The collision of eternity and statecraft: Why the reincarnation of the dalai lama is a global flashpoint

“ The Grand Lama and many other lamas in Mongolia and Tibet assume the title of ‘Living Buddha.’ In him, most of all, Buddha is incarnate, as the people are taught to think. He never dies. When the body, in which Buddha is for the time incarnate, ceases to perform its functions, [pg 316] some infant is chosen by the priests, who are intrusted with the duty of selecting, to become the residence of Buddha until, in turn, it grows up to manhood and dies. No Buddhist priest in China pretends to be a ‘living Buddha’ or to have a right to the exercise of political power. ”

“ By reducing, too, the faculty of borrowing within its natural limits, it would bridle the spirit of war, to which too free a course has been procured by the inattention of money lenders to this law of nature, that succeeding generations are not responsible for the preceding.
On similar ground it may be proved, that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation: they may manage it, then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. ”

“ Must the idea of statecraft and rule perpetually reappear, reclothe itself in new forms, age, die, even as life does—making each time its almost infinitesimal addition to human achievement? Now the world is crying aloud for a renascence of the spirit that orders and controls. ”

“ Living Buddha reincarnation is a succession system unique to Tibetan Buddhism and is respected by the state. Through traditional religious rituals and historical conventions like drawing lots from a golden urn, the Tibet Autonomous Region searched for and identified the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, and conferred and enthroned the 11th Panchen Lama with the approval of the State Council in 1995. ”

“ No one is more fully aware than myself that the priestly power required to be broken, for it had become a curse and drag to the people. What I doubt is whether the Chinese have gone the right way about it. To me it seems they are more likely to have roused rumblings among the Tibetans and Mongolians for many years to come rather than have secured peace. Our own victories had reduced the Tibetans of Tibet proper to order. The recalcitrant Dalai Lama had been obliged to fly, and the Chinese were masters of the situation ”

“ Tibet's tremendous progress in its development serves as eloquent evidence that the path it is now following is the correct one. However, there is a party who cluster around the 14th Dalai Lama, representatives of the remnants of the feudal serf owners who have long lived in exile, driven by a political goal of "Tibetan independence" and a sentimental attachment to the old theocratic feudal serfdom. In recent years, having seen the failure of their attempts to instigate violence in support of their cause, they have turned to preaching a "middle way." ”

“ Ringleaders of the group, including the 14th Dalai Lama's two brothers - Gyalo Thondup and Tenzin Chogyal, and Samdhong Rinpoche, an influential member of the leading group, once stated that they first seek autonomy, and then drive out the Chinese! Autonomy will be the start...; the first step is to realize the semi-independence of Tibet in the name of autonomy, and the
is to transit to its independence. The new head of the Tibetan "government-in-exile" once told Dialogue India, "Tibetan independence does not conflict with Tibetan autonomy. ”

“ In this division of darkness and light the Potala stands out like a haven, not flaming now, but faintly luminous with a restful mystic light, soothing enough to rob Buddhist metaphysics of its pessimism and induce a mood, [Pg 261] even in unbelievers, in which one is content to merge the individual and become absorbed in the universal spirit of Nature.
No wonder that, when one looks for mystery in Lhasa, one's thoughts dwell solely on the Dalai Lama and the Potala. I cannot help dwelling on the flight of the thirteenth incarnation. It plunges us into medievalism. ”

“ Very soon the Chinese died from some unknown cause and the Living Buddha returned to his comfortable capital.
On another occasion danger threatened the Living God. It was when Lhasa decided that the Bogdo Khan was carrying out a policy too independent of Tibet. The Dalai Lama began negotiations with several Khans and Princes with the Sain Noion Khan and Jassaktu Khan leading the movement and persuaded them to accelerate the immigration of the Spirit of Buddha into another human form. They came to Urga where the Bogdo Khan met them with honors and rejoicings. ”

“ And any means we had of preventing the Chinese insinuating themselves between us and the Tibetans have been taken from us through the jealousy of the Russians. Owing to this, we are not now in Chumbi and we have not an agent at Lhasa. The Chinese fear we may absorb Tibet and press them in Szechuan, and the Russians fear a predominant influence with the Dalai Lama might be used by us detrimentally to their Buddhist subjects present and to be. Both, therefore, stand in the way of that close relationship with the Tibetans which is now desired even more by them than by us. ”

“ On January 31, 1910, the Government of India, when they had first heard through the official sent by the Dalai Lama to our agent at Gyantse that the Chinese were advancing into Tibet, had suggested [61] that a representation should be made at Peking pointing out that disorder on our frontier could not be viewed by us with indifference, resulting as it possibly might in the status quo being entirely changed, and in conditions being set up wholly inconsistent with the spirit of our agreements with Tibet and China, agreements by which the continuance of a Tibetan Government was recognized. ”

“ After the return of the Dalai Lama to Lhasa, the representatives of Nepal and Bhutan, together with some of the leading merchants and Mohammedan head-men in Lhasa, again approached the Chinese Resident as well as the Dalai Lama, with a request that he should settle the dispute as to whether or not these troops should be allowed in Lhasa. In the meanwhile the Tibetans had sent a considerable force to face the Chinese troops, which, as previously stated, had arrived under Chao-Erh-Feng at Chiamdo, a place tributary to, but not directly ruled by, China. ”

“ The Sikkim Maharaj Kumar understood from this message that the Dalai Lama wished to open friendly relations direct with the Government of India.
The situation in Lhasa on the Lama’s arrival was most critical. The Tibetans were alarmed and enraged at the excesses which had been committed by the Chinese troops in Eastern Tibet, especially in the destruction of a large monastery near Li’tang, in retaliation for the murder of a Chinese Amban; and the Tibetans had a story that when they destroyed the monastery the Chinese soldiers used the sacred Buddhist books for making soles to their boots. ”

“ A crowd of unarmed Tibetans went to look at the new arrivals and the Chinese fired into the midst, killing two Tibetan policemen, and wounding a high Tibetan official and an old woman.
This is the Tibetan version of what happened. The Chinese asserted that, although the Resident had gone to meet the Dalai Lama, yet the latter had refused to see the Resident again to discuss matters amicably; had prevented the Resident and his escort from obtaining the usual supplies, and by refusing transport had endeavoured to cut off communication with China. ”

“ The Chinese would freely open the whole of Tibet, but the Tibetans themselves are so terribly seclusive. So the same old story goes on year after year, till centuries are beginning to roll by, and the story is still unfinished. When in the Audience Hall of the Dalai Lama’s Palace at Lhasa itself I had obtained the seals of the Dalai Lama, of the Council, of the National Assembly, and of the three great monasteries, to an agreement, and had done all this in the presence of the Chinese Resident, I thought we had at last laid that fiction low for ever. ”