OKay so we failed at keeping up a blog when we were actually in India, but I had drafted a few posts on Elyse's computer throughout the month so I'm going to turn this into my personal blog and write everything about it after the fact. Probably no one will read it anymore though haha...
So, starting back on Tuesday the 24th-- In the morning our speaker was Palden Gyatso, a monk with a very similar story to Ama Adhe’s. (Just a warning: this is another very intense story involving imprisonment and torture, but I hope you’ll find it worth reading).
We were lucky enough to have an audience with him in the intimacy of his own home, where we sat on floor cushions next to his shrine. At 79 years of age, Palden Gyatso is small and frail-looking, but his youthful skin and bright toothy smile distract from tired eyes that have seen too much in his lifetime. As we all settled in, he insisted that Elyse take a seat next to him on his couch-like raised cushion and made sure that everyone else had a pillow and was comfortable. Again, Peter would translate his story to us as he told it in pieces.
Palden Gyatso was born in 1932 in the Eastern part of Tibet and by the age of 10 had joined the monastery in his village. In his late twenties he and other monks traveled to Lhasa (the capital of Tibet), to visit the Dalai Lama’s palace, Norbalinga. By this time the Chinese army and government officials had already flooded in Tibet, and the pretence of friendship and good intentions had long since faded. Palden Gyatso was arrested in the capital city on March 10, 1959, a day when tens of thousands of Tibetans died, today known has Tibetan National Uprising Day. He spent the next thirty three years in a Chinese labor prison with 6,000 other people.
Weak from starvation, Palden Gyatso and the other prisoners were made to plow fields like mules. The Chinese used a cattle prod on the prisoners, and if someone was too weak to keep working, they would burry them alive in the fields. In the later years of the imprisonment he endured much worse torture. Lifting his red robe to show us his scars, he told us how sometimes they would force him to kneel on broken glass and rocks and then ask if he thought Tibet should be free. He told us of being hung upside down and beaten with bamboo sticks until his skin broke, and they would rub spices in the wound or throw boiling water at him. Sometimes they would use an electric baton all over his body, or when he was sitting in water.
Still, when asked if Tibet should be free Palden Gyatso never changed his mind. In a bittersweet moment before Peter could translate what he was telling us, we watched as the sweet old monk removed his upper and lower dentures (revealing the secret of his bright white smile) and stuck his tongue out at us. Peter explained that they had even used the electric baton in his mouth, and when he had come to all of his teeth were missing.
Just like Ama Adhe, Palden Gyatso meditated to ease the pain and to make it through 33 years of imprisonment. He told us that he practiced Tonglen meditation, in which one meditates on taking in other people’s suffering. Even when he was experiencing more suffering than any of us can imagine, in his Buddhist faith he was practicing the utmost selflessness and compassion for others.
Palden Gyatso has also traveled all over the world sharing his story. His book is called Fire Under the Snow, and a few of us have purchased it in the books stores here. A few of the trip members, including our staff advisor Shari, Emily F and Greg accompanied Peter-La on a later day to visit Palden Gyatso once more before he left for the United States. They got items signed and had some very nice moments with him, that I hope one of them may write about on here. But other than that, we are very excited that he will be in New York, possibly D.C. and other cities this summer when we return!
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