The Dalai Lama

by Alexander Norman

  samsara Or cyclic existence, the always unsatisfactory state in which all sentient beings suffer and remain until they attain Enlightenment, at which point they are liberated from samsara.

  sangha The monastic community.

  Shakyamuni Literally the sage of the Shakyas, ca. fifth-century BCE historical Buddha, born Prince Gautama in present-day Nepal and also known as Siddhartha (the one who accomplishes).

  shi dre (Shi “dre) A type of ghost into which victims of violent death may transform.

  Six Realms In descending order:

  The heavenly realm (within which there are many heavens or grades of heaven)

  The realm of demigods or demons

  The human realm

  The animal realm

  The realm of hungry ghosts

  The hell realm (within which there are many hells or grades of hell)

  skillful means (Thabs; upaya in Sanskrit) The practice whereby a teacher adapts his words and deeds to the level of spiritual attainment of his audience.

  Songtsen Gampo (Srong btsan sgam po) Seeunder Religious Kings.

  tantra A set of esoteric practices intended to speed the initiate’s progress on the path to full Enlightenment.

  Tashilhunpo (bKra shis lhun po) Monastery in southern Tibet, seat of the Panchen Lama, founded in 1447 by the First Dalai Lama.

  Taktra Rinpoché (sTag brag rin po che) (1874–1952) Regent of Tibet, 1941–51.

  thangka A religious painting on a scroll, usually framed with silk brocade, that may contain relics and/or other ritually consecrated substances.

  Theravada Tradition regarded by its proponents as authentically preserving the original teachings of the Buddha. In general, Theravadins do not accept the Mahayana scriptures. The tradition remains dominant in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka.

  Three Seats (gDan sa gsum) Ganden, Drepung, and Sera Monasteries: the Harvard, Princeton, and Yale of Tibet.

  torma (gTor ma) Butter sculpture: at Losar, different monasteries would compete with one another to produce the finest examples. Up to thirty feet high, they were paraded around the Barkhor on the last day of the Monlam Chenmo.

  TPA Tibetan People’s Association, a grassroots movement that grew up in opposition to the Chinese during the 1950s.

  Trijang Rinpoché (Khri byang rin po che) (1901–1981) Junior tutor to the Dalai Lama and leading advocate of Dorje Shugden.

  tsampa Roasted barley flour, a staple of the Tibetan diet.

  Tsongkhapa (Tsong kha pa) (1357–1419) Also known as Je Rinpoché, founder of the Gelug school.

  tukdam (Thugs dam) The meditative state whereby the most accomplished practitioners attain the clear light (od gsal) of primordial consciousness as they transition from embodied life to the heavenly realms from which they will again take rebirth for the benefit of sentient beings.

  tulku (sPrul sku) Literally “emanation body,” the technical term for a reincarnate lama.

  TWC Tibet Work Committee, front of the Chinese central government that carries out its policies in Tibet.

  Ü-Tsang (dBus gTsang) The combined southern provinces of Tibet.

  Vajryana The Diamond Path. Some scholars regard Vajryana Buddhism as a distinct tradition, alongside the Theravada and Mahayana traditions, others hold simply that it is the apotheosis of the Mahayana tradition.

  vinaya (“Dul ba) The monastic code or set of precepts by which the renunciate lives. For monks there are 253, for nuns 364.

  yabshi (Yab gzhis) Term referring to the Dalai Lama’s household, including his family.

  yabshi kung (Yab gzhis khang) The Dalai Lama’s father, in which kung is a title roughly equivalent to duke.

  yoga Perhaps best translated as “discipline,” yoga denotes both the practice and the set of practices whereby the yogin/yogini trains the mind in the quest for Enlightenment.

  yogin Male practitioner of yoga.

  yogini Female practitioner of yoga.

  Younghusband, Colonel Sir Francis (1863–1942) British army officer and explorer turned mystical writer who led the expedition that captured Lhasa in 1904.

  Zhou Enlai (1989–1976) Premier of the People’s Republic of China from its inception until his death, Zhou was the famously suave diplomat who managed affairs of state, including foreign affairs, while Mao struggled against perceived enemies of the Revolution.

  Notes

  Introduction: Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, August 1989

  Tibetan humor: Sir Basil Gould, the political officer for Sikkim, Bhutan, and Tibet, thought the same thing. See Basil Gould, The Jewel in the Lotus: Recollections of an Indian Political (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957), p. 207: “Tibetans laugh at the same things and in the same tone, and appreciate beauty in just the same things as Englishmen.”

