Tibet Crisis

Sonam Gyatso, who met the Mongol khan, was the third in his line of incarnation, and his two predecessors came to be posthumously regarded as the first and second Dalai Lamas. After his death, the fourth Dalai Lama was discovered in the khan’s family. Perhaps the most famous of the Dalai Lamas (apart from the current one), was the fifth, who, with the support of Mongol troops, assumed the Tibetan throne in 1642. He was the first of the Dalai Lamas to also hold secular power; it was the “Great Fifth,” as the Tibetans call him, who built the massive Potala palace in Lhasa. The sixth Dalai Lama was less interested in the life of the Buddhist monk than his predecessors; he is the author of the most famous love poetry in Tibetan. Several of the Dalai Lamas of the nineteenth century died young, perhaps as a result of palace intrigue. The thirteenth Dalai Lama confronted colonialism in the form of both British and Chinese armies, freeing Tibet from Chinese suzerainty in 1913 and striving, with mixed success, to introduce a range of reforms into Tibet, including a modern military.

Which brings us to the fourteenth, and current, Dalai Lama. After the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1933, the Tibetan government sent groups of monks throughout Tibet in search of his successor. One team eventually arrived in the far northeast corner of the Tibetan cultural domain and knocked at a farmhouse door. The team was led by a prominent monk, disguised as a servant. Around his neck, he wore a rosary that had belonged to the thirteenth Dalai Lama. A woman opened the door, holding a toddler. The child grabbed the rosary and said, “That’s mine.” After performing the traditional tests and divinations, it was concluded that the child was in fact the new Dalai Lama. He was taken on horseback and palanquin across Tibet to Lhasa, a journey of three months. He was enthroned as the fourteenth Dalai Lama on February 22, 1940. Foreign dignitaries, present at the ceremony, marveled at the composure of the four-year-old.

His religious education began immediately, tutored by the leading scholars of the day. That education continued unhindered until 1950, when troops of the Peoples Liberation Army invaded eastern Tibet, determined to “return Tibet to the Chinese motherland.” They marched into Lhasa the following year. The Dalai Lama traveled to Beijing in 1954, where he met with Chairman Mao, who famously confided, “Religion is poison.” Upon the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet, relations between the Tibetan people and the Chinese army of occupation became increasingly tense, culminating in an uprising in March 1959. During the confusion in the capital, the Dalai Lama was able to escape from Lhasa to cross the Himalayas, on foot and on horseback, the Chinese troops who pursued him deterred by Tibetan guerrillas. The Dalai Lama and his party crossed the border into India on March 31, 1959, where he was granted asylum by Prime Minister Nehru. He has not returned to Tibet in the half century since then. Over those fifty years, the Dalai Lama has devoted himself to the cause of independence (he now calls instead for autonomy) for Tibet and the preservation of Tibetan culture in exile; several hundred thousand Tibetans have followed him over the mountains in the intervening decades.

In 1979, he made his first trip to the United States. In 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Especially since 1989, the Dalai Lama, once a figure shrouded in mystery (the “Grand Lama” or “High Lama” of so many Victorian travelogues and novels) has become something of a celebrity, and certainly the world’s most famous Buddhist. Buddhism has no pope or central church; the Dalai Lama’s authority is formally recognized only in Tibetan Buddhism, although he is today widely respected across the Buddhist world. That respect derives in part from his office, but it derives in larger part from his person. Despite the grandeur of his life in Lhasa, in exile he has always worn the robes of a common Buddhist monk. And despite the adulation he evokes, he (unlike so many other gurus, East and West) has maintained high ethical standards, untainted by scandal. He has traveled the world, making the case for Tibet in capitals around the globe. At the same time, he has fulfilled his traditional role as a Buddhist teacher. When he teaches in Tibetan, he reveals his skills as a consummate scholar of Buddhist thought and practice. When he teaches in English, he offers a simpler message, emphasizing the central role that compassion plays in all religions, and in civil society, urging his listeners to act for others, regardless of their religious affiliation, or lack of same. He discourages people from converting to Buddhism.

In July, the Dalai Lama will turn seventy-three; only the first Dalai Lama lived longer. The Chinese government awaits his death, hoping to consolidate their power in the long interregnum between the passing of the fourteenth and the time when the fifteenth reaches his majority. As he grows older, questions about the future abound. Where will he be reborn? If he is born in exile, as he has promised to do, will the Chinese discover their own candidate, resulting in dueling Dalai Lamas? And as he grows older, the Tibetan community in India (where the largest number of exiles live) has implored him to travel less. He himself has expressed the wish to spend more time in meditation retreat.

The Tibetans do not refer to him as the Dalai Lama. Among his epithets, perhaps the most common is Yishin Norbu, the “Wish Granting Jewel.” In Buddhism, a jewel is defined as something difficult to find and, if found, of great value.

Donald Lopez is Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan.

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