In 1945, apparently against the advice of some of his Tibetan and European friends, Gendun Chopel began the journey back to Tibet. As is clear from the letter to George Roerich that opens this volume, sent from Lhasa on August 8, 1945, all seemed well upon his return to his homeland after some twelve years away. In the month or so after his arrival in the capital, he was the toast of the town, receiving invitations to the homes of a wide range of aristocrats. He does not seem to have considered his return permanent; he wrote that he planned to return to India in a few months. His reasons for returning to Tibet, and for returning to Tibet when he did, are not known. Some say he was ordered by the British to leave India; others say he was invited to return by a tutor of the Dalai Lama. However, it is clear from a number of sources that one of his purposes was research.
As discussed in a previous chapter, in his first years in Kalimpong, Dorje Tharchin had shown him photographs of Dunhuang documents from the Tibetan dynastic period. In the wake of the An Lushan Rebellion, Tibetan troops captured Dunhuang in 781 and controlled it until 848. The Tibetan monarchy ended and the Tibetan empire collapsed in the wake of the assassination of King Lang Darma in 842. The Hungarian scholar (in the employ of the British) Sir Aurel Stein, the French scholar Paul Pelliot, and the Japanese scholar Count Ōtani Kōzui discovered thousands of folios of Tibetan texts in the Library Cave at Dunhuang, beginning in 1907. The documents that Gendun Chopel studied had been collected by Pelliot and taken to Paris. Also during this period, Gendun Chopel learned about Tang Dynasty sources on Tibet from an 1880 article by the physician and amateur Orientalist Stephen Wootton Bushell (1844–1908) entitled “Early History of Tibet from Chinese Sources.”86 Gendun Chopel’s interest in Tibetan history was likely enhanced by his work with Roerich translating the Blue Annals at the Himalayan Research Institute in Kulu.
It was perhaps during his time in Kulu that Gendun Chopel went to Lahul where he saw the famous statue of Avalokiteśvara called the Karsha Pakpa. Years later, he told his student Horkhang Sonam Belbar, “While I was returning to Tibet from India, on the road there were Buddhists and Hindus who were going to see the famous [statue] Karsha Pakpa Rinpoche. I went to see it and one day I slept in the presence of Pakpa. Pakpa is a statue that is white in color, made from marble, and one cubit tall. That night, in a hallucination that was like a dream, I dreamed that Pakpa Rinpoche said, ‘Write a history; it is very auspicious. However, there will be an obstacle for you.’ Pakpa Rinpoche wept. I also cried.”87
He had learned a great deal about the history of India during his years there. Indeed, one of his stated purposes in writing Grains of Gold was to recount for his compatriots all that had happened in the Land of the Noble Ones since the time of the visits of the great Tibetan translators of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. However, his interest in history was not entirely antiquarian. The period between the world wars was a time of nationalist movements among the many European colonies in Asia, with native scholars, in some cases using the work of Orientalists, extolling the grandeur of their cultural heritage and recalling the times when Asian kingdoms were the conquerors rather than the conquered. Gendun Chopel was clearly inspired by this movement, coming to lament Tibet’s loss of military might and even the memory of that might. And so he wrote in a poem:
Compiling the available ancient writings
Setting forth authentic accounts and clear chronologies,
I have mustered a small degree of courage
To measure the breadth and might of the first Tibetan realm.
