The story of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people's campaign to remain autonomous is so bizarre to western eyes that one could well question what lessons could possibly be drawn that would be relevant to us. (Oracles falling into a trance? Rebirth? Seriously?) But this story is in the end about issues that are universal: power, equality, autonomy, security. It allows us to see these issues from a completely different direction, and thus perhaps lead to entirely new ideas about our perhaps too familiar western liberal democracies. So humour me please, as I try to draw some conclusions relevant to you and me from this strange story about Tibetans following a beloved monk across the Himalayas by the thousands.

On authority and power

It is clear that the authority of the Dalai Lama—and I am referring here to the centuries old figure, not the 14th Dalai Lama in particular— is never under question. He is respected and loved. People are willing to give up their lives for him. He consults with advisers and ministers, and even oracles, but in the end the decisions are his. That's how the system works, and that's how it's worked forever and will continue to do so.

It might seem strange that such a system does not descend into authoritarianism. But there's a good reason why this doesn't happen. The antidote against authoritarianism is built into the system by ensuring the Dalai Lama truly works for the benefit of the people. That's what happens when you isolate and carefully educate someone from the age of two.

“Democracy”

Compare this with what we understand as democracy today. This is a system born out of popular uprisings against the authority of an absolute monarch: the French Revolution and the American Revolution at the end of the 1700s, and the gradual shift of power from the monarch to parliament that we might call the British Revolution, which includes a period of civil war in the 1600s.

These revolutions in turn inspired similar movements in other countries, against their own monarchies or remote colonial masters, displacing the power of a few into power of the many. Or at least presumably that was the intention. With variations, the resulting system is essentially the same: an elected legislature with the power to make laws, an executive with the power to send bills to the legislature [1], and most importantly to regulate and implement the law, and a judiciary that settles disputes and punishes law breakers. And last but certainly not least, an armed police to enforce the law and keep everyone in line: we must not forget that a police force is an essential component of the system. Without one, it doesn't work.

In such a system, power is delegated to elected representatives [2]. The citizens themselves are reduced to voting for someone every few years. They have zero power.

Electoral democracy is a mechanism for allocating power (hopefully) without bloodshed

What grew out of those violent uprisings against absolute monarchies was a compromise to allocate power by some means that could be deemed to be fair, and hopefully non-violent. This is why there is such horror today of contested elections. It will take Americans a long time to digest the events of January 6, 2021 when the Capitol was stormed by a large and definitely violent mob.

But the process is still intrinsically adversarial and competitive, and winner-takes-all. This is key: the winner is handed near-absolute power; the result is essentially a dictatorship. The only thing that distinguishes electoral democracy from absolute power is term limits: every few years, there is a vote.

Who actually gets the power?

Not the citizens. The citizens have zero power. And anyone who has lived in such a system for a while knows that, with very rare exceptions, the people who get into power as their representatives do not represent the best interests of the community. Rather, they represent specific interests, generally revolving around money.

The battle for power never ends

There is no end to the competition for power. What we call democracy is simply an eternal competition for the minds of the voters, waged with all the marketing techniques crafted by the rich experience of sellers of things, with a prize to be awarded every few years. It is a substitute for the hereditary system of kings, interrupted only by the occasional palace rebellion or bloody popular uprising.

“Democracy” is not a system of government. It is the same ancient competition, just with rules to prevent bloodshed.

So you see my fascination with the politics of Tibet: There is simply no competition for power: No warring political parties, no campaign rhetoric, no false promises, no lies.

However, as we have seen, this is not enough. There is another requirement: the state should be run for the benefit of the citizens, and no one else.

The antidote to authoritarianism

There is a way for the citizens to gain power in a “democracy”, albeit indirectly: they can vote in true representatives who will act according to the best interests of the people. Again, we see this with the traditional role of the Dalai Lama: by careful training from an early age, he is guaranteed to believe only in serving others. By the time the Dalai Lama reaches adulthood he has fully internalized the bodhisattva's vow to live for the benefit of all beings. Including of course his fellow Tibetans.

Very occasionally an electoral democracy produces an Olof Palme or a Jacinda Ardern , but the system soon reverts to its natural state of bitter competition between people not at all driven by a will to serve the community, and protect it from the ambitions of this or that special interest. Jacinda Ardern burns out, Olof Palme is assassinated. Liberal democracy has no mechanism to ensure the people's representatives really represent their best interests.

The challenge

So maybe the Tibetan model is not easily transferable to other societies. But the question still remains whether real democracy, without the quotation marks, can still be achieved. What Tibet teaches us is that we have to

• move beyond the eternal, never resolved, adversarial competition for power, and

• find a mechanism for assigning power to people who are guaranteed to represent the best interests of the community.

I don't have a complete and satisfactory answer to this challenge, although I have a few ideas which I will explore in the future, and maybe you do too. But I am certain of one thing: I am not going to waste my time clinging to the illusion that “democracy” is the only possibility.

