The Dalai Lama

by Alexander Norman

  Not all invitations came from Buddhist groups, however. In 2000 the Dalai Lama visited Northern Ireland to participate in, among other events, one billed as “testimonials from victims of sectarian violence.” This was organized by the Catholic monk Father Laurence Freeman, who had also organized the Good Heart conference where the Dalai Lama commented on the Christian gospels. Besides meeting, and being photographed with, Gerry Adams, the Irish Sinn Fein leader whom many believe to have been a senior member of the terrorist Irish Republican Army, the Dalai Lama also met with the man he has since described as his “hero,” Richard Moore. One of three speakers to give their testimonial, Moore had been blinded as a ten-year-old boy by a rubber bullet fired by a British soldier, which hit him between the eyes. Prior to the event, the Dalai Lama placed Moore’s hand on his head and face, inviting him to picture what he felt. A few years afterwards, Moore met with his assailant and made an unlikely friend of him. At the Dalai Lama’s invitation, the two men then traveled to Dharamsala, where the Tibetan leader presented them to a large audience of refugee schoolchildren, explaining that their story exemplified what he meant by compassion, reconciliation, and forgiveness.*

  There were some light moments, such as when, having been gifted a “vineyard”—claimed to be the smallest in the world, and consisting of precisely four vines—the Dalai Lama was invited in front of a crowd of a thousand onlookers to fire a pistol in the air, as tradition demanded, on completion of the “harvest.” He took the gun from the previous owner (a Catholic monk), looked at it, hesitated for a moment, then kissed it and handed it back.

  By now, the Dalai Lama’s popularity was such that, shortly after the two-year anniversary of 9/11, a crowd of 65,000 came to Central Park to hear him declare that “the very concept of war is out of date.” And as an example of the seriousness with which Buddhist thought is now beginning to be taken by the scientific community, during the winter of 2005 the Dalai Lama was invited to address the American Society for Neuroscience. The invitation to do so was not without controversy. A five-hundred-signature petition (largely, it seems, from among scientists with a connection to China) urged the organizers to withdraw it, on the grounds that his proposed lecture on the value of meditation “is of poor scientific taste because it will highlight hyperbolic claims, limited research and compromised scientific rigour.” One delegate was critical of the Dalai Lama’s belief that the mind and the body are separable and that, moreover, it is possible for the consciousness of one individual to be transferred into the body of another. The reference here is to the Buddhist practice of phowa, whereby the practitioner transfers his or her consciousness into the body of another, either recently deceased or who desires to practice the dharma in another realm.*

  The Dalai Lama’s lecture was well received nonetheless, even if many remained skeptical of some of his claims about the benefits of meditation. But few would have wished to argue with the Dalai Lama’s further claim that, while countless billions of dollars were spent annually on exploring outer space, it was time to devote proper resources to probing the “inner space” of consciousness.

  If these examples of the Dalai Lama’s mounting stature throughout the world are impressive, the devotion he continues to inspire among Tibetans in Tibet is arguably even more so. A striking instance of this occurred in 2006, when a comment, picked up from a speech he gave in Bodh Gaya, electrified the whole country when word of it was somehow circulated in Tibet. In view of the threat to the long-term survival of several rare species indigenous to Tibet, the Dalai Lama had suggested that it would be a good idea if Tibetans ceased to wear or to use animal fur. They responded by the hundreds and thousands. Himalayan tiger and leopard skin, otter pelts, sable and bear skin, all highly prized both as clothing and as furnishings in religious ceremonies, were brought from their places of safekeeping and publicly burned. Had the Chinese doubted for a moment where the loyalty of the vast majority of Tibetans lay, this was a forceful reminder of how things stood. In vain did they try to halt the bonfires; to no effect were the arrests of the organizers.

