Buddhist Scholar Robert Thurman on ‘Why the Dalai Lama Matters’
Thursday, 19 June 2008, 3:46 p.m.
The plight of the
Tibetan people, whose cultural and religious heritage has been steadily
undermined since their country was invaded by the Chinese government in
1950, has become a cause celebre for the likes of Richard Gere, Mia
Farrow and K.D. Lang. At the center of that effort has been Robert
Thurman, an influential and prolific American Buddhist scholar and
activist who is a long-time friend of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual
leader in exile.
Thurman, 66, the Je Tsong Khapa professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist
Studies at Columbia University, has devoted his life to the study and
preservation of Tibet’s unique cultural heritage. He is the author of
several books on Tibetan Buddhism and the co-founder, along with Gere,
of New York’s Tibet House. Thurman was chosen as one of Time magazine’s
25 most influential Americans in 1997.
At a time when the world has been particularly focused on Tibet
since the territory erupted in mass protests this spring, Thurman has
come out with a new book, “Why the Dalai Lama Matters,” to present his
view on how the conflict can be resolved. In the book, he argues that
establishing Tibetan cultural and religious autonomy – while keeping
Tibet as a part of China – is a benefit to Tibet, China and the world
at large. I caught up with Thurman last week while he was visiting the
Bay Area on a book tour.
The news from Tibet has been pretty grim lately, but you remain
optimistic that the situation will improve … that the Tibetans will
one day be able to live there freely and practice their religion. What
gives you hope that will happen?
I base my hope – as the Dalai Lama bases his – on what is realistic.
And I believe reality dictates that the Tibetans are the ones who can
live sustainably in Tibet. They’re the ones who can restore and
maintain the Tibetan plateau, their ancestral home, as they have for
thousands of years. And it has to be healthy in order to be of benefit
to its neighboring regions. It’s the water tower of Asia – it’s where
everybody’s water comes from, India, China, Southeast Asia. It’s also
the source of the wind – the jet stream that rises up out of the
plateau, affecting the weather all around the planet. So if Tibet is
messed up then the world gets messed up. This is why Tibet should
matter to everybody.
Why are the Tibetans the only ones who can take care of Tibet?
In part, because it’s three miles above sea level. If Chinese
people could live up there comfortably, they would have been there 500
years ago in huge numbers. They are not genetically adapted to live at
that high altitude without serious health problems.
You argue in your latest book, “Why the Dalai Lama Matters,” that
the Dalai Lama could be one of China’s greatest assets. What is it that
he can offer them?
He’s a great asset for several reasons. First, he is the key to giving
them legitimate sovereignty over Tibet as an autonomous region within
China because he would inspire his people to vote that way. Secondly,
he can help to restore some sense of contentment and calm within the
Chinese populace, especially among those who are poor and have not yet
benefitted from China’s economic rise. Thirdly, he could become a true
ambassador for China in the world, which they are going to need
increasingly as they rise to true superpower status.
And you think the Chinese government will eventually see this?
Yes, I am hopeful because the Chinese are smart, pragmatic
people. In fact, the leaders have never actually met the Dalai Lama
face to face. I am confident that once they do that there will be a
shift in their thinking.
Many people, including you, have described Chinese actions against
the Tibetan people as genocide. How do you make peace with people who
want to wipe you out?
I don’t think the Chinese people do want to wipe them out. I do think
they want to assimilate them – which is cultural genocide. That’s what
they’ve done to other neighboring peoples and tribes throughout their
history, by bringing them into their language and their way of living.
The big trend around the world since the ’90s has been that people are
demanding self-determination, whether it’s Kosovo or Lithuania or
Ukraine, and the Chinese realize that the trend is very hard to stop.
So they want to get rid of Tibetans because the Tibetans are living,
cultural proof that Tibet doesn’t legitimately belong to China. It’s a
sad situation, but it isn’t any one person’s fault. It’s just a
mistaken policy by the country’s leaders. And that policy could be
turned around with the stroke of a pen – President Hu’s pen.
Many Tibetans want independence from China, but the Dalai Lama has
embraced something called the middle way. What is that, exactly?
The middle way, which is a central concept in Buddhism, is the path
between, on the one hand, demanding independence fruitlessly when no
one will give it to you, and, on the other hand, caving in and saying,
“Let’s become Chinese.” It means establishing Tibet as a free,
self-governing region within China because that is the only realistic
solution.
Understand that the Dalai Lama himself says that he wants
independence, too. I mean, people want to be free. That’s what anybody
would want. On the other hand, he is a pragmatist, and it is a deeply
important thing to the Chinese leadership to feel that they have what
you might call a “big map” profile. So why bother to have paper
independence and then be isolated and persecuted and starved and get
nowhere? Better to join up with a big power in a federation and have
their help in your development. So far the Chinese leadership has only
used Tibet as a resource depot and a place to colonize. Their big
investment has been to bring Chinese into Tibet rather than to help the
Tibetans. But they could help them. And that’s needed, because the
Tibetans have been driven into great destitution by their country being
taken over by outsiders.
Some people say that the Dalai Lama should just stick to religion, but you see him as a great statesman. Why?
What makes him a great statesman is that he understands this
century. This is no longer the age of 19th century imperialism or 20th
century economic imperialism. It’s the information age, a time of
pluralistic societies where people are mixing around in every which
way, immigrating around the globe and learning about what’s going on in
other places. Even if they are dirt poor, they often have access to TVs
or computers. You simply can’t dominate people in the same ways that
were once possible. And wars are no longer viable. You just can’t win
them. The Dalai Lama is the one who understands that, I believe, and
dares to say it.
