The Right to Be Reborn Denied
24 January 2008,
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By Thubten Samphel
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Dharamshala:Thereïž’s a new law
in force in China these days that says the Chinese authorities in
future would choose reincarnating Tibetan lamas. Partly in anticipation
of such a move and mostly to keep pace with the changing times, the
Dalai Lama said he has been toying with different methods to
choose his successor. This standoff between Tibetan Buddhism and the
Chinese Communist Party has brought international media spotlight on
this unique system of selecting Tibetan spiritual leaders and on one
cultureïž’s spiritual beliefs and a stateïž’s political ambitions.
Buddhists believe that highly realized beings have the capacity to
choose where and when they want to be reborn. Itïž’s a matter of putting
the efforts of a lifetime (or, in most cases, lifetimes) to adjust
oneïž’s internal mechanism to reach the level when one could project
oneïž’s spiritual qualities over time and space. These qualities enable
highly realized beings to manifest themselves simultaneously in several
places, as the historical Buddha did when he was seen teaching at
several places at the same time. Or, over many lifetimes, rebirth after
rebirth, and in different life forms, as the Buddha did and which forms
the basis and the moral of the classic book, the Jataka Tales.
The Chinese authorities once considered all this voodoo, a leftover
from Tibetïž’s dark, feudal superstitious past. Back in 1954, Mao Zedong
told the young Dalai Lama, “Religion is the opiate of the people.”
Later, the Tibetans were told that there could not be ïž“two suns in the
same sky:
communism and Buddhism.ïžâ€Â
This forthright Chinese attitude to their culture cost the Tibetan
people dear. At the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1969, Tibet had
lost about 6,000 monasteries. The inmates of these centres of learning
had either fled or been imprisoned or died. Tibet became a land of lost
content. This
is the equivalent of saying that one fine day India finds all its
universities in ruins and nothing is seen or heard of all the promising
students and brilliant faculty members.
This was Chinaïž’s attitude to Buddhism in the days of Mao. Why is China now after the Tibetan sun?
The answer lies in history. The role played by the innovative system of
rule by reincarnation and the priest-patron relations which the lamas
of Tibet developed with the Mongol khans and later with the Manchu
emperors kept the peace in Central and High Asia for centuries. Of all
the places where Buddhism spread, Tibet was the only one where this
belief in reincarnation was put into practice. Starting from the 12th
century, when the first incarnate lamas began to appear on the Tibetan
scene, various lamas, because of the immense spiritual prestige they
commanded, filled the plateauïž’s fractured political vacuum and
exercised political authority. The first recorded reincarnate lama was
Karmapa Pakshi who was
recognized as the authentic reincarnation of Karmapa Dusum Khyenpa
(1110-1193), an outstanding lama of the Kagyu school of Tibetan
Buddhism. This idea caught on and soon reincarnate lamas proliferated
among different schools of Tibetan Buddhism and across the plateau.
In 1207 when the Tibetans heard that Genghis Khan made the Tanguts, a
people related to the Tibetans by language and religion and who then
operated in present-day Gansu-Ningxia corridor, into a vassal state,
Tibetan lamas submitted to Mongol overlordship. Because of this piece
of Tibetan diplomacy, of all the countries that became a part of the
greatest land empire in human history, Tibet was the only one that was
spared devastation. The Mongols collected only taxes from Tibet and
left Tibet very much to its own devices.
In 1244, Godan Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, sent a letter to
Sakya Pandita, Tibetïž’s most accomplished scholar, demanding, ïž“We need a
lama advise my ignorant people on how to conduct themselves morally and
spirituallyïž… As you are the only lama I have chosen, I will not accept
any
excuses on account of your age or the rigours of the journey.Sakya
Pandita along with his nephew Phagpa undertook the journey to Mongolia.
In the course of tutoring Godan Khan on Buddhism, Sakya Pandita
extracted a promise from the khan to stop the practice of drowning
thousands of Chinese peasants as a method of both population and
political control. In return for his spiritual service, Godan Khan
invested the Tibetan hierarch with temporal authority over central
Tibet and later over all Tibet.
