The Dalai Lama

by Alexander Norman

  On his return to Dharamsala, it was not long before the Dalai Lama was plunged back into the intricacies of supernatural politics. Early in 1974, during the government’s annual invocation of the Nechung oracle, the deity handed down a prophecy that shook the Dalai Lama to the core. Something, declared the deity, had upset the mind of Palden Lhamo. As the Precious Protector wrote subsequently, “This was something beyond the comprehension of the Tibetan people.” So serious was the matter that “on the following day it was decided it would be right to perform an effective tsok* ritual propitiation of Palden Lhamo and the five king emanations, to be followed by an invitation to Nechung . . . during which confessions and apologies would be made to Palden Lhamo and Nechung would be asked to clarify what we had done wrong.”

  The difficulty here was that the Glorious Goddess is far too exalted a being to be contactable by straightforward means. She does not speak through an oracle in the way Pehar speaks through the Nechung oracle. Nor does Dorje Drakden, through whom Pehar speaks, have the right of access to her. He can help in the process, but other than in the most exceptional cases—such as when, during the reign of the Great Fifth, she spoke directly from her thangka—Palden Lhamo is accessible only through dream, divination, and inference following careful preparation. The Dalai Lama would have to inquire—something that would take time (months rather than weeks, possibly even years rather than just months) and great diligence. Nonetheless, the importance of the pronouncement cannot be overstated, and investigation of its meaning became a central focus of the Dalai Lama’s spiritual practice.

  In the meantime, there were important developments on the earthly plane. Now that the CIA had withdrawn all its funding of the Tibetan resistance, the situation with respect to the guerrilla camp in Mustang in northern Nepal came quickly to a head. The guerrillas themselves had declared that they would never give up. But then a new king ascended the throne in Nepal in early 1972. It soon became clear that this monarch would not, as his father had done, simply turn a blind eye to the antics of the Tibetan freedom fighters in Mustang. It was, after all, a province of Nepal, however remote. Following a visit by the new king to Beijing during the autumn of 1973, the Nepalese issued an ultimatum. The camp must either disband voluntarily or face a military contest—with either the Nepalese army, the Chinese, or both.

  The terms were generous nonetheless: if the freedom fighters went quietly, the Nepalese government would provide a million dollars (presumably supplied by the Americans) to help resettle the troops. In return, the Nepalese would acquire the Tibetans’ weapons. But while the majority of camp residents saw the futility of trying to carry on under these circumstances, a minority still refused to lay down their arms.

  Watching with mounting concern over the prospect of an international incident with potentially embarrassing consequences, given that the rebels’ financial and other support was being channeled through India, the Indian government contacted the Dalai Lama, requesting that he intervene. It was decided that he should make a voice recording to be played to the diehards. This was duly conveyed to the rebel camp—with disastrous results. On hearing the Dalai Lama’s words, the soldiers felt as if the world had been cut from beneath them. For them, the Dalai Lama was their reason for sacrificing not just family but all worldly ambition in the “sacred cause” of which he had spoken so eloquently in his March 10 statement just recently. The tape recording asking the rebels to lay down their arms seemed nothing less than betrayal. Several took their own lives on the spot—one of the commanders slashing so vigorously at his own throat that he completely decapitated himself. Another soldier threw himself wordlessly from the top of a cliff. Others were so dazed that “they wandered around crying, like they didn’t even know where they were.” It was a tragic end to a project that was, in reality, doomed from the outset.

  While on the earthly plane the disbanding of the Mustang guerrilla camp brought to a close Tibetan dreams of an armed liberation of Tibet, on the spiritual plane a similar sundering occurred soon after. During his investigations of the Glorious Goddess’s terrifying pronouncement, the Dalai Lama encountered both the Great Fifth and the Great Thirteenth in dreams, and both former incarnations advised him to cease propitiating Dorje Shugden. It emerged that what had upset the mind of the Glorious Goddess two years previously was in fact Shugden’s behavior. This was a very serious development, yet it was subsequently given supernatural approval not once but three times when the Dalai Lama conducted separate divinations in front of the Great Fifth’s thangka of the Glorious Goddess, which, on that never-to-be-forgotten occasion, had spoken directly. The advice was the same in every case: not only should he cease propitiating Shugden in public, but also he should cease doing so in private, too. In fact, as far back as the late 1960s, Pehar, speaking through Nechung, had warned the Dalai Lama and the government that they should beware of the deity. But on that occasion the Dalai Lama had rebuked him for openly criticizing an important fellow protector. After all, had not Shugden played a vital role in the escape into exile? And was he not the guardian of the Gelugpa tradition itself? How could Pehar presume to speak against a colleague in this way?

