by Diki Tsering

I have had a strange, almost unreal life, now that I try to recollect my history. You must forgive me if my memory lapses occassionally. It is all so very long ago, and my childhood has never been a conversation piece until today! I don't know how to be interesting. It's amusing that you ask me the date of my birth. If I had ever asked my grandmother such a question, I would have been severely rebuked for showing such disrespect. How times have changed!

Honestly, I do not know the exact date of my birth. What relevance did dates have to us? We were born without much fanfare, matured into adolescence, were married, had children ourselves, and then were overtaken by death. We lived the entire cycle simply, in the belief that people are ordinary and that existence is natural.

I was born approximately in the first month of the Iron Ox year (1901). I was named Sonam Tsomo. My birth name belongs to another life. Most people know me as Diki Tsering, but I was not born Diki Tsering. Ever since I went to live in Lhasa, I tried to become Diki Tsering, with all the social forms and graces that go with that name. Because of the responsibilities I owed toward my new position in life, I gradually eased out of being Sonam Tsering, the simple girl with her simple life and the ordinary ambition of being a good housewife and mother. I feel very tender toward the young girl that I have forced myself to forget.

It was both faith and fate that propelled me into my unbelievable life as the mother of Dalai Lama. When it happened, it seemed as if I had lost all my courage and confidence, and I became afraid, like a little child, at the formidable task that lay before me. But once I began to tell myself that I was Diki Tsering, the name that was given to me on my wedding day and means "ocean of luck," a kind of rebirth kindled all the forces of determination within me. I was no longer afraid, and I willingly challenged fate, determined not to be submerged by the tide.

Today I am a tiresome old woman, my body feverish and with rheumatism. But however deblitated you become physically, the spirit of youth is constant and alive. It never deserts you, even in the face of the greatest suffering. My only companions now are memory and reverie. My mind goes back more and more to my childhood, my parents and grandparents, my birthplace. I see so clearly the meadows, the stream, the hills, the farm where I grew up, and I feel so strongly the cycle of returning home on this last lap of my journey.

Traditions are so easily broken and forgotten. Today, when I see young people, I often think they are reacting against their traditions in order to overemphasize their modernity. I am proud to be, despite my resilience and ability to change, a very traditional woman. Does this make me archaic and anachronistic? I don't think so. I have always been proud and strong-willed. I have fought many battles and have emerged stronger after each victory. My traditions, my roots as a Tibetan, have fortified me. Traditions cannot be denied or forgotten. They are the creators of your spirit and your pride and the backbone of your sensibilities. They make you what you are and define what you want to be...

Author Diki Tsering with her son, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. "(I knew) surely he was no ordinary boy, and that we would make him a monk."

Almost three years after the birth of Lobsang Samten, I gave birth to Lhamo Dhondup, who was to become the fourteenth Dalai Lama. My husband was bedridden with illness for two months prior to Lhamo Dhondup's birth. If he tried to stand up, he felt giddy and lost consciousness. He told me that each time this happened, he saw the faces of his parents. He could not sleep at night, and this was very difficult because he kept me awake and I had to work during the day. I thought he was playing a cruel trick on me, but now I know this was not so. It was just one of a series of strange happenings in the three years that preceded the birth.

During that time our horses seemed to go mad, one by one. When we brought them water, they raced for it and then began rolling in it. They could neither eat nor drink. Their necks stiffened, and finally they could not even walk. All thirteen of them died. It was such a disgrace to the family and a greta loss, for horses were money. After this there was a famine for three years.

We had not a drop of rain, only hail, which destroyed all the crops. Everyone was at the point of starvation. Families began to migrate, until only thirteen households were left out of forty-five. My family survived solely because the monastry of Kumbum supported us and supplied us with food. We lived on lentils, rice, and peas that came from their stores.

Lhamo Dhondup was born early in the morning, before sunrise. To my surprise, my husband had gotten out of bed and it seemed as if he had never been sick. I told him that I had a boy, and he replied that this surely was no ordinary boy and that we would make him a monk. Chushi Rimpoche from Kumbum had passed away, and we hoped that this newborn infant would be his reincarnation. We had no more deaths or other strange incidents or misfortunes after his birth. The rains came, and prosperity returned, after years of destitution.

Lhamo Dhondup was different from my other children right from the start. He was a somber child who liked to stay indoors by himself. He was always packing his clothes and his little belongings. When I asked him what he was doing, he would reply that he was paking to go to Lhasa and would take all of us with him. When we went to visit friends or relatives, he never drank tea from any cup but mine. He never let anyone except me touch his blankets and he never placed them anywhere but next to mine. If he came across a quarrelsome person, he would pick up a stick and try to beat him. If ever one of our guests lit up a cigarette, he would flare into a rage. Our friends told us that for some unaccountable reason they were afraid of him, tender in years as he was. This was all when he was over a year old and could hardly talk.

One day he told us that he had come from heaven. I had a strange foreboding then, for a month before his birth I had had a dream in which two green snow lions and a brilliant blue dragon appeared, flying about in the air. They smiled at me and treated me in the traditional Tibetan style: two hands raised to the forehead. Later I was told that the dragon was His Holiness, and the two snow lions were the Nechung oracle (the state oracle of Tibet), showing His Holiness the path to rebirth. After my dream I knew that my child would be some high lama but never in my wildest dreams did I think that he would be the Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lama, My Son: A Mother's Story
Diki Tsering
Penguin Compass
ISBN: 0-14-019626-9