  “feeling it between finger and thumb”: Charles Bell, Portrait of the Dalai Lama (London: Collins, 1946), p. 88.

  1. The Travails of the Great Thirteenth

  fifty shrapnel shells: Patrick French, Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (London: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 224.

  those taken prisoner: Tsepon W. D. Shakabpa, Tibet: A Political History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 212.

  “one of great calmness”: Petr Kuz’mich Kozlov, Tibet I Dalai Lama (St. Petersburg, 1920). I have changed the last word of Mark Belcher’s translation of this passage from “nervousness” to “emotion,” which seems more apt.

  “Tibet,” she wrote: First Historical Archives of China, vol. 30 (1996), quoted in Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (London: Jonathan Cape, 2013), p. 366.

  “the hospitable and venerable”: Philip Short, In Pursuit of Plants: Experiences of Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Plant Collectors (Portland, OR: 2004), p. 108. Forrest’s account was originally told in his paper, its title splendidly understated, “The Perils of Plant Hunting” in the Gardeners’ Chronicle of May 1910.

  “eventually run to ground”: Short, In Pursuit of Plants, p. 114. Forrest himself only just survived. At one point in the course of his three-week ordeal, much of it passed at 16–17,000 feet, he trod on an inch-wide spike in a booby trap, which, “passing through the bones of my foot,” protruded “half a hand’s width” from the other side.

  He accepted thatcapital punishment: Charles Bell, Portrait of the Dalai Lama (London: Collins, 1946), p. 157.

  The Chinese amban: Xiuyu Wang, China’s Last Imperial Frontier: Late Qing Expansion in Sichuan’s Tibetan Borderlands (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), p. 124.

  in a cauldron of “cold water”: Albert Leroy Shelton, Pioneering in Tibet: A Personal Record of Life and Experience in Mission Fields (New York: F. H. Revell Company, 1921), pp. 93–94. See also Eric Teichman, Travels of a Consular Officer in North-west China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), p. 228.

  “resembleliving demons”: Sam van Schaik, Tibet: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 84.

  “only made confusion worse”: Short, In Pursuit of Plants, p. 108.

  “in order to curry favour”: Flora Beal Shelton, Shelton of Tibet (New York: George H. Doran, 1923), 171–72.

  a “shrieking” and “diabolical” noise: W. N. Fergusson, Adventure, Sport and Travel on the Tibetan Steppes (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), pp. 2–3.

  “a kind people”: Fergusson, Adventure, Sport and Travel, p. 3.

  “welcoming smile ”: Bell, Portrait, p. 103.

  “Many monks”: Gyalo Thondup with Anne F. Thurston, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet (London: Rider, 2015), p. 7.

  2. A Mystic and a Seer

  a white dragon: Khemey Sonam Wangdu, Basil J. Gould, and Hugh E. Richardson, Discovery, Recognition and Enthronement of the 14th Dalai Lama: A Collection of Accounts (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2000), p. 3.

  forced it on him: Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet: 1913–1951, vol. 1, The Demise of the Lamaist State (Berkeley
: University of California Press, 1989), p. 141. See also the account in Charles Bell, Portrait of the Dalai Lama (London: Collins, 1946), chap. 68.

  If we are not able: Sam van Schaik, Tibet: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 204.

  stamping his right foot: Lest anyone doubt the veracity of this story, one can, according to the regent’s niece, who visited his monastery in 2006, still see the imprint carefully preserved in a chapel. Tseyang Sadutshang, My Youth in Tibet: Recollections of a Tibetan Woman (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2012), p. 37.

  one of his nieces: His niece remembers him at the start of an important religious ceremony smiling and waving at her and then, during an interval, toying with her fingers. When a smallpox epidemic broke out in the region of Reting Monastery, she was taken to see the Rinpoché while he undertook a spiritual retreat at a hermitage in the mountains. There he gave her some powder which included the desiccated skin of a cousin who had contracted and survived the disease. This, the great lama explained, was to be inhaled up the nose like snuff. When she did so and duly sneezed, he “very kindly let down the folded sleeve of his yellow silk shirt” and allowed her to blow her nose on it. Sadutshang, My Youth in Tibet, pp. 37, 45. A delicate fragrance is a well-attested characteristic of Christian holy men too: Saint Philip Neri was one of them, Saint Pio of Pietrelcina another.

