives eating tsampa “…with their fingers …it almost makes you sick just to watch them wolf it down.” Strangely enough, our old friend Heinrich Harrer joins the sahibs and memsahibs in this condescending chorus. In Seven Years he writes “Of course one cannot compare the productivity of Tibetan workers with that of Europeans. The physical strength of the natives was much inferior.” He ascribes the low productivity of the Tibetans to their staple diet of tsampa. Henrig la seems to have forgotten that he survived his tremendous trek across the Jhangtang in winter on a near exclusive diet of tsampa, not Wiener schnitzels.

Peter Fleming who traveled across Amdo, Tsaidam, Turkestan and Baltistan in 1935, on a steady diet of tsampa, is more befittingly appreciative:

Tsamba has much to recommend it, and if I were a poet I would write an ode to the stuff. It is sustaining, digestible and cheap. For nearly three months we had tsamba for breakfast and tsamba for lunch, and the diet was neither as unappetizing nor as monotonous as it sounds. One of the great virtues of tsamba is that you can vary the flavour and the consistency at will. You can make it into a cake or you can make it into a porridge; and either can be flavoured with sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, or (on special occasions for you only had one bottle) Worcester Sauce. And, as if that were not enough, you can make it with cocoa instead of with tea. I would not go so far as to say that you never get tired of tsamba, but you would get tired of anything else much quicker.

Even Melvyn Goldstein, usually not the most sympathetic of souls to things Tibetan, is positive on tsampa, claiming that it “…is a great trail food because it requires no further cooking and can be eaten with plain water if it is not feasible to make a fire and tea, for example during a storm (and…) it provides a highly nutritious meal that requires virtually no preparation.”

The fact of barley’s exceptional nutritional qualities – that Tibetans, Romans and ancient Greeks had long known and celebrated – finally received due recognition from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006. This is what that august body declared, “Scientific evidence indicates that including barley in a healthy diet can help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease by lowering bad cholesterol (low density lipo-proteins) and total cholesterol levels.”

The New York Times (Wednesday, June 28, 2006) added that “The new health claims for barley are substantial and are based on “significant scientific evidence.” Other claims being made for a “barley-inclusive” diet is ‘reduction of risk for cancer of the stomach and intestine’; ‘reduction of risk of cardiovascular diseases’; ‘reduction of risk of Type 2 diabetes ’; ‘stimulation of the immune system’; and ‘contribution to reduction of the risk of obesity’.

Traditionally, it is not only Tibetans who have made nutritional and medical claims for barley. The Japanese make a tea of roasted barley, called mugicha (boricha in Korea) which is said to cleanse the blood of impurities and reduce stress. In Britain you have Lemon Barley Water, a great tonic popular with parents and children alike. It has long been the official drink supplied to players at Wimbledon.

The Delicate Art of Preparing and Eating Tsampa

Okay, so tsampa’s good for you. But how is a non-Tibetan, or a Tibetan out of touch with his roots, supposed to eat it without suffering the fate of the Chinese soldiers mentioned earlier. Peter Fleming who wanted to write an ode to tsampa, describes the basic way of going about it:

You fill your shallow wooden bowl with tea, then you let the butter melt in the tea (the butter is usually rancid and has a good cheesy flavour); then you put a handful of tsamba in. At first it floats; then like a child’s castle of sand, its foundation begins to be eaten by the liquid. You coax it with your fingers until it is more or less saturated and has become a paste; this you knead until you have a kind of doughy cake in your hand and the wooden bowl is empty and clean. Breakfast is ready.

The watchword is “coax”. You have to go about the process slowly and gently, “folding” the tsampa into the tea like you would fold melted chocolate into egg-white when making chocolate mousse. Tibetans don’t use the word “knead” (zi) for the process of preparing tsampa for eating. The word used is “yoe” which would mean blending or mixing but, I repeat, done gently. When prepared in this fashion you get a mixture that is not sticky or doughy but soft and manageable. This end-product is now called paag, and not tsampa anymore. You can then make convenient lumps of the stuff, ready to be eaten, without tsampa sticking all over your hands and everywhere. A small lump or roll of paag squeezed in your fist is called daga.

