Painful News from Lhasa.
A few days after my arrival at the Tower, I met many Tibetans who had
come to worship at the holy places in Nepāl. They told me positively
that the ex-Minister of Finance had been imprisoned on such and such
a day and had been tortured in the Court. I could not quite believe
the news, but I was very anxious to know the truth of the case.
Fortunately I saw a high Lama named Kusho Lokela from Lhasa, who was on
a pilgrimage in memory of his master Temo Rinpoche, whom I have already
mentioned. I enquired of him whether the rumor about the imprisonment
of the ex-Minister of Finance was true.
“I left Lhasa a month and a half ago,” he said, “and then the
ex-Minister was at home. After my departure from Lhasa I heard of his
arrest, on my way to Nepāl. But I cannot say whether it is a fact,
for, as you know, in Tibet rumor often magnifies misfortune. But there
is really great misfortune for Tsa Rong-ba, who was somehow connected
with you. I saw him on the veranda of the Court waiting for his trial.
I wondered at his bonds, and asked him about his imprisonment. He
told me with tears, that he did not commit a theft, nor engage in any
quarrel, but he was acquainted with and asked medicine from a doctor of
Sera, and that was the cause of his arrest. But he did not know very
much about you personally. He was tortured every alternate day, and
he became so thin that his body was mere skin and bone. My sympathy
and pity became the greater when I heard from him that he bore all his
sufferings patiently in the belief that his tortures were due to the
sins of his former lives.”
Kusho Lokela was a very honest gentleman, so I could not but believe
this. I was really very sorry to receive from him this sad information,
and I could not sleep through the night thinking about these Tibetan
friends of mine who were imprisoned. I composed an _uta_ about it,
which may be rendered in prose somewhat as follows:
“To hear about the misfortunes and sufferings of my friends is to
me painful; to speak of them is still more painful and bitter; but
unbearable it is for me to write of them. But now for the sake of
reviving my recollection of them in my memories in the future, I shall
relate in verse all the details.
“Six years ago, I remember, I determined to study Buḍḍhism, the
wonderful Pure Law. I left my Motherland, and traversing the snowy
range of the Himālayas I entered Tibet, and again have I arrived here
from my travels. My heart bleeds to hear now that in that hermit
country those friends of mine, as a result of their friendly services
to me and for no other offence, have been arrested and imprisoned ‘in
durance vile’ and confined within stone walls.
“For these friends of mine I cannot but shed tears when I know that it
is for my sake that their sufferings are acute, their bodies shivering
within the stony walls of their prison-house in the snowy capital
city of Lhasa, sitting disconsolate and wretched on the wooden floor
unenlivened by the light of the sun.
“Who will give them food? As a rule in the jails of Tibet, the
prisoners get but one meal a day--a handful of barley flour. If my
friends are the victims of this rule they will die of starvation,
benumbed with the cold.
“Still worse misfortunes and excruciating sufferings they are
undergoing, I am sure, for the jailors, unfeeling and cruel, not only
starve them with insufficient food, but with insults beat them and
inflict bodily pain. My friends, I fancy, now desire to extinguish
themselves as a release from their sufferings. These painful
reflections on my part drive me to the desire of extinguishing myself
also in order to put an end to all my own tortures.
“O how pitiful is my friends’ condition! When I was in Lhasa, you,
my friends, never thought that you would be treated as culprits for
my sake; your offence simply was the help you rendered me during my
sojourn in your country. Now how can I leave you helpless without
saving you?
“Judging of men as they naturally are, I should fancy that you would
feel disgust towards me and hate me. I thought so, but I have since
heard from the man who has met you in the Court of Justice that you
said this:
“‘I am not guilty of any theft or breach of the peace, but was told by
the Judge that I had acted against the law. I was simply acquainted
with a Japanese priest of whose antecedents I knew scarcely anything.
All these torments which I am now suffering are, to my mind, but the
results of the evil deeds (Karmas) of my past lives. Therefore it is I
have to bear them in order to get rid of them as such.’
“O my friends! you may mitigate your misfortunes with that kind of
consolation; but how is it possible for me to bear the galling thought
that I am the cause of all the misfortunes you have suffered for my
sake?”