Once day, after secretly killing the fat­test pig belong­ing to King of Nay­dong, Nichö Zangpo came before the king and asked, “Your Majesty, the fat­test of all your pigs was struck down with an ill­ness and has died. Now, where should I throw the corpse?” The king answered, “After shav­ing the hair cleanly, go and sell the meat at the mar­ket. You should present the pro­ceeds without tak­ing a cut.”  Then, in accord­ance with the instruc­tions of the king, Nichö Zangpo took the load of pork to the mar­ket. “Any buy­ers for pork from a pig struck down by ill­ness?” Although he spent all day shout­ing, he was unable to sell even one tiny piece of meat.

 Then, Nichö Zangpo brought the pork back and explained in detail to the king how there were no buy­ers and so the King said, “now it is ok If you cook the meat and eat it.” Nichö Zangpo asked, “Your Majesty, will you par­take of the meat or the broth?” The King replied, “I am the King, so of course I will eat the meat. Since you are all ser­vants, unworthy oth­er than to drink the meat broth, why do you even need to ask?” thus he rep­rim­anded him.

 Then, Nichö Zangpo chopped the meat and bones up into tiny pieces and, since he cooked it for a very long time, hav­ing fallen away from the bones, the meat became soft and mushy, and noth­ing but the bones and hide could be retrieved. Nichö Zangpo and the ser­vants drank the fla­vour­some and nutri­tious meat broth and offered the pig’s hide and bones to the king, “Your Majesty, “except for the pig’s hide and bones, all the meat has liquified and melted into meat broth. Please par­take of this cooked hide.”He said.

The King replied, “Well then, bring me the meat broth!” Nichö Zangpo replied, “We have already drunk the meat broth accord­ing to the King’s instruc­tions.” The King had no option but to eat that pig’s cooked hide.

 The next time they were eat­ing pork, the King first said to Nichö Zangpo, “This time, I’ll drink the meat broth! You all can eat the meat.” Then, Nichö Zangpo took the boiled meat out as soon as it was cooked, divided it up for every­body and it was eaten. The meat broth, which was devoid of any meaty fla­vour, was offered to the King.

Pro­verb: From time spent with the excel­lent come tea and alcohol;

                    From time spent with the evil comes cor­por­al punishment!

Yes­ter­day, my teach­er Wangmo and I went for a walk beside the bridge to the right of the school. Resem­bling a golden-col­oured bal­loon, the set­ting sun was about to dis­ap­pear behind the shoulder of the west­ern moun­tain. The fact that the entire envir­on­ment breathed a tran­quil­lity akin to that of nomad­ic grass­lands was due to it being a Sunday, a hol­i­day, as well as the traffic being extremely light.

  Inside the tea house loc­ated to the right of the school there were many Indi­ans, young and old who were engaged in wel­come applause and shrill exclam­a­tions whilst watch­ing tele­vi­sion. It was highly likely that a tre­mend­ously sat­is­fy­ing event had occurred.

 At that time, Gen Wangmo asked an Indi­an acquaint­ance for inform­a­tion. The extremely joy­ous Indi­an excitedly replied, “Not only have we Indi­ans suc­cess­fully send a satel­lite to the moon, but we’re also the first to announce to the world the news of the exist­ence of water on the Moon. Just look! If we’re not joy­ful at this news, what can we be joy­ful about?” And he showed us the news being broad­cast on television.

How­ever, Gen Wangmo’s face did not express the same joy­ful­ness as those Indi­ans When I imme­di­ately asked her why, Gen Wangmo said, “The fact that we are able to travel to oth­er plan­ets in depend­ence upon human intel­li­gence makes me happy. Moreover, it is our hosts, the Indi­ans who have achieved this. How­ever, the astro­nauts are not Tibetan. One day, if there comes a time where we are also able to send a satel­lite to oth­er plan­ets like that, I will prob­ably be jump­ing for joy.”

 When I returned to my bed­room, I reflec­ted on Gen Wangmo’s words. We ourselves do not even pos­sess a piece of land the size of a palm of the hand whilst also hav­ing to live on land belong­ing to oth­ers. I also real­ised that from the point of view of mod­ern sci­entif­ic devel­op­ment, we were underdeveloped.

