The Dalai Lama — not just a simple Buddhist monk
The present (14th) Dalai Lama’s given name is Tenzin Gyatso. He’s addressed by most Westerners as ‘Your Holiness,’ and by most Tibetans as ‘Kundun’ — The Presence.
The Dalai Lamas are regarded as the principal incarnation of Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion and patron deity of Tibet.
Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, likes to present himself as a simple Buddhist monk. However, he‘s also the temporal leader of Tibetans in exile, and was for most of his life head of the Tibetan Government in Exile (now the democratically elected Central Tibetan Administration). The Dalai Lama is also a Nobel peace laureate and a charismatic icon of Buddhism who draws crowds wherever he goes. A seventy-something man in reasonable health, he pursues a punishing travel regime and teaches the ancient texts of Tibetan Buddhism to scholarly gatherings as well as neophyte audiences. He’s on the board of many charitable organizations, most notably the Mind & Life Institute. He’s considered by many Tibetans to be the enlightened incarnation of Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion, and is unofficially but effectively a good will ambassador to the world. He is reviled by the Chinese government, which accuses him of wanting to split Tibet from China, even though he never asks for more than Tibet’s ‘autonomy.’
Above and beyond all of these appelations, the Dalai Lama is an institution, one to which the man Tenzin Gyatso must at times submit. As a young man just escaped from the invading Chinese, he acknowledged that he’d been freed from a gilded cage. Indeed, the life of a Dalai Lama in Tibet was neither secure nor enviable (see History, below).
Since settling in India he has worked tirelessly to promote Tibetan Buddhism, with considerable success. In fact, despite the intrigues, schisms and scandals that are as ubiquitous in exile as they were in Tibet’s days of lofty isolation, he and his people enjoy a largely stainless media image — at least in the West. Lifelong refugees, they manage public relations with consummate skill; without a country of their own, they’ve amassed considerable wealth, building gilded monasteries, temples and stupas and clothing themselves in fine silks.
History of the Dalai Lamas
The title ‘Dalai Lama’ is not Tibetan but Mongolian, and was coined in 1578 by the Altan Khan, whose aid was enlisted by Sonam Gyatso. Sonam was the third Dalai Lama but the first to use the appelation; the title was applied retrospectively to his two previous incarnations.
By the 1570s, the office of the Dalai Lama dominated the Yellow Hat (Gelugpa) sect which controlled Tibet. Since then, the official Gelugpa leader, the Ganden Tripa, has remained in thrall of the Dalai Lama’s office.
It’s more practical to speak of the office than the man because between the seventh and the thirteenth, only one reached his majority. The ninth died at eleven, the tenth, eleventh and twelfth at eighteen. Some were poisoned by loyal Tibetans for being Chinese-appointed impostors, others by the Chinese for being unmanageable. Meanwhile, regents managed – if they survived – and the office flourished.
Tibetans respond to the
Dalai Lama with
reverence, awe and – not unusually – abasement
The Dalai Lama is not just a man, but an institution
Although the Chinese authorities have a point in lamenting Tibet’s medieval past, horrific penal system and lack of infrastructure, it’s played its own intrigues with abandon, manipulating such theocratic institutions as the Panchen Lama and the administration of monasteries and sects within Chinese controlled Tibet. The eventual death of the fourteenth Dalai Lama promises to produce a war of words as Beijing manouvers itself to declare his successor. Meanwhile, Tibetans in exile wrestle with the possibility that there may be no fifteenth – or at least, not one they can trust.
Scandals & intrigues
The inner workings of Tibetan lamaism in exile are as archaic and entangled as ever; see for example the Dorje Shugden affair.
Today, hundreds of Tibetan lamas in exile live in comfort, tour the world and are attended by adoring devotees. Most seem authentic, but one assumes that abuse happens. Indeed, Sogyal Rinpoche, given up by the Dalai Lama himself, settled a sexual abuse lawsuit out of court without releasing details, and yet remains one of the most sought-after teachers in the blogosphere.
It’s easy to point the finger at public figures. They may be blameworthy, but that begs the ubiquitous fact of human self-deceit. Those who approach religion from a fear of death or for the consolation of being ‘right’ or ‘chosen’ are both vulnerable and wishful, two attitudes rarely addressed by Tibetan teachers except as ways to ‘open one’s heart and mind.’
King Pasenadi once asked the Buddha how he would consider someone to have, “…achieved enlightenment, or freedom from birth and death, or even to have entered upon such a path?” The Buddha replied, “It is difficult to know these things. Only by staying with people for a long time and paying close attention to them can you come to know them well enough to answer that. You only find out how strong a man is by observing him under adversity. Just as you can only learn how wise he is by talking with him.”
I have met the Dalai Lama; I liked him and was impressed by his learning and his demeanor. Nevertheless, I never tire of impressing on people that even if they consider him a fully awakened buddha, they’re still responsible for their own awakening. Even more perilously, the whole world may believe a thing, but that doesn’t make it true. If you intend to invest your spiritual hopes in one man, or in one race or religion or sect, then you should be discriminating in the most skeptical and penetrating ways you can muster. This is the very essence of what the Buddha taught.
For more information about the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans and life as a Buddhist monk, read Stephen Schettini’s The Novice: Why I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I Quit and What I Learned (Greenleaf Book Group Press, Sept 2009).
