The Dalai Lama

by Alexander Norman

  The pope jumped the other way. Retaining most of the ceremony and outer trappings of the church, he radically attenuated the liturgy through the adoption of a new Mass, dropping Latin and many other elements of tradition.* Only in their commitment to the supernatural were both leaders in complete agreement.

  Thomas Merton was in a way emblematic of this “renewed” Catholic Church. One of the most influential Christian writers of the twentieth century, he had by now become deeply interested in Buddhism, causing some to believe that, had he lived, he would have converted. For the first of his three meetings with the Precious Protector, the conversation, according to Merton, was all about “religion and philosophy and especially ways of meditation.” The Dalai Lama was, he wrote, “most impressive . . . strong and alert, bigger than I expected . . . A very solid, energetic, generous and warm person.”

  For his part, the Dalai Lama records his gratitude to Merton for introducing him to “the real meaning of the word Christian.” The fifty-three-year old Westerner was, he found, a “truly humble and deeply spiritual man,” a view that will not surprise any of Merton’s many admirers. Yet one wonders what the Dalai Lama would have thought of Merton had he known of the Catholic’s recent liaison with a woman three decades his junior. By the same token, one wonders what Merton, a peace activist and critic of the Vietnam War, would have made of the CIA’s involvement in Tibet at the time. There is reason to think both would have been horrified.

  Merton’s journal record of his conversations over several days with the Tibetan monk gives a penetrating insight into the Dalai Lama’s real preoccupations. Politics seems to have been mentioned hardly at all, except in relation to the putative compatibility of Marxism and monasticism, the topic of Merton’s forthcoming conference contribution: only if Marxism was confined to “the establishment of an equitable economic and social structure,” in the Dalai Lama’s view. Of greater interest to the Dalai Lama was the question of the stages of the spiritual path within the Catholic tradition. “Having made vows, did the monks continue to progress along a spiritual way, toward an eventual illumination, and what were the degrees of that progress?” Merton does not record his answer, but doubtless would have referred to the writings of mystics such as Saints Teresa of Ávila and Bonaventure. Both describe a seven-stage journey of spiritual development by means of service to others, and prayer. Merton’s visit thus alerted the Dalai Lama to the depth of Christian culture in a way that, perhaps, the brisk Anglicanism of some of his other Western visitors had not.

  Merton’s visit was also significant for the welcome news it brought of the Catholic Church’s change in attitude toward mission. Whereas in the past the emphasis had been on obtaining converts, now it was on witness. The issue of conversion is one that still rankles for the Dalai Lama and for Tibetans generally. Buddhism does not seek converts. (When, as has occasionally happened, some of the Dalai Lama’s Christian visitors have let their enthusiasm get the better of their good manners and sought to make a convert of him, the insult is thus doubly felt.) The guru teaches only when asked—and asked again. As for mission, the assumption is that as non-Buddhists* come to have a better understanding of what Buddhism is, and in particular when they come to have a better understanding of how things really are, they will naturally seek instruction from a spiritual guide and, in due course, will enter the path to liberation themselves.

  It was around the time of Merton’s visit that the Dalai Lama and his inner circle had the first indication that the CIA’s Tibet program would soon be drawing to a close. Gyalo Thondup was alerted by the head of the Russian news agency in Delhi to the fact that moves were afoot in Washington to reach out to the Chinese. As a presidential candidate, Richard Nixon had argued that China could not be kept outside the family of nations, nurturing fantasies in “angry isolation.” Now that he was in power, it was clear that President Nixon intended to follow up on his pledge.

  To the Dalai Lama personally these developments were not wholly unwelcome. At least, fewer people stood to be killed by the rebels or in retaliation for their attacks. But when it emerged that the CIA’s funding of the Tibetan government in exile itself was also under threat, he was persuaded by the more hawkish of his advisers to make loud protestations of commitment to the quest to regain Tibet’s independence. In an early speech to mark the anniversary of the “Tibetan National Uprising Day,” the Dalai Lama had decried the “inhuman treatment and persecution” of his people at the hands of the Chinese. He had also spoken of their “passive struggle against tyranny and oppression.” More recently, the temperature had risen sharply. Speaking of the “naked horror, sufferings and nightmarish hardships” endured by his countrymen in Tibet, he characterized the Chinese as “alien rulers,” adding that “not to speak of fundamental human rights, a Tibetan is denied even the right to exist as a human being.” Now it was the “great and sacred responsibility” of all Tibetans to commit to the “unmitigated continuation of the national struggle.” The Dalai Lama called on his countrymen to “rededicate themselves to this sacred task.”

  Whether or not this fiery rhetoric had a direct impact on those setting the State Department’s budget, we do not know. Nonetheless, for a little while longer, the funding was maintained—as indeed was the rhetoric. In 1971 we find the Dalai Lama speaking of “Tibetan courage” and the people’s “determination never to live under alien rule.” There should be no doubt that they would “carry on the struggle till we see Tibet once again in its rightful place among the nations of the world.” This overt championing of independence for Tibet did not go down well with the Indian administration, for which, as the Dalai Lama reported subsequently to the government in exile, it caused significant “problems.”

