Prisoners of Shangri-La

by Donald S Lopez, Jr

  24. Giuseppe Tucci, To Lhasa and Beyond: Diary of the Expedition to Tibet in the Year 1948 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1987), pp. 32–33.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1. Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, “Note on the Origin of the Kála-Chakra and Adi-Buddha Systems,” Tibetan Studies (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984), p. 21. The first European reference to Shambhala is generally believed to have been made by the Portuguese Jesuits João Cabral and Estevão Cacella, who refer to “Xembala” in their letters of 1627. See George N. Roerich, “Studies in the Kālacakra,” Journal of the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute of the Roerich Museum 2 (1931): 15–16. See also C. Wessels, Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia 1603–1721 (1924; reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992), pp. 147–48.

  2. The preceding description of Shambhala is drawn from John R. Newman, “A Brief History of the Kalachakra,” in The Wheel of Time: Kalachakra in Context, ed. Geshe Lhundub Sopa, Roger Jackson, and John Newman (Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1991), pp. 51–80.

  3. For a fuller version of this episode see Newman, pp. 59–63. Some version of this story may have been known to Madame Blavatsky. In The Secret Doctrine, she cites the commentary to the Stanzas of Dzyan: “The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island (the primitive Sveta-dwipa) had perished ages before. Their (Lemuria) elect, had taken shelter on the sacred Island (now, the ‘fabled’ Shamballah, in the Gobi Desert), while some of the accursed races, separating from the main stock, now lived in the jungles and underground (‘cave men’), when the golden yellow race (the Fourth) became in its turn ‘black with sin.’” That is, the elect who survived the demise of the Lemurian and Atlantean races took refuge in Shambhala, whence they became the teachers of the Aryan race. See Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, 2:319. On Tibetan views of Shambhala, see also Edwin Bernbaum, The Way to Shambhala (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1980). A history of the idea of Shambhala in the West remains to be written. The term has circulated in spiritualist writings since at least the time of Madame Blavatsky. Its currency was boosted considerably by Nicholas Roerich with his 1928 essay “Shambhala, the Resplendent” and his promotion of the “Banner of Shambhala.” See Nicholas Roerich, Shambhala: In Search of the New Era (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions International, 1990). In his memoir of life in Kalimpong in the early 1950s, Sangharakshita (D. P. E. Lingwood) notes that Roerich’s son, the esteemed Tibetologist George Roerich, seemed always to be in equestrian dress. Apparently his father had believed that those who wanted to prepare the way for the advent of Maitreya must always be ready to ride with the king of Shambhala and his army, who might appear over the Himalayas at any moment. See Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga (Glasgow: Windhorse Publications, 1991), p. 52. For a credulous compilation of theories about Shambhala, see Andrew Tomas, Shambhala: Oasis of Light (London: Sphere Books Limited, 1977). Shambhala has served as the name of a pop song by Three Dog Night and the names of a publishing house and a 1993 recording of duets by jazz drummer William Hooker and guitarists Thurston Moore and Elliot Sharp (called “Shamballa” on the Knitting Factory Works label). Hooker writes in the liner notes: “Shamballa [a variant of Madame Blavatsky’s spelling] is dedicated to the leaders of Humanity, the Masters of Wisdom.”

  4. Oscar Wilde, Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 983. At the end of the essay (p. 992) he writes, “At twilight nature becomes a wonderfully suggestive effect, and is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from poets.”

  5. Ibid., p. 978.

  6. Ibid., p. 986.

  7. Ibid., p. 988.

  8. See Heinz Bechert and Richard Gombrich, eds., The World of Buddhism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), pp. 275–77. For a more detailed discussion, see Heinz Bechert, Buddhismus, Staat und Gesellschaft in der Ländern des Theravāda-Buddhismus (Frankfurt: Alfred Metzner Verlag, 1966), 1:37-108. Buddhist modernists included European devotees, such as Alexandra David-Neel, who may have coined the term. For her, a Buddhist modernist was a Buddhist reformer. See Alexandra David, Le modernisme Bouddhiste et le Bouddhisme du Bouddha (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1911), p. 6. I am grateful to Professor Steven Collins for bringing this title to my attention.

