Animals were housed behind the house, which had six rooms: the kitchen, where we spent most of our time during the winter; the shrine room with a little altar, where we all gathered for the morning offerings; my parents’ bedroom; a guest room; a storage room for our provisions; and finally, a stable for the animals.
Children didn’t have a room of their own. As a baby, I slept with my mother, and then in the kitchen, near the stove. We had neither chairs nor beds, properly speaking, but there were raised wooden platforms to sleep on in my parents’ room and in the guest bedroom. We also had a few wooden hutches, painted in bright colors.
I can see into the humblest souls
MY FAMILY LIVED in a very remote region. Sining, the capital of Amdo, was the closest town, but it took three hours by horse or mule to get there. Our village was very poor, and it’s only thanks to my older brother, who was recognized when he was very young as a reincarnate lama from the great monastery of Kumbum, that we had a little more than other people.
I have always rejoiced in my modest origins. If I had been born in a rich or aristocratic family, it would have been hard for me to share the concerns of the simple people of Tibet. Those years of my early childhood in Takster had a profound effect on me. They allow me to see into the humblest souls, to sympathize with them, as I try to make their living conditions better.
I had many brothers and sisters; my mother brought sixteen children into the world, only seven of whom survived. It was my older sister who helped my mother in childbirth when I was born, since she was already eighteen. We were very close, and there were many joys in that harsh life.
My parents were small-scale farmers but not, strictly speaking, peasants, since they rented a plot of land and tilled it themselves. Barley and buckwheat are the main grains of Tibet. My family grew them, along with potatoes. But many times all the year’s efforts were ruined by strong hailstorms or drought.
We also had a few animals, which were a more reliable source of income. I remember our five or six dzomos, which my mother used to milk.6 As soon as I was able to stand on my feet I would go with her to the stable. In the folds of my robe I would carry a bowl, and she would pour milk, still warm, straight into it.
We also had a herd of about eighty head of livestock, both sheep and goats, and my father almost always had one or two horses, sometimes three, to which he was very attached. In the region, he had the reputation of knowing how to take care of horses and even curing them on occasion.
Finally, my family raised two yaks, which are a gift of nature to mankind, since they can survive at an altitude of over ten thousand feet. We also kept hens for their eggs, which I was in charge of gathering from the chicken coop. I often amused myself by climbing up to the nest-box, where I liked to perch and cluck like a hen!
My parents never thought I might be the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
IT WAS MY MOTHER who reminded me of the memories of the first two years of my life. She was surprised to hear me repeating at a very early age: “I come from central Tibet. I have to go back there! I will take you all with me.” And my favorite game was packing my bags; then I would say good-bye to everyone and pretend to leave, sitting astride improvised mounts. My relatives thought they were children’s games, and no one really paid any attention to them. Only later on did my mother think that I had an intuition of the fate that lay in store for me.
Truthfully, my parents never suspected that I might be the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Several months before I was born, my father had suffered a strange illness, losing consciousness many times and with repeated bouts of vertigo, until he finally had to take to his bed and leave all the household work to my pregnant mother. Curiously, on the morning of my birth he felt cured, got up in full form, and said his prayers, as if he had never been sick. When he learned that a son had been born at dawn on this lucky day, he said to my mother that this child was probably not like the others, and that he should become a monk.
I recognize
my
rosary
ISTILL WONDER TO THIS DAY how the search party for the Fourteenth Dalai Lama discovered our little village so far from everything, lost in the great grass plains of Amdo.
In 1933 my predecessor, Thubten Gyatso, had left this world at the age of fifty-seven. His body was embalmed, according to custom, and the monks were startled to discover one morning that his head, which had been facing south, had turned to the northeast. This unusual movement was interpreted as a sure sign pointing toward the region of his next reincarnation.
Soon after, a vision of the regent’s confirmed this sign. On the sacred water of Lhamo Lhatso, he had seen the Tibetan letters Ah, Ka, and Ma glittering. Then there had formed the image of a monastery with three floors, with a turquoise and gold roof, and then a little house appeared. It had gutters with knotted, unusual shapes. There was no doubt for the regent that the letter Ah