I remember as a child my nanny, Dawa Bhuti (from Kharag in Shigatse district) telling me this story where a daga of paag featured prominently. The story had a flavour of Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River. Three sisters (the older two selfish and mean, the youngest kind and beautiful) have to go on a quest. One by one they walk up a mountain and each in turn encounter this little dog. The puppy begs them for food with this couplet that concludes with three barks:

If you give me one lump (of paag)
I will tell you one tale
Arf! Arf! Ar!

dag chig tayna
tam chig shay yong
Ak Ak Ak.

Another way to eat tsampa is straight and dry. Tibetan’s call this method tsang-gam. You take a spoonful of the dry meal and pop it in your mouth. Another way is to just lick the dry tsampa from a bowl. When old tsampa hands do it, it looks deceptively easy, but the practice is not recommended. If you insist, you should know that the trick is never to inhale when performing tsang-gam. If you do, even a little, you will suffer a coughing spell, possibly even a nasty choking experience. Death by tsampa! More improbable things have happened in Tibet.

Tibetan peasants, especially those from the Tsang region like to add a handful of tsampa to their bowl of barley-ale (chang) and eat it with their fingers in a fashion called kyo-mak da. I once tried adding tsampa to red-wine as Carson Ritchie tells us Homer’s heroes did. The result was, well, interesting.

For breakfast tsampa is usually consumed as cham-dur, or, as Tibetan restaurants feature it on their menus, “tsampa porridge”. It is a dish much loved by children. My daughter Namkha Lhamo regularly eats cham-dur when we have tsampa in the house. You put a pat of butter in a bowl with some powdered cheese (chu-shib) and a little sugar (preferably brown sugar) and pour in some hot tea (or hot milk) in the bowl getting the butter to melt and blending with everything else. You then stir in enough tsampa so that the mixture is more runny than doughy – porridge consistency – and get on with your breakfast.

Children in Tibet also love to eat the barley grain (ney) after it is roasted and popped. This Tibetan pop-corn is called yod. The popped barley is milled at a water-mill called the chu-thag and made into tsampa.

Quality tsampa milled from high-grade barley, the grain washed and prepared in a special way, is not only delicious but has a wonderful sweet aroma to it. When I was in Mustang our phokhang or commissariat at Kag-Beni had a special supply of tsampa that was so good that one of our instructors, Thondup Gyalpo la (a former sergeant in the Guards regiment in Lhasa) would just mix it with water from the stream and eat it without any side-dish or sauce. He insisted that adding anything else would spoil the taste of the tsampa. Tsampa eaten in this way is called chu-paag.

For dinner you could make a nice soup or broth called tsam-thug with tsampa, meat and vegetables, but more on that in Part II of this essay.

In ancient Tibet, tsampa was served at banquets in large brick-like cakes called masen. At the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA), Sonam Wangdu la, one of my star comedians who was also a master-chef in old Lhasa, once served this dish at a New Year dinner at TIPA. The tsampa cakes were accompanied large joints of cooked mutton and radish. This ancient banquet was called sozi masen.

Tang dynasty accounts mention that Tibetans pressed a lump of tsampa with their thumb, and used the hollow space as a spoon to scoop up stew or vegetables.

Tsampa Paraphernalia

A largish wooden bowl or gog-phor is generally used for mixing and eating tsampa. This bowl has a tight-fitting lid which can be taken off and used to hold your side-dish (paag-drel) of stew, soup or vegetables. This will be discussed in Part II.

You might also also use a jha-phor or tea bowl, for drinking tea or beer. It is smaller and shallower than the tsampa bowl and the inside is sometimes lined with silver. Your set of wooden bowls might include a tiny bowl (with lid) in which you keep a supply of your favorite hot-sauce. This bowl can be stored inside the large gog-phor after you’ve had your meal. These wooden bowls are manufactured in southern Tibet and in Mon Tawang. They are also made in Bhutan by skilled wood-turners. Some of these bowls are credited with being able to detect poison.

