Brother of Dalai Lama meets with students in Chestnut Ridge
The brother of the Dalai Lama related his storied personal history yesterday to students at the Green Meadow Waldorf School.
Gyalo Thondup, 78, who has also worked to improve the welfare of the people of Tibet and Tibetan exiles, spoke to sixth through 12th-graders at the school for more than hour.
“It was wonderful to hear from someone who has so much incredible knowledge and who has experienced so much,” said Jessalyn Traino, 18, of North Haledon, N.J. “You can just feel all of the things that’s he’s experienced coming out of him as he was talking. It was just amazing.”
Thondup was 6 years old when his brother was born. It was a stormy day, he said, and Thondup was about to go to a market with his older sister. But when his mother went into labor, Thondup’s sister was asked to stay behind and aid in the impending delivery, which, as was tradition in northeastern Tibet, took place in a horse stable.
His sister, he said, was not happy to stay.
“My sister is crying. You know, she’s very hot-tempered, very hot-tempered,” he said, eliciting laughter from the crowd, “She was pulling her hair.”
Thondup went to the market with villagers instead of his sister.
“When I returned from that particular market day, the small baby was crying,” Thondup said. “I remember everything.”
His brother, Lhama, was recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama at the age of 2.
As a teenager, Gyalo Thondup left Tibet to study in Nanjing, China, where he learned the Chinese language and culture. He eventually returned to Tibet, but in 1952, after the Chinese invasion of the region, Thondup fled for India. The Dalai Lama fled seven years later, after a Tibetan uprising in the capitol of Lhasa was suppressed by military force.
Thondup said that he doesn’t hate anyone, “even (though) the Chinese killed so many of my brothers and my sisters in Tibet … I don’t hate Chinese people.”
Thondup helped establish the Tibetan government in exile in India and, in 1979, met with then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Thanks to the meeting, borders between Tibet and China were temporarily unsealed, allowing exiles separated from their families for two decades to reunite.
Thondup continues to be optimistic that the treatment of Tibetans in China will improve.
“I’m watching the China situation and the Tibetan situation and the international situation,” he said. “I think things probably will change, but very slow … .”
Thondup is in the United States this month to raise support for his new foundation, a research and policy group dedicated to assisting Tibetans in exile and those living in Tibet.
source: the journal news
