The Dalai Lama

by Alexander Norman

  The Chinese immediately claimed that the Dalai Lama personally was behind the protests. It is conceivable that Dharamsala had alerted some of its contacts inside Tibet that the Dalai Lama would deliver an important speech during his trip to the United States. It seems likely that the Indian government had been informed that something was in the offing, given that, whereas up until now an Indian official had always accompanied the Dalai Lama on his trips abroad, on this occasion he went unaccompanied. So at least some people knew in advance that the Dalai Lama was poised to make an important declaration. Yet, given his attitude toward violence, and in light of the certainty that any protest, however peaceful, would itself be met with violence, it is not credible that he would have issued any such orders.

  International coverage of the event nonetheless meant that China was forced to take seriously the resentment to which the riots bore testimony. At once a split arose between those party officials who felt that liberalization in Tibet had gone too far and those who countered that the authorities had “divorced [them]selves from the masses and harmed them.” There were calls by the conservative faction to cancel the Great Prayer Festival due to be held the following March, its revival having been recently permitted by the Chinese. Surprisingly, these calls were met with support among the older monks at the Three Seats, fearful that they would not be able to control the younger generation. Yet it was the Chinese head of the Tibet Autonomous Region who insisted that, just as he had attended the previous festival—wearing Tibetan dress—he would do so again. Foreign journalists had been invited, and it would be an embarrassing admission that he was not in control of the situation if the event were to be canceled. In the meantime, as a gesture of reconciliation, the Panchen Lama was sent on a mission to the three major monasteries with news of a generous benefaction from the government. Furthermore, all but a handful of those detained following the late September disturbances were released.

  Realizing that the Chinese planned to use the 1988 Monlam Festival in Lhasa as propaganda to demonstrate that local reforms were working, many monks boycotted the proceedings. It was not until the last day that there was any trouble. When the statue of Maitreya, the Buddha to come, was being paraded around the Barkor (the pilgrim’s route around the Jokhang Temple), there was a sudden call from one of the participating monks for the release of the remainder of his colleagues still being held since the demonstration the previous fall. When ordered to desist, he was immediately joined by others who shouted pro-independence slogans. Within minutes, a riot was in full swing. The disturbance, involving several thousand people, both lay and monastic, lasted the whole day. A number of police vehicles were overturned and set ablaze, and several shops were set on fire, while the crowd pelted the police with stones. The day ended when security forces stormed the Jokhang Temple, killing, according to Tibetan and foreign eyewitnesses, more than twenty unarmed demonstrators, including a twelve-year-old boy. (Chinese sources claim there were just three casualties—one of them a policeman who had been hiding in a toilet and whose killing in cold blood was independently verified.) The scale of the rioting far exceeded anything that had been seen the previous year.

  It was against this background of unrest that the Dalai Lama delivered a second public and again overtly political message to China from another foreign capital. In his “Strasbourg Statement” of June 1988, he gave a clarification and reaffirmation of the Five Point Peace Plan but this time with what appeared to be an explicit modification of his earlier position with regard to independence. Now, he declared, “the whole of Tibet . . . should become a self-governing democratic entity . . . in association with the People’s Republic of China.”

  At first sight, inclusion of the phrase “in association with the People’s Republic of China” looked intended to reassure Beijing that the Dalai Lama was willing not merely to pay lip service to giving up the idea of Tibet as an independent country, but actually to give China a recognized role in the governance of Tibet. This time, the Dalai Lama’s initiative was not rejected out of hand—at least not by the Chinese. Instead, it provoked a hostile reaction within some Tibetan circles. The Dalai Lama’s own eldest brother, Jigme Norbu, by now a respected academic at Indiana University, circulated a letter among the exile community urging his fellow exiles to reject the proposal. The head of the refugee Tibetan Youth Congress likewise denounced the proposal—though he later claimed that he had been encouraged to do so by the Dalai Lama himself. Some have taken this to mean that the Dalai Lama wanted to show the Chinese that he was willing to take on the hard-liners within his own community. In any case, the Tibetan Youth Congress remains to this day opposed to the Dalai Lama’s policy of not seeking independence for Tibet. If, therefore, there is doubt as to how hostile some of the reaction really was, there can be no doubt that a great many did see the Strasbourg Statement as a sellout.

  When, after some weeks’ deliberation, the Chinese again rejected the Dalai Lama’s proposal, it was on the grounds that the statement was simply a covert bid for independence: the word “association” did, after all, clearly imply co-equal status. Beijing was also displeased at the inclusion of a foreign legal expert as a member of the proposed Tibetan negotiating team.* Yet it seems that what was really at issue was the Dalai Lama’s continued insistence that “Tibet” included both Kham and Amdo, and, moreover, that its people must be accorded freedoms and privileges that were not even in prospect for the domestic population of China. From the Chinese perspective, neither demand seemed remotely realistic.