  9. Graham Sandberg, Tibet and Tibetans (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1906), pp. 195–96. Sandberg oversimplifies the role of the European in the process. See, for example, Charles Hallisey, “Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravāda Buddhism,” in Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 31–61; and Jonathan Spencer, “The Politics of Tolerance: Buddhists and Christians, Truth and Error in Sri Lanka,” in The Pursuit of Certainty: Religious and Cultural Formulations, ed. Wendy James (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 195–214.

  10. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1996), p. 166.

  11. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, The Way to Freedom (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), p. 73.

  12. Dalai Lama, Good Heart, p. 3. On his participation in the Buddhist-Jewish dialogue, see Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994).

  13. Dalai Lama, Good Heart, p. 41.

  14. For a fuller discussion of upāya, see Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism in Practice (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 27–31.

  15. Dalai Lama, Good Heart, pp. 81–82.

  16. See Donald S. Lopez, Jr., “Do Śrāvakas Understand Emptiness?” Journal of Indian Philosophy 16 (1988): 65–105.

  17. Cited from a sādhana to Shugden translated in Réne de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1956), pp. 137–38. See also Stan Royal Mumford, Himalayan Dialogue: Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), pp. 125–31, 261–64; and Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Heart Jewel (London: Tharpa Publications, 1991), pp. 73–101, 137–69.

  18. For an illustrated description of such a possession ceremony, see Nebesky-Wojkowitz, pp. 432–39.

  19. On the ris med movement, see E. Gene Smith, introduction to Kongtrul’s Encyclopedia of Indo-Tibetan Culture, ed. Lokesh Chandra, pts. 1–3 (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1970), pp. 1–52; and Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 533–43.

  20. See Samuel, p. 605 n. 8.

  21. For some of the relevant Tibetan literature pro and con Shugden, see Matthew Kapstein, “The Purificatory Gem and Its Cleansing: A Late Tibetan Polemical Discussion of Apocryphal Texts,” History of Religions 28, no. 2 (1989): 231 n. 40.

  22. See, for example, the description of Vajrabhairava, one of the three chief yi dam of the Geluk in Bulcsu Siklós, The Vajrabhairava Tantras, Buddhica Britannica, Series Continua 7 (Tring, England: Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1996), pp. 42–43.

  23. The statement can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.infra.de/eureka/buf/tibet_foerderkreis/dorje_shugden/dolgyal3.html.

  24. The statement appears on the Web at http://www.infra.de/eureka/buf/tibet_foerderkreis/dorje_shugden/0008.txt.

  25. Reported in the September 21, 1996, issue of World Tibet News on the Internet.

  26. Reported in the September 21, 1996, issue of World Tibet News on the Internet.

  27. In support of the view that the controversy would be exploited by the Chinese, the BBC news of July 16, 1996, reported that three Tibetan monks who had recently applied at the Chinese embassy in New Delhi for visas to visit Tibet were asked whether they worshipped Shugden. The two who said they did were granted visas; the third, who said he did not, was refused a visa.

  In an article by Wei Se in the Chinese government magazine China’s Tibet (vol. 7, no. 6), the Dalai Lama is called a “self-sty
led believer in ‘religious freedom,’” and is ridiculed for his “staunch disavowal” of an “innocent guardian of Tibetan Buddhist doctrine” and for having “declared a virtual war against a holy spirit of the Gelug Sect.” Reported on the Internet on World Tibet News Network, February 6, 1997.

  28. The declaration was printed in the newsletter and catalog of Snow Lion Publications, Snow Lion 11, no. 4 (fall 1996): 3.

  29. The murders were covered in a lengthy story in Newsweek, April 28, 1997, 26–28. In the article the Dalai Lama (clearly speaking as a Buddhist modernist) is quoted as saying, “Nobody would pray to Buddha for better business, but they go to the Shugden for such favors—and this is where it has become like spirit worship.”