  At this time, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was in danger of losing control of her Congress Party.* For ideological reasons, Congress retained an instinctive sympathy for the Chinese Communist Party as overthrowers of colonialism—despite the fact that the Communists had shown themselves to be avid colonists. As a result, Mrs. Gandhi could do without further problems stirred up by her country’s Tibetan guests. In response to the Dalai Lama’s renewed stridency, she let it be known that the future of the Tibetan Special Frontier Force, which, it will be recalled, had been set up following the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and now gainfully employed fully twelve thousand of the refugees, was in the balance.

  This was deeply unwelcome news. If both American funding and funding of the SFF were to be withdrawn simultaneously, the viability of the whole community would be threatened. To compound the Dalai Lama’s worries, the news from Tibet was deeply concerning. In 1969 and 1970, a wave of revolts and protests had broken out, with significant numbers of casualties inflicted on the Chinese. In retaliation, there had been mass arrests and public executions.

  Yet remarkably, in spite of the many obstacles he faced within the temporal realm, on the spiritual plane this was an especially fruitful period for the Dalai Lama. Robert Thurman, with wife and two children in tow, visiting the Dalai Lama in 1971, noticed “an astonishing, exciting change in him . . . He had come alive philosophically.” In particular, Thurman noticed, the Dalai Lama “no longer referred every question” to his teachers. Instead, he gave his own “lucid and lyrical explanations of difficult texts.” Exactly what spiritual realizations he attained during this period remain secret in accordance with every initiate’s vow of silence, but a number of hints suggestive of the Precious Protector’s growing stature as a yogin can be gleaned both from his biography of Ling Rinpoché and from the autobiography of Trijang Rinpoché.

  From Trijang Rinpoché we gather that toward the end of 1969 the Dalai Lama had a number of auspicious dreams, and that, during a subsequent retreat, he consecrated some long-life pills—“and other substances”—which he presented to the junior tutor. The importance of dreams within tantric practice would be hard to overestimate. Because physical sensation is absent in dreams, the practitioner’s mental states are considered to be more immediately av
ailable, and more readily open to manipulation, during sleep. The majority of dream yoga teachings are “ear-whispered,” and therefore secret. But we do know that this remarkable set of practices aims to further the initiate’s quest for Enlightenment. To induce lucid dreaming, the practitioner lies on his right side, the right hand cupping the cheek with the thumb pressing a nerve by the cheekbone. The left arm is extended and rests on the left hip. Once the dream is established, there are four principal steps: first, the sleeper, realizing he (or she) is dreaming, takes control of the dream; second, the dreamer “re-describes” the dream such that it becomes a form of spiritual practice; third, the dreamer “multiplies” the dream, imagining himself or herself in a variety of different situations; fourth, the dreamer dissolves the dream into the clear light of mere awareness—one of the features of which is non-duality. Once mastery of the technique is gained, it is said to be possible to travel not just around the terrestrial world but into different worlds, or loka, to meet with other spiritual practitioners and to converse with and even take teachings from them. In the Dalai Lama’s own case, he has on occasion been able to reconnect with his past lives and has spoken of dreaming that he was once a slave in an ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s court.

  The Dalai Lama attained another important milestone in his spiritual development toward the end of the following year when he began the completion stage of an advanced tantric practice called tum mo—literally, Fierce Woman—yoga. Ordinarily the training involved takes a little over two years, though it may take much longer, depending on aptitude and the ability of the individual to devote himself or herself wholeheartedly to the regime. This includes a requirement to undertake a minimum of 100,000 prostrations, in which the practitioner lays himself or herself down at full stretch, arms out, on the ground while reciting the “refuge” formula (a short prayer to the deity being invoked). An additional ten thousand prostrations are undertaken in case of errors during the practice, plus another thousand in case of further mistakes. It is not surprising to learn that, for best results, besides conducting these exercises very early in the morning (though not before half light, on account of the harmful influences that may beset the practitioner when it is dark), the yogin is advised to adopt meat in his or her diet.* Later in the training, tum mo yogins visualize themselves as deities coupled with a consort in the “union of bliss and emptiness.” This entails the repetition of 400,000 mantras for the male and 200,000 mantras for the female deity, plus a further 100,000 mantras for the dakinis in their retinue. (A dakini may be understood most simply as a female spiritual being.)

  Of all tantric practices, tum mo yoga is capable of producing the most spectacular empirically demonstrable results—results of which the Dalai Lama himself was skeptical at the outset. Though only a byproduct of the training, which is chiefly concerned with pacifying the initiate’s afflictive emotions in preparation for experiencing the “union of bliss and emptiness” at which all tantric practice aims, the physical effect of tum mo is to raise the body temperature to extraordinary levels. This occurs as a result of the “vase” breathing exercises that form part of the discipline. At the invitation of the Dalai Lama during the early 1980s, a team from the Harvard Medical School led by Dr. Herbert Benson visited Dharamsala to conduct experiments on some adepts. They found that the most proficient meditators could raise their core temperature by up to fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, while in specific areas of the body it went even higher. A popular event, first described by Alexandra David-Néel, the French traveler and religious seeker, is the annual competition held today by hermits high above the snow line in the mountains above Dharamsala. The one who wins is the yogin who can dry out the largest number of sheets soaked in freezing water and draped about his naked torso. Yet when the Americans came to do their research, they “found that without gloves their fingers became numb so quickly that they could not fix the electrodes to the body to obtain their readings. The tests had to be done indoors.”