It is said that Tibet’s army of red-faced demons,
Pledging their lives with growing courage
To the command of the wrathful Hayagrīva,
Once conquered two-thirds of the earth’s circle.88
Gendun Chopel knew that, apart from the Dunhuang documents, most records from the dynastic period of Tibet had been lost. However, an important source remained: inscriptions on stone monuments and pillars. At least one of his motivations for returning to Tibet was to visit these sites and document these sources, work that would be continued by Hugh Richardson (1905–2000), head of the British Mission in Lhasa. Gendun Chopel’s research on the dynastic period would be cut short by his arrest in 1946, with the essays he had written up to that point later published by his student Horkhang as the White Annals.89
As is clear from his letter to Roerich and from the reminiscences of his friends, Gendun Chopel seems to have been something of a celebrity upon his return, gathering a circle of young disciples, to whom he taught poetry and grammar. This circle included two Nyingma lamas—Lachung Apo (also known as Sherab Gyatso, 1905–1975) and Dawa Sangpo (1916–1958). Lachung Apo reports in his biography of Gendun Chopel, written in 1972, that Gendun Chopel came to visit him when he was recovering from a serious illness: “One day, when I was somewhat more lucid, he gave me a small book of Elephant Brand paper in which were written the words, beginning with, ‘All of our decisions about what is and is not’ and ending with the verse, ‘I am uncomfortable about positing conventional validity.’ He said, ‘Look at this; it will keep you from sleeping.’ It was a great help to me.”90 He reports that he and Dawa Sangpo later received lessons in Sanskrit poetics from Gendun Chopel, as well as in Madhyamaka philosophy:
Then he gave Dawa Sangpo instruction in Madhyamaka. He had him take notes to supplement the small book he had given to me earlier….At the end, when it had been completed and printing blocks had been carved by [the sponsorship of] Kashopa, he said to Dawa Sangpo, “Later, there is going to be controversy about this. The controversy will not occur until after I am already dead. If it occurs, it is all right. You must be careful. Do not forget the essential points I explained.”
He also said, “In order for human birth to have real meaning in this world, one must leave some imprint. In my own opinion, I thought that I must draw out some of the distinctive features of Madhyamaka and Pramāṇa. Now, I have done what is appropriate to suffice for the Madhyamaka.”91
The book is his controversial Adornment for Nāgārjuna’s Thought, published after his death and discussed in the next chapter. (A translation of the contents of the “small book of Elephant Brand paper” appears in part 2.)
In addition to his work on the White Annals and his teachings to his students, Gendun Chopel assisted the Sera geshé, Geshé Chodrak—the other monk that Sherab Gyatso had recommended to Rahul Sankrityayan in 1934 and whom Gendun Chopel recommends to Roerich in his letter—in the compilation of a Tibetan-Tibetan dictionary.92
On January 15, 1946, the Austrian mountaineer and former SS sergeant Heinrich Harrer arrived in Lhasa, together with his compatriot Peter Aufschnaiter. Eight months earlier, they had escaped from a British detention camp in Dehradun in northern India. Together, they would spend seven years in Tibet. On February 13, just a month after his arrival, Harrer made the following entry in his diary.
At Geshila’s [a Chinese from Shanghai, who escaped to Tibet and stayed at the Chinese mission] I met a Mongolian Lama, who spoke English and who is doing translations and who is also writing poetry. His name is Chömphel. He says that he translated for money the book about the last Lama for Bell. When it was printed it was sent to Canada. All this sounds rather strange, as one could scarcely assume that Bell would have given his name to a book he had not written himself. He tells us that the book had been written by another Lama in Tibetan and that [the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s] friendship with the Englishman was not mentioned even once, but always only with [sku] drag [aristocrats]. He himself is now writing a history of Tibet, which should be finished in the next months. Of course, it is written in Tibetan. He will bring me an English book about Gesar. It seems as if he is permanently living in Lhasa. He is earning his living with painting and also gets something from his books. He is a friend of Tucci and says that a student of Tucci has published a history on Tibet. He does not like Gould very much, because in his opinion he has published too many books on Tibet without knowing Tibetan.93
We learn a great deal from this diary entry. Six months after Gendun Chopel’s letter to Roerich, he is still circulating in Lhasa society. He tells the Austrian that he has recently translated a biography of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (who had died in 1933) from Tibetan into English, and that this translation had then been sent to Sir Charles Bell (1870–1945), the long-serving British political officer in Sikkim who had retired to Canada, where he wrote his famous biography of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Portrait of the Dalai Lama, published in 1946, a year after Bell’s death. In the preface to his book, Bell refers to the text: “A biography of the late Dalai Lama was compiled under the orders of the Tibetan government. It was completed in February, 1940, between six and seven years after the Dalai Lama’s death on December 17, 1933 and is entitled The Wonderful Rosary of Jewels.94 The Regent was so good as to give me a copy of it, printed from the wooden blocks made in Tibetan style. Sir Basil Gould, the Representative of the Government of India in Tibet since 1935, kindly arranged for the translation of the relevant parts. This translation was supervised by my old friends Raja and Rani S.T. Dorji. This biography, which reached me after I had completed mine, deals with the Dalai Lama’s life on typically Oriental lines.”95 Bell then goes on to disparage that style.
