... I again sought the counsel of the oracle. To my astonishment, he shouted, 'Go! Go! Tonight!' The medium, still in his trance, then staggered forward and , snatching up some paper and a pen, wrote down, quite clearly and explicitly, the route that I should take out of the Norbulingka, down to the last Tibetan town on the Indian border. His directions were not what might have been expected. That done, the medium, a young monk named Lobsang Jigme, collapsed in a faint, signifying that Dorje Drakden had left his body. Just then, as if to reinforce the oracle's instructions, two mortar shells exploded in the marsh outside the northern gate of the Jewel Park.

At nightfall he went to the shrine dedicated to Mahakala, his personal protector divinity, and presented a kata, a length of white silk, to the divinity, a traditional gesture on departure signifying not only propitiation but also implying the intention of return. Then

At a few minutes before ten o'clock, now wearing unfamiliar trousers and a long, black coat, I threw a rifle over my right shoulder and, rolled up, an old thangka [a religious painting] that had belonged to the Second Dalai Lama over my left. Then slipping my glasses into my pocket, I stepped outside.

There followed an excruciating three-week trek across the Himalayas through blizzards and rainstorms, before the Dalai Lama, now very ill from dysentery, arrived on the back of a yak at a small Indian outpost on the border with Tibet. He was all of twenty three years old.

Nine years earlier, in October of 1950, news had reached Lhasa

... that an army of 80,000 soldiers of the [People's Liberation Army] PLA had crossed the Drichu River east of Chamdo. Reports on Chinese Radio announced that, on the anniversary of the Communists coming to power in China, the 'peaceful liberation' of Tibet had begun.

The oracle was consulted on the question of whether the youngster, 16 years old at the time, should be enthroned as the leader of the Tibetan people. The answer was unequivocal:

the kuten, tottering under the weight of his huge, ceremonial head-dress, came over to where I sat and laid a kata, a white silk offering scarf, on my lap with the words 'Thu-la bap', 'His time has come'.

The problem the young leader would face was enormous. Over the years that followed the People's Liberation Army would advance from the east towards Lhasa visiting unspeakable horrors on the population, while meeting fierce, but futile, resistance. His older brother, Taktser Rinpoche, would seek help from the CIA, a move that the young Dalai Lama was very sceptical about, and which would cause some tension with the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru later:

Firstly, it was obvious to me that the most likely result of a pact with America or anyone else was war. And war meant bloodshed. Secondly, I reasoned that although America was a very powerful country, it was thousands of miles away. China, on the other hand, was our neighbour and, whilst materially less powerful than the United States, easily had numerical superiority. It might therefore take many years to resolve the dispute by armed struggle. Furthermore, America was a democracy and I could not believe that her people would put up with unlimited casualties. It was easy to imagine a time when we Tibetans would be on our own once more. The result would then be the same, China would have her way, and in the interim, there would have been the loss of countless lives, Tibetan, Chinese and American, all to no purpose whatever.

Not a bad analysis for a teenager.

There would follow a period where the Dalai Lama would try diplomacy. In 1954 the Dalai Lama travelled two thousand roadless miles to China, to meet with Prime Minister Chou En-Lai and with the Chairman himself. And the young Dalai Lama was impressed:

The more I looked at Marxism, the more I liked it. Here was a system based on equality and justice for everyone, which claimed to be a panacea for all the world's ills.

Where he parted ways with Marxism was that it was purely materialistic, which of course he could not agree with. But all the same

I felt sure, as I still do, that it would be possible to work out a synthesis of Buddhist and pure Marxist doctrines that really would prove to be an effective way of conducting politics.

However, he would be shocked and brutally disappointed when at their very last meeting, in an astonishingly wrong reading of the Dalai Lama's thinking, Mao told him his true feelings about religion:

Finally, he drew closer to me and said, 'Your attitude is good, you know. Religion is poison. Firstly it reduces the population, because monks and nuns must stay celibate, and secondly it neglects material progress'. At this I felt a violent burning sensation all over my face and I was suddenly very afraid. 'So,' I thought, 'you are the destroyer of the Dharma after all.'

Protecting the Dharma, the Buddha's teachings, is the very reason for the existence of the Dalai Lama across the centuries. It's the reason why the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was reincarnated in the little boy that not so many years before had been playing happily in his parents' farm. It's the reason why thousands of Tibetans would happily give their lives to protect him no matter what. It's why they had wept when they saw him leave. It's why when the oracle told him he had to “go tonight” he slung a rifle over his shoulder and grabbed a centuries-old painting of a protector deity that had been in his possession from many lifetimes before.

The next few years would be for the Dalai Lama a struggle to decide whether to stay in Tibet or not. At his first meeting with Nehru, which happened before the fateful decision to go, the Prime Minister would counsel him to stay, but gradually he would be persuaded that there was really no alternative. Not only for his own safety, but more importantly for the safety of his people, he would have to leave, and this time Nehru would agree. The exodus, the reconstruction of the temples, and the creation of a new Tibetan society in exile, would take a great effort over many years.

In 2019, when the Dalai Lama was 84 years old, I had the privilege of hearing him speak at Loseling in Karnataka State in India, next to the reconstructed Drepung temple. As a crew of young monks weaved their way with giant teapots among the thousands who had come from near and far to listen to his words, delivering tea and the small and tasty tsampa balls made of barley flour and tea that Tibetans love, making sure that absolutely everyone was fed, I listened to a translator over a small radio that we foreigners had been outfitted with. “I am a messenger of Avalokiteshvara, of great compassion” he said, “I will be by your side when you die”. I know he will, and that is of great comfort to me.

#DalaiLama #Religion #Buddhism

I know of two ways in which the concept of rebirth is discussed. One is when ordinary people like you or me think about death and it goes something like this: if someone was, let's say, a habitual abuser of animals, then they will probably come back as an animal.

This is easy to interpret. It's a way of getting them to put themselves in the place of others. Maybe that will change the way they behave towards them.

The other context in which I have heard the idea of rebirth is when it applies to people like the Dalai Lama. When his predecessor died, a search party was sent out to find a young child as whom he would have been reborn. Indeed they found a two-year-old boy who appeared to know certain things that his predecessor would have known. So he was enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama, and taken from his remote village to the capital of Lhasa to live in the very ancient palace that has been the home of all of them for centuries, and trained in his role by a team of strict tutors.

In his autobiography the Dalai Lama mentions that he is just another monk. Being the Dalai Lama is his role. The role of the Dalai Lama is to preserve and protect the dharma, and the people. When Tenzin Gyatso is asked if he really believes in rebirth, he replies “It's complicated.”

The fact is, there is a continuity in the lives of the different occupants of the title of Dalai Lama. It's easy to understand why, as they all occupy the same home and brought up and educated in exactly the same way. In a very real sense, the Dalai Lama continues to be reborn, and with him the Tibetan people and their buddhist tradition.

What the idea of the Dalai Lama being reborn again and again produces is an exceptionally resilient and united people, unperturbed by inner conflict, and confident in the leadership of someone who is centuries old, the eternal physical manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, of great compassion. The Tibetan people understand this very clearly. Without that understanding, they would have been lost. The continued rebirth of the Dalai Lama is real, with profound and very real consequences.

#DalaiLama #Buddhism #Religion