A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 4

In the Eye of the Storm, 1957-1959

Melvyn C. Goldstein

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780520972254
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

It is not possible to understand contemporary politics between China and the Dalai Lama without understanding what happened in the 1950s, especially the events that occurred in 1957–59. The fourth volume of Melvyn C. Goldstein's History of Modern Tibet series, In the Eye of the Storm, provides new perspectives on Sino-Tibetan history during the period leading to the Tibetan Uprising of 1959. The volume also reassesses issues that have been widely misunderstood as well as stereotypes and misrepresentations in the popular realm and in academic literature (such as in Mao's policies on Tibet). Volume 4 draws on important new Chinese government documents, published and unpublished memoirs, new biographies, and a large corpus of in-depth, specially collected political interviews to reexamine the events that produced the March 10th uprising and the demise of Tibet's famous Buddhist civilization. The result is a heavily documented analysis that presents a nuanced and balanced account of the principal players and their policies during the critical final two years of Sino-Tibetan relations under the Seventeen-Point Agreement of 1951.

1

Introduction

Traditional Tibetan Society

History does not occur in a vacuum, even for powerful kings and rulers. While many believe that ultimately it is the leaders of countries—the “great men” of history—who make the decisions that becomes its “history,” the sociocultural, political, economic, and religious matrix in which leaders are embedded plays an important role in constraining, facilitating, accelerating, and impeding the policies that are and can be utilized. This matrix, therefore, is often as determinative of historical outcomes as the leaders themselves. This has been true in Tibet, where three major institutions—mass monasticism, the manorial estate system, and the theocratic-ecclesiastic political system—played a critical role in determining the history of Tibet from the start of the twentieth century, including in the 1950s, where one of the key issues in Sino-Tibetan relations was the timing and nature of “democratic reforms” that would transform those institutions.

MASS MONASTICISM

It is impossible to understand modern Tibetan history without exploring, at least briefly, the special nature of the Tibetan monastic system and its place in the Tibetan national identity and national psyche. Tibetans saw their Buddhism—monasteries, lamas, and monks—as the institution that defined the character of their nation and civilization. For example, in 1946, the Tibetan government conveyed this in a letter sent to Chiang Kai-shek that stated, “There are many great nations on this earth who have achieved unprecedented wealth and might, but there is only one nation which is dedicated to the well-being of humanity in the world and that is the religious land of Tibet, which cherishes a joint spiritual and temporal system.”¹ The reference to the “well-being of the world” conveys aptly Tibetans’ belief that the monastic system’s organization of collective prayer chanting and other rituals functioned to benefit not just Tibet, but all sentient beings on the planet, and that this is what made Tibet a unique and great civilization in the family of nations. It was the heart of what we can think of as Tibetan “exceptionalism” that saw Tibetan Buddhism as a “civilizing project” that had converted the Yuan and Qing Emperors and had led Tibet to see its relationship to China as one of priest to patron.²

Monasticism is fundamental to both Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist philosophies and is found wherever Buddhism exists. However, the Tibetan form of monasticism differed from other types of Buddhism by virtue of its commitment to maintaining large numbers of monasteries in which tens of thousands of lifelong monks were recruited and supported, as well as by the unique Tibetan institution of incarnate “lamas”—enlightened spiritual leaders who served as the indispensable teachers/guides for learning and practicing Buddhism and for advancing on the path to nirvana.

The scale of the Tibetan monastic system was enormous and supported a staggering number of monks. The Chinese Military Headquarters reported that 14 percent of the Tibet Autonomous Region’s whole population in 1958 were monks and nuns.³ The magnitude of this can be appreciated by comparing it with Thailand, another prominent Buddhist society, where only about 1–2 percent of the total number of males were monks.⁴

Tibetans, not surprisingly, believed that monks per se were superior to laymen, and that the state should foster both religion and the spiritual development of the country by supporting monasteries and by making monkhood available to the largest possible number of males as a lifetime commitment. All celibate monks, even those who were functionally illiterate and only marginally involved in religious study and meditation, were considered superior to all laymen, because they had taken the critical first step in the Buddhist quest for enlightenment—they had taken vows of celibacy and renounced the attachment to sex, marriage, and family. Monks in Drepung Monastery often explained the essence of monks vis-à-vis laymen with a metaphor, saying “we monks are like sticks of incense in that we stand and fall by ourselves.” Becoming a monk, therefore, represented the empirical proof of the success of Tibetan Buddhism, so more monks represented more success and more greatness. In the Tibetan monastic system, therefore, quantity trumped quality. Monasticism in Tibet was not conceptualized as the otherworldly domain of a minute elite, but as a mass phenomenon that brought as many people onto the path of enlightenment as possible, although within this, the subgroup of highly educated monks were also much prized and honored. In Tibet’s great monastic seats, three, four, five, and even ten thousand monks resided in what were in essence monastic cities. Structurally, therefore, Buddhism in Tibet was characterized by what I have called “mass monasticism.”⁵

This was achieved partly due to the nature of monk recruitment. In the Tibetan monastic system, the overwhelming majority of monks were placed in monasteries by their parents as children when they were between the ages of roughly seven and twelve, without particular regard to their personality or wishes. Being a monk, moreover, was not a temporary experience for young males, a rite of passage, as in Thailand, but rather was a lifelong commitment. Being a monk in Tibet meant becoming a part of an all-consuming, lifelong, highly esteemed alternative culture.

