The Dalai Lama

by Alexander Norman

  18

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  From Rangzen to Umaylam: Independence and the Middle Way Approach

  For several years now, the Dalai Lama’s representatives in America had been in touch with sympathetic political figures in Washington, notably Joel McCleary, a student of Geshe Wangyal and then deputy assistant for political affairs at the White House. Although President Ford had regarded the Dalai Lama primarily as the Indian government’s “burden,” President Carter understood, and was sympathetic to, the human rights angle of the Tibetan issue. The Dalai Lama would be welcome in the United States provided, as usual, that he kept to religious themes.

  Arriving on September 3, 1979, the now forty-four-year-old Dalai Lama maintained a schedule that took him on a hectic tour of twenty-two cities over seven short weeks, starting with New York and ending with Washington, DC. Prophetically, the first word uttered in public by the Dalai Lama was “compassion.” This was in answer to a question posed at a press conference asking whether he had a message for the United States. Subsequently mixing general talks on spirituality with more-technical discourses on Buddhist philosophy, the Dalai Lama was an immediate hit. Robert Thurman, by now a college professor, later recalled how, on reconnecting with the Dalai Lama, he “almost keeled over.” Noting that the Tibetan leader had “always been charming and interesting and very witty,” he saw that since their last meeting in 1971, the Dalai Lama had again increased markedly in stature and “opened up some inner wellspring of energy and attention and intelligence,” adding, “He was glorious.” It seems certain that the Dalai Lama’s spiritual progress during the intervening years had given him a powerful self-assurance. Though his life had been—and would continue to be—a struggle in the face of overwhelming odds, nonetheless, sustained by his ever-increasing accomplishments as a yogin, he had grown in confidence and authority. Thurman noticed this, and increasing numbers of people who came into his presence noticed it too. Here was a man who, faced with almost unbearable responsibility from a young age and forced to confront a world for which he had been completely unprepared, nevertheless remained faithful to the spiritual tradition in which he had been raised. In so doing, he found a strength more than equal to the demands of the world in which he now began to move.

  That said, this first visit to the United States was a low-key affair, its organization sometimes verging on the chaotic, the flights mostly economy class and the security arrangements less than confidence inspiring. To the alarm of one volunteer, the notional commander of the security detail at one event “intimated that he would be ‘packing heat’ . . . To call him amateurish would have been a compliment.”

  Besides visiting many of the country’s most famous landmarks, including Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, the Dalai Lama also gave teachings at the Buddhist center established by Geshe Wangyal, the CIA’s interpreter monk. Among his academic engagements were talks at both Amherst College and Harvard University, where he disarmed and delighted his audiences as he apologized for needing “a walking stick for [his] broken English.” Only at the University of Washington did he encounter any opposition, when a number of Maoist students in the audience started yelling at the Dalai Lama.

  An important follow-up to this first trip to the United States was the subsequent issue of a compilation of several of the Dalai Lama’s talks, published under the title Kindness, Clarity, and Insight, edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, who had translated for the Dalai Lama throughout the visit. This was to become the first of dozens of such books. More than anything else, though, the American visit showed the Dalai Lama that while his audiences were sympathetic to the Tibetan cause, they were hungry above all for spiritual and moral guidance. Understanding what Trijang Rinpoché had described as the “lack of spiritual depth” of most Westerners, the Dalai Lama was struck by the climate of “competitiveness” and “insecurity,” in which “many people appear[ed] able to show their true feelings only to their cats and dogs.” He was also struck by the enthusiasm of the young for what he had to say on a wide variety of topics, not just Buddhism but also “cosmology and modern physics” and questions having to do with “sex and morality.” He began to see that, quite apart from acting as a “free spokesman” for Tibet, he might have something to contribute to a people grown apart from their own religious tradition.