  Between 1995 and 2002, from the disappearance of the Panchen Lama until the time of Beijing’s confirmation as the venue for the Games, there had been no official contact between the Chinese authorities and the Tibetan government in exile, recently recast as the Central Tibetan Administration. This was despite—perhaps even because of—America’s enthusiastic advocacy of dialogue between the two sides. In October 1997, Bill Clinton had urged his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, to initiate meaningful talks with the Dalai Lama, and on a visit to Beijing the following year, the American president confronted Jiang during a live press conference, saying of the Dalai Lama, “I believe him to be an honest man, and I believe that if he had a conversation with President Jiang, they would like each other very much.” Whether the laughter from the audience that followed was generous or nervous is unclear.

  Nonetheless, with the Olympics looming, and perhaps due to China’s concern following more than one visit by the Dalai Lama to Taiwan, contact between Beijing and Dharamsala was reestablished, and one or more government-level meetings took place each year from 2002 in the run-up to the Games, with increasing signs of progress. These followed a potentially difficult moment occasioned, during 2000, by the dramatic flight from Tibet of the fourteen-year-old Ogyen Trinley Dorje, head of the Karma Kargyu tradition, who, having walked from his monastery in Tibet to the Nepalese border and subsequently flown to Kathmandu by helicopter, arrived in Dharamsala in early January. Rumors that he was a spy were put about by those whom his presence in exile threatened. In particular this included a rival to his leadership position who already occupied substantial property assets belonging to the Kargyu in India. For his part, however, the Dalai Lama recognizes the “Tibetan” candidate and has since taken a close, even avuncular interest in the young man’s education and welfare, saying more than once that he expected the Karmapa to play an important role in the future of the refugee community.

  When the controversy occasioned by this unexpected arrival had abated, and following successive rounds of talks between officials from Dharamsala and Beijing, in 2007 the Dalai Lama’s chief negotiator announced that, although the differences in viewpoint on the question of the Tibetan issue were “numerous,” they had, he said, “reached the stage where, if there is political will on both sides, we have an opportunity to finally resolve this issue.” This was an extraordinary development, and even though the Chinese responded to the Dalai Lama’s Congressional Gold Medal, awarded that year by the Bush administration, by describing it as a “farce,” optimism within the exile community rose to its highest since the Deng era. In fact, the award, made by an act of Congress, which must be cosponsored by two-thirds of the membership of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, was a matter of immense significance not only for the Tibetan exile leadership but also for the Chinese, to whom it looked like a major upgrading of the Dalai Lama’s political status by the United States. The perception was further reinforced when Congress authorized the president to confer the award on the Dalai Lama in person.

  In Tibet, meanwhile, China’s denunciation of the award, along with, for example, continued restrictions on display of photographs of the Dalai Lama, caused serious resentment. If anyone expected the Tibetan masses to turn the other cheek to this latest insult following the Congressional award, and to the continued demonization of the Dalai Lama in the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics, they were tragically disappointed. Once more, Tibet erupted in flames and in fury.

  On March 10, 2008, monks staged a protest against Chinese rule that centered on the Ramoche Temple in Lhasa. Here it needs to be understood that, besides this date being significant as the one on which the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, it also falls during the first month of the Tibetan New Year, which itself commemorates chorul dawa: the Month of Miracles. These signs were performed by the Buddha in answer to the gibes and abuse of nonbelieving heretical teachers before a crowd of more than nin
ety thousand. Making the miracles of Christ look like the trivial deeds of a minor siddha, the Buddha began by flying through the air. He then produced a stunning display of fire and water emanating from his body. Next, he planted his toothpick in the ground and it grew into a vast tree, laden with fruit and fragrant flowers. On the following day, he “manifested” two mountains made of the most precious stones. Thereafter, he produced a lake. Next he manifested a voice that sounded throughout the world, expounding the dharma. The day after, he radiated a light which filled the universe. On the penultimate day, he made his patrons world rulers. On the last day, the Buddha pressed down on his seat with the fingers of his right hand, and from beneath arose Vajrapani, a wrathful bodhisattva, who scattered the heretics and smashed their thrones. Then the Buddha radiated eighty-four thousand beams of light from each pore of his skin. On the tip of each ray reposed a lotus, on which was seated another Buddha preaching the dharma. Given the resonance of these events and of this time in the Buddhist psyche, it is hardly surprising that the New Year is a time of heightened emotion for Tibetans, especially within the monasteries.