It seems, then, that the representative of the king of Bhutan in Kalimpong and his wife—Sonam Tobgye Dorji and Chuni Wangmo (who carried the titles “Raja” and “Rani” from the viceroy of India)—“supervised” the translation, but that the translation was done by Gendun Chopel and perhaps Dorje Tharchin, who knew Sir Basil Gould well.96 The typescript of the translation resides today among Bell’s papers at the British Library. The contributions of Gendun Chopel (and Tharchin) were not credited. In addition, we learn from Harrer that Gendun Chopel is writing his own history of Tibet. And we learn that he does not have a high opinion of the British, something that is eminently clear throughout his works.
In Harrer’s diary, we read in an entry from November 26, 1946, some nine months after he met Gendun Chopel, “By the way, the Geshé from Amdo, who was imprisoned some time ago because of ‘new fashions,’ has also been whipped (sixty times). Allegedly he will be released soon.”97 What had happened during that time? Of the many mysteries and questions surrounding the life of Gendun Chopel, none is more contentious, and consequential, than the reason for his arrest and imprisonment. There are questions about when he was arrested, how long he spent in prison, and the conditions of his imprisonment. However, the question that looms over all others is why he was arrested.
Gendun Chopel seems to have been arrested in July 1946, hence Harrer’s statement that he was “imprisoned some time ago.” He was charged with passing counterfeit Indian rupees. The previous May, counterfeit currency had indeed been seized in the Kalimpong region. However, a search of Gendun Chopel’s room in Lhasa revealed nothing apart from a list of Tibetan government officials and some notes on the Sino-Tibetan border. Among the many theories that are put forth concerning his arrest, all seem to agree that the charge was a pretext for something else.
Some have claimed that he was arrested because he had embarrassed a powerful member of the cabinet. This was Kashopa Chogyal Nyima (1903–1986). He had long been a supporter of Gendun Chopel. As a token of his gratitude, when Gendun Chopel completed his Treatise on Passion in 1939, he sent a copy to Kashopa. Upon his return, Gendun Chopel had been invited to the nobleman’s home and was giving English lessons to his son. As discussed in the previous chapter, while he was in Sri Lanka, Gendun Chopel had studied Pāli and translated the Dhammapada, perhaps the most famous work, at least in the West, of the Theravāda tradition, from Pāli into Tibetan. On one of his visits to Kashopa’s home, Gendun Chopel presented him with a copy of the translation. Kashopa said, “The terminology of the tantras is unlike anything else.” Gendun Chopel burst out laughing because the Dhammapada is not a tantra. According to some, this was enough to send him to prison.98
Others claimed he was a Russian spy. Such a charge was a remnant of the Tsarist days, when Britain and Russia vied for influence over Tibet as part of the Great Game. During this period, there were Buddhist monks who were Russian partisans, including the noted Buryiat scholar Ngawang Dorje (1854–1938), whose name was Russianized as Agvan Dorzhiev. But Stalin launched a campaign against religion in which the many Buddhist institutions in the Soviet Union, especially in Kalmykia and Buryatia, suffered greatly, especially in the Great Repression of 1937–1939. Gendun Chopel could only be considered a Russian spy in a particular flight of imagination, perhaps because he had collaborated with the expatriate Russian scholar George Roerich and lived at the estate of his father Nicholas in Kulu.
