The Dalai Lama Is Not the Pope Of Buddhism
He’s just a monk with the worst job imaginable
By *Christopher* — Flickr: dalailama1_20121014_4639, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22580076
A version of this piece first appeared at The Evidence Files, bouncin-and-behavin-blogs.
Introduction
A lot of people who know what I do like to ask about the Dalai Lama. Most assume he is simply the “Pope of Buddhism.” To be sure, the Dalai Lama is the face of Tibet and, in many ways, the face of Buddhism. But his fame (and presumed pontifical status) is a function of the terrible world in which we live, not his designation itself.
Unlike the history of brutality among some Christian popes, almost none of the Dalai Lamas engaged in anything remotely close to atrocities. Only a few of them rose to the level of spiritual, let alone political, leaders of Tibet. And no pope faced the eradication of their culture, expulsion from their homeland, and prohibition to practice their spiritual beliefs simultaneously like the current Dalai Lama has.
Even though today’s Dalai Lama is the leader of a people facing one of the worst — and longest — human rights crises of any group in the world, he does not make the news much. Lately, Ukraine and Palestine top the international news cycle, which is a rather convenient turn of events for the government of a certain other place. All three of these sets of circumstances are a horrible stain on the character of the so-called progressive humanity of the 21st century.
The current Dalai Lama seems like the pope of Buddhism to some because he has spent decades of energy advocating for the rights of his people, putting him in the international spotlight. Westerners delight over his ‘funny’ robes — the centuries-old garb designating one’s commitment to monastic teachings — his thick accent, and his curious personality. For many, he is their first or only exposure to Buddhism.
Despite his lightheartedness, he fights a serious battle in which real people have been imprisoned, tortured, or killed for more than half a century. The mystique surrounding him, however, has garnered more attention than his message in many corners. Still, absent that specious focus, Tibetans might long ago have been eradicated from the planet were it not for his efforts.
Thus is the existence of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.
But who is he? What does he, or Dalai Lamas generally, do? Here is the summary answer to both.
The Dalai Lamas
Dalai Lama is an honorific title handed down for the first time by a Mongol chieftain to Sonam Gyatso, the man who would become the third. Two others were identified posthumously after Gyatso’s naming, which occurred around 1578. The word dalai (ta le) in Mongolian means something akin to ‘ocean.’ The title on the whole suggests someone of vast or even infinite wisdom.
Sonam Gyatso’s predecessors and successors are considered part of one lineage, among many, of reincarnates. Tibetan Buddhists believe that:
great spiritual practitioners are reborn voluntarily to help those stuck in the cycles of suffering...
The first three Dalai Lamas were monks who made great achievements in scholarship and established several prominent monasteries (the fourth died at just 27 years old). It was not until the fifth that Dalai Lamas assumed political power. Even then, most Dalai Lamas after him exercised limited to no secular authority. Indeed, of the fourteen Dalai Lamas, only the fifth, thirteenth, and fourteenth took a substantial role in secular politics.
Often referred to as the “Great Fifth,” Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso was the first of the Dalai Lamas to adopt the role of both spiritual and governmental leader. Tibet at that time suffered from fractured politics, with noblemen across the country acting as regional kings often in conflict with one another. Dissension among the nobility opened the door to the exploitation of Tibetans by internal and external forces. Lhasa, the city that would operate as the capital from the mid-17th century on, was rife with corruption.
The fifth, with the support of the formidable armies of the Mongolian leader Güshi Khan, wrested control of Lhasa and then imposed his new government on the nobles and monasteries in the areas outside the city. His “reunification,” as some scholars call it, was not bloodless. Some sects suffered substantial losses.
In any case, over the duration of his rule, the fifth Dalai Lama inaugurated the Ganden Podrang Law Code, asserted the Gelukpa lineage as the supreme school among Buddhists, and secured Tibet against external foes through his alliance with Güshi Khan. His efforts led to the flourishing of Buddhist scholarship and certain improvements for the laypeople. His reign helped create the image of the Dalai Lama as a secular authority, though none following him achieved anything near to his reforms or his exercise of power.
Divided Buddhism
This is a key point, and perhaps Exhibit A for why the Dalai Lama is not the pope of Buddhism. The Dalai Lama is a preeminent authority of one type of Buddhism — Vajrayāna — but even then, not the only authority.