  The enthusiasm shown toward the exiled Tibetan leader both in the United States and in the USSR’s Buddhist territories was not lost on the Chinese, yet it seems they were genuinely confident that what the exile community’s missions—which had meanwhile left for Tibet—discovered would persuade the Dalai Lama to go back and, in due course, take up a position within the Chinese administration of his country. It is conceivable that Deng saw the Precious Protector as a future ally in the quest for China’s emergence on the world stage. Yet on his return from Tibet, Lobsang Samten could report nothing to assuage the Dalai Lama’s fear that, should he go back, he would again be a mere puppet of the central government, while his people continued to suffer discrimination and harassment, their religion disastrously curtailed by the state. Recalling the conditions the first delegation found, Lobsang Samten spoke of the team’s intense sorrow: “We were very upset. We were so proud of our people . . . their strength was so encouraging. But it was also very sad. Their poverty was extreme. Most were just in rags, like beggars.”

  On returning to Dharamsala, carrying many hundreds of letters, the team members were able to give the first comprehensive review of conditions in “China’s Tibet.” Everywhere they traveled they were greeted by crowds of people, many of them in tears, lamenting their miserable conditions and asking for news of the Dalai Lama. It was clear that Tibetans had become second-class citizens in their own country, that education and health care for Tibetans was poor or nonexistent, and, worst of all, that religion had been all but destroyed. Hardly a single monastery, out of a total estimated at around six thousand, had escaped unscathed. The Three Seats stood in utter ruination, Ganden reduced to a bombed-out hulk.* The Jokhang too had been despoiled.† Both the Potala and the Norbulingka had been robbed of many of their treasures—even though the Potala was protected during the Cultural Revolution, allegedly on the orders of Zhou Enlai. The entire religious establishment had been laid waste, while many structures bore evidence of desecration, the better to inflame the people: temples used in some cases for storing grain, in others even as slaughterhouses.

  It was true that some new towns had been erected—consisting almost entirely of Brutalist block buildings—but these were in any case mostly occupied by Chinese settlers. In Tashikiel, for example, the quarter where the Tibetans lived was “little better than an open grave. Its buildings were in total disrepair, its streets muddy and impassable.” The people lived in “dark, decaying rooms with barely any furniture or utensils and no running water and only intermittent electricity.”

  The Dalai Lama was horrified. This was even worse than he had feared. And yet, rather than publicize the delegation’s findings, he concluded that the government in exile should continue with plans already in hand to send a further four teams into Tibet.

  As it turned out, the second delegation arrived in Tibet shortly before the arrival of Chinese Communist Party secretary general Hu Yaobang, who headed the highest-ranking central government delegation Tibet had seen in thirty years. Evidently he was himself disturbed by what he found. “We feel that our Party has let the Tibetan people down. We feel bad!” he exclaimed, apparently weeping, in a major speech. Following this, and presumably as a gesture of good faith, the local leader of the Tibet Autonomous Region’s Revolutionary Workers’ Committee (effectively the party-appointed governor) was removed from his post. Furthermore, it was announced that a large percentage of government cadres would be returned home. Hu subsequently promulgated a new six-point plan for the development of Tibet, which included a tax holiday for farmers and disbanding of the hated (and woefully inefficient) farm collectives. But though welcomed by the people, Hu’s initiative was res
ented by many party cadres. As a result, its implementation was slow and patchy. Tibet was seen as a punishment posting with little attraction for Chinese government officials. As a result, those who took positions there tended to be the less able, the less well educated, and the most open to financial inducement. It is not hard to imagine that more than a few were tyrants in their particular locale. In any case, Hu’s proposed reforms threatened them all and were deeply resented.

  It has often been suggested that hosting these delegations from the exile community was a public relations disaster for the Chinese, but this is not straightforwardly true. It is clear that the Chinese were hopeful that, after being shown the advances made in Tibet over the past two decades, as well as the irreversibility of the changes, the delegates would advise the Dalai Lama that he should return. Indeed, it seems the Chinese were genuinely concerned that the Dalai Lama’s delegates, whom they saw as former “feudal overlords,” might be given a hostile reception by the masses. But while it was true that people climbed on the roofs of the cars in which the delegates traveled, this was in hope not of visiting physical violence on them but of obtaining a vicarious blessing from the Dalai Lama.