  News of this latest rejection only added to the resentment that had manifested itself in the violent demonstrations of the preceding two years. On International Human Rights Day in December 1988, a demonstration led by monks won immediate support from bystanders in Lhasa. Despite the fact that the demonstrators were unarmed and orderly, two were summarily shot, while a European bystander was also injured. Subsequently, a trial of those deemed to have been the ringleaders was swiftly arranged and deterrent sentences were handed out, including several for life imprisonment and more than one of execution (though in fact no execution took place). In this heightened atmosphere, many Tibetans viewed the sudden and unexpected death of the Panchen Lama just seven weeks later as a politically motivated assassination. Tibet’s second-most widely revered incarnation had recently given several speeches openly critical of Beijing, and it seemed certain to many that his death had been ordered as a warning to those who would deviate from the party line. It is hard to see what Beijing would gain by such a move, however. The fact that the Panchen Lama had been cruelly treated following his earlier criticism of Mao seems a far more plausible cause of his premature death aged only fifty. He was by then considerably overweight and was known to have diabetes and high blood pressure.

  While Tibetans everywhere remained shocked and in sorrow, an invitation to the Dalai Lama from the official Buddhist Association of China to attend the Panchen Lama’s funeral presented him with a troubling dilemma. The invitation could only have come from the very highest level of government. Moreover, it provided both sides with an uncontroversial opportunity to meet which might otherwise have taken years of diplomacy to achieve, even if both sides were willing. And yet the Dalai Lama refused.

  In his second autobiography, Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama makes clear that “personally” speaking, he “wanted to go.” Whether his refusal was the decision of the Kashag—perhaps fearing that if he went he would be kidnapped or forced into making some public concession, just as Ngabo had been thirty years before—or whether it was on the advice of Nechung, or perhaps because of an intervention on the part of the Indian government, we do not know.

  Yet more unrest in Lhasa broke out a few weeks later, at the turn of the Tibetan New Year, causing the authorities to ban the official celebration of the Great Prayer Festival. In spite of this, large crowds gathered on the day that Monlam was to have been celebrated, and a further three days of rioting ensued. It is unknown how many died in the subsequent cr
ackdown, although one report puts the figure as high as several hundred, including almost a hundred monks. Then, on March 7, 1989, the Chinese authorities decreed that all foreigners residing in Lhasa must leave. The following day, martial law was enacted. It was lifted formally a year later, though it is questionable whether in any meaningful sense it has ever been lifted.

  The Dalai Lama was devastated, yet he was impotent to do anything other than pray and protest to the Chinese while reminding Tibetans that any protests must be strictly nonviolent.

  If the Panchen Lama’s death was arguably a contributory factor in the March riots, the death a month later of Hu Yaobang led to an upheaval in China that made the Lhasa disturbances seem trivial in comparison. One of the more liberal members of the Politburo, Hu had been forced to take responsibility and resign following the anti-CCP student protests that erupted in China during 1985–86. For the six weeks following his demise, Tiananmen Square became the focus of pro-democracy/anti-government demonstrations which, at their height, attracted over a million people. At first the party leadership could come to no decision; but, fearful of the growing unrest in eastern Europe which Soviet Russia was doing nothing to combat, when the protests began to spread outside Beijing and across the whole of China, Deng finally ordered in the military on June 4. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed and the protest leaders arrested in a crackdown that drew fierce condemnation from around the world.

  It was against this backdrop that, in October, the committee of Norwegian dignitaries responsible for the Nobel Peace Prize selected the Dalai Lama to be the recipient of the 1989 award. When the news broke, it was a joyous moment for Tibetans at home and abroad—a shaft of sunlight illuminating their benighted land, a vindication of their story, a harbinger of the restoration they so earnestly longed for. It was, too, a matter of intense pride that their guru, their leader, their kinsman had been publicly acknowledged in this way. Surely China must now accept democracy, grant the Tibetan people freedom, or remain forever beyond the pale. For the Dalai Lama himself, at that moment traveling in the United States, a report broadcast on the radio suggesting he had won did, he admitted later, excite him a little. But with no further mention on the evening news, he assumed that it had been nothing more than a rumor. When the award was confirmed early the following morning, his attendants waited until after he had completed his meditation before telling him, by which time he was, he said, “no longer excited.” He was, however, both surprised and pleased to hear that the prize came with some money. There was a leper colony in India to which he had long wanted to make a donation. He would also use some of the prize money to set up the Foundation for Universal Responsibility, a Delhi-based charity working mainly in education and in interfaith and peace-building projects.

  With the award of the Nobel Prize, the “Tibetan issue” became, at a stroke, a global issue, and from this moment on, the Dalai Lama began his ascent to superstardom. Yet as the brutal suppression of the Tiananmen protests made clear, the conservatives within the Politburo had by now reasserted their authority. A siege mentality prevailed, and the government quickly announced its “extreme regret and indignation” concerning the award. For the Chinese, the Nobel committee selection constituted “open support for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan separatists in their activities to undermine national unity and split China.” This was nothing but a collaboration between the Dalai Lama and “hostile foreign forces.”

