My Spiritual Journey by Dalai Lama (good books for 8th graders txt) 📕

through the garden. The sky was crystal-clear, and the sun rays lit up the top of the mountain that overlooked Drepung monastery in the distance. Soon they were shining on the palace and shrines and on Norbulingka, the Jewel Park, where I was walking. It was a fresh, cheerful spring, with tufts of new grass and fragile buds opening on the poplar and willow trees. Lotus leaves were poking up through the surface of the pool and spreading in the sun. Suddenly I jumped when I heard shouts in the distance.

I sent some guards to find out the reason for these cries. When they returned, they explained to me that the population was streaming out of Lhasa toward Norbulingka in large numbers, to protect me from the Chinese. They kept pouring out all morning. Some remained grouped together at the different entrances to the park, while others were starting to patrol around it. By noon about thirty thousand people had gathered there. The situation had to be defused.

I was afraid that, in a burst of rage, the crowd might try to fight with the Chinese garrison. Spontaneously elected leaders called to the Chinese to give Tibet back to the Tibetans. Everyone demanded the end of the occupation and the reestablishment of the Dalai Lama’s authority. Hearing their shouts, I realized the fury of the demonstrators, and I knew that they had become uncontrollable.

I felt caught between two volcanoes. On one side, my people were rebelling as one against the Chinese regime. On the other, a powerful and aggressive occupation force was standing, ready to charge. If a battle broke out, the inhabitants of Lhasa would be massacred by the thousands and the rest of the country would be subjected to an implacable martial law, with its inevitable crimes and persecutions.

On March 10, 1959, when the Chinese army, stationed around Lhasa, aimed its cannons at the Dalai Lama’s summer residence, thousands of Tibetans spontaneously gathered to form a wall with their bodies. The crowd did not disperse in the days that followed, and when, on March 17, the Chinese army attacked, men, women, old people, and children offered their lives for the Dalai Lama.

In street battles that set twenty thousand Tibetans against forty thousand Chinese soldiers, the Lhasa insurrection of 1959 continued for three days and three nights before it was repressed. In Lhasa, devastated by mortar fire and submachine guns, the survivors say that the corpses of men, dogs, and horses barred the narrow streets flowing with blood. On the morning of March 18, 1959, dawn rose on the death rattles of the dying, the groans of the wounded, and the stench of widespread blood.

There were about ten thousand dead, and four thousand demonstrators were arrested. Arrests and summary executions continued for a long time after the events.

The day before the massacre, disguised as a soldier, the Dalai Lama had fled. Under the protection of the Freedom Fighters—resisters who came from Kham—he had taken the road of exile to India, hoping that his departure could spare the massacre of his followers. But his wish was not granted.

My Children, You Are the Future of Tibet

Forced exile

WE MUST HAVE BEEN a sorry sight when we were welcomed by the Indian border guards. There were eighty of us, all physically exhausted by the journey and morally overwhelmed by the ordeal.

When we arrived in Tezpur,5 hundreds of messages, letters, and telegrams were waiting for me. People from all over the world sent me their greetings and encouragements. I was overwhelmed with gratitude, but also with a sense of urgency. The priority was to prepare a brief declaration for the many people who were waiting for a word from me to relay to the media. So I reported the facts frankly and in moderate terms. Then, after a light lunch, we took the train for Mussoorie.

Hundreds or even thousands of people rushed to see us as we traveled by, waving at us and wishing us welcome. In some places they even had to clear the tracks so we could move forward. The news spread quickly throughout the Indian countryside, and it seemed as if everyone knew about my presence on board that train. Thousands came one after the other to welcome me with shouts of “Dalai Lama Ki Jai! Dalai Lama Zindabad!” (Long live the Dalai Lama! Long life to the Dalai Lama!).

I was very moved. In three large cities on my journey—Siliguri, Benares, and Lucknow—I had to leave the train car and take part in impromptu meetings with immense crowds that welcomed me by tossing flowers. The whole journey seemed like an extraordinary dream. When I think back on it, I am infinitely grateful to the people of India for their effusive kindness at that moment of my life.

A few days later a communiqué from the Chinese news agency arrived, condemning my Tezpur statement as “a gross document full of faulty reasoning, lies, and subterfuge.” According to the Chinese version of events, I had been kidnapped by Lhasa rebels acting in the pay of “imperialist aggressors.”

I was stunned to find that the Chinese were accusing imaginary imperialists, such as the Tibetans residing in India, the Indian government, and my “clique in power,” instead of admitting the truth that the people they were claiming to liberate had revolted against them.

In 1959 the Dalai Lama met the world and the world met Tibet. But the international press dwelled mostly on the exotic nature of Tibetan culture, with articles that foregrounded a mixture of the fantastic and the religious, and relegated the political question of China’s illegal occupation of Tibet to the background. Thus, Paris Match, in its April 28, 1959, issue, glorified “the Tibetan Joan of Arc” who was supposed to have miraculously guided the Dalai Lama during his journey through the highest mountain passes in the world. The magazine didn’t shrink from praising the supernatural powers of the young spiritual master, whom it