Contents
* * *
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
A Note on Language and Spelling
Cultural Tibet
Introduction: Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, August 1989
A Prophecy Fulfilled
The Travails of the Great Thirteenth
A Mystic and a Seer: The Regency Established
A Child Is Born
The View from the Place of the Roaring Tiger: Tibet’s Nameless Religion
“Lonely and somewhat unhappy”: A Hostage in All but Name
The Lion Throne
Homecoming: Lhasa, 1940
Boyhood: Two Cane-Handled Horsewhips
Trouble in Shangri-La: Devilry and Intrigue on the Roof of the World
The Perfection of Wisdom: The Higher Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk
“Shit on their picnic!”: China Invades, 1949–50
Into the Dragon’s Lair: The Dalai Lama in China, July 1954–July 1955
The Land of the Gods: India, November 1956–March 1957
“Don’t sell the Dalai Lama for silver dollars!”: Lhasa, 1957–1959
Freedom in Exile
On the Back of a Dzo: The Flight to Freedom
Opening the Eye of New Awareness: Allen Ginsberg and the Beats
Photos
“We cannot compel you”: Cultural Revolution in Tibet, Harsh Realities in India
“Something beyond the comprehension of the Tibetan people”: The Yellow Book and the Glorious Goddess
From Rangzen to Umaylam: Independence and the Middle Way Approach
Bodhisattva of Compassion
Cutting Off the Serpent’s Head: Reaction and Repression in Tibet
“An oath-breaking spirit born of perverse prayers”: The Murder of Lobsang Gyatso
Tibet in Flames: The Beijing Olympics and Their Aftermath
The Magical Play of Illusion
Afterword and Acknowledgments
The Fourteen Dalai Lamas
Glossary of Names and Key Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Connect with HMH
Footnotes
Copyright © 2020 by Alexander Norman
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Norman, Alexander, author.
Title: The Dalai Lama : an extraordinary life / Alexander Norman.
Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019023278 (print) | LCCN 2019023279 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544416581 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780544416888 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, 1935– | Dalai Lamas—Biography. | Tibet Region—Biography.
Classification: LCC BQ7935.B777 N67 2020 (print) | LCC BQ7935.B777 (ebook) | DDC 294.3/923092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023278
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023279
Cover design: Michaela Sullivan
Cover photograph © Vincent J. Ricardel / Getty Images
Spine photograph © Raghu Rai / Magnum Photos
Author photograph © E. A. Norman
Map by Mapping Specialists, Ltd.
eISBN 978-0-544-41688-8
v2.0220
Excerpts from Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama by Tenzin Gyatso. Copyright © 1990 by Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness, The Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers and Little, Brown Book Group.
For my children:
M.R.N.
E.A.N.
T.F.H.N.
A Note on Language and Spelling
Most would agree that the Tibetan alphabet, in each of its forms, is highly attractive on the page. Its use in a nonspecialist book such as this is out of the question, however. Moreover, the standard (Wylie) method of transcription into European characters, although it renders the Tibetan accurately, produces almost equally baffling results for the general reader. Who would guess that bstan ’dzin rgya mthso (the name of the present Dalai Lama) is pronounced “Tenzin Gyatso”?
In view of this difficulty, I have given phonetics (often my own) for all Tibetan words and names. Where they occur more than once, I have—in most cases—included them in the glossary at the end, together with the correct Wylie transliteration.
It is also worth noting that Tibetan uses different tones, so words that are phonetically similar may have an entirely different meaning. Notoriously, the words for “ice,” “shit,” and “fat” are pronounced exactly alike, save for tonal register.
Cultural Tibet
Introduction
Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, August 1989
Striding up to Reception, I announce my purpose.
“I am looking for Mr. Tenzin Tethong, private secretary to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”
Under my arm I am carrying the draft manuscript of the Dalai Lama’s autobiography, Freedom in Exile, on which I have been working for the past several months.
The receptionist stares at me blankly. Perhaps it is my strong English accent.
“Mr. De Whaaat?” she demands in a slow drawl.
Three decades later, such a response is unimaginable. One of the world’s most instantly recognizable people, the Dalai Lama sells out sports stadiums from Sydney to São Paolo, from Oslo to Johannesburg. With around 20 million Twitter followers, the Dalai Lama has more than the pope, and his online presence continues to grow. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the richest award of them all, the Templeton Prize for spiritual progress. He holds the freedom of cities and honorary degrees too numerous to list. His image adorns wristwatches and screensavers, while his Amazon page gives details of more than two hundred books crediting him as author. Sales of several individual titles run into the millions. Unquestionably, the Dalai Lama is one of the best-known and best-loved public figures of modern times.
