The Book of Joy

and forth, from side to side, looking down thoughtfully, fingertips
touching.
“This reminds me of my friend who told me about being sent to a
Chinese gulag at the time I escaped from Tibet. The night I fled from the
palace of Norbulingka, I went to a chapel to pay my respects, knowing
that it was likely the last time I would ever see it again. My friend, who
was already a senior monk at Namgyal Monastery, was there at the
chapel. Lopon-la, as he is affectionately known by his fellow monks, did
not know it was me, because my visit was top secret, and I could not tell
him. Then as soon as I had left the palace, the Chinese bombardment
started. They arrested many people and about one hundred and thirty were
sent to a very remote area, like during Stalin’s rule, when people were
sent to Siberia. After eighteen years of hard labor, Lopon-la was able to
come to India, and he told me what had happened during his time in the
work camp.
“They had no shoes, even during the very coldest of days. Sometimes
it was so cold that when you spit, it would land as ice. They were always
hungry. One day he was so hungry that he tried to eat the body of one of
the other prisoners that had died, but the flesh of the dead person was
frozen and too hard to bite.
“Throughout the whole time, they tortured the prisoners. There is
Soviet-style torture and Japanese-style torture and Chinese-style torture,
and at this camp they combined them all into an immensely cruel kind of
torture.
“When he left the camp, only twenty people had survived. He told me
that during those eighteen years he faced some real dangers. I thought, of
course, he was talking about dangers to his life.”
“He told me he was in danger of losing . . . his compassion for his
Chinese guards.”
I could hear a gasp in the room at this extraordinary statement, that
the greatest danger for this man had been the risk of losing his
compassion, losing his heart, losing his humanity.
“Now he is still alive, age ninety-seven, and his mind is still in very
good shape, sharp and healthy. So as you mentioned, his spirituality and