If I wanted to see a truly smil­ing expres­sion on Gen Wangmo’s face, I knew I needed to achieve out­stand­ing res­ults through study­ing the tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern sub­jects comprehensively.

Pastoral Work 

 Depend­ing upon the grass, water,and the temperature,

[Pas­tor­al work] involves chan­ging the loc­a­tion of the tents,

From Spring to Sum­mer to Autumn to Winter pastures,

Keep­ing the cattle in neatly fenced enclosures.

 Types of Cattle

 Horses have manes, tails and coats of vari­ous colours.

Cattle pos­sess four types of hair: long coarse hair, short soft hair,

   Tail and mane.

The snow-white sheep pro­duce hair and wool,

And domest­ic goats have long coarse hair and short soft hair.

 Tools of the Trade

 These are: poles, guy ropes, black yak-hair tent,

Dowa, gyemo, kyelpa, gye’u;  (Large and medi­um-sized leath­er bags and small bags)

Saddle, bridle and bit, har­ness, seat and stirrups,

Nose ring and rope, stake and tether;

Sling-shot, milk­ing buck­et and lasso.

Types of Produce

Deli­cious but­ter, cheese, roas­ted bar­ley flour, dump­lings and yoghurt,

Sweet cheese, wild sweet pota­toes, meat and vegetables.

As the Cat Mas­ter became fat­ter and fatter,

His ret­in­ue of mice became smal­ler and smaller:

If it’s grain that he’s eating,

 Where did the furry cat fae­ces come from? 

After hav­ing fooled some pigeons, the deceit­ful cat ate them. Since pigeons no longer ven­tured around him,  he was unable to get hold of even one of them.

He made a liv­ing by steal­ing all the pos­ses­sions of a Gelong one by one, and selling them at the mar­ket. One day, while he was steal­ing the Gelong’s mala, the monk saw him. Due to the Gelong reach­ing with one hand after the cat and strongly pulling his tail, the cat’s tail broke off into his hand and the cat escaped.

  In addi­tion to being an aged cat, he had also lost his tail and so his dex­ter­ity dimin­ished. He con­sequently became help­less and ema­ci­ated due to hun­ger from not being able to catch any mice. 

While adorned with the Gelong’s mala around his neck, the cat addressed some mice in the fol­low­ing way, “All of you!  Don’t be afraid of me.  Although in the past I per­formed quite a lot of wrong deeds, now, how­ever while in the pres­ence of the Gelong, I received Upa­saka vows. Not only am I keep­ing the five basic train­ings, in addi­tion, I have also aban­doned eat­ing red foods (meat). Now, I can teach you all the Dharma.” Thus, he pre­ten­ded to give a Dharma talk with a soft melodi­ous voice.

The mice believed what the cat said and every even­ing they gathered to receive his Dharma teach­ings. Once the teach­ing was fin­ished, while the mice were return­ing home, the cat caught whichever was the last one to leave and ate it. 

Due to this situ­ation, as the cat gradu­ally became fat­ter and fat­ter the num­ber of mice became few­er and few­er. Uncom­fort­able with this, the mice had a meet­ing dur­ing which the chief mouse, by the name of Raphen, examined the cat’s excre­ment and saw that there was mouse bone and fur, hence he knew that the cat was telling lies. How­ever, he pre­ten­ded not to know and addressed the cat, “Dear Pre­cious Teach­er, what kind of food do you eat?” “I don’t eat any­thing but a little grain and leaves”, the cat replied.

 Then, Raphen related the sequence of events to the mice and every­one was very shocked and sur­prised. “So, what do we need to do now?” the mice said.  Raphen replied, “I have a plan”, and he told them about it.  The fol­low­ing day, dur­ing the Dharma teach­ing, the mice offered a small bell by way of a gift to the Cat Mas­ter and it was fastened around his neck. While return­ing home after the Dharma teach­ing was over, every­one looked back at the same time since the ringing bell resoun­ded loudly for all to hear. The catch­ing and killing of one mouse by the cat was mani­fest for all to see. Since that time, cats always bury their excre­ment under the earth. 

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.