Yet for all his latter-day superstardom, few know much about the Dalai Lama or about the culture he embodies. And of what is known, a great deal is misunderstood. For example, many people suppose that the Dalai Lama is a religious leader—a sort of Buddhist pope. But unlike the pope, who claims authority over every priest and prelate in Christendom, the Dalai Lama has no jurisdiction over any other lama or monk. Neither is he the head of his own particular faith tradition, nor is he the leader of any of the subgroups within that tradition. In fact, he is not even abbot of the monastery of which he is a member. So when he says, as he often does, that he is “just a simple Buddhist monk,” the Dalai Lama is not just being characteristically modest. He is straightforwardly telling the truth. The Dalai Lamas—of which the present one is the fourteenth—have only ever been simple Buddhist monks, even though the Great Fifth Dalai Lama was one of the most powerful men in Asia, and even though the Dalai Lamas have always been venerated by people far beyond the Land of Snows (as Tibetans often refer to their country).
From a political perspective, however, the Dalai Lamas have been anything but ordinary. Beginning with the Great Fifth, they have been—in theory at least—temporal leaders of a people whose country is the size of western Europe, spanning over fifteen hundred miles from a border with Pakistan in the west to China in the east, and almost a thousand mi
les from Mongolia in the north to India, Nepal, and Burma in the south. But it is little known that in 2011, the present Dalai Lama renounced his claim to lead his people as head of state in favor of a democratically elected layman. As a result, the office of Dalai Lama is now purely a teaching office. This makes perfect sense, however: the word lama is the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit word guru—a spiritual guide.
Together with these misunderstandings, the Dalai Lama’s image as smiling saint for all seasons fails to do justice either to the Dalai Lama as a person or to the tradition he represents. It neglects his extraordinary achievements in settling a diaspora community now a quarter of a million strong. It neglects how he has unified a people previously sharply divided along geographical, tribal, and sectarian lines. It neglects how, in so doing, he has opened up the institution of the Dalai Lama to all Tibetans in a way that it never was before. It neglects his political reforms. It neglects his remarkable attainments as a scholar-practitioner: he is unquestionably one of the most accomplished and learned masters of Vajrayana Buddhism to have emerged within the past century. It neglects the astonishing impact the Dalai Lama has had on the shape of the modern world. Above all, it neglects one of the most extraordinary cultures ever to have evolved on the face of the earth and the complex, often turbulent history that brought it into being.
In writing this book, therefore, I have sought above all to set the Dalai Lama’s deeds in the context of the history and culture of the Tibetan tradition, and it is for this reason that I have shown in some detail the circumstances of how the regency that governed Tibet until the Dalai Lama was of age both came into being and came to an end. Without some understanding of what and where the Dalai Lama comes from, we are likely both to miss the scale of his accomplishments and to misconstrue the enormity of the challenges he has faced.
I hope particularly to show how the Dalai Lama’s motivations have caused him to act in the way he has acted—these motivations being themselves determined by his understanding of the Tibetan tradition. I take as my starting point the fact that what has chiefly inspired him is the bodhisattva vow he took at the age of fifteen. Out of compassion, he committed himself to direct his every thought, word, and deed to the benefit of all sentient beings in their quest to overcome suffering. The Dalai Lama’s life story can thus be understood as a teaching that shows, from the perspective of the tradition, what compassion really is and how this construal of compassion plays out in the everyday world.
Here, though, I should say something about the words “tradition” and, especially, “Tibetan tradition” as I use them in this book. When I claim that the Dalai Lama exemplifies the Tibetan tradition, I take the term to denote that which is handed down, or handed over, from one generation to another—not just the habitual practices of many Tibetans over time but also the body of ideas and beliefs that attach to these practices. When, for example, I say that, according to Tibetan tradition, there are many hells, some hot, some frozen, I am saying that according to the understanding of most orthodox believers within the tradition, this is the case. I don’t mean to claim that all Tibetans everywhere have always believed this, only that most have and do.
At the same time as making this point about tradition, I should also emphasize that, so far as the Tibetan religious tradition is concerned, there is Buddhism with, so to speak, local accents but no such thing as a specifically Tibetan Buddhism. From the Tibetan point of view, the Buddhism preserved within this tradition is the highest, most complete form of Buddhism—even if some of its teachings and practices are regarded as heterodox by others.
Because of my interest in setting the Dalai Lama in the context of Tibetan culture and history and presenting his biography as a lived lesson in what, from the perspective of his tradition, it is to be truly compassionate, I have been less interested in recounting what the Dalai Lama says. Both his spiritual teachings and his political views are recorded in the hundreds of books and many thousands of hours of video and voice recordings that have been made over the sixty years since he came into exile. It is to these sources that those interested in the Dalai Lama’s spiritual and political philosophy should turn.