  Also, it is important to remember that the Dalai Lama’s identification with Chenresig is not, for Tibetans, merely an abstract theological proposition. It is built into their self-understanding. As every child knows, Chenresig is the father of the Tibetan race, first manifesting in the guise of a monkey. One day he was importuned by an ogress who lived among the mountains and was at that moment mourning the death of all her children. Moved by pity, the monkey accepted the ogress’s request to become her mate. It was their offspring who were the first Tibetans. Thus it stands to reason that Chenresig, as his name implies—translated literally it means the One Who Looks Down with Compassion—takes special care of the successors of his own progeny. Moreover, that he has since taken human form in the Dalai Lamas and their predecessors is only to be expected, given the bodhisattva’s relationship with the Tibetan people. The relationship between Chenresig and the Tibetan people is thus a feature of the way the world is.

  When we understand how the tradition conceives the Dalai Lama, we begin to see why it is so hard for Tibetans to hear him slandered. We also see why it is so hard for communism to make real converts among the Tibetan people. And indeed why, six decades since his flight into exile, the Dalai Lama’s picture still cannot be shown in his homeland.

  The forced dispersal of the demonstration at the Ramoche Temple in March 2008 was the trigger of a disastrous riot. Many in the crowd, including a number of monks, went on a rampage. Over a period of several days, mobs of Tibetans attacked both ethnic Chinese and Hui Muslims, killing, it is thought, up to eighteen innocent civilians. At one point an attempt was made to storm the Lhasa mosque, the rioters setting its gate ablaze, while large numbers of businesses owned both by Han Chinese and the Hui minority were torched. Foreign eyewitnesses spoke of stabbings and stonings as shops burned and were looted, and several non-Tibetan hotels were also set ablaze and vandalized. Not only were men involved but women and children, too. There were dozens of police injuries, and large numbers of vehicles—including a fire engine—were destroyed. In all, the number of separate incidents ran into the dozens, possibly hundreds, as the city erupted. Among other measures, the Chinese authorities responded by cutting off the water supply to the Three Seats, whose personnel were implicated in the disturbances, preventing food and medical deliveries to the monasteries. But news of the unrest spread quickly and was followed by riots in Kham and Amdo, a number of them turning violent and resulting in several deaths, both of Chinese and Tibetans, and the destruction of property.

  It seems hard to deny that the viciousness of the 2008 uprising harmed the Tibetan cause in the eyes of the world. Yet it is true that claims about video shot in various locations during the protests suggested that some of the rioters were operating under a false flag as agents provocateurs. That the weapons and dress of a number of the individuals involved did not correspond to the area in which the incidents took place is taken as evidence they were planted by the Chinese. And it is indeed also true that it would have been extremely helpful to the central government if the rioters could be portrayed as racist thugs. Nevertheless, even if some of these accusations of deception on the part of the Chinese are correct, it seems unlikely that they could account for all the violence. Nor can we say that the memory of those little Tibetan boys and girls, their heads strung like a garland of flowers about the Hui military garrison eighty years earlier, nor even the memory of the casual brutality of the Cultural Revolution forty years before, could possibly justify what occurred, even if it does contextualize it.

