on Tibet

Since a band of blue-tracksuited thugs began herding the Olympic flame around the globe following so soon after ethnic riots in Tibet, the cause of Tibetan nationalism, embodied in the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama, has never been higher profile. Of course for decades since the Chinese army expelled the ruling elite from Tibet and officially annexed it as a province of greater China, the Free Tibet movement has maintained a core support from a rag-tag band of activists, students and politicians. With celebrity endorsement and the unstinting PR campaign from the exiled Dalai Lama himself, not to mention depiction in a Hollywood film, Tibet has been firmly fixed as one of the those places in the world where ‘something bad is happening’. Chuck in a Nobel Peace Prize for the Dalai Lama himself, a virtual secular sainthood, and even as success breeds a degree of rehabilitation for China, Tibet remains firmly a classic case of good versus evil. But, at least to me, a sense of unease accompanies the narrative of Tibetan nationalism. Perhaps unsurprisingly in a world of shallow dramatised public debate, there is surely so much more to be said, so many more shades of grey obscured as one or another world leader rushes to be seen at a joint press conference with the Dalai Lama, or condemn gross human rights abuses to an approving western audience (albeit whilst simultaneously trying to drop a reassuring wink at the Chinese leadership).

At its forefront lies the Dalai Lama himself, the man whom the Chinese leadership seems to intent on somewhat irrationally painting as the anti-Christ, at least partly no doubt in reaction to the reverence in which he is held in the western world. Partly for his message of spirituality and peace, but probably more for the fame his exile has brought him, he has come to be bracketed among the likes of Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter or Desmond Tutu as a freelance moral authority, something of a thinking-man’s pope. But this global assumption obscures the question of just what or who the Dalai Lama is.

The position of Dalai Lama (literally “Ocean Teacher” – teacher who is spiritually as deep as the ocean), the leader of Tibetan Buddhists worldwide, is filled by what is believed to be the reincarnation of the Buddhist Master(s) who, through reaching enlightenment, escaped the wheel of life and death but have elected of their own free will to continue to be reborn in human form in order to teach mankind. Upon the death of the Dalai Lama, a search begins in consultation with the Nechung Oracle, to find his reincarnation who must then undergo a training whereby eventually he full embodies the ‘mindstream’ of the Dalai Lama and is able to take up his position as the next Dalai Lama.

We tend to spell enlightenment with a capital “E” in the West, and I doubt too many people (Richard Gere perhaps excepted) would take this meta-physical jump. Indeed if it is true it must simply be coincidence that the emergence and persistence of the Dalai Lama is intimately connected to dominant power structures.

Created in 1578 out of the position of Grand Lama, a position created by Emperor Kublai Khan to govern the other Lamas (“teachers”), the title of Dalai Lama was first bestowed upon Sonam Gyatso, the de-facto (Chinese-backed) spiritual ruler of Tibet. Depending on who you believe, the title was either given to him by the Mongolian ruler Altan Khan (Mongolia then also being part of the Chinese empire), or, according to the present Dalai Lama, was merely a term of high esteem the emperor used to address Sonam Gyatso which simply ‘stuck’ and became his adopted title. Still other accounts suggest the title was most actively promoted by the man himself. Sonam Gyatso then post-humously recognised two previous incarnations of himself thus making him not the first Dalai Lama, but in fact the third, and so begun the line that stretches to the present and 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.

Rather than being a predominantly spiritual position the Dalai Lama’s emergence was thus inherently political. From a Buddhist perspective however, this needn't matter. The desired spiritual event was brought about even within a corrupt and unjust system. Events must follow their course.

However the theocracy not only emerged and flourished in a corrupt political environment, but its religious teachings actively buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives. This form of violence enforced a rigid and oppressive feudal hierarchy, in which the peasantry suffered as near slaves until the Chinese occupation in 1949. Far from being the oppressors of the Tibetans at that time, the Chinese occupiers actually abolished the feudal structures that underpinned Tibetan society. The (CIA funded) resistance movement that until the 1960s fought a sporadic guerrilla campaign was neither supported by the majority of the population, nor fighting for spiritual or cultural freedom. With the Dalai Lama as its figurehead it consisted largely of the dispossessed Tibetan ruling elites and their supporters looking to regain control of their lands and the people who worked them.

Perhaps, following in a similar vein of logic as before, the Dalai Lama survives these facts relatively untouched. Whatever matrices of power he was a part of and exploited by, the Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader who was not responsible for the material conditions that surrounded him. Yet the behaviour of the Dalai Lama(s) themselves throughout history has been anything but indicative of spiritual enlightenment. For example, on acceding to power the 3rd(/1st) Dalai Lama seized monasteries from competing sects and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that did not accord with his new claim to divinity. His successor, the 4th(/2nd) Dalai Lama led a wild lifestyle of parties, mystresses and general excess, behaviour hardly befitting his incarnate status. For this he was consequently murdered, a fate no fewer than 5 other Dalai Lama’s were to share for reasons Jigme Norbu, the elder brother of the present Dalai Lama, argues were almost certainly either “for being Chinese-appointed impostors, or by the Chinese for not being properly manageable”.

Maybe the present Dalai Lama should not be burdened with the mistakes of history (though are they not technically his own mistakes?), but even in his present incarnation he has exercised some pretty questionable judgement. Since he fled from Tibet Tenzin Gyatso has travelled the world at least ostensibly promoting the cause of Tibetan independence, or, in recent years the more pragmatic cause of Tibetan autonomy within China. Keeping an exiled government in place is not cheap, and it has led him to associate with some dubious people. Following donations to the Tibettan cause by Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult which carried out the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, the Dalai Lama repeatedly wrote certificates or letters of recommendation for Shoko Asahara to the authorities of Tokyo, hailing Shoko Asahara as “a very capable religious teacher” and hoping the authorities would “allow the Aum Shinrikyo Sect to be exempted from tax payments and propagandize its credo”. It is one thing to accept donations from dubious sources in the name of a greater good (though perhaps better should be expected from a man of the status of the Dalai Lama), but the support of the Dalai Lama went far beyond this. The German weekly Focus reported that without the his help, it would have been absolutely impossible for Shoko Asahara to build up his sect empire and, within a short period of very few years, gain status as a cult leader in Japan.

None of this is allowed to form part of the public perception of the Dalai Lama, nor the cause of Tibettan nationalism. China is without doubt engaged in a sort of non-violent ethnic cleansing in an attempt to settle the question of its sovereignty in Tibet, but despite this the irony is that Tibet and the Dalai Lama, both of whose past tells a story less of spiritual enlightenment than the complex and dirty web of power in which we all are wrapped, are once more enjoying a resurgence not for the moral urgency of their cause but precisely because of the dynamics of dominant power structures today. An emergent, seemingly increasingly powerful China, at once inspires fear and fascination from the rest of the world. At a time when it is about to hold the Olympic Games, in many ways the crowning glory of liberal internationalism, China is coming under increasing pressure to show it will play by the rules of an international system it did not shape, and indeed played at least some role in its historic subjugation. But perhaps the lesson from history is that this latest outburst in Tibet points to China’s continued weakness at a time when everyone seems to obsess about its emergent strengths. China’s control has never been absolute in Tibet. It has tended to follow that as the central authority’s power has weakened, so Tibet’s autonomy has risen to the point where it operated as a virtual independent state. As the Chinese leadership seeks to re-define itself, an increasingly conscious population is engaged in a variety of struggles for rights and freedoms. The question is whether in Tibet, those would be better provided in the long-term by the return of the exiled Tibetan leadership or not. Maybe, just maybe, the question is more open than many realise.