Essential Oil Cookbook

My name is Tenzin Gyatso and I am a monk.
I was born on 30/12/1982 in the east of Tibet, which is very close to China. I come from a very small village, but I love so much my country.

My family was a farmer and we have six members in the family. There are my parents and my four brothers but I don&'t have any sisters.

My family was very poor and my parents could not send us to school. During my childhood I was small and weak and my parents suffered a lot due to illness so I stayed with my grandmother. She lived far from my home and she looked after me because my mother was very busy to working the farm and the house. Therefore, looking after us was very difficult for her.

However, sometimes my mother came to visit us. I felt very happy with her arms around me and she kissed me. When I was five years old my father sent me to look after animals for another family. It was far from my home and l spent three years with the animals. They are domestic animals like yaks, horses and sheep etc. Then I came back home and went to a small school near our Village and learned Chinese language. I helped my mother with the work at home but after two years we couldn't pay the school fees. I stopped school and went to work for other people to look after animals again in my village.

I was 12 years old when my elder brother asked me to be a monk in the monastery and I agreed to that, so I became a monk in one of the great monasteries of Tibet. It is called Lab Rang monastery.

There are more than 5000 monks in the monastery. I stayed in a Lama's house and worked there as well as studying Tibetan language. It was very smooth and peaceful. But unfortunately, at that time Chinese officers came into the monastery and they said to all the monks who are under 18 years olds that they could not stay in the monastery any more and should go back to their family. Therefore, we had a big problem. Then, my brother asked me if I would like to go to India and study over there. I told him I would like that.

My brother helped me find some money. I left the monastery and didn't tell any members of my family that I was leaving.

Then my brother gives a lot of advice for the journey which was very helpful for me. However, I was in for a big surprise! When I arrived in the town of Xining I met a man who looked very kind toward me and he said to me "would you like to go to Lhasa? If you go with me, then you help me to look my truck of butter, therefore I will not charge any money to u and you will arrive safely in Lhasa." I trusted him and listened to what he told me. Then he told me give me your bus ticket, I will get a refund on it. So I gave him the ticket and he gave me his pager number. He told me, that if he did not come soon, then you can page me on this number. So I waited for him for around two hours. Still he did not come. I called that pager number and after a few minutes one police officer came to the telephone booth I just used, asking who had paged him! I then realized the kind man who was helping me, had taken my ticket, cheated me, and given me a police pager number. When I saw the policeman, I quickly hid behind the booth because I was afraid of what might happen to me. After that I became depressed and didn't have any choices. I went to the train station but people told me it was dangerous and I shouldn't get a train, so I went back to the bus stand and looked for a bus to Lhasa. My big problem though, was that I had very little money. I had to find another bus.

I managed find a bus, but they wanted 350rps. I told the driver that I did not have any money and he told me I could go on the bus, but I would not have a seat, I could only sit on the machinery which was used for opening and closing the door. To get from Xining to Lhasa cost me 200
without seat. It was a terrible journey, but I won't go into details.

I arrived in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. At that time it was very difficult for me to find someone who could take me to India, because I don't understand Lhasa dialect. Then after one week I found somebody and I paid Chinese 1000Rs to him take me to India and I prepared some food and other things for myself on the journey.

There were 24 people traveling together across many mountains and through rivers by foot. We could only move at night because we were afraid of being seen by the Chinese. In the day we would hide in a comparatively safe place. Sometimes we were even able to sleep for a short time during the day, but there was always the fear of being caught by the Chinese. After eight days we were near Mount Everest around 6:30 am but unfortunately the Chinese army saw us and they arrested all of us and beat us up. I was very afraid of them. Then they took us in a truck to their office and they took us one by one in a quite big room and asked many questions with a very hard beating.

When I went into the room they told me to take off all my clothes. I was a 15 year old monk, and just the idea of taking off my clothes made me feel very nervous and afraid. Then, once I removed my clothes, they checked inside them, looked inside my bag and they took my money and my books with Lama photos inside. They asked many meaningless questions, and when I couldn't give clear answers, they started beating me. There were six or seven people around me and they started kicking me, like playing football. I felt very angry towards them and I wanted to fight back but I had no power. I realized I could not do anything, so I started to cry. The whole time they were abusing and taunting me, so I felt worse and worse. But what could I do? I was powerless.
I spent one month in different prisons under the Chinese army. They didn't give much food to us and we were in a big suffering. After they released me, I went back to Lhasa where some of my brother's friends helped me and gave me a place to stay. They told me that I should stay in Sera Monastery near Lhasa and study, but I felt very strongly that I should go to India and see His Holiness the Dalai Lama, because when I was in prison, the Chinese officer asked me a lot of questions about HH the Dalai Lama.

Therefore, I cried in front of my brother's friends and begged them to lend me some money to get to India. One of them lent me the money for the journey and gave me some tsampa and butter which is Tibetan peoples' favorite food.

Around the first week of November 1998. which is winter and very cold, I journeyed with 52 people. I was really afraid that the Chinese would catch me again walking. Since I was getting better of the travelers, I tried my best to help them. They got discouraged and went back to home. Therefore, I continued the journey with others. The guide told us that many Tibetans who tried escaping, they lost their lives, lost their toes and fingers due to frost bite and so on, while travel through this snow mountain. After climbing the mountain for around 8 hours, we reached the Nepal's border. We were extremely glad since then, like other people of the world, we slept at night and woke up in the morning. But, since our food had finished we had nothing to eat. So, we were starving. Hence, in a Nepalese village, we sold some of our clothes and got some money for food.

Note: Tenzin had trouble continuing with his story as it brought up too much emotional trauma. We thank him for being so brave as to recall this much to share. If you would like to help Tenzin, he needs a kind sponsor.