  For most people worldwide, Tibet was hardly a major issue. Many had heard of the Dalai Lama, but few know much about his homeland. It was therefore a matter of deepest regret to the Tibetan leader that, when news of the Land of Snows did finally make headlines, the picture it presented should be so dismal. Nevertheless, at the time, it did not prevent the Chinese president from announcing to international media just before the Olympics: “Our attitude towards contacts and consultation with the Dalai Lama is serious.” This was taken by sympathizers as a sign that the main effect of the riots was to show the Chinese the strength of Tibetan discontent. While it certainly did that, once the Games safely passed without major protest—despite earlier suggestions, no head of state apart from Poland’s stayed away in solidarity with the Tibetan people—Tibet abruptly vanished from the world’s consciousness. A proposal on autonomy presented by negotiators from Dharamsala that autumn met with nothing more than derision. By the end of the year, the Dalai Lama was admitting that all his efforts of the past thirty years to find a political solution agreeable both to Tibet and to the Chinese had failed.

  Since then, the Dalai Lama has made repeated admissions of the failure of his policy of rapprochement with China. From his perspective, his determination to meet Beijing halfway by demanding autonomy but not independence for Tibet has resulted in nothing other than cynical maneuvering on the part of the Chinese government. When the spotlight was on China at the time of the Olympics, its officials let drop one or two hopeful remarks for the benefit of those listening but then failed to act on them. And yet, in admitting the failure of his Middle Way policy, the Dalai Lama did not disavow it. Instead, he immediately responded with a plan to call a referendum to learn the will of the people. Did they or did they not want to continue with the policy in spite of its manifest failure? At first the vote was to have included all Tibetans, but the impracticality of a full plebiscite meant that, in the end, it was confined only to the diaspora. Unsurprisingly, it was found that the vast majority were indeed in favor of accepting the Dalai Lama’s views and continuing with the policy.

  Of course, such a referendum was only ever going to yield one result, given that the Middle Way was still the Dalai Lama’s preferred option. But it is important to recognize here the Dalai Lama’s openness to dissent. To the dismay of many, some Tibetans in exile even had the temerity to do so. Both the Tibetan Youth Congress, long a source of rumblings in favor of direct, even violent action, and Amnye Machen (a Dharamsala-based research institute) made clear their rejection of the Dalai Lama’s policy, albeit expressing full confidence in his spiritual authority. A small number of elected politicians also broke ranks. To this, traditionalists reacted with outrage at what they saw as open expressions of disloyalty, some even calling for violence to be visited on the offenders.

  It is often imagined that genuine democracy, once established, must, by virtue of its own internal logic, succeed as soon as it is implemented. That this view is naïve is shown by several recent attempts to initiate rule by the people, for the people, in countries where, historically, other systems have traditionally prevailed. In the case of the Tibetan diaspora (as no doubt would also be the case if ever democracy came to Tibet itself), loyalty to the Precious Protector is seen—even by many educated young people—as having greater value than the free expression of opinion. Yet for all this, most rec
ognize the wisdom of the Dalai Lama’s position. To make violence a component of policy is unthinkable for him. But beyond this, it is obvious that, even if every man, woman, and child were to take up arms, a few million Tibetans could not possibly succeed against the might of all China. The effect of conflict would only be more pain and more suffering for more people. The Dalai Lama’s Middle Way policy thus prevails.

  And yet, tragically, a new and still more desperate expression of discontent erupted among Tibetans just a few months after the Beijing Olympics as a young monk from Kirti Monastery in Kham poured gasoline over himself and lit a match. When, in 1963, a Vietnamese monk had done the same in protest against the Diem government, President John F. Kennedy said of the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph of the event that no other news picture in history had aroused such emotion around the world. But though also photographed, the incident in Tibet was barely remarked on by the world’s media.

  Although at first this looked like an isolated incident, it was followed by a shocking spate of fourteen more self-immolations in 2011 and a staggering eighty-six in 2012. The figure dropped to twenty-eight the year after and eleven the year after that, and, since then, only a handful more have been recorded. But just when it seems the last flames have died down, more leap into Tibetans’ collective consciousness as some (usually) young man or some young woman undertakes the ultimate protest and another name is added to the martyrs’ memorial in Dharamsala. At the time of writing, more than 150 cases have been recorded.