  In the fall of 1976, the Dalai Lama conferred his sixth Kalachakra initiation on a large audience just outside Leh in Ladakh, a remote, ethnically Tibetan province of northern India. Formerly a tributary principality of the Tibetan government, today Ladakh has a Muslim population approaching that of the Buddhist population. But while traditionally Islam is hostile to polytheism, of which Buddhism is considered an example, the Tibetan lamas of the region are widely respected—and the Dalai Lama himself is a popular figure among the Muslim community. On this occasion, it is said that the young daughter of a local mullah, who was taking his family to see the Tibetan holy man, was jokingly told by the grown-ups that she would see that he had four arms like the figures in many of the Buddhists statues. When, however, they asked her afterwards whether she had seen them for herself, she replied that he didn’t have four arms. He had a thousand. This was reckoned a marvelous event by Tibetans when they came to hear of it. Chenresig is often depicted as having a thousand arms.

  It was on the second day of this Kalachakra initiation that news came of the death of Chairman Mao at the age of eighty-two. The Dalai Lama, greatly moved at the passing of the man he had once admired so greatly, immediately led prayers for him.

  No one supposed that this single event would change conditions in Tibet overnight. It was, however, an occasion for hope that life might improve. Credible reports (since corroborated) that a number of Tibetans were executed for showing inadequate remorse at the news of Mao’s death quickly dampened expectations. Yet soon after, very different signals began to emerge from Beijing. An early indication of change came when, that same year, a senior American official was invited to visit Tibet. Six months later, Ngabo—the former governor turned collaborator and now a senior government official in Tibet—announced that the Precious Protector would be welcome to return home, “so long as he stood on the side of the people.” Both were promising developments. The sudden reappearance of the Panchen Lama at a political conference was yet another hopeful sign. It seemed that the reformers were now in the ascendant, and while open dissent remained impermissible, gradually it became clear that China was seriously intent on liberalization.

  As the Dalai Lama watched developments with keen interest, matters relating to the dharma protectors came to a head, culminating in a ceremony at which he summoned Nechung in front of a gathering of high lamas to confirm in public what he had told the Precious Protector in private. Now that he had broken with Shugden, “it would be excellent,” proclaimed Nechung, “if the Dalai Lama . . . could receive as many initiations, transmissions and core teachings as possible from all the Tibetan traditions.” This meant that, apart from taking Nyingma teachings, the Dalai Lama should also take teachings from masters representing each of the other traditions: Sakya, Kargyu, and Jonang. The Dalai Lama could now consider his determination to
help preserve the Tibetan Buddhist tradition in its entirety by taking teachings from each of the different schools as having the approbation of the protectors themselves.

  From the Dalai Lama’s perspective, the loss of many lineages due to the destruction of the dharma in Tibet had to be limited to the extent possible. One way of helping to do so was for him to take initiations as widely as he was able. This was in keeping with the high lamas’ traditional role as custodians of the teaching lineages. Broadening his remit to do so beyond his own school meant that he would be free to explore large areas of the tradition that would otherwise be off limits to him. Among these were the dzogchen teachings of the Nyingmapa and the mahamudra teachings of the Kargyupa. These dzogchen teachings, of which the most well known are to be found in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, describe a method of attaining Enlightenment in a single lifetime. In fact, similar methods are also described within the Gelug tradition, but proponents of dzogchen claim they are less efficacious than those described in this, arguably the most important of the Treasure Texts. A Treasure is a text, or sometimes an object, believed to have been hidden by the Lotus-Born (though other great masters are also associated with the practice) during his sojourn in Tibet and revealed by a qualified yogin when karmic conditions ripen suitably.

  Similarly, mahamudra* teachings are also to be found within the Gelug corpus, but the Kargyu tradition has a special focus on them and presents them in a unique form that the Dalai Lama was keen to help maintain. This new openness would also allow the Dalai Lama to be initiated into lineages that preserved variations on those maintained by the Gelug school, for example the extraordinary Chod† tradition that is again practiced by both Nyingma and Kargyu, as well as by Gelug yogins. These practices are attributed to an eleventh-century female practitioner by the name of Ma Chig Labdron. When only a girl, and despite her protests that she wanted to become a renunciate, her parents married her off. But so determined was Ma Chig to practice the dharma that she first burned her hands and feet and then, when that did not persuade her husband and parents to let her go, she cut off her own thumbs. Eventually they realized there was no stopping her and she finally had her way. So severe was her asceticism that her hair turned yellow and her eyebrows red, and yet still she was not taken seriously. It was only when the abbot of the monastery close to where she lived came and saw for himself not just these outward signs but signs of her inward realizations that she was accepted as one worthy of the highest respect. As for the Chod teachings, these include a set of visualizations whereby the meditator takes on a series of identities, becoming, among others, a wrathful goddess, a calm purifying god, and finally a fearless yogi, all of whom offer their own flesh and blood as food for the demons. For best results, these visualizations are conducted in a graveyard, or cremation ground, at night. Again, these practices are not unknown within the Gelug tradition, while the habit of practicing among the recently dead is a well-known trope within the tradition as a whole. The Dalai Lama’s spiritual lineage includes an incarnation known as the Yogin of the Burning Ground. Prior to his manifestation as King Songtsen Gampo, the first of the religious kings, Chenresig manifested as one known for his habit of frequenting cremation grounds, wearing the shrouds of the deceased, dancing, lying on top of corpses, and eating food left in offering for the dead.