An important article for a tsampa based meal is the sol-ray or napkin. Its usually the name size as a napkin in the west, but sometimes bigger. It is important to have this on your lap as tsampa tends to spill a little, no matter how careful you are when you mix it. When you were traveling the napkin could be used to tie up your bowls and things in the napkin. Such napkins are handy as they can, at a pinch, substitute for a bowl to hold lumps of tsampa or meat. In Bhutan people use a wooden bowl for their soup like Tibetans but their traditional rice dish is always served in a large napkin called the tho-ray, that everyone carries about with him. I saw a photograph of the former king, Jigme Singe Wangchuk, using such a napkin when having a meal with a crowd of ordinary Bhutanese people. A nice democratic gesture.

Anyhow, If you haven’t picked up the skill of mixing tsampa in a bowl you can use a bag to do the mixing in. In Tibet a pliant bag of thin leather with a drawstring (oto) on the opening, is used. It is called a thang-khug. You can use a plastic bag at a pinch. I have seen Tibetans doing that. It mustn’t be too stiff, but I guess it shouldn’t be too thin either, and tear.

There is a larger tsampa bag of leather and fabric which is called a tsam-khug, and is largely used for storing and sometimes serving tsampa at a table; but not for mixing. I saw a beautiful tsam-khug leather bag trimmed with brocade, at the monastery of Gar Rimpoche in Rarang, Kinnaur. The bag had a serving spoon inside called the tsam-thur, which is used to serve out the tsampa.

Generally you would use a special wooden container with a lid, called tsam-phor, to store and serve tsampa at a table. These bowl-like containers are often painted with designs on the outside and laquered red on the inside. Some of these vessels are even decorated with turquoise, coral and semi-precious stones on the outside. In the old days a high lama, a merchant prince or an important official might have such a fancy tsam-phor on his side-table. One tsam-phor I saw had a special lid which incorporated a small bowl on the top. That small bowl was used to hold a supply of thue, which is a rich concoction of powdered-cheese, butter and brown-sugar (bhurom) used to flavor the tsampa.

The Vocabulary and Voice of Tsampa
Tsampa is also eaten in Turkestan where it is called “talkhan”. In Bihar and some parts of north India a kind of tsampa (sometimes mixed with milled chick-pea) is called “satthu” and eaten by peasants and labourers. In certain parts of north China where tsampa is eaten it is called “tso-mien“. All Chinese Communist publication, even those in English, invariably refer to Tibetan barley, not by its native name of “ney” or “dru”, but in pinyin as Qingke – probably pronounced “chinky” (I think).

The honorific for tsampa is su-shib. Of course the Dalai Lama has a very special tsampa made for him which is called jamin. On the other hand inferior tsampa eaten by poorer people is called kamsob or tsam-sog. This is sometimes mixed with pea-flour (ten-tsam or ten-shi) which is generally cheaper, though quite flavorful in its own right.

Since tsampa played such an important role in Tibetan life, it should come as no surprise that there were special tsampa officials called the “tsam-shipa” and the “tsam-nyer” in charge of procurement, storage and distribution of tsampa. A special department of the government called the “tsam-sher laykhung” collected agricultural produce for distribution to monasteries and the army. Wages in old Tibet, for soldiers of the army and the like, were paid in large part with tsampa. This was called tsam-phog. A payment in cash was made for the remainder, called the sha-phog or “meat wages”

Tsampa is used in religious ritual for making sacramental cakes called tsok and torma, and in the sangsol ceremony where handfuls of tsampa are tossed in the air (tsam-tor). Tsampa is also burnt and the smoke offered not only to various deities, but sometimes as an act of compassion to yidags (tantalized spirits) existing in a special subdivision of the Buddhist hell. Since these creatures are said to take in nurishment only through smell, the burnt-tsampa offering (soor or tsam-soor) was an effective way of feeding them.

