In this, the first decisive moment of his career as political leader, the Dalai Lama chose not to back his two ministers, even though he had appointed them, and even though they stood clearly on the side of the people. Instead, he reluctantly accepted their resignation. Although Tibetan history has its share of warrior leaders, the tradition expects the Dalai Lama to be a spiritual, not an earthly, hero, and his acquiescence in the Chinese demand is early evidence of the Dalai Lama’s understanding that his political vocation was to be a keeper of the peace and a seeker of dialogue rather than one who confronts and faces down an overwhelmingly superior foe. One consequence of this acquiescence was, however, that the hundred or so members of the Tibetan People’s Association were sent for “reeducation.”
Another difficulty the young leader faced at this time was how to manage relations with Tashilhunpo Monastery and the young Panchen Lama. Following the death in 1937 of the Ninth Panchen Lama, still in exile from his headquarters at Tashilhunpo, two rival candidates had emerged. Just as was the case when the Panchen Lama was consulted during the search for the Dalai Lama, so tradition held that the Dalai Lama be consulted during the selection of the new Panchen Lama. In this instance the Dalai Lama was too young to play a meaningful role in the procedure, so it was the regent who had taken it on. Given residual tensions between the two sees (in the original sense of the word “see,” meaning a seat of authority), it was perhaps inevitable that they should opt for different candidates. One consequence of this was to bind Tashilhunpo more firmly first to the Chinese Nationalists, to whom it turned for support against the Ganden Phodrang (the Dalai Lama’s government), and then to the Communists. When Mao came to power, the young Tashilhunpo-approved candidate sent a congratulatory telegram praising the Communists for completing the “grand salvation of the country and the people”—or, rather, his closest advisers did. He himself was only eleven years old at the time. When the Chinese came to Lhasa, they thus had a powerful ally whose own followers could be relied on to support them against the Dalai Lama. It was therefore incumbent on the Dalai Lama to forge a new relationship with Tashilhunpo. But when the young Panchen Lama was brought to Lhasa in 1952, it was clear that whatever good personal qualities he may have had, the Chinese were unwilling to allow him to develop any sort of friendship with the Dalai Lama.
Meanwhile, the inflation that had beset the Lhasa economy eased later that year when the PLA’s first crop was harvested, and an atmosphere of uneasy peace took hold. This was helped by the fact that, although some in the Communist Party leadership were impatient to begin implementing socialism in Tibet, Chairman Mao continued to insist on gradual integration. He was encouraged in this by General Zhang’s early assessment of the Tibetan religious hierarchy. Zhang believed that the Panchen Lama definitely remained favorable to Beijing, while the “Dalai Lama belongs to the middle but may possibly turn left.”
One of the things that may have encouraged Zhang in this view was the creation by the Dalai Lama of a Reform Bureau within the nominally still functioning Tibetan government. This office called for a series of reforms that sought, on the one hand, to bring about genuine improvement in the lives of ordinary people and, on the other, to preempt the Communists’ program. Among other initiatives, these reforms required that all civil servants, whether lay or monastic, become paid employees of the government. This was intended to put a stop to the graft—the bribery, extortion, and selling of favors—by means of which those in public office had, in place of any salary, traditionally looked after their own interests. Another initiative of the bureau was a program of land reform, which called for the voluntary distribution among the landless of some of the aristocracy’s manorial possessions. If the introduction of salaries was not universally welcomed, this proposal was even more unpopular. The aristocrats protested that “if you take away the pastures, you lose the flowers too”—the flowers being the taxes and interest that the government itself received from these holdings. Events soon overtook the work of the bureau, but its very existence shows that from the beginning, the Dalai Lama saw no contradiction between his religious faith and social and economic reform.
In the meantime, the Precious Protector’s eldest brother, Jigme Norbu (formerly Taktser Rinpoché, abbot of Kumbum), had arrived in the United States and made contact with officials from the State Department. The Dalai Lama, communicating with him via letter carried by trusted intermediaries to India, and from there to America, instructed him to hold off on requesting direct support for the time being. From the Precious Protector’s point of view, following his initiation into the Kalachakra tantra earlier in the year, the most important thing for him to do was to master it.
