even as the Dalai Lama claims to be unconcerned about all the complications that arise as Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism go around the world, his kid brother (who shed the monastic robes into which he was born) is outspoken in calling the situation “a hell of a hodgepodge,” and referring to the West’s infatuation with Tibet, and the Tibetans who make corrupt use of that, as “the Shangri-La syndrome.”
Even for those who understand it, after all, Tibetan Buddhism is a vividly charged and esoteric body of teachings, a “unique blend,” as the British judge and Buddhist scholar Christmas Humphreys once wrote, “of the noblest Buddhist principles and debased sorcery.” Its core, as with all Buddhism, is a belief in suffering and emptiness, and the need for compassion in the face of those. But unlike the stripped-down austerities of Zen, say, it swarms with animist spirits, pictures of copulating deities, and Tantric practices of sexuality and magic that, in the wrong hands, or without the proper training, can be inflammable.
The Dalai Lama’s very equanimity and his refusal to be autocratic (even if he had the time) have left him relatively powerless as all kinds of questionable things are done in the name of his philosophy. Unlike their Catholic counterparts, he says, Tibetan and Buddhist groups “have no central authority. They’re all quite independent.” To top things off, three-hundred-year-old rivalries that used to be conducted in the privacy of the Himalaya are now played out on the world’s front pages.
Five years ago, with no help from the Chinese, an unseemly mess broke out when two six-year-old boys were presented as the new incarnation of the high Karmapa lineage, one of them endorsed by the Dalai Lama, the other by friends of the departed lama’s family. One of the most prominent lamas in the West was banned from entering America for many years after a $10 million sexual harassment suit was brought against him; perhaps the most famous rinpoche in the West was notorious for his women, his drinking, and his brutal bodyguards, and left a community riddled with AIDS. Not long ago, three members of the Dalai Lama’s inner circle were found murdered in their beds, the victims, it was supposed, of some complex internecine rivalry.
The Dalai Lama takes all this in stride—he was putting down insurrections at the age of eleven, after all—but the whole issue of authority (when to enforce it, and how to delegate it) takes on a special urgency as he moves towards his seventies. The finding of a new Dalai Lama when all of Tibet is in Chinese hands would in the best of circumstances be treacherous; it became doubly so three years ago when Beijing unilaterally hijacked the second-highest incarnation in Tibet, that of the Panchen Lama, placing the Dalai Lama’s six-year-old choice under house arrest and installing a candidate of its own. (The Panchen Lama, by tradition, is the figure officially responsible for authorizing the Dalai Lama’s own incarnation, and the maneuver suggested that the Chinese may have few qualms about coming up with their own puppet as the next Dalai Lama.)
In response to this, the Dalai Lama has been typically canny. More than a decade ago, he reminds me, he said, “If I die in the near future, and the Tibetan people want another reincarnation, a Fifteenth Dalai Lama, while we are still outside Tibet, my reincarnation will definitely appear outside Tibet. Because”— the logic, as ever, is impeccable—“the very purpose of the incarnation is to fulfill the work that has been started by the previous life.” So, he goes on, “the reincarnation of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, logically, will not be a reincarnation which disturbs, or is an obstacle to, that work. Quite clear, isn’t it?” In any case, he says cheerfully, “at a certain stage the Dalai Lama institution will disappear. That does not mean that Tibetan Buddhism will cease. But the incarnation comes and goes, comes
Even for those who understand it, after all, Tibetan Buddhism is a vividly charged and esoteric body of teachings, a “unique blend,” as the British judge and Buddhist scholar Christmas Humphreys once wrote, “of the noblest Buddhist principles and debased sorcery.” Its core, as with all Buddhism, is a belief in suffering and emptiness, and the need for compassion in the face of those. But unlike the stripped-down austerities of Zen, say, it swarms with animist spirits, pictures of copulating deities, and Tantric practices of sexuality and magic that, in the wrong hands, or without the proper training, can be inflammable.
The Dalai Lama’s very equanimity and his refusal to be autocratic (even if he had the time) have left him relatively powerless as all kinds of questionable things are done in the name of his philosophy. Unlike their Catholic counterparts, he says, Tibetan and Buddhist groups “have no central authority. They’re all quite independent.” To top things off, three-hundred-year-old rivalries that used to be conducted in the privacy of the Himalaya are now played out on the world’s front pages.
Five years ago, with no help from the Chinese, an unseemly mess broke out when two six-year-old boys were presented as the new incarnation of the high Karmapa lineage, one of them endorsed by the Dalai Lama, the other by friends of the departed lama’s family. One of the most prominent lamas in the West was banned from entering America for many years after a $10 million sexual harassment suit was brought against him; perhaps the most famous rinpoche in the West was notorious for his women, his drinking, and his brutal bodyguards, and left a community riddled with AIDS. Not long ago, three members of the Dalai Lama’s inner circle were found murdered in their beds, the victims, it was supposed, of some complex internecine rivalry.
The Dalai Lama takes all this in stride—he was putting down insurrections at the age of eleven, after all—but the whole issue of authority (when to enforce it, and how to delegate it) takes on a special urgency as he moves towards his seventies. The finding of a new Dalai Lama when all of Tibet is in Chinese hands would in the best of circumstances be treacherous; it became doubly so three years ago when Beijing unilaterally hijacked the second-highest incarnation in Tibet, that of the Panchen Lama, placing the Dalai Lama’s six-year-old choice under house arrest and installing a candidate of its own. (The Panchen Lama, by tradition, is the figure officially responsible for authorizing the Dalai Lama’s own incarnation, and the maneuver suggested that the Chinese may have few qualms about coming up with their own puppet as the next Dalai Lama.)
In response to this, the Dalai Lama has been typically canny. More than a decade ago, he reminds me, he said, “If I die in the near future, and the Tibetan people want another reincarnation, a Fifteenth Dalai Lama, while we are still outside Tibet, my reincarnation will definitely appear outside Tibet. Because”— the logic, as ever, is impeccable—“the very purpose of the incarnation is to fulfill the work that has been started by the previous life.” So, he goes on, “the reincarnation of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, logically, will not be a reincarnation which disturbs, or is an obstacle to, that work. Quite clear, isn’t it?” In any case, he says cheerfully, “at a certain stage the Dalai Lama institution will disappear. That does not mean that Tibetan Buddhism will cease. But the incarnation comes and goes, comes
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