  30. There has been little scholarship in the wake of Benedict Anderson on the idea of Tibet as a nation, especially scholarship based on the extensive Tibetan historical literature. For preliminary considerations, see Georges Dreyfus, “Proto-Nationalism in Tibet,” in Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Sixth Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Fagernes 1992, ed. Per Kvaerne (Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, 1994), pp. 205–18; Georges Dreyfus, “Law, State, and Political Ideology in Tibet,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 18, no. 1 (summer 1995): 117–38; Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 134–54; Warren W. Smith, Jr., Tibetan Nation: A History of Tibetan Nationalism and Sino-Tibetan Relations (New York: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 659–93; and the essays in Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner, eds., Resistance and Reform in Tibet (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).

  31. On the constituents of a narrative of national culture, see Stuart Hall, David Held, and Tony McGrew, eds., Modernity and Its Futures (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1992), pp. 293–95.

  32. Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation?” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 11. Although the Bönpo tradition is largely absent from the discourse of the Tibetan government (both pre- and post-exilic), where Tibet is identified as a sanctuary for the practice of Buddhism (in Tibetan, “the religion of the insiders,” nang pa’i chos), there has been an increased interest in Bon among scholars of Tibet in recent decades, beginning with David Snellgrove’s Nine Ways of Bon (1967) and continuing with the work of the Tibetan scholar Samten Karmay and his colleagues in Paris. This work has led to the formation of a nativist discourse about Tibet, with an emphasis on local practice, such as the mountain cults, and the portrayal of Bön as the authentic Tibetan religion. Buddhism is seen as a late arrival and, with its universalism, a contributing factor to the demise of the Tibetan empire and the erosion of a sense of national identity. See Samten G. Karmay, “Mountain Cults and National Identity in Tibet,” in Resistance and Reform in Tibet, ed. Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 112–20, which discusses the importance of the hardly nonviolent mountain gods and King Gesar of Ling in Tibetan national identity. Even prior to the Chinese invasion, progressive thinkers such as the Buddhist scholar Gendun Chophel (dGe ’dun chos ’phel, 1903–1951) felt that Buddhism had destroyed Tibetan national identity. See Heather Stoddard, “Tibetan Publications and National Identity,” in Resistance and Reform in Tibet, ed. Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 129.

  33. See Tsering Shakya, “Whither the Tsampa Eaters?” Himal (September–October 1993): 9. For a useful historical survey of the various meanings of “Tibet,” see Melvyn Goldstein, “Change, Conflict and Continuity among a Community of Nomadic Pastoralists,” in Resistance and Reform in Tibet, ed. Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 76–90. On the politics of culture in exile, see also Ashild Kolas, “Tibetan Nationalism: The Politics of Religion,” Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 1 (1996): 51–66.

  34. See, for example, Melvyn Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 112–20. It is noteworthy here that even the most crass political disputes are expressed in terms of Buddhist doctrine and vocabulary.

  35. Joseph Rock quotes a speech by a Golok from Amdo that illustrates this point (and also calls into question the putative “nonviolence” of the Tibetans):

  You cannot compare us Go-log with other people. You obey the laws of strangers, the laws of the Dalai Lama, of China, and of any of your petty chiefs. You are afraid of everyone; to escape punishment you obey everyone. And the result is that you are afraid of everything. And not only you, but your fathers and grandfathers were the same. We Go-log, on the other hand, have from time immemorial obeyed none but our own laws, none but our own convictions. A Go-log is born with the knowledge of his freedom, and with his mother’s milk imbibes some acquaintance with his laws. They have never been altered. Almost in his mother’s womb he learns to handle arms. His forebears were warriors—they were brave fearless men, even as we today are their worthy descendants. To the advice of a stranger we will not hearken, nor will we obey ought but the voice of our conscience with which each Go-log enters the world. This is why we have ever been free as now, and are the slaves of none—neither of Bogdokhan nor of the Dalai Lama. Our tribe is the most respected and mighty in Tibet, and we rightly look down with contempt on both Chinaman and Tibetan.

  See Joseph Rock, The Amnye Ma-chhen Range and Adjacent Regions: A Monographic Study, Serie Orientale Roma 12 (Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1956), p. 127.