It appears that at least one factor that led to his arrest was his involvement (although the extent of his involvement remains a matter of debate) in what is known in English as the Tibet Improvement Party. Its logo, designed by Gendun Chopel, featured a sickle (clearly reminiscent of the Soviet hammer and sickle), a sword, and a loom (reminiscent of Gandhi’s spinning wheel), with the name of the organization in both Chinese and Tibetan. In Chinese, it was Xizang Gemingdang. Xizang is a standard Chinese name for Tibet, literally meaning “western treasury.” Gemingdang is usually translated as “revolutionary party.” In Tibetan, however, the name was far more docile; it was called the Nub bod legs bcos kyi skyid sdug, which means the “Association for the Improvement of Western Tibet.” In Tibetan, it is thus a friendly association rather than a political party, dedicated to improvement rather than to revolution. However, the otherwise innocuous Tibetan name is betrayed by the term nub bod, “western Tibet,” a term that means nothing in Tibetan unless one knows the Chinese designation of the country.
The founder of the group, Rapga Pandatsang (1902–1976) was from Kham, a region that had long chafed under the rule of the government in Lhasa; his brother had led a failed revolt in 1934. Rapga was a great admirer of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic, and had translated some of Sun’s writings into Tibetan. He had met with Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing in 1935. Rapga envisioned Tibet as an autonomous state, organized along democratic lines and under the overall control of the Republic of China. Article Two of the Tibet Improvement Party agreement states, “Recently President Chiang has declared to allow autonomy of Tibet. According to this we must exert our efforts mainly for Liberation of Tibet from the existing tyrannical Government. Also we must act in the light of other progressive and democratic nations of the World and especially democratic Central Government of China for which all members of our party must work as men on the same boat.”99
During his time abroad, Gendun Chopel had become increasingly critical of the government of Tibet and of the corruption and political machinations of the Geluk monasteries, and he likely found kindred spirits in the Tibet Improvement Party. He believed that major reforms were necessary in Tibet. He proposed, for example, that monks be paid salaries rather than being allowed to own estates and that they be required to study and be prohibited from engaging in commerce. His erstwhile teacher Geshé Sherab Gyatso had long been a political radical by Tibetan standards, admiring Mao and supporting his movement during the 1930s; he would meet a terrible fate, dying in 1968 after being beaten by Red Guards.
Yet others would claim that Gendun Chopel was a Communist. Rahul Sankrityayan was a proud Communist who had visited Moscow. Nicholas Roerich and his family had left Russia after the October Revolution, but he later reconciled with the Soviet Union. Indeed, in the 1920s, he would proclaim an alliance between Buddhism and Communism to liberate Asia from foreign control, claiming that the identity of the two had been confirmed both by Tibetan lamas and Theosophical mahatmas.100 Nicholas Roerich was approaching seventy when Gendun Chopel visited the family estate in Kulu in the early 1940s; in the years before the Second World War, he was repeatedly denied a visa to return to his native Russia, by then, the Soviet Union. His son George Roerich would return to the Soviet Union in 1957 at the personal invitation of Khrushchev, an admirer of his father’s paintings. Gendun Chopel was thus clearly exposed to socialist and communist ideas, although it is unlikely he identified himself with the Soviet Communists, who were hated in Tibet for the devastation they had caused to Buddhist monasteries in the Soviet republics; there were many monks from Kalmykia and Buryatia at Drepung during Gendun Chopel’s years there. Indeed, a monk from Drepung reported a conversation in which Gendun Chopel ascribed the origins of Marxism to the fact that Marx was always hungry and jealous of the rich, arguing that the Russian Revolution was the result of years of famine and could have been averted by food aid from Britain and America.101
Thus the degree of Gendun Chopel’s involvement in the Tibet Improvement Party, and his own political beliefs more generally, like so many other elements of his biography, are in doubt. Indeed, although Gendun Chopel wrote on a remarkable range of topics, no overtly “political” writings have emerged among his extant works apart from the critique of European colonialism found in the final chapter of Grains of Gold (see this page.). It may have been that he designed the logo of the Tibet Improvement Party simply because Rapga, knowing him to be a noted artist, asked him to do so.