Tsampa appears in many Tibetan expressions and proverbs:

Tsamkhu tongpa dap pa: To beat an empty tsampa bag. To try and get something out of nothing.

Tsampa sholpa. To sprinkle or throw tsampa. To flatter.

Tsampa gam lingbu tang. Eat dry tsampa and play the flute at the same time. Do two incompatible things. Conflict of interest.

Ngu-khug tsam-khuk la bhechoe tang. Using your money bag for storing tsampa. Squander your wealth. Charles Bell renders this as “The Good father had a full money-bag/ The bad son uses it as a bag for flour.”

Tsampa rang ge zay, thang-khuk mi la yok. You eat the tsampa but put the tsampa-bag on someone else’s (head). To profit from a situation but let others suffer the consequences.

Tsampae khyekyag bhutog ki chay. Baking-soda acting as guarantor to tsampa, (both can be blown away by the wind). One insubstantial person cannot support another.

Tsampae-drima kha. Smelling of tsampa. Having a Tibetan quality. Tibetan-ness.

The word tsam-zen, is a contraction for tsampa-zangen or tsampa eater. Two separate sources told me that when the first demonstration started in Lhasa in 1987, and Tibetans were called out from their homes to join the protesters in the streets, the rallying cry was “All tsampa eaters come out”. “Tsampa zangen tso ma dhon-sho.”

Babu Tharchin la, the editor of the Tibetan newspaper in Kalimpong, The Tibet Mirror, in an editorial (October 1, 1952) called on all Tibetans, specifically the people of Kham, to unite.

We, the tsampa eaters, chuba wearers, dice players, raw and dried meat eaters, followers of Buddhism, Tibetan language speakers, the people from The Three Circuits of Ngari (Ngari Korsum), Four Horns of Central Tibet (U-Tsang Ru-zhi), Six Ranges of Eastern Tibet (Dokham Gangdrug) and the Thirteen Myriarchies of Tibet (Bhod Trik-khor Chuksum) we must make the effort to end the [Chinese] occupation.

On October 1, 1957, The Tibet Mirror published a “reminder song” which had as a refrain these lines “Don’t let silver coins lure you, /Stand up, stand up the tsampa eaters!”

In an article in Himal in 1993, the scholar Tsering Shakya la: wrote that “During the height of the Tibetan resistance to the Chinese in 1959, a letter appeared in the Tibetan Mirror, symbolically addressed to ‘all tsampa eaters’. The writer had gone down to the staple, barley as the most basic element which united the Tibetan-speaking world. If Buddhism provided the atom of Tibetanness, then tsampa provided the sub-particles of Tibetanness. The use of tsampa transcended dialect, sect, gender and regionalism”

The website High Peaks Pure Earth recently came out with a well-documented article describing how a cultural re-assertion of Tibetan identity was taking place all over the plateau since the protests and crackdown of 2008, and that tsampa was enjoying something of a cultural revival. The report mentioned the singer Tashi Dhondup who was sentenced for 15 months in labor camp for his album Torture Without Trace. In one song Tashi la sang: “Remembering my brother in exile / I carry a bag of tsampa on my back / And take this road to / The western land of scholars.”

Perhaps we could join our brothers and sisters in Tibet in this culinary revival. The health benefits are undeniable and tsampa has the unqualified blessings (jhinlap) of the FDA, which many Chinese food imports deservedly don’t. Eating a tsampa meal, even occasionally, with your family would be a good way to remind ourselves, especially our children, of our Tibetan heritage. Perhaps we could do it on Losar. In old Tibet your always had the Sozi Masen banquet on Losar (especially at the Potala) even if other bills-of-fare were enjoyed on that day.

Jews eat unleavened bread at their Passover meal to remember the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt to the promised land. So perhaps we could incorporate tsampa in our March 10th breakfast. This is just a suggestion. I’m sure readers will be able to come up with other and better ideas of how we could create a meaningful ritual meal for that day. Send in your thoughts. Any information you might have on tsampa-manufacturers or retailers in the USA, India and Europe and other related subjects would be really welcome. Thanks.

