If there is a more potent royal symbol to evoke in Tibet than King Srong btsan sgam po, it would be the legendary King Ge Sar of Ling, the paradigmatic martial hero, savior of Tibet, and exemplar of wise rule. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the Dalai Lama likens Gushri Khan to King Ge Sar [3b]. Leaving no symbolic opportunity unexploited, he also likens Gushri Khan to Buddha in the prologue verses [2a]. All of these rhetorical maneuvers are directed toward legitimizing Gushri Khan as a sanctified, righteous warrior in the cause of Buddhism.
But the Dalai Lama does not stop there. He also endeavors to frame the particular events of the wars leading up to 1642 in Buddhist terms. He provides a discourse that enables his audience to understand those events as pious actions, embedded in a righteous quest. For example, one of his primary antagonists, Hal ha Chog thu, was a Mongolian chieftain who had come from western Mongolia to the Blue Lake region in northeastern Tibet. It is said that “his mind was possessed by malevolent black spirits, due to which he implemented plans to undermine Buddhism in general and the teachings of Tsong kha pa13 in particular.” The Dalai Lama goes on to say that, as a result, Gushri Khan “gathered an army from his own region, with Buddhism as his only concern, and went to the Blue Lake in the first month of 1637.” Here, the Dalai Lama evokes the resonant literary paradigm of the Indian epic the Rmyaa:
Just as the powerful King Rma dispatched the lord of Lanka, so [Gushri Khan] destroyed Chog thu and 40,000 troops, until only the name remained. He took control of the region up to the eastern edge of the lake and protected his subjects in happiness by way of a religio-political government. Gradually, the sun dawned in the domain of central Tibet, and Gushri Khan established a festival in which the stores of merit were enhanced. At the vajra seat of the Tibetan land in the Ra sa ’phrul snang Temple, he received the title and assumed the responsibilities of a great dharmarja such that he came to stand above all other kingdoms. [108b–109a]
Here, the Dalai Lama not only embeds Gushri Khan’s military exploits within a Buddhist narrative, but he intends to evoke, once again, an identity between Buddha and the khan with the analogy between the vajra seat of Bodhgaya and the Ra sa ’phrul snang Temple. Additionally, the khan is depicted as a dharmarja, or a religious king (chos rgyal), a class of sovereign that is regarded as particularly just and righteous because they dedicate their rule to promoting the interests of Buddhism.
In 1639, Gushri Khan battled the Bon chieftain from Be ri, who is represented as oppressing Buddhism and only permitting the Bon religion to grow in Kham. “In the fifth Hor month of the Earth-Hare year of 1639,” we are told, “Gushri Khan brought his forces down on top of Be ri, whereupon he seized most of the latter’s subjects” [109a]. The Be ri coalition fell apart, and many of the principals were imprisoned. Now that the danger to Buddhism was overcome, according to the Dalai Lama, the lamas and leaders of the Sa skya, dGe lugs, Kar ma bKa’ brgyud, ‘Brug pa bKa’ brgyud, sTag lung, and so forth were liberated from a dungeon and sent home. In this terse account of a very complex situation, Gushri Khan is depicted as an impartial supporter of a broad array of Tibetan Buddhist schools.
This interpretive move seems to be required by the general tenor of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s argument justifying violence and warfare. It is one thing to deploy Buddhist imagery and narratives to justify the defense of the interests of Buddhists being persecuted by some malevolent non-Buddhist oppressor; it is quite another to legitimize sectarian conflicts between Buddhists. The Dalai Lama has a heightened sensitivity to this question, and he downplays the intrareligious basis of the most substantial warfare that took place leading up to the culmination of events in 1642. The battle against Chog thu and the Be ri chief were minor sideshows compared to the decisive battles that took place in dbU and gTsang between partisans of the Buddhist dGe lugs and bKa’ brgyud schools. When the Dalai Lama reaches this part of the story, he merely mentions that Gushri deployed billions of troops and subjugated the land, but he makes no mention of who was defeated. He further obfuscates matters when he concludes by remarking that the kings and ministers of Tibet had to learn to bow humbly to Gushri Khan in 1642 [109b].