  Nechung’s approbation of the Dalai Lama’s desire to be initiated into practices from across the whole of the Tibetan tradition, not just by Gelug masters, but by other lamas, may seem unremarkable, but it is important to understand the radical nature of this development. One might think of the head of one of the most austere evangelical churches suddenly coming out in favor of inviting Catholic priests to bring their incense, Gregorian chant, communion rails, and confession into church on Sunday. For the majority of Tibetans, it was nonetheless a welcome move. It underlined the fact that this was a Dalai Lama whose wish was to serve all, irrespective of their religious commitments. Yet the change was also to have devastating consequences within the refugee community.

  In the meantime, however, the Chinese government began to make overtures to a number of individuals who they thought might be able to influence the Dalai Lama. Among these were Heinrich Harrer and Prince Peter of Denmark and Greece. Having written Seven Years in Tibet, Harrer had gone on to make several other notable expeditions. The prince was less well known but had been an important figure in Kalimpong during the 1950s. An anthropologist by training, he had made a special study of the widespread practice of polyandry among Tibetans.* While both Harrer and Prince Peter eventually took up the invitation to revisit Tibet, they found no miraculous transformation for the better under the new regime—quite the contrary in fact—and neither was able to recommend that the Dalai Lama should ask to return, though the Chinese clearly hoped they would.

  The Dalai Lama’s initial response to China’s newfound commitment to openness and reform was muted, therefore. After so many years of the harshest treatment for any Tibetans who resisted Chinese rule, he and the Kashag were skeptical that any fundamental change had occurred. After all, despite some economic liberalization, the basic commitments to communism, to one-party rule, and to the occupation of Tibet were not in question. When, however, Gyalo Thondup—now living in Hong Kong—was approached by some officials of Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, it became clear that Beijing was in earnest. This was the first contact, if indirect, between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government in almost twenty years. The party leadership wanted to open a dialogue. With his brother’s approval, Gyalo Thondup met with officials in Beijing in March 1979 and, on the twelfth, with Deng Xiaoping himself.

  To his surprise, the Chinese leader—whom the Dalai Lama had met when, during the 1950s, Deng was political commissar for the southwestern military district—told Gyalo Thondup that, apart from independence, there was nothing that could not be discussed. And lest the Dalai Lama doubt what he was saying, he should send trusted emissaries to Tibet to investigate the situation for themselves: “Better to see with one’s own eyes than to hear something a hundred times from other people.”

  For his part, Gyalo Thondup, deeply suspicious of Deng—mainly on account of documents he claimed to have seen suggesting that Deng, whom he nicknamed “the Dwarf,” had been the very person who authorized the destruction of monasteries in Tibet—put forward three proposals on behalf of the Dalai Lama. The first was that Deng make good on his recent promise that contact between Tibetans inside Tibet and those in exile could be permitted. The second, taking up Deng’s offer, was that the exile community be allowed to send representatives to investigate the “new Tibet.” Third, the Dalai Lama would like to send some newly qualified teachers to Tibet. To all three proposals Deng responded enthusiastically, asking at once how many teachers were available. When Gyalo Thondup suggested Dharamsala might send “fifty for a start,” the Chinese leader complained that was “no good. We need at least one thousand!”

  From this encounter was born a plan whereby the Dalai Lama would send a series of fact-finding missions to Tibet to assess the situation on the ground. Should their reports concur with the Panchen Lama’s recent speech declaring that “the present standard of living in Tibet is many times better than that of the ‘old society,’” the Precious Protector might then accept Deng’s further proposal—that he himself return for a visit.

  This turn of events was as welcome to the exile community as it was unexpected. Many had given up hope of ever hearing what happened to loved ones who had stayed behind. Yet it was a moment of optimism tempered by dreadful anxiety; much of the news would surely be bad. The Dalai Lama nonetheless instructed his immediate elder brother, Lobsang Samten, recently returned from America, where he had been working anonymously for several years as a janitor at a school in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, to lead the first delegation.* He himself meanwhile set out on a trip to Moscow, the Buryat Republic, and Mongolia. In 1979 Russia still looked like a world superpower, and there was clear merit in developing relations
with other players to the greatest extent possible in the field of global politics.

  On his arrival in Moscow, the Dalai Lama discovered that Marxist tyranny remained alive and well in Russia. Describing a visit to Lenin’s study at the Kremlin, he was later to recall the absurdity of being “watched over by an unsmiling plain-clothes security man who was clearly ready to shoot” at the least provocation. He also noted how out of touch the Russian Communist Party was with the common people. His aides reported how, after he had thanked a doorman in the Kremlin, the man announced that this was the first time in twenty-five years of service that anyone had uttered a word of gratitude. But while the trip to the USSR both sent a signal to China that he was not without friends even in the communist bloc and was a great encouragement to the Buddhists of the Soviet Republics, the trip the Dalai Lama took to the United States in the fall of 1979 was of far greater significance.