#democracy #politics #DalaiLama

[1] In a parliamentary system, the executive is part of the legislature, but the idea is the same.

[2] But not always. In a republic, the executive chooses their own ministers, who are not elected. This is a serious vulnerability in the system, if the ministers are powerful enough.

... 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

The Tibetan process for selecting a leader is, on the face of it, irrational and absurd, and could not possibly work. Our “democratic” process for selecting political leaders, on the contrary, is exquisitely rational and fair. But—and I can see you rolling your eyes now— the Tibetan process produces a great leader that saves thousands of his people and the key institutions of his nation strictly non-violently, and creates a stable society for future generations in exile. Our “democratic” process produces the most incompetent, narcissistic, destructive leaders possible. We're ecstatic when, very occasionally, it produces a functioning human being, like Justin Trudeau.

We spend a lot of time pulling our hair out at the last outrages from the likes of Trump or Poilievre or Farage or Milei or ... and rightly so, of course. But I don't think we ever raise our eyes to look more broadly at the political system that produces these leaders regularly. One of the things I want to do with these posts is to start analyzing why “democracy” fails so spectacularly at producing even moderately competent leaders. This is a systemic failure, and to repair it we need to try to understand the mechanisms that cause it to happen.

Having said that, please grab the popcorn and find a comfortable chair, for the next part of the story gets really dramatic.

[1] As you can probably tell, I don't agree that the political systems of countries like Canada and many others is even remotely democratic. So I denote such systems with quotation marks. I call them “democracies”. So “undemocratic” here means not following the rules of “democracy”. Of course that begs the question of what democracy, without the quotes, actually might be. That is something to be explored in the future.

[2] It turned out spectacularly well.

#DalaiLama #leadership #FalseDemocracy

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

On March 17 1959 the 24-year-old Dalai Lama left the capital of Lhasa on a two-week journey across the Himalayas into India, as the Chinese military occupied Tibet, overcoming a tenacious resistance. He was accompanied by a small retinue of about 100 people, but many thousands more would follow him into safety in India.

The boy who would become Tenzin Gyatso had been discovered by a search team that had set out to find the child who was the reincarnation of the 13th. Dalai Lama. They found a two-year-old in a village in the Qinghai province of China who fit the bill:

The Lama Kewtsang Rinpoche of Sera Monastery was disguised in a cloak, but round his neck he was wearing a rosary which had belonged to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. The little boy seemed to recognize the rosary, and he asked to be given it. The lama promised to give it to him if he could guess who he was, and the boy replied that he was Sera-aga, which meant, in the local dialect, “a lama of Sera.” The lama asked who the “master” was, and the boy gave the name of Losang. He also knew the name of the real servant, which was Amdo Kasang.

The lama spent the whole day watching the little boy with increasing interest, until it was time for the boy to be put to bed. All the party stayed in the house for the night, and early the next morning, when they were making ready to leave, the boy got out of his bed and insisted that he wanted to go with them. (My Land and My People—the original autobiography of His Holiness the Dalai Lama)

The child was taken to Lhasa and formally enthroned at the age of four. He grew up only surrounded by monks whose job it was to give the future spiritual leader of the Tibetan people the appropriate education. He was all of 16 years old when he took on the job. Eight years later he would be crossing the Himalayas, travelling by night to avoid detection, for the sake of Buddha, dharma and sangha [1], to find a new home in India.

During the next few years the Dalai Lama would have long meetings and permanent communication with the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. While there would always be some tension between the two leaders – Nehru was understandably anxious not to do anything that might provoke China – there is no doubt that the Indian PM was sympathetic to the plight of the Tibetans, and specifically the immediate situation of the brave mountain people that had followed their leader into a new territory for which they were not at all prepared.

One main concern the Dalai Lama expressed was the education of the children and youth that were migrating, only slightly younger than himself. Nehru agreed to create schools to accommodate the children, and prepare them to access higher education in India's polytechnics and universities. Without such an opportunity, the Dalai Lama argued, his people would eventually flounder, never being able to integrate into Indian society. This did not happen because the Dalai Lama, and Nehru, were thinking ahead and understood deeply the value of passing on knowledge between generations.

But the Chinese occupation had created another serious educational problem: the training of the monks themselves. There were three major training monasteries in the Gelug tradition of the Dalai Lama in Tibet, going back to the early 1400s: Drepung, Ganden, and Sera. They had all been overrun by the Chinese.

So of course the Tibetans rebuilt them in India. They had been given and to establish a colony in Karnataka state in the south of India and there they built three monasteries with their temples called by exactly the same names: Drepung, Ganden and Sera.

This is where I was headed when I had landed in Mumbai at 1 am and experiencing that “what I am doing” feeling. But before I tell you the rest of that story, I have to talk a bit more about the Dalai Lama.

[1] The three treasures of buddhism: the Buddha himself; the Buddha's teachings; and the buddhist community.

#DalaiLama #Religion #Education