Sonam Rapten

Hey, did you know that the Dalai Lama once had a insane blood-raging army of psychotic Mongol warriors who considered themselves Holy Crusaders of Buddhism and stood ready and willing to crush any and all of his enemies at a moment's notice with little to no provocation?

Let's talk about a dude named Sonam Rapten.

Sonam Rapten was born in a small village on the western edge of the Tibetan Plateau, probably sometime around the year 1595. We don't know who his parents where, or what his family was like, but it probably couldn't have been all that awesome, because at the age of 8 years old he was sent off to Drepung Monastery to be trained as a Buddhist Monk and we don't have any record of him ever going home again. Drepung Monastery was the headquarters of the Gelug (Yellow Hat) school of Buddhism, which probably doesn't mean much to you or me but it's pretty important to the plot here, because even though nowadays we think of the Buddhists as a bunch of super chill peace-loving dudes, this was back at a time when the color of your hat was apparently a pretty good indicator of whether or not other practicing Buddhists should consider planting a flying side kick through your skull. But we'll get to that.

Sonam rose quickly through the ranks, became monastery treasurer, and then, ultimately the Principal Attendant to a guy we now know as the Fourth Dalai Lama (fun side note, the Fourth was actually just the second person to bear that title even though we now call him the Fourth… the Mongol Khan had declared the Fourth's predecessor to be a Dalai Lama, or an "Ocean of Wisdom", and the Yellow Hats liked it so much that they back-dated the title to the Third's two previous reincarnations). Which, great! Being the assistant to the Dalai Lama probably means he was a pretty successful and high-ranking dude in the hierarchy of Drepung Monastery, and to achieve that title at the age of just 20 years old was a real honor.

But then things got bad.Like Jade Empire or The Last Ninja bad.

Ok, so it's basically impossible to read about this story without encountering ten billion unintelligible proper nouns, so I'm going to try to distill it down to just the stuff that's necessary for the plot. The deal is essentially this: A thousand ago there was a big, powerful Tibetan Empire, but that broke apart into a bunch of different factions that have been at war off-and-on with each other for like six hundred years. The two most powerful of those factions in the year 1600 are the province of Tsang, and the province of U (yes, like the letter u, but the correct spelling has umlauts on it and I don't feel like keying that in by hand every time I want to type the name of that province). Sonam Rapten, Drepung Monastery, the Dalai Lama, and the Yellow Hat Buddhists are in the Province of U, and the King of Tsang Province is a White Hat Buddhist and a dick and he hates the Dalai Lama because he accuses the Dalai Lama of being too friendly with the Mongols (which he was) and also of putting a curse on the King of Tsang that makes him feel tired and nauseous and itchy all the time (which seems a little less likely). Everyone just mean-mugged each other for a while, but then, out of nowhere, the Fourth Dalai Lama dropped dead at the age of just 28 years old and the King of Tsang used that moment of confusion to spring into action – he launched his armies into U (also ur mom), crushed U's forces, slaughtered hundreds of monks, massacred civilians, burned houses and temples to the ground, and pillaged and destroyed Drepung Monastery. Any local noble families who failed to submit had their lands confiscated. Any Yellow Hat monastery that hadn't been torched was "forcibly converted" to the White Hat school, which doesn't sound like a fun process. Anyone who resisted was crushed. The King of Tsang declared a "New Tibetan Kingdom," forbade the search for a reincarnation of the Fourth Dalai Lama, installed a new religious leader in Tibet, and then, as if all that wasn't enough, ordered Sonam Rapten to come to the Tsang Capital and personally present the King with a ransom of 300 gold coins.

Yeah… that wasn't happening. The King of Tsang had offended his family, and they'd offended a Shaolin Temple – and now they were gonna pay.

Sonam Rapten was now the most senior surviving monk of Yellow Hat Buddhism, and the entire survival of his school and monastery depended on him. He evaded his captors, slipped off to the north, and immediately started looking for the reincarnation of the Fourth Dalai Lama (the Dalai Lamas have a bit of a Doctor Who thing going on where when one dies he's reincarnated into a new body, except instead of regenerating in the TARDIS it's up to a committee of monks to go around the world trying to figure out which kid is the reincarnation of their dearly-departed spiritual leader). Hunted by agents of Tsang, navigating his way through brigand-infested wilderness that was also in the midst of a goddamn Mongol Civil War, he met with oracles, tracked down rumors, met with families, and did some badass old-school Questing. Eventually, after a year of searching, he found a kid that showed some promise – a boy named Ngawang Lobzang Gyatso. After running the two year-old boy through a grueling series of trials that range somewhere between a séance and an IQ test, Sonam Rapten was convinced he'd found the kid he was looking for.

He immediately went to work Obi-Wanning the boy, training him in philosophy, poetry, sanskrit, mysticism and tantric rituals, and introducing him to the greatest masters and philosophers he could find, all while keeping news of the kid's discovery a secret from the wrathful and murderous King of Tsang.

