Dalai Lama biography: The story of a simple monk

Express News Service

This is the story of a simple monk. No more, no less. Of a man, who was forced by circumstances to leave his home on the Roof of the World, to arrive in Mussoorie’s Happy Valley. In our Little Tibet, you find lungtas or Tibetan prayer-flags fluttering in the wind.

Their colours have not been chosen at random, the priest at the Tibetan Temple tells me: “They are always in odd numbers,” and adds: “They move from blue, white, red, green to yellow.”

Sixty years down the road, comes this biography of the Dalai Lama. It is as authentic and intimate as one can possibly desire. Tenzin Geyche Tethong, or TGT (as his friends call him), was his close aide of for 40 years. He gives you unprecedented access to the life and times of the Dalai Lama.

With pictures that are rare and stunning, comes a tale that is well told. To read this book is to enter the fabled world of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. You will fall in love with the simplicity of this Laughing Buddha.

“When I first met him in Mussoorie,” TGT reminisces, “I was amazed at the sagacity of one still in his 20s. While most of the senior Tibetans believed that this was just a passing phase, a temporary exile; he knew we were in for the long haul. From Day One, he plunged into the onerous task of settling his unrooted people.”

As his long-time personal secretary, privy to the Dalai Lama’s difficult relationship with India, thanks to the many challenges arising from the host country’s ambivalence to Tibet, he candidly discusses India’s lacklustre attempts at uplifting his people.

Denying them official documentation, restricting employment, and crowding refugees in the remote location of Dharamshala—all while citing its fear of angering China.

He adopts a reasoned approach towards the Dalai Lama’s non-violent struggle for Tibetan autonomy. He explores the numerous political difficulties faced by the Tibetan cause in the years before its worldwide recognition. This chronicle presents a first-hand narrative of the Tibetan saga.

“Refugees? We have proved to be ideal refugees!” thunders the Harvard law graduate Dr Lobsang Sangey, the Sikyong (President) of the government-in-exile when I met him in Happy Valley. “All they have to say to the wholesale merchants of woollens in Ludhiana is you are Pemba, or Tashi or Dorji from Mussoorie to get instant credit.”“For to die in debt is a Tibetan’s worst nightmare,” he tells me.

Heinrich Harrer, the Austrian who escaped from an internment camp in Dehradun’s Premnagar to arrive in Lhasa and meet the Dalai Lama, then, 11 years old, introduced him to the world outside. He helped him rig up a movie projector; powered it with an old jeep engine and started the only ice-skating rink in Lhasa. These tales are told in his well-known book, Seven Years in Tibet.

Later, the Dalai Lama asks Heinrich why he loves climbing mountains.

Heinrich answers: “The absolute simplicity, that’s what I love. When you are climbing, your mind is clear, free from all confusions, you have focus and suddenly the light becomes sharper, sounds are richer, and you are filled with a deep, powerful presence of life. I’ve only felt that way one other time.”

Dalai Lama: “When?”
Heinrich: “In your presence.”

After fourscore and six years, it’s his presence that has made all the difference. He has managed by whittling away, a bit at a time, to spread the Dharma to the corners of the earth. Does he too sometimes feel homesick for Tibet? Does he too, after all these years in exile, hear the cries of the wild geese and cranes and the beating of their wings as they flap over the Potala on a cold moonlit night? I wonder.