There was once a wealthy house­hold­er in a val­ley. Early one morn­ing, he was head­ing back to his home while rid­ing a horse and lead­ing a don­key behind. In that place, there were two greedy thieves who saw him. With the aim of steal­ing the don­key, they stealth­ily snuck up behind the householder.

One of the thieves led the don­key away while the oth­er took the bridle off the donkey’s head and pro­ceeded to put it on his own head and fol­low the house­hold­er. When the house­hold­er had almost reached his home, he glanced behind him. Not only was his don­key nowhere to be seen, he was moment­ar­ily dumb­struck to see a man with a bridle on his head fol­low­ing him!

 The thief then explained: “Dear Mas­ter, there is no point being taken aback! I com­mit­ted a mis­deed in the god realm and the Lord of the Gods, Indra, in accord­ance with the laws of the gods, ban­ished me to a don­key rebirth in this human realm. How­ever, since that wrong­do­ing has now been pur­i­fied, I have attained a human form.” 

 Then the house­hold­er said, “If that is so, you have gone through many hard­ships for the sake of our fam­ily. I have here exactly 50 coins to give you as com­pens­a­tion. Now, go forth and live your life in a happy land! In the future, do not engage in any neg­at­ive actions caus­ing you to become a don­key again,” he advised him and let him go.

  A few days later, the house­hold­er went to the mar­ket with the idea of pur­chas­ing a don­key. See­ing his own don­key on sale there, he was dev­ast­ated and uttered, “Oh no! What bad karma you have! Have you engaged in evil actions?  You have become a don­key again! What evil action did you do? May the Three Jew­els show com­pas­sion!” He pro­ceeded to give 50 coins to buy the don­key back! 

On 27th Septem­ber 1987, unable to bear the occu­pa­tion and oppres­sion by the Red Chinese and pre­pared to sac­ri­fice their lives, a mass of many tens of thou­sands of indi­gen­ous Tibetans pro­tested in unity by tak­ing to the streets to demon­strate.  “Tibet is com­pletely inde­pend­ent! May the Vic­tor, the Dalai Lama, Ten­zin Gyatso have a life-span of 10,000 years! Red Chinese get out of Tibet! Tibet belongs to the Tibetan people!” Their cries per­vaded the city of Lhasa in its entirety. In the midst of that crowd without con­cern for life or limb, Lob­sang-la, an astute and cour­ageous hero, arous­ing an increas­ing con­fid­ence in non-viol­ence, took the lead of a vast crowd of many people. Firstly, they did a three-fold cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion of the main temple (Jokhang temple), then they ran in front of the main doors of the large Tibet-based Chinese gov­ern­ment offices, and declared their indis­put­able truths which resoun­ded unceasingly.

A unit of Red Chinese sol­diers wear­ing heavy weaponry fired without restraint dir­ectly and unre­mit­tingly on the crowd of many people with the con­sequence that the protest­ing cries of the Tibetan broth­er­hood and the sound of Chinese army gun­fire were heard in equal meas­ure. For a moment it was as if heav­en and earth had been turned upside down and become insep­ar­able. Dur­ing this time, even the birds, large and small, were scared away in ter­ror to the four dir­ec­tions. No mat­ter how much repres­sion there was from the Chinese army equipped with heavy weaponry, the pat­ri­ot­ic Hero Lob­sang-la con­tin­ued to unin­ter­rup­tedly raise his head above the crowd of the masses, his hon­est mes­sage resound­ing distinctly.

After the bar­bar­i­an troops cap­tured the Hero Lob­sang-la, even though he was for­cibly thrown twice into a house ablaze with flames, Hero Lobsang-la’s super­i­or pat­ri­ot­ism and con­fid­ence only increased even more than before as his body was com­pletely engulfed by fire. He was without the slight­est con­cern for the unbear­able pain which was like being stabbed by a thou­sand knives all at once. On top of that, he was con­tinu­ally hold­ing aloft the Tibetan nation­al flag, protest­ing against the Red Chinese with total conviction.

Des­pite Hero Lob­sang-la being him­self between life and death, he was tak­ing lead­er­ship of the broth­ers and sis­ters of the Three Provinces of Tibet, uni­fy­ing them, and thus per­fectly estab­lish­ing them on the path of non-viol­ence. Thus was his struggle.  Masses of enemies from the oth­er side pierced them with sharp weapons, but how­ever aggress­ive they were, Hero Lob­sang-la and the Tibetan her­oes and heroines shout­ing their hon­est truth, pressed for­wards without regard for life or limb. This non-viol­ent struggle became an unpar­alleled leg­acy for future gen­er­a­tions of our Land of the Snows.

Through those indi­gen­ous Tibetan her­oes and heroines dis­play­ing a super­i­or cour­age togeth­er with unwaver­ing pat­ri­ot­ism, that day has become an import­ant com­mem­or­a­tion day which leaves an indelible leg­acy of tre­mend­ous sig­ni­fic­ance in the his­tory of Tibet.