The Dalai Lama attempts to convey a tone of neutrality among Buddhists. This tone is in stark contrast to the manner in which this series of events was perceived by others at the time and in the decades and centuries that followed. In the eyes of non–dGe lugs pas, Gushri Khan’s conquests and the ascendancy of the Dalai Lama as the paramount political force in the country were both permeated with sectarian agendas. Monasteries were seized and converted, land estates were reassigned to support dGe lugs institutions, the Karmapa was driven into exile, and the entire symbolic universe was reconfigured to feature the institution of the Dalai Lama at its core.
The Fifth Dalai Lama wrote Song of the Queen of Spring in an attempt to influence the way people perceived these conquests soon after they took place. It would do no good for the dGe lugs pa alliance to win on the battlefield but then be unable to legitimize that victory, thus the imperative to fashion a narrative that would be compelling in the court of public opinion. This fact goes a long way in explaining why the Dalai Lama rushed this historical work into print within a year of the 1642 victory. With an almost journalistic timeliness, he was compelled to shape perceptions in order to alter the course of events.
Yet the ideological split that the Dalai Lama was attempting to knit together remains in his text. He finds that he must address the essential partisan question. In the closing pages of the text, he comments fleetingly on the relationship between members of the dGe lugs and bKa’ brgyud lineages:
Gushri Khan became king over the three regions of Tibet. … Even though he had a strong commitment to maintaining an earnest respect for all tenet systems without distinction, the Karmapa’s functionaries were unskilled in their behavior due to which the khan forcefully deployed forces up to the Kong po region in the east. [110a]
The Dalai Lama is careful not to blame the Karmapa himself, a figure as prestigious in the bKa’ brgyud school as the Dalai Lama was then for the dGe lugs pas. But he does try to legitimize Gushri Khan’s military action by portraying the people who surrounded the Karmapa as having behaved badly. The language is indirect and glosses over the real tensions, but he then attempts to fortify the notion that the khan is in the right by citing two additional prophecies legitimizing the Mongol.
In the concluding lines to the body of the text, he returns to a more explicitly pro–dGe lugs tone:
Because of taking birth as the receptacle of the three secrets, imbued with the nectar of compassion of the great Conqueror Tsong kha pa, [Gushri Khan] fulfills the qualities of a king who transforms with a golden wheel all aspects of religio-political government. [110a]
The Fifth Dalai Lama skillfully narrates these events, shaping them to serve his own emerging agenda.
In the portions of the Song of the Queen of Spring examined here, the Dalai Lama does not explicitly employ the justification that particular acts of violence ought to be understood as beneficial and compassionate toward their target, but he makes such arguments elsewhere in the text.14 Thus, the reader of the text would have felt that there was some implication that Gushri Khan’s violence could be understood as a case of that sort. Still, the main thrust of the language surrounding the khan is directed toward justifying his warfare by virtue of his identity as a righteous religious-warrior king, a man who is rhetorically connected to many of the most potent emblematic figures in the Indo-Tibetan symbolic universe: kyamuni Buddha, King Srong btsan sgam po, King Ge sar, and others. Each of these figures is a sovereign on a religious mission and a transcendent agent intent on furthering Buddhism. As such, each is committed to promoting Buddhism even if it involves the commission of sanctified violence. In other words, because of who Gushri Khan is, his violence is justified.