  36. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 163–85.

  37. Tibetans exported wool, furs, yak tails, and musk to India and China and had extensive diplomatic and trade relations with Nepal. Tibet’s first international trade mission was launched in 1947, with the representatives carrying passports to which Britain and the United States granted visas, subsequently claiming after Chinese protests that the visas had been granted in error. For an account of the trade mission, see Melvyn Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 570–610.

  38. Hall, Held, and McGrew, eds., pp. 2–3. Some have seen the alliance between the clergy and the aristocracy as the defining characteristic of the medieval period in Europe. The warrior class (the aristocracy) provided protection and endowment for the clergy and in return the clergy provided legitimation, at the same time adopting celibacy and thus renouncing claims to kingship via the primogenitor. The situation in Tibet, often characterized as a medieval society, is similar and different. The chief difference comes in the institution of the incarnate lama, whereby celibacy does not preclude sovereignty.

  39. Cited in Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), p. 213.

  40. H. H. the Dalai Lama, “The Practice of Buddhism,” Snow Lion Newsletter (spring 1993).

  41. Edward Burnett Tylor, The Origins of Culture, chaps. 1–10 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), p. 1; originally published as Primitive Culture.

  42. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, ed. Samuel Lipman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 73. For studies of the evolution of the idea of culture, see Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780–1950 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1958), and, more recently, Tomoko Masuzawa, “Culture,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

  Tibetan terms rendered as “culture” or used to render the term “culture” include rig gzhung (literally, “knowledge-system”), rig gnas (literally, “knowledge-abode,” also used for “science”), and shes rig (literally, “understanding-knowledge”). The term “cultural revolution” in Tibetan is rig gnas gsar brje, literally, “knowledge-abode-new-change.” I am grateful to Professor Elliot Sperling for this information.

  43. See T. P. Atisha, “The Tibetan Approach to Ecology,” Tibetan Review 26, no. 2 (1991): 9. For an insightful critique of this
phenomenon, see Toni Huber, “Traditional Environmental Protectionism in Tibet Reconsidered,” Tibet Journal 16, no. 2 (autumn 1991): 63–77; and Toni Huber, “Green Tibetans: A Brief Social History,” in Tibetan Culture in Exile: Proceedings of the Seventh Seminar of the IATS, Graz, 1995, ed. Frank Korom (Vienna, 1997), pp. 103–119.

  Some of the Dalai Lama’s statements on the environment can be found in His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, My Tibet, with photographs and an introduction by Galen Rowell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

  44. Renan, pp. 18–19.

  45. The Dalai Lama’s message of universal human rights and nonviolence has had a different effect in Tibet, to which it is also directed. Whereas in Tibet prior to 1959 Geluk monks were among the most conservative members of the society, thwarting, for example, the thirteenth Dalai Lama’s preliminary attempts at modernization, since the Chinese occupation, monks and nuns, especially in the vicinity of Lhasa, have been the leaders of protests against the Chinese, calling for Tibetan independence in a Buddhist vocabulary. These demonstrations reached their peak in 1987 and 1988, at the time the Dalai Lama was making his proposals before the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament. Buddhism has become a focus of resistance, in part because its practice has been suppressed by the Chinese and because its embodiment, the Dalai Lama, has been forced from Tibet; his anticipated return has taken on messianic proportions in Tibet. This is not to suggest that all Tibetan resistance has been nonviolent. Occasional bombings continue to be reported by the Chinese. For a study of Tibetan resistance during the 1987–88 period, see Ronald D. Schwartz, Circle of Protest: Political Ritual in the Tibetan Uprising (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). See also Elliot Sperling, “The Rhetoric of Dissent,” in Resistance and Reform in Tibet, ed. Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 267–84. See also Jamyang Norbu, “The Tibetan Resistance Movement and the Role of the C.I.A.,” in the same volume. Such scholarship suggests that the Tibetans in Tibet are not passive victims of Chinese rule. On the current state of Buddhism in Tibet, see Melvyn Goldstein and Matthew Kapstein, eds., Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).