Buddhism across the globe comes in many forms, or ‘vehicles.’ Examples include Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna. Each of these vehicles enjoys prominence in various geographic locations. Within these larger groupings, there are yet further divisions. In Tibetan Buddhism (which adopts the essential tenets of Vajrayāna), there are many partisan schools of thought.
Most people identify the four main Tibetan Buddhist sects as Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Geluk. All fourteen of the Dalai Lamas served as important figures of the Geluk, though the head of the order is the Ganden Tripa. Some of the others have their own spiritual leader. For example, the Karmapa heads the Kagyu and the Sakya Trizin heads, well, the Sakya. These schools frequently clashed over doctrinal differences, though typically through heated debates rather than violence.
The Dalai Lama came to be viewed as the dominant spiritual personality of Tibet primarily because of the ascension to power of the fifth. As noted, during his capture of authority, many lineages suffered the loss of property as their monasteries were handed over to the Gelukpa. The result was the advent of notable Geluk monasteries. Some of these are the ones Westerners have probably heard of, such as the Potala Palace or Sera or Drepung monasteries.
The famed Potala Palace of Lhasa (public domain photo)
After the fifth, some Dalai Lamas were assassinated, although this almost always occurred over political disputes rather than dogmatic disagreements. Others simply held no interest in politics. Until the 13th Dalai Lama, many commoners in Tibet knew very little if anything about the currently serving Dalai Lama. For the disciples of the other lineages, their spiritual leader was their sectarian head, such as the Karmapa.
Because different sects enjoyed primacy in various locations, news of activities in Lhasa (where the Dalai Lama assumed his “seat”) simply did not reach many people outside. It is important to remember that Tibet (historical Tibet, not the Chinese-designated Tibetan Autonomous Region) is a little less than one-third the size of Europe, with a fraction of the population.
Much of it sits on a plateau above 3,000 m (9,800 feet). Its vast size, harsh terrain, and brutal weather made it quite the desolate place. To illustrate, a journey from Lhasa to Beijing in the 19th century encompassed at least a few months of travel under the best conditions. People simply did not know or care what occurred outside of their localized orbit; they only started to in the 20th century.
Under the thirteenth Dalai Lama, who reigned from 1895 to 1933, Tibet grappled with malicious interference from outsiders for the first time in over a century. Colonel Younghusband of the British invaded Tibet on a bloody “diplomatic” mission in late 1903 and, later, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party (KMT) took control of China on the vow that they would begin “reclaiming” lost territories. One of those territories included Tibet. During this time, even commoner Tibetans began to take greater notice of national affairs.
So much happened between the seating of the thirteenth Dalai Lama and the birth of the fourteenth, that it cannot be properly summarized here. Instead, let’s just skip ahead. Before we do, however, here are the parting words of the thirteenth, an ominous warning to his successor:
It may happen here in the center of Tibet the Religion and secular administration may be attacked both from the outside and from the inside. Unless we can guard our own country, it will now happen that the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, the Holders of the Faith, the glorious Rebirths, will be broken down and left without a name. As regards the monasteries and the monks and nuns, their lands and property will be destroyed… The officers of the State, ecclesiastical and secular, will find their lands seized and their property confiscated, and they themselves made to serve their enemies, or wander about the country as beggars do. All beings will be sunk in great hardship and in overpowering fear; the days and nights will drag on slowly in suffering.
How the 14th Dalai Lama seemed to become pope
Born in 1935 in far eastern Tibet (Amdo), Tenzin Gyatso — the 14th Dalai Lama — traveled to Lhasa as a young boy. Between the times that a previous Dalai Lama died and a new one came of age, Tibet was ruled under a prime minister, the desi. Following the thirteenth’s death, the desi staved off incursions by the Chinese KMT and then navigated the various complications hefted upon Tibet by the Japanese invasion of China that preceded their joining the Axis Powers in World War II. All this happened while the fourteenth underwent his monastic education.
During the War, Tibet served as a buffer for the Allies, a geographic barrier against potential Japanese attacks on India launched from China. Because Britain ruled over India then, both the British and the Americans quietly but frequently assisted Tibetan fighters by providing munitions and other material support. When the War ended, however, these powers all but forgot about the Tibetans.