  The fact that what each of the delegations found was a deeply traumatized and largely impoverished people watching helplessly as the large majority of jobs went to Chinese immigrants, while Tibetan children were not even allowed to learn their own language in such schools as there were, suggested to the Dalai Lama that what Mao had ultimately intended was the complete destruction of Tibetan identity. Yet China’s apparent willingness to break with the past and to improve the lot of its people, including the Tibetans, presented the Precious Protector with a genuine dilemma. It seemed indeed that the Beijing government had been kept largely ignorant of what had been going on in Tibet these past twenty years, relying to a large degree on inaccurate and self-serving reports. Now, however, it looked as if there was a willingness to treat Tibet more fairly. Given this, and given his wish, deeply felt, to visit his people, the Dalai Lama announced that, all being well, he would do so sometime in 1985.

  In the meantime, a second long visit to the United States, during the summer of 1981, further underscored the Dalai Lama’s estimation of the spiritual crisis in the West. Besides teaching at a number of different Buddhist centers, the Dalai Lama conferred his first Kalachakra initiation in America on 1,200 mostly young seekers in a field outside Madison, Wisconsin. This was only appropriate, given that the Dalai Lama “had immersed himself in the study and practise of [the] visionary world” of the Kalachakra tantra for a great many years now. Notwithstanding its apocalyptic imagery, he was convinced that promulgating the tantra worldwide could have a positive impact on the cause of universal peace.

  The event in Madison caused some local officials to fear they might end up with a Woodstock-style hippie free-for-all on their hands. And it did indeed inspire some responses (for example, June Millington’s jazz-funk composition “When Wrong Is Right”) that might have raised eyebrows among the more conservative authorities. But on the whole, the event was well received. Attendees appreciated the fact that, while those wishing to take up Kalachakra practice seriously were now initiated into a system that might take half a lifetime of assiduous practice to master, the Dalai Lama made available a daily “six session yoga” for those who could not fit the full practice into their schedule. And for those who merely wanted to attend out of curiosity, there was no obligation to undertake any of the practices at all. This is not always the case. On some occasions the obligations imposed on initiates are quite onerous. The requirement to recite a given mantra one hundred thousand times is by no means rare.

  The other major event of this visit to the United States was a series of talks the Dalai Lama gave at Harvard University, subsequently published as The Buddhist Path to Peace. Although to some, the Dalai Lama seemed, in the words of Pico Iyer, “like a figure from another planet,” and the complexity of his exposition of basic Buddhist principles consisted largely of “philosophical discourses almost none . . . could follow,” the main message of the talks—that there can be no world peace in the absence of inner peace—struck a chord. On the one hand, the Dalai Lama showed that peace is the responsibility not so much of governments as of individuals. On the other, he made clear that those who perpetrate violence must take responsibility for their actions, a message that resonated powerfully with his audience.

  There was, however, a moment during this trip when the Dalai Lama might have seemed to court controversy. One of the Buddhist centers at which he gave teachings was the Naropa Institute at Boulder, Colorado, the foundation of the popular but eccentric Chogyam Trungpa. Although he doubtless knew that Trungpa had his critics, it is uncertain whether the Dalai Lama was aware of the recent scandal at Naropa. As a self-proclaimed practitioner of so-called Crazy Wisdom, Trungpa modeled his teaching style on the fifteenth-century Kagyu master Drukpa Kunley. Besides having, like Trijang Rinpoché, a genius for spontaneous religious poetry, Drukpa Kunley was also an enthusiastic flute player, chang drinker, and fornicator who fathered many children, one of them on a fifteen-year-old nun. But while such behavior may seem extraordinary to the outsider, the antinomian antics of some of the greatest tantric adepts, or mahasiddi, are an important and cherished part of the Tibetan tradition. Correctly understood, the shocking behavior of these holy madmen is but the illusory sport, designed to instruct, of a fully enlightened being.