There were many reasons why parents made a son a celibate monk for life. For many, it was their deep religious belief that being a monk was a great privilege and honor and a calling that made parents proud. For others who were poor, it was that but also a culturally valued way to reduce the number of mouths to feed, while also ensuring that their son would never have to experience the hardships of the poor in rural villages. In other cases, parents made a son a monk to fulfill a solemn promise made to a deity to whom they had prayed to help cure that son when he was sick. In yet other cases, recruitment was the result of a tax obligation. Many monasteries had numerical targets, so when they fell below their target number of monks, the government authorized them to conscript young boys from their subject peasants. For example, a subject family with three sons would have to make the middle one a monk.⁶ In virtually all cases, however, new monks were young boys, and joining a monastery was the decision of their parents.

Parents sometimes broached the subject with a son, but usually simply told the child of their decision. Officially, the monastery asked such young boys whether they wanted to be a monk, but this was just pro forma. For example, if a newly made child monk ran away from the monastery after a month or two, this would not result in his dismissal on the grounds that he did not want to be a monk. A number of monks told the author how at first they had run away from the monastery to their homes, only to receive a beating from their fathers, who immediately returned them to the monastery. The monks relating these incidents did not see this as abusive. Rather, they laughed at how stupid they had been at that time to want to give up being a monk. Tibetans generally felt that young boys cannot comprehend the greatness of being a monk; it was up to their elders to see to it that they had the right opportunities.

However, since monks could leave the monastic order when they grew older, powerful mechanisms were needed to retain adolescent and young adult monks facing a life of celibacy. The monastic system was structured to facilitate this. A monk enjoyed high status, but an ex-monk was somewhat looked down upon. Also, the large monasteries generally did not place severe restrictions on comportment or expect educational achievements. Rather than diligently weeding out all novices who seemed unsuited for a rigorous life of prayer, study, and meditation, the Tibetan monastic system expelled monks only if they committed serious crimes like murder or engaged in heterosexual intercourse.⁷ Moreover, there were no exams that novices or monks had to pass in order to remain in the monastery (although there were exams for higher statuses within the monk’s ranks). Placing thousands of monks in a monastic community at a young age meant that many would have little interest or ability to study or meditate, and Tibet’s great monastic centers accepted them along with the virtuoso scholar monks. Even illiterate monks were welcomed for fulfilling the vow of monkhood and for helping to do the work needed to maintain the monastery. As mentioned above, this made sense in Tibet, because the goal of monasticism was to enable as many males as possible to move along the path to spiritual enlightenment by cutting their attachments to family, children, and the material world. Monks used to convey the monastery’s acceptance of this internal diversity with the apt saying, “In the sea there are frogs and fish.”

In contrast, leaving the monastery posed important economic problems. Monks lost whatever rights they might otherwise have had to their family’s farm when they entered the monastery. Monks who left the monastery, therefore, had to face the task of finding some source of income. They also reverted to their original status of belonging to a lord and were liable for service to their lord. By contrast, if they remained monks, their basic economic needs were met without their having to work too hard. All these factors made it both easier and more advantageous for monks to remain in the monastery.

The special status of monks was manifested also in the monasteries being treated as semiautonomous units within the Tibetan state, with the exclusive right to judge and discipline their monks for all crimes except murder and treason. This relative autonomy, however, did not mean that the monastic system was disinterested in the political affairs of the country. It was actually very concerned. The Gelugpa monastic leadership espoused the belief that since the Tibetan state was first and foremost the supporter and patron of religion, the needs and interests of religion and monasticism should take primacy. The Dalai Lama and the rest of the government agreed with this in principle, but there was no unanimity on who was to determine what in fact was in the best interests of religion.

Since the monastic segment felt it represented the essence of religion, monastic leaders believed that the political and economic system existed to further their ends and that they, not the government, could best judge what was in the short- and long-term interests of religion. Thus, it was their religious duty and right to intervene whenever they felt the government was acting against the interests of religion. This, of course, brought them into the mainstream of political affairs and into potential conflict with the ruler and the government, which had to balance acting in the best interests of religion and the state.

Mass monasticism was extremely expensive and required a huge input of resources and funds year after year, so the control of resources and income was a major issue for the monastic system. For example, a monastery like Drepung with its ten thousand monks, provided tea with butter at least once a day to all its monks during the morning prayer chanting (Tib. mangja) ritual, and had to maintain tens of thousands of butter lamps and constantly make religious objects (Tib. tshog) from grain as well as maintain a complex cycle of prayer festivals at which food was often served to the thousands of congregated monks. Moreover, these monks had to be provided a salary in grain, and of course there were continual costs for the upkeep of the physical plant of the monasteries. All this was sustained predominately by the yields from monastic manorial estates. Consequently, for the monastic leadership, the manorial estate system was seen as absolutely integral to the continued sustenance of the monastic segment and thus the greatness of Tibet. The communists’ democratic reforms, therefore, were seen as an existential threat to monasticism and the greatness of Tibet.

Another less well understood but important source of income for monasteries was money lending. Tibetan monasteries were the largest money lenders in Tibet, because they had numerous endowment funds that had been donated for the performance of specific rites. And just as with endowment funds in the West, the capital of those funds (usually grain) was maintained intact, and only the interest was used for the rites. This meant that every year the capital had to be lent out and interest collected to be used to fund the events. So here too, democratic reforms were seen as a threat to these lending activities and thus the viability of large monasteries.

Thus, Tibetan Buddhism and mass monasticism exemplified for Tibetans the value and worth of their culture and way of life, and the essence of their national identity. It is what they felt made their society and country unique and without equal. However, the reverse side of this strong belief in the superiority of the traditional system was a visceral rejection of new ideas. In the realpolitik world of the twentieth century, mass monasticism was a powerful, backward-looking force that blocked internal change and modernization. For example, the very important move to modernize Tibet that was led by Tsarong Shape and a group of young aristocratic officials under him in the 1920s, was quickly undermined and blocked as being a danger to the paramountcy of Buddhism.⁸ Not surprisingly, as Tsarong had argued would ...