  Another feature of tum mo yoga is the “levitation” that forms a standard part of the practice, whereby “the practitioner sits in full lotus posture and by means of a downward flip of the legs propels himself upwards in a jump which may reach several feet.” When Alexandra David-Néel witnessed the spectacle for the first time, she was somewhat disappointed, having hoped that she would see something that defied physical laws. Nonetheless, it is startling enough. And while the temptation is to take these remarkable physiological effects as an end in themselves, it is vital to remember that their whole purpose is to enable the yogin to attain direct insight of the nature of mind, which, when undistracted by thought, is seen, according to the tradition, to be clear and limpid as a still lake. When the practitioner attains this level of clarity, the mind is found to be empty of self. What remains is mere awareness.*

  The context of this spiritual progress on the part of the Dalai Lama included two conferrals of the Kalachakra initiation, one in Dharamsala in 1970 and the other at one of the south Indian settlements early the following year. Apart from his initiation into Shantideva’s tong len lineage, one of the most important teachings the Dalai Lama had taken since coming into exile included further initiation into the mysteries of the apocalyptic Kalachakra tantra by its greatest contemporary exponent, the Eleventh Kirti Rinpoché (1926–2006). In a notably vivid dream of Kalachakra’s female consort, the Dalai Lama received clear encouragement to spread the peacemaking power of the tantra throughout the world. Accordingly, he made a commitment to serve as the bodhisattva’s principal advocate and to offer the Kalachakra initiation as frequently as possible. This was validated during a subsequent retreat when, in a vision he had of Kalachakra in wrathful form, the bodhisattva indicated to the Dalai Lama that he had his full support in this.

  How these spiritual events tie in with developments in the temporal sphere can only be guessed at, but it is a fact that the Kalachakra initiation the Dalai Lama conferred in 1971 preceded by only a few months one of the least known but most devastating episodes in the history of his life in exile.

  The decade had begun with the worst weather ever recorded on the eastern coast of the Indian subcontinent. A disastrous cyclone killed up to a quarter of a million people in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh), flooding huge areas and forcing millions from their homes. The Pakistani government’s inept handling of the crisis precipitated a level of civil unrest that began to threaten its existence. Following the violent partition of India after independence from Britain in 1947, the predominantly Muslim territories had formed the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which, at the time, was subdivided into two administrative regions, both governed from Islamabad but separated by more than a thousand miles. By mid-1971, opposition to the Pakistan government had grown to such an extent that civil war began to look likely. Now, millions of refugees from East Pakistan started streaming west toward India, and disease and starvation threatened on an epic scale. To compound the horror, the central government of Pakistan ordered its army to quell the protests in an operation that saw perhaps another quarter of a million—mostly Bengali civilians—dead.

  Prime Minister Gandhi meanwhile, seeing both a welcome distraction from her domestic difficulties and an opportunity to seriously weaken India’s traditional foe, called in her generals. Among these was S. S. Uban, head of special forces and commander of Establishment 22, the Tibetan Special Frontier Force. Already famous for his alleged exploits as a scout commander in David Stirling’s Long Range Desert Patrol (forerunners of Britain’s special forces regiment, 22 Special Air Service) during the Second World War, Uban was one of those military men, by no means rare, who manage to combine their commitment to kill when called on with a strong religious faith. Ordering him to “carry out reconnaissance and conduct whatever unconventional warfare [he] deemed necessary,” the prime minister made clear to General Uban that she wanted a decisive result in East Pakistan. He in turn asked for an entirely free hand. “Will you allow me to take all my men with me, Tibetans and all?”
he demanded. “Tibetans?” she replied. “Goodness! Will you be able to control them?”

  “Yes, leave that to me,” he replied. “They [will] do anything I ask of them.”

  Meanwhile, as the world looked on appalled, the tragedy unfolding in East Pakistan inspired what Rolling Stone magazine hailed as a “brief incandescent revival of all that was best about the Sixties,” the Concert for Bangladesh organized by ex-Beatle George Harrison and featuring many of the artists associated with that decade’s counterculture. It is thus one of those cruel ironies of history that, almost at the very moment when forty thousand of New York’s emancipated youth descended on Madison Square Garden for Harrison’s concert, Establishment 22’s two senior-most Tibetan officers appeared in Dharamsala, carrying with them a letter from the prime minister herself. This, though not addressed personally to the Dalai Lama, set out the Indian position. “We cannot compel you to fight a war for us,” Mrs. Gandhi wrote, “but the fact is that General A A K Niazi [the Pakistan army commander in East Pakistan] is treating the people of East Pakistan very badly. India has to do something about it. In a way, it is similar to the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans in Tibet . . . It would be appreciated if you could help us fight the war for liberating the people of Bangladesh.”