Note: This is the first of a Four Part series on Tibetan culinary culture. So many people have given me bits of information at one time or the other that I haven’t quite been able to keep track of everything. A full acknowledgement will appear at the end of Part IV.

Just the name “Middle Way” confers on this “approach” a deeply spiritual aura. It makes its proponents seem moderate, sensible and tolerant, and those opposing it extreme and radical. All this happens reflexively, as a matter of course, sometimes without even the need for any explanation, since Tibetans, and indeed, almost all those who have been raised Buddhist, are conditioned to accept the Middle Way as infallible and perfect. Naming the policy of surrendering Tibetan sovereignty to Communist China the “Middle Way” was a stroke of genius. It was also a deeply dishonest, perhaps even a sacrilegious act.

When the Buddha spoke of the Middle Way he was describing not his goal of achieving Enlightenment but the method he had worked out and ultimately used to achieve that goal. He explained it in the very first teaching he gave after his Enlightenment. In this teaching “Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dharma” Buddha clearly described the Middle Way as a mid- point between extremities; between the extreme of self-mortification (which he had tried for six years) and the other extreme of sensual indulgence (which had been his lifestyle as a prince).

Though His method or “Way” had changed or evolved over time, we should note that the Buddha never compromised on his goal of achieving Enlightenment. That goal was immutable. It could never be changed. The Middle Way was only a method for attaining it. As mentioned before, the Buddha did try other means before deciding on the Middle Way. But once He had decided His commitment was total. Siddharta fixed his resolve on the goal with an unshakable resolution. A beautiful and dramatic verse is attributed to him by some early compilers of the sutras. “Let blood dry up, let flesh wither away, but I shall not stir from this spot till Enlightenment be attained.”

Other great Buddhist figures – Milarepa immediately comes to mind – have demonstrated such uncompromising and single-minded resolve in the pursuit of their spiritual goals. The Dalai Lama was as single-minded about the goal of Tibetan independence when he first arrived in India in 1959. I have offered relevant quotations from His Holiness in previous writings, but in all his early 10th March statements He is very clear that Tibetans should never compromise on the goal of freedom and independence, no matter how long it took and whatever the cost. He was also convinced that we would succeed. “Our way may be a long and hard one…” He said “…but I believe that truth and justice will ultimately prevail.” The only condition that His Holiness set himself and us was that the struggle had to be non-violent.

In 1960 His Holiness wrote the “The Prayer to the Word of Truth” (dentsig monlam) which is recited daily in Tibetan schools and in the prayers of most Tibetans. Tibetans also sing it at every 10th March rally, and in other demonstrations and marches as well. Lonely prisoners in cramped dark prison cells in Tibet may have sung or recited this prayer for strength and solace. They would certainly have been reassured by these two lines:

May the object of my most heartfelt yearning —
COMPLETE FREEDOM FOR ALL TIBET be soon realized.*

(Ring ne nying du nag pey dod pey don
Yong dzog bho jong rang wang tsang may pel)

The Dalai Lama was at the time not only inspired by Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, but also, it appears, by the Mahatma’s advice on why we should never compromise on our fundamental beliefs. “All compromise is based on give and take” Gandhi said, “but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.”

Mādhyamaka, the philosophical system systemitized by Arya Nagarjuna, is also called the Middle Way. It is a rejection of two extreme views, and therefore represents the “middle way” between eternalism—the view that something has an objective existence (i.e., its existence does not depend on external objects)—and nihilism, or a denial of the existence of something that actually exists.

Whether we support or oppose the present policy of giving up Tibetan sovereignty to Communist China, we all have to accept, at least if we are not irredeemably dishonest or deluded, that it doesn’t have anything to do with Buddha’s Middle Way or Nagarjuna’s philosophy.