  Trungpa had a devoted following, which included, among other well-known figures, Allen Ginsberg. With Trungpa’s encouragement, Ginsberg had been a co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, whose creative writing program was—as it remains—a key part of the Naropa curriculum.

  Ginsberg himself was away when the incident—memorialized in a private-circulation book, The Great Naropa Poetry Wars—occurred. At a Halloween party, Trungpa, drunk, ordered all present to strip naked. When W. S. Merwin, a visiting poet, and his new wife refused to join in and returned to their room, the master ordered his bodyguards to bring them back. The guards began to batter the door down. As Merwin recalled: “I was not going to go peacefully. I started hitting people with beer bottles . . . It was a very violent scene.” But the bodyguards were too much for him, and the reluctant couple were led back and forcibly undressed.

  The incident came to the attention of the national press. One commentator claimed to see an incipient fascism not just in the guru’s leadership but in the dharma generally. Coming to Trungpa’s defense, Ginsberg argued that the Tibetan teacher was infallible and that this was a lesson whose meaning had not yet become clear.*

  The fact that the Dalai Lama visited only a year after the scandal broke suggests either that he was ignorant of what had occurred or that he knew and was prepared to lend his name to Trungpa’s center nonetheless. There is no record of any kind of public reprimand from the Dalai Lama. Yet to look for such a reprimand would be to misunderstand the tradition. Because the individual lama is under no authority but his own, a public rebuke by another lama would be an unjustifiable assumption of superiority. Furthermore, given that teachers’ spiritual attainments are known only to themselves, to rebuke would be to call these attainments into question. Within the spiritual sphere, the Dalai Lama’s authority is moral rather than juridical. That his personal fidelity to the vinaya, or monastic code, is exemplary is itself a rebuke to those who flout it. And while not denying the possibility of genuine siddi—the exercise of magical power—the Dalai Lama has often referred to the standard test for determining whether an individual lama is sufficiently qualified to engage in these practices: such a person should be able to eat a portion of wholesome food or a portion of excrement with equal indifference. When asked how many people there might be capable of passing this test, he invariably replies by saying that, to the best of his knowledge, at present there are “none.”

  It was during this, his second long visit to America, that the Dalai Lama began to articulate some of his most appeal
ing insights. Declaring that “happiness comes from within” and that “the purpose of religion is not for arguing,” he explained that, beyond any considerations of creed or philosophy, ultimately his religion was “kindness.” This resonated powerfully with the many who sought a meaningful inner life without the trappings or commitments of religion, and from now on, the Dalai Lama’s simple message of dogma-free spirituality was to be the cornerstone of his ministry to the wider world.

  Returning from America to India, the Dalai Lama traveled immediately to Dharamsala to see his mother. The gyalyum chenmo had been in slow decline following a stroke several years earlier and was clearly nearing the end of her life. As his sister recalled, on a visit to his mother’s bedside, the Dalai Lama “talked to her, just like a little boy coming home . . . He gently told her not to be afraid of dying, but to concentrate on the thangkas and say the mani prayers.” It cannot have been a surprise when, just a short while later in Bodh Gaya, news reached him of her death. Naturally it saddened him. Apart from brief separations, they had been close throughout his adult life, and until recently, she would often send bread and pastry, baked in the Amdo style, up to the Dalai Lama’s residence. Yet as he himself admitted, it was the death later that same year of his attendant, Ponpo*, that affected him the more deeply. It was Ponpo whose mole the infant Dalai Lama had sucked for comfort and who had mothered him, during his time at Kumbum, in a way more tenderly than even the gyalyum chenmo had been able to—even if, as he so often tells audiences, it was his mother who first introduced him to the meaning of the word “compassion.”