As Rupert Gethin argues, the reason that violence is forbidden for conventional Buddhists is that it harms the agent mentally, fostering the very cognitive states th
at the practitioner seeks to overcome.15 Yet, in this text, the Dalai Lama is suggesting that highly advanced Buddhist yogins may be able to undertake acts of violence that serve salutary ends without themselves experiencing afflictive emotions. Under certain circumstances, cases of murder, suicide, self-sacrifice, warfare, and other types of violence may be regarded as legitimate within Buddhist discourse so long as they are carried out by people capable of undertaking them without generating harmful mental attitudes. The Dalai Lama seems to have something of this sort in mind when he glorifies the many deeds of Gushri Khan that would, in another circumstance, be regarded as dreadful sins violating core Buddhist values. In the immediate aftermath of 1642, this may be as much as the Dalai Lama felt he could achieve with this history.
As the fully articulated discourse took shape in the following decades, the Dalai Lama and his regent sDe srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho endeavored to create a stable social structure through their exertion of power; a significant part of that effort was conducted through formulating a coherent paradigm. As Foucault points out:
What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression.16
The discourse they eventually created went far beyond what could have been accomplished in 1643, when the Song of the Queen of Spring was written. In the more mature mythology that was to develop over the coming decades, the Dalai Lama and his last regent placed great emphasis on an identification between the Dalai Lama lineage and Avalokitevara, the bodhisattva representing perfect compassion, whose special responsibility it is to protect and nurture Tibet. King Srong btsan sgam po, mentioned above as the sovereign responsible for introducing Buddhism to Tibet, is particularly important for followers of the oldest lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, the rNying ma school. He also stands as an icon of the religious and political unity of the Tibetan people that prevailed in the seventh century. It is little wonder then that King Srong btsan sgam po was seen as an emanation of the bodhisattva Avalokitevara.
Thus, Srong btsan sgam po and other supposed incarnations are repeatedly associated with the Dalai Lama lineage. This connection is most notable in the fourth volume of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s biography, Good Silk Cloth, authored by the regent sDe srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho. The entirety of that volume is occupied with describing scores of previous incarnations of Avalokitevara in India and Tibet, leading up to and including accounts of the previous Dalai Lamas and culminating with a description of the last years of the fifth member of that lineage. The tone of this text is magical and miraculous, and it is meant to transport the reader with tales of the continual kindness and perpetual protection of the compassionate bodhisattva Avalokitevara, all in an effort to attribute the most beneficent associations to the Fifth Dalai Lama himself.17
Likewise, in the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Sealed and Secret Biography, there are dozens of references to his visionary encounters with both King Srong btsan sgam po and Avalokitevara. In addition, he records frequent dreams and apparitions of Padmasabhava (eighth century), the great shamanic yogin from India who is credited with subduing the indigenous spiritual forces in Tibet and turning them to the protection and support of Buddhism.18 Like King Srong btsan sgam po, Padmasabhava is a tremendously significant figure from the imperial period of Tibet, an era when Tibet was both powerful and united. The Fifth Dalai Lama’s interest in Padmasabhava was a consequence of the Indian’s symbolic value, arising from his role in establishing Buddhism in Tibet. Additionally, the Dalai Lama was preoccupied with Padmasabhava because of his personal devotional interest in the rNying ma school, with which that guru is most closely associated. The Dalai Lama had a variety of notable rNying ma teachers, and he incorporated many rNying ma teachings into his own personal practice. In addition, he employed a broad range of rNying ma symbols, rituals, and narratives from the imperial period in the discourse he developed to justify his own evolving political role in post-1642 Tibet. That imagery was particularly potent for him because it harked back to a time that Tibetans regarded as religiously and politically unified, when just and righteous religious kings (chos rgyal, dharmarja) ruled, and the rNying ma doctrine taught by Padmasabhava prevailed.19
The appropriation of Avalokitevara was perhaps the most consequential dimension of the Dalai Lama’s evolving discourse. In the immediate aftermath of Gushri Khan’s military victory of 1642, the Dalai Lama seems to have had less political authority than either his regent bSod nams Chos ‘phel or Gushri Khan. Yet, this began to shift as the mythology began to take hold:
One reason that between 1642 and 1653 the political power of only the Dalai Lama grew at the expense of the regent and the king may be considered to lie in the fact that this belief identifying the Dalai Lama as Avalokitevara gradually spread and gained wide acceptance.20
During the intervening period, the Dalai Lama frequently gave empowerments in the practice of Avalokitevara; he wrote biographies of the Third and Fourth Dalai Lamas, emphasizing themes that would fortify their identity as emanations of that bodhisattva; and he sponsored the restoration of monasteries and temples connected with King Srong btsan sgam po.21
In 1645, construction was begun on the Potala Palace, the most compelling architectural dimension of the emerging discourse. Named after Avalokitevara’s mountain home in South India, the hillside location was particularly meaningful for the narrative being developed because King Srong btsan sgam po had constructed a small palace there nine centuries before. The Potala was sanctified to a degree by the restoration of an image said to have been used by the king in his devotions. This image had in the meanwhile made its way through the hands of many notables, including a period of time in Mongolian royal households. Gushri Khan arranged to have it returned to Tibet and to the hillside where Srong btsan sgam po had once dwelled.22 As intended, the literally awe-inspiring visage of the Potala Palace, which dominates the Lhasa Valley, would have struck visitors as an otherworldly and arresting expression of power, particularly once phase two of the construction was completed by the regent in the 1690s.23 The Dalai Lama fortified his position of power also by insinuating his mythology into the ancient geomantic ideology of the valley,24 by configuring “a clearly defined group of guardian deities that protect the lineage,”25 and by projecting authority in the international arena.26 All of these efforts were directed toward creating a discourse with the broadest appeal possible throughout Tibet.
These dimensions of the mature discourse took years to conceive, deploy, and implement before they had the effect of placating resentments and winning allegiance. In the short term, just after the war, the Dalai Lama needed a way to soothe the most immediate opposition to the dGe lugs ascent to power. As the upstart and recently successful usurper of a stable government, the dGe lugs pas of the 1640s had an interest in representing the violence authored in their name as spiritually legitimized through the status of Gushri Khan as a bodhisattva. However, the dGe lugs pas of the 1670s and 1680s, by then in control of power themselves, were more concerned with promoting stability. Consequently, within this elaborate paradigm, the warfare that brought the dGe lugs pas to power began to be described in a new way. The later discourse pays greater attention to the types of concerns that are encountered in standard just-war theory, elaborated by both Christians and Muslims once they found a need to create governments. That is to say, the Dalai Lama and sDe srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho expended considerable efforts to represent the battles as being responsible reactions to others’ improper actions. Hence, it is asserted and forcefully argued that the bKa’ brgyud pas were oppressing the dGe lugs pas, the gTsang pas were obstructing the Dalai Lamas, the Bon pos were attacking dGe lugs interests, and so forth. These types of arguments are entirely absent from Song of the Queen of
Spring. As the new dGe lugs discourse became a comprehensive legitimizing ideology, there would be no violence authorized merely by the charismatic identity of the agent performing it. Now, violence would be legitimized only if it were a response to just causes.
In the Dalai Lama’s earliest efforts to configure the warfare that had been prosecuted in his name, he tried to legitimize the disparities in power the war had revealed, and he tried to embed those disequlibriums in a political discourse that created new religious, social, and economic forms. In the mature discourse that he and his regent developed subsequently, they found that their initial successes had fashioned a new reality. This in turn summoned a new narrative about how power would be arranged. This new production of truth would occupy the balance of his life and would preoccupy his regent thereafter. With efforts that were architectural, linguistic, ritual, symbolic, and otherwise, they worked to solidify a new pattern of power relations that had been initiated by the war. Unfortunately for them, the very things they did to concretize this new narrative also set in motion forces that would eventually displace and overturn the pattern that the Dalai Lama had envisioned; thus, this account is just a snapshot in a genealogy of power.
Buddhist Warfare Page 10