In 1251, Sakya Pandita passed away in present-day Lanzhou, capital of
Gansu province. Several years later Godan Khan also died. Sakya Pandita
was succeeded by Phagpa and Godan Khan by Kublai Khan. The great khan
decided to adopt the nineteen ïž–year-old Tibetan as his spiritual
teacher. Before the Tibetan master accepted the honour, he demanded
that as his student he expected Kublai Khan to prostrate before his
teacher. Kublai Khan suggested that this kow-towing, this offering of
body, speech and mind to his teacher, should be done in private. Done
in public, Kublai Khan said he would lose his prestige and empire. This
was acceptable to the young Tibetan master and soon Kublai Khan made
Phagpa the imperial
preceptor and re-confirmed his position as the ruler of the whole of
Tibet.
The priest-patron relations, a successful peace pact between the lamas
of Tibet and the reigning military power of the day, reached its height
during the reigns of Tibetïž’s successive Dalai Lamas. In the reigns of
Godan and Kublai Khan, Buddhism remained a court religion. This changed
during the time of the Third Dalai Lama who was invited by Altan Khan
to visit Mongolia. He accepted the invitation and arrived at the Mongol
capital in 1578 and converted the whole of Mongolia to Buddhism. His
successor, the Fourth Dalai Lama, was a Mongol.
The most productive period of the priest-patron relations was
during the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama. The Fifth Dalai Lama was
offered the temporal rule of Tibet, from borders of Ladakh in the west
to Dartsedo (Ch: Kangding) in the east, by the bearded Qosot Mongol
chieftain, Gushri Khan, in 1642. In the following years the Manchus
brought China under their rule. The Manchusïž’ one problem was how to
deal with the Mongol menace, real and next door. Successive Manchu
emperors used Mongoliaïž’s devotion to the Dalai Lama to their advantage.
They requested the Dalai Lama to keep the Mongols at bay. Sometimes
they requested the use of Mongol forces to put down sporadic rebellions
within their borders. Mongols were kept at bay but the Dalai Lama cited
the smallpox epidemic then raging in China and the hot climate as
reasons for the Mongol cavalry being unsuitable as a fighting force in
such a terrain.
On his part, the patron kept his bargain of protecting the spiritual
realm of his priest, but not always. Emperor Qianglong dispatched
Manchu troops to Tibet to help repulse the resurgent Gorkhas who had
taken over major Tibetan towns along the Tibet-Nepal border in the
first Gorkha war between 1788-1792. Since then a detachment of Manchu
troops was station in Lhasa. The office of the Manchu amban in the
Tibetan capital was upgraded and expanded. The power and influence of
the ambans, whom the Manchus considered their viceroys in Tibet and the
Tibetans viewed as ambassadors of the Manchu court, waxed and waned
with the fortunes of the Manchu dynasty and with the energy and
cohesion of the Kashag, the Tibetan council of ministers.
The decline of the Manchu power in China and exhausting challenges
posed to it by the expanding and sea-faring west prevented the Manchus
from coming to Tibetïž’s help in the Dogra war of 1841 to 1842, the
second Gorkha war from 1855 to 1856 or in the British invasion of Tibet
from 1904 to 1905.
This international diplomatic structure came crashing down when the
patron turned on its priest. The Peopleïž’s Liberation Army marched into
Tibet in 1949. Decades earlier, Mongolia had been caught in the Soviet
embrace. Two of the three triangular nodes that have propped up
structure of the priest-patron relationship were snatched away. The
third, the successor regime of the erstwhile patron of Buddhism, the
Republic of China, was driven away to Taiwan.
Today, there is no Mongol might to speak of. The egalitarian faith that
has sustained the early Chinese communists has been sapped and replaced
by a profit-at-all cost ethos. But the 14th Dalai Lama has gone on to
build an international constituency his predecessors could have hardly
dreamed of. More than the international spread of the institution of
the Dalai Lama, its potency in Tibet is what worries the authorities.
Perhaps here lies a part of the answer to the Chinese authoritiesïž’
attempt to regulate where and when Tibetan lamas should be reborn. They
want the power but not the faith that sustains it.