Another of the reasons put forth for Gendun Chopel’s arrest is that he drew maps of the Tibetan-Bhutanese border, returning to Tibet by an unusual route in order to do so. Some speculate that these maps were intended for the Kuomintang. Maps were indeed discovered when his rooms were searched at the time of his arrest. After his release, Gendun Chopel would provide a variety of explanations for his arrest, including one which involved his map-making skills. A friend of Gendun Chopel reported the account that he gave:
While Gendun Chopel was in Calcutta, he got to know a Chinese man. Having gotten to know him, he asked him to make a map starting in Assam and Loyul to the east of India and ending in Nepal. He did not know whether it would be beneficial or harmful, but he made the map. It said things like, “the land is like this,” “the bridge over the river is like this,” “the households on the other side of the bridge are like this,” “the police are like this,” “the number of police at the place is like this.” In many ways it was like an army map. It was not something vague; he made it absolutely clear. It fell into the hands of the British and they were at the point of arresting him. In the end they issued a notice that he was not permitted to remain in India. This is what he told me.
He said that after he left for Tibet, the British sent a letter to the Tibetan government saying, “A Communist has left for Tibet.” Everyone believed it and saying, “Gendun Chopel is a Communist,” they put him in prison. This happened because of the evil intentions of the British. The main person was Kashopa and there were others.102
Gendun Chopel’s suspicion that the colonial authorities considered him to be a Communist is confirmed in an intelligence report dated July 23, 1948—two years after he was arrested—by Harishwar Dayal, Political Officer of the Government of India in Sikkim, who wrote, “It is gathered from a reliable source that Gedun Chomphel, who is now in the custody of the Tibetan Government is a Communist and an agent of Soviet Russia, appointed by Pandit Rahul La [Sankrityayan]. It is said that he stayed with Pandit Rahul in India for some time and during that time they manufactured false Tibetan currency notes.”103
In addition to the story of the maps, Gendun Chopel would provide another explanation for his arrest, one that placed the blame more squarely on the British, specifically on Hugh Richardson. Here, as reported by one of his students, Gendun Chopel alludes to his translation of the biography of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama:
The one who “put a black hat on a white person” was the British representative named Richardson, who lives at Dekyilingka. Richardson talked to the Kashak [cabinet]. Why did he need to speak to them? When I went to British [India], I translated a book [into English]. It was a very good translation. At that time, because they knew that my English was very good, the British government repeatedly asked me to stay, saying they would give me a big salary. Because I did not stay, from that point, the British developed a strong dislike for me. Richardson is British. When he was asking me questions earlier, I was certain that as soon as he saw me he did not like me. Based on that, he talked to Kashopa and Surkhang. Kashopa and Surkhang talked to the Kashak. They made strange charges against me and I was arrested. The one who did that was Richardson.104
Regardless of the reason, by early 1946, several months after Gendun Chopel had arrived in Lhasa, the members of the Tibet Improvement Party were under surveillance by the British, who acquired copies of the bilingual (Chinese and Tibetan) membership applications that the party had had printed in Kalimpong; these copies were passed on to the Tibetan cabinet in Lhasa. In April, the cabinet requested that Rapga be arrested and extradited to Tibet, something that the British could not do since Rapga claimed Chinese rather than Tibetan citizenship. However, the residences of Rapga and six other members of the party were raided on June 19, 1946 on suspicion of espionage, revolutionary activities, and counterfeiting Indian currency. Rapga was deported, departing for China on July 22.
Thus, that Gendun Chopel was arrested in July does not appear to have been a coincidence. On January 4, 1946—about six months after Gendun Chopel’s return to Lhasa—Hugh Richardson, British Representative in Lhasa, had written to Basil Gould, British Representative in Sikkim, “The [Tibetan] Foreign Bureau know all about Chomphel La. They say he is always demanding interviews with the Shapes [cabinet ministers], decrying Tibetan Buddhism as corrupt, praising the ‘New Wisdom’ (which seems to emanate from India), speaking in favor of Nazism and generally conducting himself in an eccentric way. For these reasons the Tibetan Government have had him watched. They say he is corresponding regularly with Roerich.”105 On July 11, 1946, J. E. Hopkinson, who had replaced Basil Gould as Political Officer in Sikkim, quoted Richardson’s letter to the central intelligence office in Shillong in Assam.
