For the next fortnight, while he turned these issues over in his mind, Passang performed the elaborate round of prayers prescribed in Tibetan Buddhism for the souls of the dead. By the time they had been completed, it was early March 1959, and Lhasa was in crisis.
The following morning, Dharamsala dawned dark and threatening, with black thunderheads massing above the town and blotting out the snow peaks.
I had arranged to meet Passang again at the tea house below the temple after he had finished his morning parikrama. The weather had turned, and as it was now bitterly cold we sat inside and ordered tea, momos and a bowl of thukpa to warm us.
As we ate, Passang described how the tension in Lhasa had reached crisis point during the first week of March, when the Chinese invited the twenty-five-year-old Dalai Lama to attend a theatrical performance in the army camp outside Lhasa. The invitation came when the Tibetan leader was debating in the great Jokhang Temple. Two Chinese officers barged through the crowd and demanded to see His Holiness immediately, breaking all rules of Tibetan protocol. They said that, contrary to custom, the Dalai Lama should bring no bodyguards when he came to their camp to see the performance.
Word of this suspicious invitation soon got out, and the population of Lhasa, along with the crowds of pilgrims who had come to Lhasa for Monlam, converged around the gardens of the Dalai Lama’s summer palace of Norbulingka, in an attempt to prevent his attending and—it was widely suspected—being abducted to China.
“On the evening of 15 March, I and twenty-five other monks of Sera were told to get ready as we were going to meet His Holiness,” said Passang. “Ahead of us, leading the party, went two senior monks on the back of donkeys. The rest of us walked. We assumed we were going to join the crowds gathering at Norbulingka, and I was excited as I hoped we would get to hear His Holiness give one of his public teachings. But we didn’t stop at Norbulingka; instead we headed off into the darkness. We crossed the wide Tsangpo River in a small boat, and for the next two days we walked and walked, through empty plains, with only hard balls of tsampa to eat. The monks who were leading us refused to tell us where we were going or what we were doing, and as we were all very junior monks we had no option but to obey.
“Finally, at the village of Chi Thu Shae, we stopped to rest and to eat. We had only been there two hours when a party of Khampa horsemen turned up at the inn. Among them, to our amazement, was His Holiness, with a rifle strapped to his back. At first none of us recognised him, as he was dressed as an ordinary guard, but it was his spectacles that gave him away. He had fled Lhasa in disguise, and we were told that it was our job to escort him. None of us knew that he was heading into exile. I am not sure even he knew at that stage. All we knew was that we had to escape from the Chinese, and to stop their soldiers seizing the Dalai Lama. Of course we were very excited, and very honoured. We realised this was a great responsibility.
“We walked for several more days through very harsh country, struggling to keep up with His Holiness, until we reached Lhuntse Dzong. It was here that we met a rinpoche in the street. We asked him to release us from our vows a second time, as we were still wearing our monastic robes, and it was clear that our duty was now to take up arms to defend His Holiness, and to slow down the PLA if they tried to follow and capture him. We obviously couldn’t do this while still wearing the robes of monks, and we felt strongly that we must end this ambiguity. The first ceremony of giving back our vows at Dakpa had seemed very inadequate and hurried, and we were not sure what our exact status was: were we monks or not?
“So the rinpoche gave us a long lecture, almost a sermon, and said that just because we were giving back our vows didn’t mean we could indulge in loose living and worldly affairs. We were doing this to protect the Dalai Lama. If we needed to, we must fight the Chinese and even kill; but he warned us—‘Don’t do anything else which will go against your monastic vows.’
“We shed our robes and were given ordinary chubas to wear, and guns to use. His Holiness had already left, hurrying on to escape the Chinese, who were expected at any moment. We remained behind with the Khampa fighters of the Chu-zhi Gang-drung movement, vowing to stop the Chinese if they attempted to follow him. We were very proud to do this work, and planned to make a heroic stand, and to die fighting for His Holiness. But that is not what happened.
“Only a single day passed before a huge force of Chinese arrived. There were hundreds of them, with trucks and tanks and artillery and machine guns. Worst of all they had two fighter planes, and we were completely outnumbered. I’m ashamed to admit it, but when the planes began to strafe us, we fled into the hills after firing only a few shots, heading in the direction of the Mango-la Pass. Without food or arms or supplies it seemed pointless to stay and die. We could not fight, so we fled. Some of the Chu-zhi Gang-drung volunteers died fighting at Lhuntse Dzong, but almost all of us monks took to our heels and ran, hoping that on another occasion we might be able to redeem ourselves and do a better service to His Holiness.