  The fall of the Berlin Wall a month later served only to deepen Chinese paranoia. In contrast, it gave the Dalai Lama an opportunity to underscore his status as a world figure by visiting the wall just days after its dismantling. It was a poignant moment for him. “As I stood there,” he recalled, “in full view of a still-manned security post, an old lady silently handed me a red candle. With some emotion, I lit it, and held it up. For a moment the tiny dancing flame threatened to go out, but it held and, while a crowd pressed round me, touching my hands, I prayed that the light of compassion and awareness would fill the world and dispel the darkness of fear and oppression.”

  Returning home to Dharamsala, the fifty-five-year-old Dalai Lama received a rapturous welcome. Yet for him personally, perhaps an even more pleasing event at this time was news of the discovery of the reincarnation of his senior tutor, Ling Rinpoché. When, early the following year, the five-year-old came for a visit, the Dalai Lama was visibly moved. An observer noted how, as the little boy stood to leave the audience chamber, the Dalai Lama “bent down to adjust [Ling Rinpoché’s] shoestrap, then stayed down, waving, smiling and blowing kisses like a loving father till the boy was out of sight.”

  In spite of all the publicity in the immediate aftermath of the award of the Nobel Prize, the Dalai Lama remained at this time relatively unknown both in America and beyond, at least outside Buddhist circles and human rights advocacy groups. His press conferences were better attended than they had been, but as one journalist noted, even now he had “no handlers, advance men, interpreters, press people, or travel coordinators,” and he continued to be largely reliant on volunteers when overseas. As a result, the arrangements made on his behalf remained somewhat haphazard. This gave the Dalai Lama the opportunity occasionally to make impromptu changes to his schedule such as one occasion in 1991, while staying in Santa Fe. Having met with a succession of interested people, including “politicians, movie stars, New Age gurus, billionaires and Pueblo Indian leaders,” the Dalai Lama announced that he would like to go up into the mountains to watch the skiing. To the consternation of those accompanying him, he insisted on taking a chairlift so that he could get as close to the action as possible. The story is recounted in a delightful article by the writer Douglas Preston.

  Sitting quite relaxed, with nothing to hold onto (there was no safety bar), the Dalai Lama “spoke animatedly about everything he saw on the slopes. As he pointed and leaned forward into space [his assistant], who was gripping the arm of the chair with whitened knuckles, kept admonishing him in Tibetan . . . begging His Holiness to please sit back, hold the seat, and not lean out so much.”

  But the Dalai Lama would not listen.

  “How fast they go!” he exclaimed. “And children skiing! Look at [that] little boy!” In fact, the slope in question was just a “bunny slope and the skiers weren’t moving fast at all. Just then, an expert skier entered from a higher slope, whipping along. The Dalai Lama saw him and said, ‘Look—too fast! He [is] going to hit [the] post!’ He cupped his hands, shouting down to the oblivious skier, ‘Look out for post!’ He waved frantically. ‘Look out for post!’ The skier, who had no idea that the incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion was crying out to save his life, made a crisp little check as he approached the pylon, altering his line of descent, and continued expertly down the hill. With an expostulation of wonder, the Dalai Lama sat back and clasped his hands together . . . ‘Ah! This [is] a wonderful sport!’” adding that, in a future free Tibet, he was sure that there would be plenty of good skiing to be had.

  Many of those who have had the good fortune to travel with the Dalai Lama on his overseas trips have commented on the keen interest he takes in his surroundings, the torrent of questions, his openness to talking to whosoever comes his way, the jokes—often at his own expense—the laughter and his concern for others, especially those in distress. On hearing this, it is all too easy to forget that, throughout it all, his spiritual practice—the three to four hours of meditation he engages in every morning without fail and the hour and more in the evening—remains the most important part of the Dalai Lama’s day. But doubtless this is precisely what enables him both to deal with the frequent trials he has to face and to move seamlessly among the vast array of people he encounters, giving each his full attention, “as if,” in Preston’s words, “he shut out the rest of the world to focus his entire sympathy . . . care and interest on you” alone.* And perhaps this is the secret of his appeal. Here is someone who is manifestly authentic, someone who does exactly and in all circumstances precisely what
he urges others to do—and with joy, not gravity, with generosity, never rancor, and all in a spirit of forgiveness of failure.

  From Santa Fe the Dalai Lama traveled to Washington, where, in April 1991, he was received for the first time by a serving president of the United States—at that time the elder George Bush. Significantly, their meeting did not take place in the White House itself. It nonetheless provoked a furious response from Beijing. But for the Dalai Lama, an American president was only a warm-up. Among the other world leaders he met in the afterglow of the Nobel award were Pope (now Saint) John Paul II (again), the king of Sweden, Prince Charles of the United Kingdom, and then the presidents of Ireland, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Poland, Argentina, and Chile, followed by the prime ministers of Great Britain, Norway, Cambodia, Australia, and New Zealand. Having been a political nonentity up until that moment, with Bush’s endorsement he was suddenly the man of the hour. These were heady times both for the Dalai Lama and his growing band of followers—mainly the idealistic young but also many older people who were beginning to wake to a political cause that seemed unarguable. Here was the Tibetan David standing up to the Chinese Goliath, armed only with the rhetoric of nonviolence and compassion.