In the decades since, the Dalai Lama has made the rites of the Kalachakra tantra a central feature of his public ministry and, at the time of writing, has conferred it thirty-four times, many in the West. As he explains it, the tantra is a powerful support to the cause of world peace. Involving the creation of an astonishingly intricate mandala using individual grains of colored sand (a mandala is a two-dimensional symbolic representation of some aspect of the world, in this case the palace of Kalachakra, Lord of Time), the tantra includes elaborate rituals, accompanied by complex hand movements known as mudras, during which initiates visualize themselves in a variety of different settings, culminating in entry to the palace. By way of preliminaries, participants meditate on the miseries of samsara—the otherwise endless series of births and deaths to which all beings are bound until they become enlightened—recognizing it for what it is: “an ocean fraught with frightful sea monsters . . . the crocodiles of birth, ageing and death.”
With regard to the visualizations, these are, again, directed toward familiarizing the mind with particular mental states. One of them involves imagining oneself being born as a child and entering the body of Kalachakra through his mouth. Once inside, the practitioner melts in a single drop of bodhichitta (the aspiration to seek liberation for all sentient beings) and descends through the deity’s body via its energy centers, before exiting via the tip of his erect penis and entering, through the “lotus” of her vagina, the womb of Kalachakra’s sexual consort, Vishvamata. If this were not startling enough, we discover that the Kalachakra texts also give detailed information about building trebuchets—a kind of oversized catapult, used as a siege engine in medieval times—and flamethrowers. It turns out that an important aspect of the tantra is that it is held to have been taught initially to the king of Shambala, a hidden land from which, at the end of our present era, he will lead an invincible army in airborne ships to defeat the barbarians who have taken over the world.
As the Dalai Lama is now at pains to stress, these martial aspects of the tantra are to be understood symbolically, not literally. The real enemy is not the barbarian horde but the ignorance that gives rise to the afflictive emotions of anger, greed, strife, and so forth. * It is nevertheless clearly more than a coincidence that the Dalai Lama’s focus at this time was on a set of practices the character of which is both apocalyptic and concerned with deliverance from evil.
Likewise, it cannot be mere coincidence that, during the winter of 1952, Trijang Rinpoché was to be found again restoring a number of thangkas depicting the protectors. It might be that the collective karma of Tibetans was such that the protector deities had been unable to keep the Chinese at bay, but it did not follow that the deities should be abandoned. On the contrary, they must be encouraged to redouble their efforts on behalf of the people.
The Chinese, having by this time completed the garrisoning of their troops in a new barrack complex in Lhasa, turned their attention to building the infrastructure for their future administration of Tibet. This included a new hospital and a school open to all. There were also party initiatives aimed at recruiting cadres to work for the implementation of socialism. Not everything the Chinese did in this regard was unpopular. As Lobsang Samten’s future wife recalled: “When we passed fourteen, we became members of the Youth Organisation. Actually alt
hough our parents were not very keen, many of us were really enthusiastic for this new order of things . . . [W]e did a lot of good work, social work, planting trees, cleaning the main street outside our school. It was fun too, there were lots of social gatherings and dances. We enjoyed the freedom . . . a freedom we’d never had before the Chinese came.” It was, however, mainly the aristocrats, and particularly the children of the aristocracy, who benefited from these innovations. They were the ones who could afford to patronize the teashops and restaurants that sprang up to cater to the Chinese. And they were the ones who had previously been most constrained by social convention. The Precious Protector was, of course, removed from all such activities. In effect, he was now little more than a figurehead whose official role in government was occasionally to dignify meetings with his presence. This does not mean that he was not keenly interested in every development, but his primary focus remained his education.