From 1945 to 1949, the KMT fought a brutal war with the Communists under Mao Zedong for control over China. The Communists ultimately prevailed, but adopted much the same political platform of “reunifying China” as the Nationalists had. From 1949 to 1959, the Tibetans played a lethal game of chess with the Communist Party leadership, continuously striving to find some form of rapprochement by which they would maintain their territorial and cultural integrity.
These efforts ultimately failed, leading to a full-scale invasion of Tibet by the People’s Liberation Army in 1959. Recognizing the risk to the Dalai Lama, his advisors smuggled him from the country into India. He was in his mid-twenties. His advisors feared for his safety because although so young, the Dalai Lama was the human embodiment of Tibetan autonomy given his role as spiritual and secular leader.
Settling in India under asylum was not easy as the Indian government (that achieved independence from the British in 1947) had no desire to ruffle the feathers of the Chinese. Still, the Dalai Lama eventually made a home in Dharamsala and reestablished his government-in-exile there. Despite his pleas to other world governments, Tibetans received little support at the international level while Chinese forces razed monasteries and lethally extinguished any resistance. Most nations saw China as a budding global power and, like the Indian government, did not wish to provoke it over a “domestic dispute.”
Few, if any, popes watched the systematic obliteration of their entire culture
Since then, the Dalai Lama has been forced to accept the complete takeover of his home country, and watch from afar the subjugation of his people who remained behind. Recognizing the futility of ever obtaining any real autonomy, he has instead worked to secure the fair treatment of Tibetans still in Tibet. Even this has proved nearly impossible.
The Chinese government has engaged in a campaign of “reeducation” to the extent that as many as 30% of the Tibetan population may no longer even speak their native language. Arrests for religious “subversion” is common (newspeak for being “too” Tibetan Buddhist), and advocates for Tibetan human rights tend to be sentenced to long prison terms or disappear altogether. Simply displaying a photo of the Dalai Lama in their homes or carrying one on their person is a criminal offense for Tibetans.
For more than sixty years, the Dalai Lama has watched as his people suffer and his culture is eviscerated. Yet, he continues to maintain the search for a peaceful solution. Younger Tibetans living abroad have occasionally called for violence, demanding the adoption of tactics like those of the IRA of the 1960s to 1990s, but the Dalai Lama vehemently opposes this.
Back in 2018, the Dalai Lama said this about violent resistance:
People are disturbed by violence and the desire for peace is increasing year by year. To achieve it we have to adopt a realistic approach, taking account of scientific findings that basic human nature is compassionate. After so much violence, what positive result has there been — none. Only more hatred. Violence is not the right method for solving problems.
Coda
Now nearing 90 years old, the Dalai Lama knows his death may well herald the final destruction of his entire culture and people. The Chinese government’s most visceral urges have largely been held in check by the Dalai Lama’s public advocacy and popularity.
He has been forced to serve as the spiritual leader of a people for whom it is a crime to embrace their spirituality. He leads from exile the government of a country that clings to a highly tenuous existence, whose people cannot express anything resembling patriotism or nationality for fear of a violent response. Despite this, he continues to propose peaceful solutions, knowing full well that with each passing second the annihilation will become a fait accompli.
Organized religion frequently comprises a tool of oppression and tyranny. The global present and majority of its history leave little room for arguing otherwise. Tibetan Buddhists engaged in their own bouts of mistreatment in the past. But for the last century, they have shown perhaps the greatest example of peace and compassion in the face of such devastating consequence, an exemplary personified in their leader.
The Dalai Lama is not the pope of Buddhism. That he seems so is a testament to his mostly deft handling of an impossible situation, promoting the peaceful resolution of a terrible injustice that he himself suffered personally. If nothing else, this — more than anything — distinguishes him from any pope.
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Robert Vanwey is the co-director of the Dharma Farm School of Translation and Philosophy. Before that, he was Senior Technical Analyst for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice. He has a Juris Doctor and Master degree in history.
See my recent piece in the Tibetan Review on the fight for rights for Tibetans and preservation of Tibetan culture and the environment there. Or visit the Evidence Files Medium page for more history, politics, and law.