But does this policy have a connection, no matter how tenuous, to any other traditional Buddhist idea or practice? The only thing that comes to mind is the popular avadana story of the compassionate prince who gives away everything: his kingdom, his queen his children, thereby displaying the virtue of perfect charity. There are quite a few versions of the story of Prince Visvantara (Skt) or Vessantara (Pali), which is popular in most Buddhist countries, especially South East Asia where it is performed theatrically for the public, as it was done in old Tibet.

In the Tibetan version of the story Prince Drimekundan is the son of the king of Betha, a very wealthy and powerful king. The king possesses a magical wish granting jewel, which is the source of the kingdom’s fabulous wealth and power. From his earliest years the young Prince Drimekundan had given away his possession to the poor, so much so that his compassion was a household word. One day a wicked Brahmin, acting secretly for the king of another kingdom who hated and envied Betha, asks Drimekundan to give him the magic jewel. Drimekundan gives it to him, and of course the kingdom of Betha suffers all sorts of disasters and calamities.

When his father, the old king finds out, Drimekundan is banished into the wilderness with his wife and two children. During the course of the journey he gives away his elephants, then his horses and then his chariot to other Brahmins who ask him for charity. He even gives away his two children and also his wife, the queen, to various beggars who accost him on the way. Finally he meets a blind man who asks him for his eyes which he immediately plucks out and bestows on him. Then after many other trials the Supreme God Indra (literally the deus ex machina in this drama) resolves everything in the most miraculous way. Drimekundan gets back his eyes, his children, his wife and also his kingdom. He even gets the magic jewel back from the wicked king who, naturally, begs for forgiveness.

We never put on this play at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) when I was director. In Tibet it was performed by the monks of the Muru monastery and not by the popular Ache Lhamo companies. I was told that it was not a favorite of opera fans as the dialogue verses were chanted in a monotonous recitative and not sung in the musically dramatic namthar style. A year or so after I was removed from TIPA, the Private Office off His Holiness informed TIPA that it should perform the story of Prince Drimekundan. The private Office also arranged for an old monk of Muru monastery to develop the script for the play and also direct the performance. Finally, a special performance was arranged for His Holiness, kashag ministers, officials and members of the Tibetan parliament.

Of course the Drimekundan story must be regarded as a fable or allegory. All avadana and jataka stories are, in a sense, poetic and dramatic metaphors used to illustrate Buddha’s teachings. Many of the stories predate Buddhism and the period and setting of the Drimekundan legend is clearly pre-Buddhist and Vedic. We see this not only in the belief system of the characters and the appearance of the Supreme God Indra, but also in the extreme acts of charity, self-mortification and renunciation, which are conspicuous features of certain Hindu religious practices. In fact a similar legend, Raja Harishchandra, recounted in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, is very popular in the Hindu world. The first full-length feature film (silent) ever made in India was Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchardra (1913).

The historical Buddha though renouncing power, wealth and family-life to seek Enlightenment, did not give away his kingdom to its enemies. Nor did he give away his queen and child to passing beggars, nor his eyes to the blind in the hope of divine intercession and salvation. In point of fact Buddha absolutely rejected the idea of divine salvation. But what I think is crucial for all Tibetans to grasp, even appreciate, is that the Buddha never claimed that his teachings could provide solutions to political and national problems.

The Drimekundan story may or may not have inspired or influenced the formulation of the TGIE policy of giving away Tibetan sovereignty to Communist China. But the underlying assumption in the story that extreme acts of piety and renunciation, no matter how absurd or self-destructive, will somehow be divinely rewarded and everything miraculously set right in the end, is too uncomfortably close to the imbecilic claims being made right now as to how the “Middle Way” will not only resolve the Tibet crisis, but China’s spiritual problems as well.

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* A few years ago some members of the Tibetan community in Switzerland tried to get these two lines of the “Prayer For the Word of Truth” changed to fit with current “Middle Way” politics. They approached a Tibetan scholar to make the necessary changes but the scholar was horrified by the request and sent them away.