I had forgotten this anecdote because my mind is dominated by memories of my present existence, attached to my present body. The events of my previous life have grown vague. Unless I make an effort to bring them back to mind, I don’t remember them.
Childhood memories
THE TIBETAN GOVERNMENT had built a house for my mother, and we lived apart, since I lived within the yellow walls of Norbulingka. But I would go almost every day to my mother’s house. My parents also came to see me in the apartment of the Dalai Lamas, and we were very close. My mother visited me quite often, at least once a month, accompanied by my brothers and sisters.
I remember our children’s games in the gardens of Norbulingka. I also remember a temple with a stuffed leopard and a stuffed tiger. They looked so real to my younger brother, Tenzin Chögyal, that the mere sight of them filled him with terror. It didn’t matter that I reassured him, saying they were just stuffed animals—he didn’t dare go near them.
During the winter, at the Potala, the custom was that I should go into retreat for a month. I found myself in a room with no sun, with its windows shut, where it was cold. It was an old room (two or three hundred years old), and because of the oil lamps it looked like a kitchen—dark, smoky, dirty.
There were also rats! While we chanted or recited prayers, I could see them coming, for they liked to scurry around the torma offerings and drink the water in the offering bowls…. I couldn’t tell if the deities liked this water, but I could see clearly that the rats loved it! (Laughs.)
All through these years, my teacher never smiled. He was always very, very severe. But during this same time, shepherds, simple people, would be passing by joyfully, with their herds of cows and other animals. Hearing them sing, I’d sometimes say to myself, “I wish I could be one of them!”
I indulge in illegal treats
IREMEMBER THE SEVERE EXPRESSION of my teacher, who often scolded me. So as soon as lessons were over, I would run to my mother’s house for refuge, determined not to go back to the official residence of the Dalai Lamas. My mind was made up to remain with her, free from any obligation to study, but then, when the time came for the evening lesson, I would meekly return to my official residence…. (Laughs.)
These are all childhood stories….
Memories of my life when I was little come back to me, funny anecdotes. For instance, in the Dalai Lama’s kitchen, traditionally, no pork or eggs or fish were ever cooked. But my father liked pork very much. Occasionally, when I went back to my parents’ place, I would ask for pork…. (Laughs.)
I remember that I would sit right next to my pork-loving father, almost like a little dog waiting for his tidbit…. Eggs too were a treat. Sometimes my mother cooked eggs especially for me. It was a little illegal! (Laughs.)
The Dalai Lama’s childhood resembled an ordinary childhood and could almost have been our own. Pampered by his parents’ love, he led a life filled with games that alternated with studies, breaking the rules, and boyish tricks to escape the vigilance of severe teachers.
We conceive of the Dalai Lama’s ability to concentrate, his memory, and his aptitude for meditative practice as hardly ordinary, but he himself is verymodest about these qualities. At the age of eighteen, when Chinese occupation was looming, he received the rank of Geshe or “Doctor of Divinity.” This title requires intensive training under the strict authority of teachers, and his teachers were even more demanding than normal since they were training him for an exceptional fate. They sometimes administered punishments, “after he had prostrated and asked forgiveness, with a whip that had a gold handle, but that hurt no less than ordinary whips.”
The Dalai Lama delights in relating anecdotes, punctuated by loud bursts of laughter, about his innocent pranks. He takes pleasure in presenting himself as a “clever little rascal,” trying to make us believe in his innate mischievousness!
The portrait provided by Heinrich Harrer, the Dalai Lama’s “professor in the secular sciences,” is more complimentary and brings something else to light: “People spoke of the intelligence of this boy as miraculous. It was said that he had only to read a book to know it by heart; and it was known that he had long taken an interest in all that happened in his country and used to criticise or commend the decisions of the National Assembly.”7
Hidden in the heart of the Himalayan Mountains, Tibetan society has remained apart from modernization and technological progress and continues its timeless rituals and religious practices. The Dalai Lama, eager to learn about the world outside, found a special interlocutor in Heinrich Harrer. The Austrian alpinist and explorer had the singular privilege, between 1949 and 1951, of instructing him in history, geography, biology, astronomy, and mechanical engineering, fields of study that completely opened up new horizons of knowledge for the teenager.
Harrer left Tibet in 1951, when the first detachments of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army invaded the high plateaus of the provinces in the east, Amdo and Kham. When Harrer died on January 10, 2006, the Dalai Lama mourned the loss of a personal friend and a defender of the rights of his people: “He came from a world that I did not know, and he taught me a lot about Europe especially. I thank him for having introduced Tibet and the Tibetans to the West,