An important milestone in the Dalai Lama’s life occurred during the New Year festival of 1954, when, now eighteen, he received full ordination as a priest, or bikshu, at which point he accepted the full 253 precepts of monkhood.* His ordination was itself preliminary to the Dalai Lama’s first conferral of the Kalachakra initiation, to an audience said to have been a hundred thousand strong, in the grounds of the Norbulingka. Such a figure sounds implausibly high, but we can be confident that it would have been in the tens of thousands. The initiation, with its evocation of a world on the brink of destruction, was a dramatic event on many levels, not least that it occurred in the context of discussions over whether or not he should accept an invitation to travel to Beijing. Chairman Mao wanted the Dalai Lama to attend the inaugural meeting of the National People’s Congress that autumn. This was to mark the formal adoption of China’s new constitution. The Three Seats and the majority of senior government officials were vehemently opposed, while only a few—including Ngabo—were in favor. There were many concerns, not least the proposed methods of transport. The plan was to go via road, rail, and air, none of which appealed to his advisers—least of all the flying component. As one official explained to his Chinese counterpart: “The aeroplane is linked neither to the heavens, nor does it touch the earth . . . [W]e cannot risk it.”
There was also serious concern that, having gone to China, the Precious Protector might not be permitted to return. This had happened to an earlier incarnation of Chenresig, who was more or less held hostage by Kublai Khan.* More pressing still was the perceived risk that the Dalai Lama, being young and impressionable, might have his head turned. Given his enthusiasm both for the Reform Bureau and for all things mechanical, this seemed eminently possible. In the event, however, the Dalai Lama, having consulted the great protector Mahakala, declared that he would go in spite of the objections expressed not only by Tibetan officialdom but also by a resurgent Tibetan People’s Association.
It turned out that the airplane journey should have been the least of anyone’s worries. Much more dangerous was the section where the road ran out and the travelers were forced to walk. Trijang Rinpoché wrote in his autobiography: “We were terrified of the possibility of boulders hurtling down on us in landslides, or of [ourselves] falling thousands of feet into deep gorges [as we made] our way falteringly across makeshift wooden bridges built over torrents swollen by the heavy rains, their spray filling the air.”
With the Chinese in charge of the arrangements, the Tibetans were compelled to accept a very different alternative to the elaborate manner of traveling to which they were accustomed. In between settlements, they slept in “shabby tents” and were required to share the PLA’s mess arrangements. The Dalai Lama was somewhat aghast at being offered a spittle-smeared mug of tea by a soldier, though, being thirsty, he noticed its condition only after drinking from it. The whole experience was humbling, and yet, as Trijang Rinpoché remarked in connection with a tantric practice that speaks of “Brahmins, outcasts and pigs all sharing without division,” they treated the experience as “an observance of pious practice.”
On his arrival in Chamdo, on August 19, the Dalai Lama was welcomed by a large crowd of local Tibetans and two Czech nationals,* one a photographer, the other a journalist. Having been carefully briefed by their Chinese minders—not to wear anything made of metal, not to cross his shadow, not to get too close—they were surprised by the Dalai Lama’s informality and approachability. When they began taking photographs of him, the Precious Protector instructed his own photographer to take photographs of them. Subsequently, he suspended a prayer ceremony in order that the Westerner might be able to take up the optimum position for his shot.
When the Dalai Lama finally took to the skies for one leg of the journey, in the Chinese premier’s private aircraft, he was not much impressed, remarking, “The craft in which we flew was very old and even I could tell it had seen better days.”
Completing the last leg by train in the company of the Panchen Lama and his entourage, the Dalai Lama was met on arrival in Beijing by Zhou Enlai, second in the Communist Party hierarchy after Mao Zedong, and Zhu De, head of the PLA. The Tibetans were then taken to a house previously owned by the Japanese mission, a sizable three-story mansion, the top floor of which was given over to the Dalai Lama and his two tutors, while his family occupied the remainder. Among these were his mother, his eldest sister and her husband (who was head of the Precious Protector’s bodyguard), Lobsang Samten, their younger sister, and their six-year-old youngest brother, Ngari Rinpoché.
Almost at once the Tibetans were plunged into a program that was to occupy them often from early morning until late at night. The very next day there was a welcoming banquet in Zhongnanhai’s great Pavilion of Purple Light; then, according to the Dalai Lama’s mother, the day after that, “with no rest,” they were “required to attend” a political meeting.
