Tibet to Indiana

Arjia Rinpoche sweeps snow from the sidewalks around his Buddhist temple here and thinks of Tibet. There are other reminders — photos of Tibet in a cultural center he oversees and a tall religious monument containing the ashes of the teacher who taught him as a boy.

For Rinpoche, the journey from Tibet’s rooftop of the world to Indiana truly has been long. Born to a family of nomads, he was introduced to the life of a prince after monks from the prestigious Kumbum monastery identified him as the reincarnation of a high lama, or spiritual teacher, at age 2.

After the Chinese takeover of Tibet, he saw his teachers tortured, his family imprisoned and his faith challenged. Eventually, he would flee to the West and, ultimately, this little slice of Tibet situated on 108 acres in Bloomington — the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center — where he has served as director since 2005.

Rinpoche, 59, is sharing the lessons of his life in a new book “Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama’s Account of 40 Years of Chinese Rule,” which in many ways is a tally of China’s effort to extinguish Tibetan culture.

“I wanted to share my life experience and the story of Tibet — what’s happened to me, what was around me, what I heard, what I saw,” Rinpoche said recently from a sitting room at his temple in Bloomington.

Rinpoche made a daring escape from China in 1998, the most important defection by a Tibetan religious leader since the Dalai Lama fled in 1959.

Among the few possessions he escaped with were the photos of his early life — as the lama on the throne at Kumbum, as a young man in tattered work clothes.

Born in 1950, shortly after China’s invasion of Tibet, Rinpoche as a young boy was taught sacred Buddhist scriptures and adored by crowds who lined the streets to watch him pass in an ornate chair carried on the shoulders of monks.

Yet he also was a child who coveted candy, played hide-and-seek in the monastery and was delighted when visitors presented him gifts of toy airplanes and other trinkets.
That world was upended in 1958 when China’s communist leader, Mao Zedong, called for a “Great Leap Forward,” an attempt to increase farm and factory production and teach a good “worker” ideology. Soldiers dragged monks into the courtyard of his monastery for beatings in front of the young boy. Some were hauled off to prison.

Others were tortured, their hair pulled from their heads, their skin burned with cigarettes.

By the mid-1960s, China was trying to eradicate religion with its Cultural Revolution. Prayers and rituals were forbidden. Monasteries were ransacked or destroyed. Ancient scriptures were burned and Buddha statues smashed. Monks and young students, including a teenage Rinpoche, were forced to denounce spiritual leaders including the Panchen Lama.

“I felt debased by this,” Rinpoche wrote, “but in my fear I also felt I had no choice. Monks who refused to go along were tortured, sent to prison camps and even killed.”
Rinpoche’s family was relocated and some members were imprisoned. A few, including his father, disappeared forever. Rinpoche was forced into hard labor, building dams and participating in collective farming.

By the mid-1980s, Rinpoche was allowed to attend college. He took a job acting as a bridge between Tibet and the Chinese government, justifying the job by saying it put him in a position to look out for Tibet. He helped see that a hospital was constructed. He oversaw the restoration of Kumbum after decades of neglect.

After years of hardship, the perks of the job began to grow on him. He began dressing like communist bureaucrats and spending time with friends “gossiping in cafes.”
“The temptations of the material world were very strong,” he wrote, “and threatened to sever my ties to the sacred vows I had taken.”

By 1995, the Chinese demands on him grew worse.

From India, the Dalai Lama announced he had discerned the identity of the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. China disputed the announcement, forcing Rinpoche to go on TV and denounce the Dalai Lama’s choice.

A few months later, under armed surveillance, he and other monks would be forced to witness China’s own selection of a Panchen Lama. He then had to prostrate himself in front of the newly minted, communist-approved religious leader.

“I felt soiled by the gesture,” Rinpoche wrote.

Larry Gerstein, a Fishers, Ind., resident and president of the International Tibet Independence Movement, said China’s lengthy occupation has led many Tibetans to make compromises that appear unseemly. But they do it strategically, in ways intended to preserve their country. The key for Buddhists, Gerstein said, is their motivation. And he thinks Rinpoche’s motives were pure.