Gendun Chopel’s friends and admirers, who included members of the prominent Horkhang and Tethong families, do not report eccentricities, praising him instead for his learning and his skills as a poet and a raconteur. He seems to have conducted something of a salon, where conversation on modern politics was mixed with instruction on Sanskrit poetics. Despite the reports of the British, his friends never doubted his patriotism. Indeed, his primary project in his year in Lhasa prior to his arrest was his work on a history of Tibet, not a religious history (chojung, literally “the arising of the dharma” in Tibetan) but a history of the political system.106 He had begun the project in India and had continued his research and writing in Tibet; he had been transcribing inscriptions from stone monuments outside the city on the day of his arrest.
And so it was that in late July of 1946, almost one year after his triumphant letter to Roerich, Gendun Chopel returned from the home of Trijang Rinpoche (1901–1981), tutor to the young Dalai Lama, to find two magistrates waiting at his door. They arrested him on charges of distributing counterfeit currency and took him to the courthouse jail of Lhasa, the Nangtseshar. A search of his rooms yielded a black box containing notes and papers connected with a number of projects. There were also various papers around the room, including information on the border area and a list of members of the government. Upon his arrest, Gendun Chopel informed the magistrates that when they searched his room, they would find all manner of papers—from copies of ancient manuscripts to notes written on cigarette wrappers—that were the basis of a history of Tibet. He asked that these not be disturbed. Although his room was sealed after his arrest, when he eventually returned to it, all of his papers, and his black box, were gone, and were never recovered. The fate of the black box has been yet another of the enduring mysteries about his life.
At the city jail, he was given a separate room on an upper floor and was allowed to receive food and bedding from friends, but he was interrogated repeatedly, especially about his relationship with Pandatsang, on one occasion receiving some fifty lashes. During the first months of his incarceration, Gendun Chopel continued his work on the White Annals (not knowing that the papers in his room had been lost) and also wrote letters and poetry. A letter that was received by Horkhang Sonam Belbar on the thirtieth day of the eleventh month of the Fire Dog Year (1946; hence early 1947) included a lengthy discussion of the dates of the Tibetan kings based on inscriptions. The letter begins, “It has been in my mind since the beginning that there would be obstacles to this history, but this obstacle is absurd. However, as Jetsun Mila said, ‘If the instructions of the lama were not profound, why would the demons create obstacles?’ ”107 He goes on to say that during his interrogation, he put forward his work on the history of Tibet as evidence of his patriotism. He is very concerned that the history be completed and published. Should he die before the book is finished, he provides a poem for Horkhang to place at the end of the unfinished manuscript.
With the luster of white loyalty to my race
Abiding in the center of my self-arisen heart
I have rendered a small service with my strength
To the king and his subjects of my snowy land.108
At the conclusion of the letter, he mentions that he has transcribed an ancient Tibetan poem that he had committed to memory. He asks that this poem be framed in glass after his death. He then exhorts Horkhang to continue to work on the history, which Horkhang would eventually publish as the White Annals. The letter concludes with this poem, addressed to Horkhang.
When this corpse-like body dies,
I will feel no regret;
Were these gold-like insights to die with it,
This would be a great loss.