As to what the Dalai Lama is actually like, I regard this question as secondary to the question of what the Dalai Lama means—not merely by what he says but also by what he does. There is something to be said for personal detail, but in my opinion this tells us much less about the man than that, for example, his religious commitments include some that a number of authorities even within his own Gelug school consider to be dangerously mistaken. How the Dalai Lama interprets and shapes the Tibetan tradition, and, especially, where he departs from it, are in my view more telling and, from a historical perspective, more significant than what his favorite television program is or what his hobbies are. For the record, his preferred viewing is nature programs—he is a fan of David Attenborough—while for hobbies, though he is less active than formerly, he has been an enthusiastic amateur horologist, and he continues to take a keen interest in the garden surrounding his residence.
Having said this, given that I have had the enormous privilege of working with the Dalai Lama on three of his most important books, including his (second) autobiography, I should at least attempt an answer to the question of what he is like as a person.* The best way I can think of doing so is by recounting the beginning of a conversation I had with him some years ago. I told him how my wife had recently chided me that it was a disgrace how, after knowing His Holiness for then more than a quarter century, I still could not hold a proper conversation with him in his own language. I had to admit she was right, I said, and for that, I told him, I ought to apologize.
“Well, if it comes to that,” he replied in his familiar heavily accented English, “it is me who should apologize. I have been learning your language since nineteen forty-seven!”
In those few words are summed up the grace, the humility, and the kindness of the man.
I first met the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, his exile home in India, during March 1988, when I went to interview him on behalf of the London Spectator. There was one thing about that first encounter that struck me at the time as slightly strange and has since come to seem prophetic. When I was shown into his audience chamber, I had just enough time to register that the room was empty before I realized the Dalai Lama was standing almost directly in front of me. It was not as if he had been there all along and I suddenly noticed him; rather my impression was that he literally appeared out of nowhere.
Something similar occurred a year or so later—but this is supposed to be a biography, not autobiography. Suffice it instead to say that quite a lot of our work that followed over the years since then was undertaken while the Dalai Lama was away from his exile home and on the road—in the United States, Denmark, Italy, Germany, France, the UK, and elsewhere in India. This has allowed me to see him in a variety of different settings, from which I have gleaned some observations perhaps worth relating.
I know him, for example, to be fastidious—his nails are always neatly trimmed—though he is not the least showy as to dress. His clothing is of good quality but not the finest. His shoes are sturdy and well polished, but of respectable and not high-end provenance. Rupert Murdoch—a media tycoon and not a moralist—once called the Dalai Lama a “canny old monk in Gucci loafers.” He was wrong. The Dalai Lama wears Hush Puppies as a rule, never Gucci. At home he wears flip-flops.
It is true that the Dalai Lama has a fondness for good timepieces, but he does not have a collection. He wears an unornamented gold Rolex. Invariably he gives away any he no longer has use for. In fact, I have one of them (gifted by him first to someone else). It is a plain stainless steel Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox with a mechanical alarm (which would no doubt have appealed to him) that he wore for a time during the 1960s.
Although quite the opposite of extravagant in terms of possessions, the Dalai Lama has admitted to having a somewhat “free-spending” nature. When he was a child, he would buy as m
any animals destined for slaughter as he could—to the point where his officials ran out of room to keep them. As an adult, on more than one occasion he visited shopping malls during his first trip to the United States in 1979. His tutor Ling Rinpoché cautioned him against making unnecessary purchases, however, and so far as I know, he has rarely been seen in any sort of retail outlet since. He does not use a computer, so he is not an online shopper. Instead his extravagance—if such it is—is limited nowadays to giving away money, mainly to humanitarian causes. When he won the Templeton Prize in 2012, he immediately donated the great majority of its almost $2 million award to the Save the Children Fund.* This was in honor of the charity’s generosity to Tibetan refugees in the early days of exile.
In private, the Dalai Lama is attentive to others’ needs and will, for example, ask if you prefer coffee if only tea has been served. He will ensure that there are nuts or cookies available alongside the dri churra (a molar-cracking dried cheese from Tibet) of which he is fond. He will adjust the blinds so the sun is not in your eyes. He may ask whether you find it too hot or too cold and have the heating or air-conditioning adjusted. If it seems to him that the room layout for an audience could be improved, he will have his staff move furniture around until he finds it satisfactory. I recall one occasion during the early days of our acquaintance when I came across him moving chairs in his hotel room in preparation for a press conference.
The Dalai Lama is a hearty eater, though this is in part because, as an ordained monk, he may eat only twice a day, and never after noon—though he might choose to do so if he is a guest at a luncheon while abroad, and he may also take a cookie or two during the course of the afternoon if he has had a particularly arduous day. As to diet, he is not fussy. He leans toward vegetarianism in principle but, on account of illness and doctors’ advice, he eats meat without scruple—though one need have no doubt he prays for the postmortem well-being of each creature that he consumes.
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