Presumably because he wanted to create a sense of anticipation, Mao did not schedule a meeting with the Dalai Lama until the following week. In the meantime, everything was done to reassure the young leader that China was the future and that future was bright. A major role in this was played by a young Khampa by the name of Phuntsog (pronounced something like “Punsock,” where the u is as in “put”) Wangyal, but generally referred to as Phunwang (similarly pronounced “Punwang”).* Originally from Batang, where the Catholic missionaries were murdered, Phunwang had attended a Chinese school, which by that time was one of several foreign establishments in the town, including a revived Catholic mission school and an American mission school and orphanage (each of which continued in existence right up until the Communists came to power). His best friend was a student at the American mission school, and through him, Phunwang came under the influence of the missionaries, whose ideals of brotherly love made a lasting impression on him.
While still a teenager, Phunwang began reading works by Lenin and Mao and became a founding member of the Tibetan Communist Revolutionary Group. As with many revolutionaries, a major spur to Phunwang’s political zeal was the hypocrisy he witnessed around him. He once saw a young woman being viciously beaten by a monk. Her crime was to have brewed beer for the monastery. Seizing the whip, Phunwang demanded to know why the monks who drank the beer were not being punished instead. On another occasion, he was disgusted to see a number of freshly severed human ears nailed to the gates of a local magistrate’s headquarters.
Phunwang also deplored the burden on the common people of the corvée system. This was the rule that officials on government duty could commandeer transport, fodder, food, and accommodation. While some aristocrats were open to the idea of change, most were, he wrote later, “elegantly dressed, sophisticated socially, completely out of touch with the ordinary people, ripe for revolution.”
A major component of Phunwang’s thinking was the notion that Khampas must set aside their traditional hostility to central Tibet and recognize that, ethnically, they were the same. But while many were sympathetic to the idea of throwing off the Chinese yoke, and some even saw the need for social r
eform, the thought of making common cause with the central Tibetan government was anathema to most, who took the view that the Chinese were better masters than their own central government. As he recalled in his autobiography, the Tibetan government exerted high taxes and flogged “anyone who couldn’t pay.” while, although “the Chinese acted as our lords . . . they didn’t steal things from the people.” He did not confine his hostility to the ruling class of his own government, however. He was even more horrified at the treatment inflicted by the Chinese Nationalist soldiery, recounting with distaste one occasion when they “tied a prisoner to a wooden post in the centre of their garrison’s courtyard and systematically began to stab him with their bayonets. When their victim’s screams became too distressing, they gagged him. They stabbed him everywhere, but not too deeply, because the idea was to allow each of the hundreds of Chinese soldiers to wet his bayonet with the blood of a living enemy. This, they believed, would bring them luck.”
By the time of the Dalai Lama’s visit, Phunwang was a trusted member of the Communist Party and self-evidently the ideal liaison officer. It was he who accompanied the Precious Protector to each of his meetings with Mao and he who interpreted between them. As events would prove, Phunwang was disastrously naïve about the Communists, yet it is important to acknowledge the genuineness of his idealism—which appealed enormously to his young charge.
When the Dalai Lama finally met the Great Helmsman, as Mao was also known, the Chinese leader “did not,” in the estimation of Phunwang, “act like the great leader he was, but spoke informally, [as if to] a friend.” For his part, the Dalai Lama “spoke well, without any nervousness.” The conversation lasted around an hour, with Mao doing much of the talking. When it was over, the Chinese leader escorted the Dalai Lama to his car and opened the door for him. “Your coming to Beijing was like coming back to your own home,” said Mao, shaking the Dalai Lama’s hand. “Whenever you come to Beijing, you can call me. You can come to my place whenever you want to. Don’t be shy.” The meeting was a splendid success. The Dalai Lama, thrilled to meet the man he had heard so much about, could hardly contain his delight. “He was so excited,” Phunwang recalled, that “he hugged me,” exclaiming: “Phunwang-la,* today things went very well. Mao is a great person who is unlike others.”
The Dalai Lama Page 17