I recently came across a beautifully written article by Sam Criss that I had never heard of before. I was struck by how beautifully and intelligently he writes. That led me to his Substack blog, Num at the Lodge. Then I noticed that one of the articles featured an image of an angry Tibetan god. Since there was only a part of the article about Tibetan Buddhism, I have reproduced that part here. I hope you enjoyed it and that it inspires you to read more of Sam’s work.
In his October 13, 1944 Tribune column, George Orwell tells an interesting story. During the liberation of France, the Allies had captured large numbers of soldiers not only from the German army, but also from many other countries, who were forcibly conscripted by the Wehrmacht. Among them were many anti-Soviet Russians, but Orwell’s informant had heard about two soldiers from the far reaches of the great heart of Asia who also spoke Russian. , and could not speak any other languages known to the British prisoners. “A Slavic language professor brought over from Oxford could not understand a word of what they were saying.At that time, a sergeant who happened to be serving on the Indian frontier overheard their conversation and recognized their language. And now I can speak a little bit. I was Tibetan!” Somehow, these wandering Tibetans… Coming down from the plateau, they fell into the hands of the Soviets, were conscripted into the army, captured by the Germans, and forced to serve in the defense of Normandy, where the two men fought on both sides of the greatest war in human history. , “All the while they could not speak to anyone but each other and had no idea what was going on or who was fighting whom.”
In Cambodia, Brian Fawcett has more information. The two Tibetans were farmers from Gyêgumdo, in present-day Qinghai Province, China. They were on a pilgrimage to Lhasa, where they planned to enter a monastery. However, during a snowstorm, he loses his direction and ends up in China. They were captured by bandits along the Lancang River and headed north to join up with the communists in Yan’an. At some point, the Tibetans fled, wandering aimlessly through the arid wastes, but were eventually captured by Soviet authorities in Tashkent, given rifles, and ordered to protect their socialist homeland from fascism. . Fawcett provides one of the important additions to Orwell’s story. It is the answer to “the riddle of their unlikely survival and their deep and flexible passivity in the face of hardship after hardship.” He says, “For ten years these two believed themselves dead…The only thing they survived was that from the first day of the ordeal they found themselves trapped in the unpredictable Bardo, the underworld.” That’s because I believed that.”
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Both Orwell and Fawcett miss some important details of the story of the wandering Tibetans. The two Tibetans were interned at Château Hervans by British forces. The castle was formerly an SS stronghold and is now a major Allied prisoner of war camp. And the person who provided the translation was not an old Indian, but SS Colonel Otto Gosse, who was also a prisoner of war. In 1938, Gosse took part in Ernst Schaefer’s SS expedition to Tibet, probably to search for the mystical kingdom of Agartha and the birthplace of the Aryan race, and to suggest that the Tibetan Plateau was perhaps part of the final route to British India. This may have been to evaluate it as a potential base for invasion. During this trip, he acquired a rough working knowledge of Tibet and a deep aversion to Nyingma Buddhism. Gosse complained that the Tibetan language they spoke was atonal and outdated, more similar to the thousand-year-old Gubum language than the ordinary spoken language he actually encountered on the plateau. But he could make himself understood. British officers told the Tibetans through Goss that they were not dead and were in fact only in a very distant country, France, and that Britain would provide them with passports to return to Jegmud if they wished. I tried to explain. The Tibetans said no.
Bardo is not exactly the same as the underworld. Ordinary waking life is a bardo state. Dreams happen elsewhere. There is a bardo that can be accessed through a meditative trance state. But the bardo in which the two peasants were among themselves was the sidpa bardo, the bardo of becoming, which we experience after death. Sidpa Bardo is an intermediate zone between one life and the next, a terrestrial junkyard filled with the detritus and effluents of the world. This is a place where gods and Buddhas take on frightening forms, and one has to suffer many frightening visions to pass through Sidpa Bardo. This bardo state is made up of unstructured thought waste leaking from all other bardos, so it is constantly flickering and impermanent. You will see a world you cannot understand and ruins. Every city you pass through will be bombed. Everyone you meet will die in battle. You will be attacked by demons and wild animals. But Sidpa Bardo is educational. The purpose of these visions is to prepare you to be born again. The entire Second World War was fought just to teach these two Tibetan peasants a secret for the next life. They believed they knew the secret. They had no interest in returning to Jegmud. They did not want the war to be in vain.
Chris writes great satire, and my first thought was that he was fabricating sources to create this amazing story.October 13, 1944 If you check out Orwell’s Tribune column of the day, he does indeed discuss the story of two Tibetans who ended up fighting for Tibet. In World War II, both sides fought without any understanding of what was happening. Based on that, I think the rest of Chris’ explanation is accurate as well.