Thus, undaunted by such flaws as depression,
Dejection, discouragement,
By the virtue of your efforts
May the royal lord be pleased.109
At the time of the New Year celebration of 1947, Gendun Chopel was transferred to the prison at Zhol at the base of the Potala. Rahul Sankrityayan and George Roerich made appeals to the Tibetan cabinet, requesting his release. They went unheeded, perhaps because of the tenor of their argument; they pleaded for clemency by explaining that a Communist takeover of Tibet was inevitable, at which time Gendun Chopel’s friendship with China would prove useful. Indeed, Sankrityayan reports, “In the beginning of 1949, Shogang Shapé, the younger brother of an influential minister of the Lhasa government, came to India for some work. I met him and explained, ‘It would be rare to find such a great scholar as Geshe la. You must ask him to write the history of Tibet. It will also benefit you, if you interact properly with him. Nobody can stop communism from entering Tibet. When communism actually enters Tibet, a friendship with this person will solve the problems of your country.’ ”110 Recalling Gendun Chopel in his autobiography, Sankrityayan would remember him fondly:
“Geshe” is a title given to a great scholar in Tibet and there was no doubt that he was a formidable scholar. He had made a deep and systematic study of Buddhist Logic and was a rationalist. He was a good poet and had an abundant knowledge of Buddhist literature and Buddhist tradition. Combined with this was his greatest trait: that he did not have any conceit about his learning and thought that he had grasped but a drop or two from the Ocean of Knowledge. He was an artist of the top order. In the houses of the nobility in Lhasa there may not have been many takers for his learning but his artistic talent was widely recognised. It was his love for learning that had caused him to forsake a life of ease and comfort. Like the other reincarnate lamas he too had the means to pursue the pleasures of the rich. Yet he abandoned the inheritance, the glory of his monastery and took the road to Lhasa in pursuit of learning. He continued his studies for many years at Drepung. Later on we were together for many years, though intermittently, as I had to travel alone in and out of the country for my other work. And then again how could I drag him with me into government jails? Yet this I must state that it is difficult if not impossible to find as learned, talented, sacrificing, cultured, idealistic, humane a person as Geshe in all of Tibet. Often my heart says that the two of us live and work together but it is not in our hands. Then only the recollection of sweet memories provides satisfaction.111
Conditions in the prison seemed to be lax. Gendun Chopel had visitors who brought him food and alcohol, received gifts of food from such eminent personages as the regent of Tibet and the tutor of the young Dalai Lama, and had a lover, a nomad woman from the north. He painted a picture of Tārā, later saying that she gave him solace during his imprisonment; he recited her prayer one hundred thousand times.
Like the date of his arrest, the date of Gendun Chopel’s release from prison remains unknown, with one source stating, almost certainly incorrectly, that he served only one year.112 According to some reports, including that of one of his jailers, he was released from prison as part of a general amnesty connected with the celebrations of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s enthronement as Head of State, an event hastened by the invasion of Tibet by the People’s Liberation Army. The enthronement took place on November 17, 1950. Thus, if Gendun Chopel was arrested in July of 1946, as several sources indicate, he would have served over four years in prison. If this date is correct, however, it means that he would have lived for only another eleven months after his release.113 Whenever Gendun Chopel was released from prison, he is said to have left this poem written on the mattress in the cell:
May the wise regard as an object of compassion
The small truthful child left all alone
In the wilderness where the frightening roar resounds
Of the stubborn tiger drunk on the blood of envy.114
The regent of Tibet at the time of his arrest was Taktra Rinpoche, whose name means “tiger rock.” Yet, again, there is reason to doubt that the poem referred to the regent. Several people report that Gendun Chopel was something of a favorite of Taktra Rinpoche and that he even sent him “snacks” while he was in prison. In addition, this poem does not appear to have been a spontaneous cri de coeur; it appears in Grains of Gold and thus was likely composed years earlier.
Gendun Chopel was initially released into the custody of some monks from Drepung monastery, who allowed him to live in a building that the monastery owned in Lhasa. He lived there with a woman from Chamdo named Tseten Yudron and her young daughter, Gakyid Yangzom. By his own report and the recollections of those who visited him during his years of imprisonment, Gendun Chopel began drinking heavily while he was in prison; the alcohol was supplied by a prison guard and by his students. It seems that he drank heavily until his death. Friends and students describe him as often morose, feeling betrayed by the Tibetan aristocrats who had once been his patrons. The remainder of Adornment for Nāgārjuna’s Thought, after the section written in his own hand that he had presented to Lachung Apo, likely derives from the notes that Dawa Sangpo took from Gendun Chopel’s oral instruction; it was reported that after a few drinks he would have flashes of his former brilliance.
