Voices of Tibet: NAMKHA DORJI

NAMKHA DORJI was born in 1937 and is a monk at Bylakuppe's Namdroling Monastery. When he was about twenty years old, the Chinese invaded his family's village in Tibet's Dhotoe province.

He says the invasion left little for him to do.

“Our Buddhist teachers advised us not to fight the Chinese,” he recalls. “We were always taught that any area that covers the sky contains sentient beings—and that the lives of all sentient beings should be protected.”

"With the Chinese invasion, terrible things began to happen in Tibet. And they're still happening. While I was there, the oldest monastery in Tibet—one devoted to Guru Rinpoche—was destroyed. And I’ve been hearing about further destruction to monasteries there only recently.”

“At first, the Chinese said, ‘We’re here to help you.’" remembers Dorji. "And we believed them. Before this, there had never been any politics in Tibet. Tibetans didn’t know how to play the game.”

In 1960, after Lhasa has been taken over, Namkha Dorji was jailed in the first of several different prisons. “Prison life was very hard,” he remembers. “Attempts were made to educate us in Communism. Many died of starvation.”

And he saw abundant evidence of torture. “Many jumped into the river, or hung themselves—they couldn’t take it anymore.”

Dorji fled Tibet in 1962, arriving first in Assam, and then in India--only to be jailed in the latter country on two separate occasions for allegedly being a Chinese spy. These are experiences Namkha declines to discuss.

“India has been nothing but good to me,” he says.

“I request the whole world to support the Tibetan cause,” Namkha asks. “Tibet was an independent country for thousands of years. It was a Shangri-la, a heaven, always a spiritual place."

And yet Dorji is resolute in his desire for a peaceful approach. "Regaining Tibet through political means is not the way," he says.

"The way can only be made right through the teachings of the Dharma.”

Dorji credits the teachings of the Dharma—and specifically “the training of one’s mind--for the equanimity he has come to experience.

As for his feelings about the Chinese?

“I have only compassion toward them."