Word: potala
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Education. In the vast (1,400 rooms) winter palace of Potala, the Palace of Gods, and in the smaller summer palace two miles away, the young Dalai Lama spent his days studying religion and philosophy, and training in the practices of dyhyana (meditation) as developed by the Mahayana Buddhist School. His mother was the only female he was allowed to receive within his household of servants, monks, abbots and the State Oracle, given to appropriately vague pronouncements ("A powerful foe threatens . . ."). The few Western visitors who, bearing sacred scarves, got audiences, found him a studious, insatiably curious and dedicated...
...world. Since then, though Radio Peking has on occasion quoted the Dalai Lama in dutiful denunciation of the American imperialists, he has in fact shown a captive's ability subtly to defy authority. The old saying is still true: "To hold Tibet firmly, the conqueror must win the Potala's top floor...
Last week the irritated Red commander sent another message to the Dalai Lama, peremptorily ordering him to report alone, even without his senior abbots, to Red headquarters in Lhasa. As word spread among the 55,000 inhabitants of the city, angry Tibetans thronged around the towering, 40-ft. Potala (Winter Palace), so that the Dalai Lama could not leave it, even if he wished to. When the Dalai Lama's mother heard the news, she burst into tears, and a crowd of weeping women surged around the Indian consulate general, begging help for the Dalai Lama. Some Lhasans broke...
...India it was an embarrassing moment: the Indians hope to stay out of the trouble, and Prime Minister Nehru has repeatedly scoffed at exaggerated reports of Tibetan resistance. Last week the Indian consulate, lying between the Potala and Red headquarters, radioed New Delhi that there was "fighting in the immediate vicinity of the consulate. The situation is tense and rising." Then the radio fell silent. At Gyangtse, a large trading center 100 miles southwest of Lhasa, the citizens attacked the Red Chinese garrison. From Phongdo, the force of Khambas and fighting monks pushed toward the capital. At week...
...hold Tibet firmly," goes an old Tibetan saying, "the conqueror must win Potala's top floor." Potala is the 500-ft.-high, 1,400-room Lhasa stronghold of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's powerful temporal ruler, and the top floor is the Lama's private residence. Since Red China "liberated" Tibet in 1951, hundreds of Chinese officials have been popping in and out of Potala's top floor, wooing the 21-year-old Dalai Lama with flattery and gifts (among them: ten autos, a direct phone to Peking), and isolating him from his own countrymen...