  “gauche,” “self centred,” and “immature”: Hugh E. Richardson, High Peaks, Pure Earth: Collected Writings on Tibetan History and Culture (London: Serindia, 1998), p. 715.

  “a very mediocre personage”: Philip Neame, Playing with Strife: The Autobiography of a Soldier (London: George G. Harrap, 1947), p. 159. See also Philip Neame, “Tibet and the 1936 Lhasa Mission,” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 26 (April 1939): 234–46.

  “new things”: Isrun Engelhardt, Tibet in 1938–1939: Photographs from the Ernst Schäfer Expedition to Tibet (Chicago: Serindia, 2007), p. 29.

  chief minister’s wife: Bell, Portrait, p. 54. The full story of Lungshar’s fall is given in chap. 6 of Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet: 1913–1951, vol. 1, The Demise of the Lamaist State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), chap. 6. Apparently Lungshar did not resent his punishment. He took it as karmic retribution for having once blinded a sheep with a nonfatal shot from his sling.

  3. A Child Is Born

  took to be significant: The most authoritative account of the events described in this chapter is to be found in Khemey Sonam Wangdu, Basil J. Gould, and Hugh E. Richardson, Discovery, Recognition and Enthronement of the 14th Dalai Lama: A Collection of Accounts (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2000).

  strange star-shaped fungi: See the account in Mary Taring, Daughter of Tibet (London: John Murray, 1970). Basil Gould visited Lhasa in August 1936, so it seems possible he actually saw the fungi. But he says they looked more like antlers; see his Jewel in the Lotus: Recollections of an Indian Political (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957).

  in her right hand: Adapted from Réne de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet (Delhi: Book Faith India), p. 22.

  “It is not known”: The story is told in more detail in Alexander Norman, Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama (New York: Random House, 2008), p. 352.

  “singular sweetness”: Charles Bell, Portrait of the Dalai Lama (London: Collins, 1946).

  the search party: The full account of the search party is given in Wangdu, Gould, and Richardson, Discovery, Recognition and Enthronement, pp. 14–15.

  ”a kind of “jump-suit”: Wangdu, Gould, and Richardson, Discovery, Recognition and Enthronement, p. 15.

  “No,” they replied: Robert Thurman recounts a story about the Dalai Lama’s mother having a dream about a bright blue dragon escorted by two playful green snow lions, but I have not seen this corroborated anywhere. Robert Thurman, Why the Dalai Lama Matters (New York: Atria, 2008), p. 14.

  “even for a moment”: Gyalo Thondup with Anne F. Thurston, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet (London: Rider, 2015), pp. 15, 19.

  “utter no words”: Quoted in Françoise Pommaret, Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century: The Capital of the Dalai Lama, trans. Howard Solverson (Leiden: Brill, 2003), p. 69. See also Samten Karmay’s translation of the relevant passage in the Great Fifth’s autobiography, The Illusive Play (Chicago: Serindia, 2014).

  “very sarcastic”: Personal interview.

  4. The View from the Place of the Roaring Tiger

  “grinding poverty”: Gyalo Thondup with Anne F. Thurston, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet (London: Rider, 2015), p. 4.

  “one of the best”: Thondup, Noodle Maker, pp. 6–13. The Dalai Lama’s extended family owned forty-five acres, while his parents owned approximately six and a half acres of land themselves—enough to be classified as landlords, and therefore “class enemies” by the Communists. Jianglin Li, “When the Iron Bird Flies: The 1956–1962 Secret War on the Tibetan Plateau,” unpublished ms., trans. Stacey Mosher.

  “happy and contented life”: Adapted from Thubten Jigme Norbu, Tibet Is My Country (London: Rupert Hart Davis, 1960), p. 51.

  “strung about the walls”: Gary Geddes, Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things: An Impossible Journey from Kabul to Chiapas, illustrated ed. (New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 2008), p. 175.

  “slipped to the door”: Diki Tsering, Dalai Lama, My Son: A Mother’s Story (London: Virgin, 2000), pp. 37–38. Although the provenance of this work might cause the strictest biographers to raise their eyebrows, it was first taken down in note form by one grandchild as a series of stories and subsequently turned into a continuous narrative by another before it received the ministrations of its English editor. The book’s artlessness and charm nonetheless give it the ring of authenticity.

