A true love story from Tibet As was the custom in much of Asia, marriages were usually arranged by the parents, often many years in advance, with the help of astrological charts. Girls, especially, had no say in the choosing of their husband. In fact, Dagmola had already been promised to a handsome heir of an estate in East Tibet, and Dagchen Rinpoche’s marriage with a princess from Sikkim had been pledged. The simple village girl from East Tibet would not be considered an appropriate candidate by any standards. Yet observers could not fail to notice how the two glanced at each other, and palace servants started to gossip and spy. After a garden party, sitting on a bench in the palace garden, Dagchen Rinpoche surprised Dagmola by asking her outright for her hand. “If your mother and uncle give their consent, will you marry me?” Torn between longing and fear, Dagmola turned him down. “I like you,” she said, “but I want to go home.” Despite her love for Dagchen Rinpoche, she was terribly homesick and could not wait to see her friends in Kham. “In the moonlight, I could see that he was both hurt and surprised,” Dagmola recalls. “Hundreds of girls would have snapped up the chance to say yes.” According to legend, Dagchen Rinpoche’s ancestors had descended from heaven as representatives of the Buddha. Dagmola cared for Dagchen Rinpoche but felt that “in our case the geography was wrong. . . . Under no circumstances would his parents accept me as part of their family. . . . Yet each time I saw him I felt closer to him.” Dagmola underestimated Dagchen Rinpoche’s determination, and she too longed to be with him. They became inseparable. Dagmola could not illustrate the way courtship worked back then more clearly than by describing the way Dagchen Rinpoche requested permission from Dagmola’s uncle. Her fiancé “placed the message on . . . five sheets of thin wood edged in red, with a designed cover and bottom also in red. The message was written on a coating of powder. All this formed a kind of elegant layered box, together with a decorated band of leather and silk. . . . An auspicious day was selected, and the message was delivered by a Sakya government secretary.” Dagchen Rinpoche’s parents were thoroughly dismayed. They told their son—through messengers—to forget about the whole thing. By custom Dagchen Rinpoche did not approach his parents directly, even though they lived in the same palace and saw each other every day. Messengers were sent back and forth with auspicious scarves draped around scathing notes. The family even offered Dagmola money to buy her off. But neither Dagchen Rinpoche nor Dagmola budged. “They wanted someone who was the daughter of a high-ranking official, or a princess, or someone very learned. I was none of this. Dagchen Rinpoche then told his parents that if he could not marry me he would become a monk. So that did it!” Remaining celibate would have entailed a terrible loss of face for his parents, since their eldest son was supposed to carry on the lineage. It took months of back-and-forth diplomacy, polite threats, and secret rendezvous, before the parents finally realized they had no choice but to relent. Quoted from Dakini Power dakinipower/dagmola-kusho-sakya/ #happyvalentine
Posted on: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:51:10 +0000
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