Oh, right, and while he was out there wandering around the steppes of Outer Mongolia, Sonam Rapten also converted a fuckton of Mongol warriors to Yellow Hat Buddhism and told them to disguise themselves as pilgrims and secretly make their way to a secret base outside the city of Lhasa. Yeah, that's right. Things are about to get weird.

In 1621 Sonam Rapten doesn't just show back up in Tibet – he storms his way into Tibet at the head of a fucking Mongol Army and bringing with him the physical reincarnation of the recently-deceased Dalai Lama. The King of Tsang's 10,000-man army is routed in the field and flees back to Tsang, the Yellow Hats re-take their lands and their monasteries, Drepung Monastery is repaired, and the kid is officially pronounced Fifth Dalai Lama in the year 1622.

Sonam Rapten was only 27 years old, and his job now was to basically run shit in U Province until the 4-year-old Dalai Lama was old enough to shave. He'd go on to basically rule as chief administrator for the next 36 years, overseeing the province as it went from near-extinction to become a potent political and cultural power for the region.

But, sure, that's great and all, but badass motherfuckers like the King of Tsang don't just give up, pop in an Adele album and start posting pouty photos on Instagram every time they're punched in the face, and you can be damn sure that the King wasn't about to let this insult go lightly. First he built a coalition of other White Hat Buddhists and united them against the Dalai Lama, building a massive army that included the rulers of Chogthu, Ligdan, and Beri. Then, he figured out who the Dalai Lama was and captured the kid's dad, which is some next-level shit. The Dad died in Tsang's prison, then the King ordered the body to be chucked in a ditch behind the castle.

Ok.

Sonam sent spies to recover the body and bring it back to U for a proper burial, then he smuggled the Dalai Lama's Dalai Mama back to Drepung Monastery where she could be protected.

Then he pulled out the big guns: He called up Khan Gushri, the brutal Mongol warrior who had just cleaved a bloody swath of destruction through all who opposed him to win that Mongol Civil War I mentioned a few paragraphs back. Gushri just so happened to be a pretty hardcore Yellow Hat Buddhist (and a friend of the Fourth Dalai Lama), and Sonam Rapten had a pretty solid proposal for him:

Let's fuck these guys up. Ride or die.

Sonam Rapten didn't fuck around waiting for the enemy to come hit him in the mouth. He rallied together a crew of badass Buddhist monks and U Province Tibetan nobles and peasants, linked up with Gushri Khan and a big-ass army of battle-hardened Mongol killers, and went on the assault. Riding alongside the Khan's cavalry, Sonam Rapten and the Mongol army crushed the Chogthu in an epic battle in the year 1637, and then, the moment they turned to face the Ligdan army, their leader died of smallpox that may or may not have been cursed onto him by a Bhutanese Lama (you know how these Tsang guys are about blaming all their physical ailments on vindictive holy men), and the entire army was like, "Yeah, I don't care that much about this shit," and ran for their lives. Sonam and Gushri then wheeled, crushed the Beri, executed their leader, and pushed on towards Tsang to finish the job once and for all.

Oh – it bears mentioning here that the Dalai Lama had pretty mixed feelings about all of this bloodshed stuff… it's not really his thing, you know? Luckily for him, Sonam Rapten forged his signature on a number of legally-binding docs authorizing full military action against all of the Lama's enemies. He wasn't going to rest until this war was finished.

The battle for the Tsang capital was hard-fought and brutal – the Tsang army turtled up in their castle in the mountains, and the Mongols were having a really hard time breaking through. The tide eventually turned, however, when Sonam Rapten led a strike team of Mongols and Buddhist monk initiates to infiltrate the Tsang base at Dongpo Castle (hehe) and capture it, causing a huge gap in the fortification structure surrounding the capital. The capital fell soon after, and the King of Tsang was executed by being sewn up into an oxhide and thrown in a river.

The Mongols were hard core. I've mentioned that before, right?

After the fall of Tsang, the Dalai Lama was now basically the ruler of all Tibet – Sonam Rapten and Gushri Khan had carved him a kingdom of his own. From there, Sonam Rapten was chief advisor to the Dalai Lama for the next 30+ years, establishing the foundation for the religious structure that still exists to this day, thanks in large part to his actions. He put down some rebellions, organized a census, converted a bunch of Mongols and White Hats to Yellow Hat Buddhism, took some traditionally-Tibetan territory back from the Ladakh Indians, and mediated a potentially dangerous situation when Gushri Khan died and his ten kids were all Kublai Khanning it up with arguments over who should inherit the army. He did try (and fail) to kill that Bhutanese guy that inflicted smallpox on the Ligdan commander, but after that he did successfully manage to (allegedly) assassinate the White Hat version of the Dalai Lama, burn down his temple, forbid a search for his reincarnated form, and then throw his ashes into a river.

He also helped the Fifth Dalai Lama design and build Potala Palace in 1649.

The Dalai Lama went on to write 27 books, establish the office in the way we know it today, meet the Qing Emperor of China, and now is known as "The Great Fifth", for all of his amazing work stabilizing and ruling Tibet. His line of succession traces all the way from 1600 to the current Dalai Lama, who you can apparently follow on Twitter now.