The present Dalai Lama admits that the traditional method of selection has had its drawbacks. In the seventeenth century, for example, a young boy named Tsangyang Gyatso was believed to be the reincarnation of the 5th Dalai Lama, one of the most potent rulers Tibet had ever seen. Born in 1683, Tsangyang Gyatso was chosen with all the usual auspicious signs: his mother drank water from a fountain and it began to pour milk; his grandfather dreamt of two suns in the sky just before his birth, and so on. But Tsangyang refused to accept his destiny. He declined to wear robes and broke all the monastic rules. Wine and women were his passions. He wrote hundreds of poems about them:
If the bar-girl does not falter
The beer will flow on and on; This maiden is my refuge And this place is my heaven.
Or again:
I seek counsel from a wise lama
To escape from my predicament, But my mind remains captivated By my sweetheart.
If one's thoughts toward the dharma
Were as intense as feelings of love, One would become a Buddha In this very body, in this very life.19
As tolerant as the Tibetans were, Tsangyang's lifestyle challenged all their beliefs — and some came to doubt that he really was the reincarnation of the 5th Dalai Lama. He was eventually deposed and died when he was twenty-four.
I know better than to discuss my doubts about reincarnation, and especially these thoughts about the Dalai Lama, with the Rikzin family, or even with my Tibetan crew. It is an offence to mention his name or to hang his portrait — punishable by imprisonment. A personal incident made me realise just how risky it could be. Before boarding my plane to come here I had picked up a photo book called 365 Days of Buddhist Offerings. I turned a few pages and thought the picture and the Buddhist text for each day would be inspiring. I kept it in my room, and looked at the day's page when I woke up, my morning dose of beauty and spirituality. One day a visitor to the house picked the book up. I watched as he leafed through it, interested to see what he made of it. Suddenly he stopped at one page. A look of shock and disbelief ran over his face. He quickly turned past the page as if it was contaminated. After fumbling abstractedly through the rest of the book, he went back to it and stole another glance. Then he put it down and left with the briefest of goodbyes. I wondered what had brought on that look, and went through the entire book myself, for the first time — and found a picture of the Dalai Lama. I learned a lot in that moment. Talking about him might put an end to our film. Even worse, it would put their lives at risk. So I just have to keep these ruminations to myself.
The fire on the mandala is now just a pile of smouldering ashes. The villagers and relatives are beginning to gather round it. A young man, impatient, scoops up a handful of ashes, but they are too hot and he drops them quickly. The fire-tender rakes them over to cool them down. Mila is taking off his headdress and his robe. Everyone is now bending down, and putting the cooled ashes in plastic bags, folded newspapers; one woman puts some in her apron. I ask Mila why they want the ashes. ‘They will keep them in their homes or spread them on their fields to bring luck and protection.’
‘What will happen now?’ I ask Mila.
At the end of a year, he says, the family will ask a high lama to divine what has become of her soul. Enlightenment is one possibility — a rare one; then she will be alongside all the Buddhas and other enlightened beings. Or maybe she will be reborn as a human among their relatives, the next best thing.
I hope the lama will give them the answer they have prayed for.
‘We'll be happy either way,’ Mila says.
IT IS 4 A.M., THE STARS in the Tibetan sky hanging enticingly close, when Yangdron wakes her two eldest sons, Jigme, aged twenty-two, and Gyatso, twenty-one. ‘Time to get up,’ she tells them. ‘You don't want to be late.’ Jigme sits up immediately, but Gyatso pulls the blanket over his head. When he finally walks into the dimly lit kitchen a little while later, the rest of the family is having their tsampa and drinking butter tea. Yangdron hands him a wooden bowl. ‘Who wants to eat now?’ he snaps. ‘I want to sleep!’
Downstairs Dondan starts the tractor, startling the cock, which begins a raucous crowing as though it too hated to be woken. Today, 13th October, at 5 a.m. — the hour that Tseten determined is most auspicious for their departure — the boys will be leaving for university. Dondan will drive them to the main road, where they will catch a bus to Shigatse, and from there travel on to Lhasa. Then Gyatso will take another bus to his college in southern Tibet, and Jigme will board a train on the newly opened railway to his university in Xian, home of the Terracotta Army, in Central China.
Yangdron puts khatas round her two sons' necks. Mila places one hand on Jigme's shoulder, counting his rosary with the other. The boys have each packed a couple of small canvas bags, and Loga tries to pick these up, but Gyatso snatches them back from him. Not everyone will be travelling to the station: Tseten was concerned that having too many people on the tractor would invite the jealousy of the local deities. This also explains the early hour: too much gossiping from the neighbours and villagers could irritate the family's protective deities, and so they are leaving well before the rest of the village is awake.
Though I am getting used to the Tibetan way of thinking, I still find myself amazed: two of their sons are going to university and this is something to hide? An event like this is a rare one for the village — if this is not a cause for celebration, what is? When I was accepted by Beijing University, my parents told the whole world. My grandmother was particularly proud. I can still remember her saying to anyone who would listen, ‘My granddaughter is going to university — the first in our family to do it. A phoenix has risen from a hen's nest!’
I ask Jigme what he thinks about the early departure. He shrugs — aside from feeling sleep deprived, he does not see anything wrong with it. He trusts his uncle's judgment; after all, Tseten accurately predicted his results in the National Exams.
The National Exams take place in June every year. They determine who will go on to university. They are notoriously difficult and fiercely competitive. Only 4 per cent of secondary school leavers in the whole of China will pass; the number in Tibet is even smaller. They are make or break for Jigme and Gyatso, who are in the same school year, despite the difference in their ages. Success will open up the world for them; failure means they will stay in the village. It is the same for so many young Chinese. Twenty-five years on, I can still remember my anxiety on exam day. When I looked at the sea of heads in the exam hall, I felt not so much intimidated as lost. What chance did I have? Who would be winners and who would be losers? The odds seemed to be stacked heavily against me.
Back in early June, a few days before taking the exam, Jigme had called home from a payphone near his school to ask Tseten to divine his results. He waited an hour for a response, pacing up and down. He looked up at the banners hanging across the street leading away from the school: ‘Best Wishes to All Students Taking the Exam!’, ‘Be an Honest Winner!’, ‘Report Cheats!’. When the phone rang, he dashed for it.
It was his mother calling him back with Tseten's forecast. Yes, she told him, both he and Gyatso would succeed in the test — they would both be able to go to college, though perhaps not to their top choices. ‘Put your mind at ease and concentrate on your studies,’ Yangdron said. ‘Don't worry. You will pass.’
‘Did you believe it?’ I asked Jigme, when he told me this story.
‘Why not? Uncle has done it