Tendzin Choegyal Taklha obituary
Tendzin Choegyal Taklha, who has died aged 79, was confidant, sounding board and chief support of the Dalai Lama, his elder brother, throughout the transformation of the Tibetan leader from national political figure to global spiritual powerhouse. Although Tendzin Choegyal himself was recognised at birth as the 16th incarnation of the Ngari Rinpoché – meaning “precious one of Ngari” – an important reincarnation lineage whose origins lay in western Tibet (modern-day Ladakh), he took the opportunity to forswear monastic life as soon as he could after going into exile in India at the age of 13. Subsequently educated, at the Dalai Lama’s behest, at an English-style public school run by Jesuits in Darjeeling, Tendzin Choegyal gained a psychological insight into western ways. It was this that enabled him to counsel the Dalai Lama as his elder brother began his spiritual mission to the world.
Born in Lhasa, on an unknown date during the March new year festival of the Fire Dog, Tendzin Choegyal was the youngest child of a family of petty-landowners who, when their fourth child was recognised as the reincarnation of the Great 13th Dalai Lama, had since become the most important in Tibet. Tendzin Choegyal himself was recognised not only as a reincarnate lama but also as the rebirth of an elder brother who had died shortly after childbirth. A senior monk then visiting the mourning family comforted the mother by assuring her that the child would come back. Taking some butter on his thumb, he anointed the baby’s corpse by pressing it on to one of its buttocks. She should look for such a mark on her next baby which, he told her, would be healthy. In later life, Tendzin Choegyal would delight in showing off the birthmark to friends – even while expressing scepticism as to the truth of the connection. Although he was formally inducted as a novice monk aged three, Tendzin Choegyal initially lived the life of a spoiled young aristocrat at his parents’ mansion in Lhasa, until being sent away to Drepung monastery at 12, an experience that he loathed. In the meantime, his youthful escapades included taking his ponies on to the palace roof as a prank. On another occasion, having discovered his songbirds had been killed by the family cat, he herded the cat and its litter of kittens into a sack and clubbed them to death. He told both stories against himself without any attempt at justification. When he was just three years old, China had moved to assert itself in Tibet by sending in the People’s Liberation Army to take over its administration. When the Dalai Lama went to visit Beijing in 1954, he took his youngest brother with him. The little boy quickly picked up some Chinese, becoming a serious liability for the delight he took in saying out loud what the adults would not say to their hosts. On the eve of the Dalai Lama’s flight from Lhasa in 1959, the PLA having made life impossible for the Tibetan leader, Tendzin Choegyal was collected from the monastery and taken to the Norbulingka Palace, where the Dalai Lama was then quartered. From there, the two brothers and their mother escaped under the noses of the Chinese army, which Mao Zedong had belatedly ordered to detain the Tibetan leader. They arrived safely in India a month later, having trekked across the southern reaches of the Himalayas. At 13 years of age, it was the boy’s special joy to be given a pistol to carry.
Shortly after reaching Mussoorie, the British-Indian hill station that was the Tibetan exiles’ temporary home for a year, the Dalai Lama gave instructions for Tendzin Choegyal to be enrolled at St Joseph’s college in Darjeeling. Founded in the late 19th century, and run by the Jesuits, the school was modelled on the British public schools of the day but with a strongly Catholic ethos. The former Tibetan Buddhist monk was so taken by this unfamiliar religion that he became an altar boy, helping to serve at mass. While away at school, he kept up an occasional correspondence, in English, with the Dalai Lama – who signed himself “John” in order to keep his identity hidden. After leaving St Joseph’s, now highly proficient and widely read in English, Tendzin Choegyal spent a period studying in North America. In 1972, he took up a teaching position back in India at the Tibetan children’s village school in Dharamsala. There he met Rindchen Khando, whom he married that same year. They had a son, Tendzin Lodro, and a daughter, Tendzin Choensum. Tendzin Choegyal subsequently enlisted in the Special Frontier Force, the Indian army’s elite and secretive airborne mountain warfare unit set up in the aftermath of the 1962 Sino-Indian war. He rose to the rank of captain. Returning to civilian life, Tendzin Choegyal joined the Dalai Lama’s private office, serving for some years in the security department before being elected to the Tibetan government in exile, representing the people of Amdo province from 1991 to 1996. During the mid-1980s his mental health had begun to deteriorate, and he became known for flying into rages. On one occasion, he told me, he physically ejected a nun from the Dalai Lama’s helicopter as it took off in Zanskar, in 1988. Afterwards, he spoke of feeling that he was channelling a wrathful deity. He was eventually diagnosed with what is now known as bipolar disorder. Retirement from public service gave Tendzin Choegyal the opportunity to cultivate friendships among the westerners who had begun to flock to Dharamsala in search of spiritual nourishment. The role he subsequently carved out for himself was to act as a bridge between two radically different cultures. Increasingly relied on by the Dalai Lama for his insight, from the early 90s until the Dalai Lama ceased travelling, Tendzin Choegyal was invariably at his brother’s side offering support, counsel and, sometimes, contrary opinion. He also became a highly sought-after – if always reluctant and self-effacing – speaker on Buddhism. While he never accepted his identification as a reincarnate lama, and repudiated the elaborate teachings of the tantric tradition, in the last 10 years of his life, he became an increasingly devoted Buddhist practitioner. He is survived by his wife and their two children, as well as by a sister and the Dalai Lama. • Tendzin Choegyal Taklha, spiritual and political adviser, born March 1946; died 17 February 2026
