The path of resilience

Sipping chai at a tea stall in India, Sonam Tashi, a 55-year old monk recounts being in a Chinese prison after posting photographs of the Dalai Lama around his monastery in Tibet:

“I was arrested in 1988. Those in prison have great suffering because they are put in small cells. When the youth couldn’t tolerate their hunger and thirst I would give them advice according to Buddhism. Many masters of the past made great efforts to become despite many hardships. When I think of this, I didn’t feel my suffering in prison was very great. I had one small [prayer beads] around my wrist, which I used to recite mantras. I had to stay as a prisoner, but I just thought of it as a retreat house. If we have too much food we feel sleepy; since I only had a little food, actually this was much better for practice! I was there one year and was able to recite 100,000 mantras each of and There were many monks there like me, using it positively as an opportunity to practise. Some said: ‘Since we are monks, if we have to stay our whole lives here and die in prison then it is not really prison because we are here practising the .’ It is also good to have all this suffering now in this life because then it is purified and we won’t experience much later.”