  “and stood beside me”: Tsering, Dalai Lama, My Son, pp. 40–41.

  guarded by trolls: With respect to Laplanders, see, for example, Andrew Brown, “Gods and Fairytales,” The Spectator, February 14, 2015.

  “nameless religion”: Starting with the great French Tibetologist R. A. Stein. See his Tibetan Civilisation, trans. J. E. Stapleton Driver (London: Faber and Faber, 1972).

  celestial dragons: Tsewang Y. Pemba, Young Days in Tibet (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), p. 146. For a useful Tibetan account, see Norbu Chophel, Folk Culture of Tibet (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1983); for a scholarly analysis of the different classes, see Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).

  “dreadful and tedious solitude”: Although he was wrong on this point, Desideri’s relazione of his seven-year sojourn in Tibet (available in Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri SJ, ed. L. Zwilling, trans. M. Sweet [Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010]) is extremely valuable for its many insights of the time. The quotation is from the earlier translation of Desideri’s relazione, An Account of Tibet: The Travels of Ippolite Desideri di Pistoia, SJ, 1712–1727, ed. Filippo de Filippi, rev. ed. (London: G. Routledge, 1937), p. 353; the whole of his “Report on Tibet and Its Routes” gives an extraordinary perspective on both eighteenth-century Tibet and Counter-Reformation Europe. Desideri himself was a linguistic genius. It took him less than two years to master the language sufficiently well to write the first of his three books in Tibetan (one of them a catechism of the Christian faith, two of them philosophical works designed to refute Buddhism). See Donald S. Lopez and Thupten Jinpa, Dispelling the Darkness: A Jesuit’s Quest for the Soul of Tibet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017).

  “strange jealous creatures”: Robert B. Ekvall, Tents Against the Sky (London: Gollancz, 1954), p. 188.

  “almost as a pet”: The full story is told in Pemba, Young Days in Tibet, pp. 148–50.

  human scapegoat: Practices such as these were not confined to treatment of the sick. It is said that at the great Nyingma fo
undation at Samye there was “a special room where the bodies that get lost in the Bardo, the realm between successive lives, were chopped up and [in which] the weighing of souls for punishment occurred . . . [O]ccasionally it became politically necessary for a man to be put in this room as a ransom for the sins of Tibet.” John Crook and James Low, The Yogins of Ladakh: A Pilgrimage Among the Hermits of the Buddhist Himalayas (1997; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2012), p. 199 and n. 65.

  “found out that”: Pemba, Young Days in Tibet, p. 149.

  5. “Lonely and somewhat unhappy”

  “A last attempt”: Thubten Jigme Norbu, Tibet Is My Country (London: Rupert Hart Davis, 1960), p. 128.

  “lonely” and “somewhat unhappy”: Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), p. 12.

  suck a mole: Raimondo Bultrini, The Dalai Lama and the King Demon, trans. Maria Simmons (New York: Tibet House US, 2013), p. 338.

  “no one to play with”:My Land and My People: The Autobiography of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), p. 27.

  “a childish dislike”: Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile, p. 14.

  “for the most part”: Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile, p. 14.

  Ma Bufang: Neither the Tibetan nor the Chinese historians have been kind to Ma. To the Tibetans he was “so devious and scandalous in his behaviour that it was beyond description.” The Dalai Lama’s elder brother recalled how, on tax-collecting missions, Ma’s officials would hunt down the local people, string them up by the ankles, and beat them with bamboo sticks if they tried to evade payment. Gyalo Thondup with Anne F. Thurston, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet (London: Rider, 2015), p. 26. To the victorious Communists, Ma, as a supporter of the Nationalist Guomindang, was a counterrevolutionary and a traitor to the nation. But anecdotal evidence suggests that he was affable, good-humored, and forward-thinking. An American government official visiting Qinghai province praised his leadership as one of the most efficient in China, and one of the most energetic. Ma was particularly concerned with reforestation and gave free seeds and instructions for planting to the peasantry, saying that the tree was the “salvation of the desert.” As onetime leader of the great mosque of Xining, he might be expected to have been socially conservative, but in fact Ma Bufang set up a modern school for girls that provided a secular education. On the Communists’ accession to power, ostensibly on pilgrimage to Mecca, he fled to Saudi Arabia, where he died in 1975.