The government eventually provided him with rooms behind the Jokhang, above the Ministry of Agriculture. The unfinished version of the White Annals had been assembled by Horkhang; Gendun Chopel was instructed by the government to complete the project and was provided with a subsidy to do so. However, he seems to have refused. In yet another portent of the gathering storm, he was also asked to translate British military commands from English into Tibetan. In 1951, his health began to fail.
Troops of the People’s Liberation Army entered Lhasa on September 9, 1951. Too weak to get up, Gendun Chopel asked to be taken up to the roof to witness them march through the Barkor. At the beginning of October, he developed a severe cough and his body began to retain fluids, causing acute swelling (edema is one of the symptoms of advanced cirrhosis of the liver). Eventually unable to walk, he asked Lachung Apo to read him two poems, Tsong kha pa’s Praise of Dependent Origination115 and Mi pham’s Prayer to the Indivisible Basis, Path, and Fruit of the Great Perfection of Mañjuśrī.116 His double identity, Nyingma and Geluk, remained with him to the very end. Mi pham’s poem begins:
May I spontaneously achieve my aim without effort:
The state of identity with Prince Mañjuśrī
Arrayed in the mode of nonduality with the wisdom body
Of the sugatas of the ten directions and four epochs, together with their sons.
Through the faith that sees the primordial protector, the glorious lama
As identical to the dharmakāya
May the blessings of the intention of the true lineage enter my heart
And may I achieve the empowerment of the skill in awareness.
Because it abides primordially, may I see, by the power of the lama’s instructions,
The secret of the mind, without relying upon effort
And such things as the qualities of the senses,
With ease, without needing to be convinced.
Elaboration and analysis, the extension of misconception,
Seeking and practice, the cause of exhausting oneself,
Observation and meditation, the trap of further bondage,
May the elaborations of torment be severed from within.
Tsong kha pa’s text is known by heart by many. In one of the more famous passages, he writes:
What need is there to speak of your many teachings?
Even conviction in just the general idea
Of a mere point of one portion
Bestows supreme happiness.
Alas! My mind has been destroyed by delusion.
I have long taken refuge
In the collection of such virtues,
Yet I have not gone in search of even a portion of [those] virtues.
Still, to have slight faith in you,
Until my life disappears
Into the jaws of the Lord of Death,
I consider this to be good fortune.
Among teachers, the teacher of dependent origination;
Among wisdoms, the wisdom of dependent origination.
These two are like chief of kings in the world.
No other knowledge is as perfect as yours.
After commenting on their beauty, he said, “The madman Gecho has already seen all the sights of the world. Now, I have heard talk of a famous land down below. If I went to have a look, I wonder what it would be like?” He died shortly after that, on October 14, 1951, at 4 p.m. He was forty-eight. His body was cremated three days later.
On December 1, 1951, the following obituary appeared on the front page, center column, of Melong.
Admonition to Remember the Uncertainty of Death
We have been saddened ever since hearing the most distressing news of the passing from this lifetime on the fifteenth day of the eighth month due to water sickness of the supreme being renowned as a spiritual friend skilled in the outer and inner sciences, Gendun Chopel. Earlier, he had gone to India, the Land of the Noble Ones, and although he only stayed there for twelve years, he carefully examined the various Tibetan treatises and histories concerning the holy places and cities of India, and while visiting the holy places along the way, he studied the Devanagari script of Sanskrit and the English script, and he translated various Sanskrit books into Tibetan. He performed many auspicious deeds to benefit others, such as composing a pilgrimage guide in order to assist those who go on pilgrimage. In the foreign year 1947, he went to Tibet via Bhutan. During that very year, the Tibetan government, for whatever reason, ordered his imprisonment. Last year, after being released from prison, he was writing a chronicle of Tibet on the orders of the government. Nowadays, if one needed to acquire the learning of the likes of this excellent spiritual friend, even if one spent several hundred thousand coins, it would be difficult for such a scholar to appear. Alas, such a loss, such a loss. I do not know whether or not anyone is publishing the book that he wrote about his long stay in India as well as whatever he had finished of his newly written chronicle of Tibet.