Dalai Lama devotion among young Tibetans represents a lived commitment, often made in secrecy and at great personal cost. Their love for their spiritual leader is deeply intertwined with the broader struggle for Tibetan identity and freedom
-By Tenzin Tsundue
When I was lodged in a Chinese jail in Tibet two decades ago, I had to listen every morning to a radio programme in Tibetan language, abusing and mocking the Dalai Lama. As a helpless prisoner in a Lhasa jail, it deeply pained me, but I endured it by pitying the small-mindedness of an otherwise powerful military power, China.
This happened shortly after my graduation. I had planned a secret mission to sneak into Tibet and start a revolution among nomads and farmers. I was only 22. I managed to cross the border undetected by the Indian personnel. After five days of clambering over the rocky Himalayas, crossing the Indus river and traversing the cold desert swept by blizzards, I was arrested by Chinese border forces.
After being thrown out of Tibet, I enrolled at Bombay University. His Holiness had come to the city for a public event. Along with others, I was granted five minutes. I related my Tibet story. In those years, Tibetans were escaping Tibet, but no exile-born Tibetan had gone into Tibet, been jailed and returned alive. He called me pawopatruk, meaning ‘a little hero’. That was my first personal audience with him. Click here to read more.
Then, amid the chaos of the Tibetan national uprising in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when China came under international pressure for violently suppressing protests, His Holiness came out in support of China, saying: “China deserves a good Olympics.”
As an activist, I was deeply disappointed. We had spent years trying to expose China, and just when the world was finally beginning to listen, His Holiness softened the blow. This wasn’t the first time. In 1991, when Tibetan lobbyists were trying to isolate China, His Holiness had supported its bid to join the World Trade Organization.
His Holiness said that our struggle was not only about political freedom, but also about inner freedom: from anger, hatred and greed. The real enemy, he said, was within us. The enemy on the outside is our teacher, because they challenge our patience, kindness and forgiveness. Your enemy trains you in compassion and makes you spiritually resourceful. You cannot practise kindness in a solitary cave or an air-conditioned room. That year, I came to know a new Dalai Lama.
His Holiness simply introduces Buddhism as kindness. He says: “Practise kindness whenever possible, and it is always possible.” Click here to read more.
The post Waiting for the Dalai Lama: Stories of faith and devotion first appeared on Central Tibetan Administration.
The post Waiting for the Dalai Lama: Stories of faith and devotion appeared first on Central Tibetan Administration.
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