Lhamo Dondrub, later Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso was born on this day in 1935. Two years later he was pronounced to be the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, and following strenuous formation was formally recognized and installed as the 14th Dalai Lama in 1950. His flight from Lhasa and the oncoming Chinese army in 1959, was world news. And with that he was thrust onto the world stage, a place the Dalai Lama will remain for the whole of his life.
I’m no fan of the tulku system, and so have little regard for offices derived from it, including the line of Dalai Lamas. On the other hand it is a system that seems first designed to pick someone who wants to please, an intelligent and intuitive child. Once nominated as a likely candidate, he, usually a he, is presented with various objects some of which were owned by the predecessor. He must sense which ones are those through the most subtle of signs, a raised eyebrow, a twitch, a shift in smells. And then once picked the new tulku is given a couple of decades of serious training both in theology and the meditative arts as practiced in the Tibetan system.
So, one doesn’t have to believe in tulkus as reincarnations of anything to find the people who hold the office are usually very interesting people…
And then there’s the Orientalism that accompanies much of the buzz around him, something made painfully obvious by the celebrity entourage and their Tibetan chic. (Yes, yes, one or two do become legit Buddhists. And blessings on them) And there’s the embarrassing romancing of old Tibet, a feudalism that deserved to die – something his Holiness freely acknowledges. Which, in no way undermines in my heart the plight of the Tibetan people under the heel of the Chinese occupation, but the confusion of the two, geeze, and the whole superficial romancing is offensive…
And, I admit, to occasionally being put off by those who think the Dalai Lama is the Buddhist pope. As I like to say for those trying to sort this stuff out, if Zen were like Quakers (stay with me on this) then Tibetan Buddhism is like Russian Orthodoxy. And, sorting out his relative place in world Buddhism with this analogy, the Dalai Lama is rather more like the Patriarch of the Russian church than the pope of the Roman one – well, if the patriarch lived in exile in Switzerland.
Okay, all that said, while doing what he can for his people, who’ve suffered too much, he has along the way become a worthy representative of world Buddhism. No doubt.
A good man, maybe even holy, or at least as holy as someone whose primary responsibility is as titular head of an exiled community, and therefore primarily a political figure, with all that means, he has done much to incline people kindly toward Buddhism in all its complexity and variety.
And, so, happy birthday, Dalai Lama!
And wishes for many many more roll along…
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