Lama Zopa Rinpoche

One morning while my uncles were in Lhasa, I was outside with my uncle’s wife and their
son, a little monk belonging to a monastery that was part of the Tashi Lhunpo. A tall monk
called Losang Gyatso came up to me and asked, “Do you want to be my disciple?” So I said,
“Yes.” I think this was past life’s karma ripening. Then he went inside and told my aunt, “He
wants to be my disciple.”
She was a very good cook, and the next day she made a thermos of tea, filled a Bhutanese
container made of woven bamboo with round breads (she made very good Tibetan bread,
served with a lot of butter) and took me to Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s monastery, where he
lived, about fifteen minutes’ walk from our place. (I should keep this story brief. This doesn’t
need to become an initiation into my story!)
Early the next morning I washed and then we had to go to somebody’s house for puja. We
used to go to different people’s houses to do puja every day; this was kind of a fixed time to
do puja. But sometimes we did extra pujas that went all night, like Praises to the Twenty-one
Taras or the Four Mandala Offerings to Tara, and on those nights we got no sleep. But mostly
we did protector practices, the major one being Dolgyal, Shugden, because in that area that
had been the main practice of Kyabje Domo Geshe Rinpoche in the past. So this practice
was well known in Domo and Phagri. They did others as well, such as Mahakala, but this
was also very strong and often done for the families.
On that first day there was a puja at the house of the benefactor of Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s
labrang. I was given some pages of the Yamantaka sadhana to memorize and told to stay
outside where the family dogs were sleeping. I memorized the text and they brought food
and tea out to me while the other monks were doing puja inside the prayer hall. That was the
first day. I memorized the text for examination by Losang Gyatso, the tall monk who
became my teacher.
Then, on the second day, I went to puja together with them because in Solu Khumbu, even
though I was very small, I used to attend pujas with many people, like the pujas they did
when people died, which extended for many days. However, in the morning, before going
out to puja I had to do my memorization.
So, like that, I spent three years in Phagri.
Buxa Duar
Nine months after the Chinese took Tibet I escaped to India through Bhutan. Phagri is near
Bhutan and at that time crossing the border was much easier than it became later on. We
made our way to Jalpaiguri in West Bengal and from there to a camp called Buxa Duar,
where Prime Minister Nehru and Gandhi had been imprisoned during the British time.
That’s where the Sera Je and Sera Me monks’ puja hall and residences had been
reestablished.
The monks had beds all the way along the walls of a very long, narrow building. There was a
very small courtyard outside surrounded by barbed wire, thorns and a ditch where there were
more monks’ beds. The house of my teacher Geshe Rabten was also there. The place was
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