The Dalai Lama says: Nonviolence is it. You destroy yourselves
if you destroy your neighbor. And this is an ethical principle to be
acted on by governments and people. They are saying that he is naive,
and that violence is the truth – but that’s an outmoded view.
You became a Buddhist as a young man. I read that you made this
decision after having an accident where you lost the sight in your left
eye. What was the connection?
When I lost my eye, it was a big shock, and a big tragedy and all that.
I was very unhappy. Yet it was a wonderful thing in that it jolted me
out of my complacent life. I was a Harvard student who had married
young, with a beautiful daughter and a bit of money. I was running
around a lot, riding motorcycles – I could easily have run something
off a cliff. I was earnestly reading the Buddhist sutras and
“Siddhartha” and thinking about the Great Quest, but I was really just
fooling around. So what the eye loss did was make me realize this is
serious. Life is over in the blink of an eye or can be, and what does
it mean? What is it really? And that sent me an on a quest to India
because I sensed there was something there that wasn’t in New York or
Massachusetts. And while on that quest, I found the Buddhist
philosophers that I really liked and have been liking ever since.
Why Buddhism?
I love Buddhist thought because I believe it’s the most
scientific and the most realistic way of thinking. And the religious
part of it, well, I am still not even that terribly religious, I think;
in a way, I’m against dogmatic beliefs, and so I like Buddhism because
it is also against dogmatic beliefs and fanaticism, and it’s into
experiencing reality as one way to be a little bit less unhappy.
I read something that your daughter, Uma Thurman, said recently: “My
father didn’t impose his religion on us as children to the point that
maybe it would have been nice to have a little more. Something to rebel
against.” What do you think about that?
(Laughs.) It’s true. I give my wife a lot of credit because when I was
younger I might have been a little more oppressively enthusiastic, like
a country preacher or something. And she made sure that didn’t happen.
I also give the Dalai Lama credit in that he taught me that it is a
mistake at this time in history to even think that somebody should
convert to your worldview. You can argue with people or hope that they
will understand things as you see them. But you can’t force it.
You were ordained in 1965 as a Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama, but you later abandoned that life. What changed your mind?
I had been living as a monk for about two or three years before
I was ordained – and my old Mongolian teacher said, “Don’t formally
ordain because you won’t stay.” He knew I was totally sincere in
wanting to stay, but he just knew the circumstances, which I didn’t. In
Tibetan society it is considered very easy and very much a privilege to
be a monk. But people don’t often leave it, and there is a big stigma
attached to leaving it. So the old lama said, “Don’t do it.” He even
told the Dalai Lama, “This boy is very sincere, and he wants to be a
monk just so he can study more, but it is not a good idea.”
When I got back to America from India, we were in the throes of
the Vietnam War protests, the civil rights movement. All my friends
from college were out there, either getting beaten up in the South
marching with Martin Luther King or they were stoned or they were in
fact fighting the war and running to Canada, and it was a really
turbulent time. I got restless and wanted to be more of an activist.
And I soon discovered that there was no support in our society at that
time for anybody to be a Buddhist monk. It was considered a complete
cop-out – people thought you must be crazy. I had no way of
representing the wonderful ideas and practices I had discovered, and
so, sure enough, I decided to offer back my robe because I recognized I
had made a mistake.
How did the Dalai Lama react to your decision?
He was kind of upset with me for a couple of years until we met
again, and then he got to know my family, and he realized I was still
very secure in my study, and I was going to be a professor. Then we
became good friends again.
We’re still living in turbulent times. How does Buddhism make sense
of the upheaval and chaos of the world, and how do you incorporate that
perspective into your daily life?
Chaos is something that we imagine is there and we fear, and therefore
we strain ourselves to maintain some sort of order because we think we
are different from the universe – we think the universe is therefore
kind of dangerous, but it isn’t. From the Buddhist perspective, the
nature of things is really all right. And that gives me the energy to
take action. There is a great teaching in the Shantideva tradition
about how to conquer anger, which is: You don’t let anything disturb
your good mood. You try to be cheerful in all cases. You try to do your
best about something. Why be bitter and hateful about some bad thing
that’s already happened? It’s a brilliant teaching.
Maybe I’m just imitating the Dalai Lama, but I think that is
his secret of how he has kept up for 50 years. People do ask him, “The
Tibetan people are badly oppressed and wandering in exile, and you
haven’t managed to stop this. How do you keep trying and not give up?
You are so cheerful. How do you do it?” And he says, “Well, because
everything is all right, really.” It’s not all right on the superficial
level in terms of the way people are living, and we better keep after
them to try to get them to recognize that it can be all right, but
ultimately it is all right, and what good does it do to be miserable,
to act angry, to say that we have to destroy the bad people and be like
them?
Buddhists believe that it takes lifetimes to reach the level of
someone like the Dalai Lama. How can spiritual practice really help in
the here and now?
Well, here I resort to my American guru Bill Murray. As he demonstrates
in the film “Groundhog Day,” it’s all about taking baby steps. You
know? Bit by bit. We can be a little less angry, a little less greedy
and dissatisfied, a little more insightful.
You said before you have gotten a glimpse of Nirvana. What did you mean by that?
I think we all have our moments, those kinds of poetic moments,
where you get a glimmer of truth about the way things are. You know,
you read Emily Dickinson or you get into an Emily Dickinson world where
she sees heaven in a dewdrop on a plant in the early morning in her
garden. You feel you are there, you know? But unfortunately not all of
the time. Being there all of the time is what Buddhahood is, where you
can be in the middle of Highway 101, zooming along, shifting lanes,
trying to get to an appointment, and yet you are in Nirvana.
(This interview
conducted by David Ian Miller, appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle,
Monday, 16 June 2008. The views expressed in this column are those of
the writers, not necessarily those of the Central Tibetan
Administration)
