Tibetan Buddhism in Diaspora

Cultural re-signification in practice and institutions

Ana Lopes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317572800
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

The imperialist ambitions of China – which invaded Tibet in the late 1940s – have sparked the spectacular spread of Tibetan Buddhism worldwide, and especially in western countries. This work is a study on the malleability of a particular Buddhist tradition; on its adaptability in new contexts.

The book analyses the nature of the Tibetan Buddhism in the Diaspora. It examines how the re-signification of Tibetan Buddhist practices and organizational structures in the present refers back to the dismantlement of the Tibetan state headed by the Dalai Lama and the fragmentation of Tibetan Buddhist religious organizations in general. It includes extensive multi-sited fieldwork conducted in the United States, Brazil, Europe, and Asia and a detailed analysis of contemporary documents relating to the global spread of Tibetan Buddhism. The author demonstrates that there is a "de-institutionalized" and "de-territorialized" project of political power and religious organization, which, among several other consequences, engenders the gradual "autonomization" of lamas and lineages inside the religious field of Tibetan Buddhism. Thus, a spectre of these previous institutions continues to exist outside their original contexts, and they are continually activated in ever-new settings.

Using a combination of two different academic traditions – namely, the Brazilian anthropological tradition and the American Buddhist studies tradition – it investigates the "process of cultural re-signification" of Tibetan Buddhism in the context of its Diaspora. Thus, it will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of Asian Religion, Asian Studies and Buddhism.

Part I
Death

1
Echoes of terror from the top of the world

Nowadays I avail myself of this primary distinction concerning all aesthetic values: in every case I ask, “Is it hunger or superabundance that have become creative here?” At first glance, a different distinction may appear more advisable – it’s far more noticeable – namely, the question of whether the creation was caused by a desire for fixing, for immortalizing, for being, or rather by a desire for destruction, for change, for novelty, for future, for becoming.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (2001 [1882]: 235)

I start with terror and, most probably, its echoes will be heard throughout this work. In its abstract, aseptic, rational form, terror can very well be understood as one necessary step towards civilization, a stage that leads to a blank sheet on which the most beautiful projects of society can be sketched. In practice, terror tears apart, but also leaves its imprint, often becoming an invisible and creative bond, the birdlime connecting, in a fragile arrangement, fragments of fragments, impressions of totality already dissolved. In the case of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, terror was born from the clash between two worldviews predominantly incompatible with each other, if not completely contradictory.

I start my account by the report of an encounter that happened almost 30 years after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) marched triumphantly through Tibetan territory, announcing the revolution to come. We are in August of 1979, in the eastern Tibetan village of Tashikhiel, where a crowd of 6,000 people gathered little by little.¹ Hours earlier the local population had received the news of the imminent visit of a fact-finding delegation sent by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama himself. More than 20 years had passed since the Tibetan spiritual and secular leader had fled Tibet to take refuge in India, and since then Tibetans had been deprived of any contact with the Dalai Lama or members of his family. The delegation that would visit Tashikiel was led precisely by the Dalai Lama’s brother, Lobsang Samten.

As they approached the village, the delegation members became increasingly surprised by what was there to greet them. In Lobsang Samten’s words, “it was unbelievable. Everywhere, people were shouting, throwing scarves, apples, flowers” (Avedon 1994: 333). The presence of the Dalai Lama’s brother among the members of the delegation transformed the fact-finding mission into a religious ceremony. “They were dying to see us,” reported Lobsang Samten. “They climbed on the roofs and pushed inside, stretching out their hands to touch us.” Meanwhile, the Chinese officials screamed, trying to protect the delegation: “Don’t go out! Don’t go out! They’ll kill you! They’ll kill you!” (ibid.).

The Chinese officials had no doubt that the superiority of the communist system was already totally assimilated by Tibetans after more than 20 years of occupation, and several reeducation sessions. They firmly believed that the lives of the fact-finding delegation members were at risk since they represented everything bad that existed in the Tibet of the past: “Feudalism,” “the poison of religion,” and the “oppression of the people.”² However, the scenes of devotion and commotion witnessed by them in Tashikiel would happen again and again wherever the delegation went, gaining colossal dimensions in the capital city of Lhasa.

Tibetans cried profusely as they reported the details of what had become of their lives in the past decades. Everyone had a story of death and torture in their family to tell. Monasteries had been destroyed; lamas and monks had been executed or put in prison. Similar stories would be told and retold in all the villages and towns the delegation visited. The Chinese officials seemed surprised with what they saw. Mr. Kao, a senior official in the Nationalities Affairs Commission that accompanied the mission, confided to Lobsang Samten:

“You are the representative of the Dalai Lama,” he shouted, “and people are trying to get blessings even from you. What will happen if the Dalai Lama himself came? We cannot control it. We cannot be responsible. These people are just crazy!”

(Ibid.)

The sincere surprise of Mr. Kao in the face of the strong display of Tibetan devotion is, in a certain way, the portrait of many decades of Chinese occupation in Tibet. Since the Chinese communists crossed the Tibetan border with the aim to integrate Tibet into their political project, they were constantly confronted by the unconditional faith of Tibetans in their religion and especially in the figure of the Dalai Lama. Convinced of the superiority of the communist system, the Chinese officials clearly had a hard time understanding the attachment of Tibetans to their “backward and feudal” religion. The conflict of almost opposite worldviews, ways of life, codes of conduct and so forth engendered in Tibet a situation that, even with the passing of decades, has proven itself to be in many senses untenable. The recent cases of Tibetans setting their bodies on fire in order to protest against the conditions of life under Chinese rule represents perhaps the most extreme outcome of the politics of terror and oppression perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) against some minorities in their territory.³ Symbolic transgression, death and destruction have been among the weapons used by the Chinese to sever the connection between Tibetans and their own sense of cultural identity and history.

Histories of Sino-Tibetan relations

It could indeed be said that different views of history are at the very core of the clash between Tibetan and Chinese worldviews. Chinese claims over Tibet go back to the thirteenth century.⁴ According to the Chinese version of history, it was during that time that Tibet became an integral part of Chinese territory. This argument is based on the Mongol conquest of both regions. In general terms, Tibetans and Chinese agree that the crucial encounter in 1247 between the Tibetan spiritual master Sakya Pandita (1182–1251) and the powerful Mongol prince Goden Khan (d. 1253), the grandson of Genghis Khan (d. 1227), marked the beginning of important changes in the power structures of Tibet. The Government White Papers, a historical account prepared by the Information Office of the State Council of the PRC in English,⁵ describes this encounter as an instance in which the “terms for Tibetan submission to the Mongols” was decided. It then explains that

the regime of the Mongol Khanate changed its title to Yuan in 1271 and unified the whole of China in 1279, establishing a central government, which, following the Han (206 BC – AD 220) and Tang (618–907) dynasties, achieved great unification of various regions and races within the domain of China.

The traditional Tibetan historiographical approach to the matter emphasizes, on its side, the religious aspects of Sakya–Mongol relations, pointing out the essence of Tibetan political theory vis-à-vis the country’s neighbors. According to this interpretation of the historical facts, the kind of relationship established between Mongols – and later the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) – and Tibetans did not involve the direct interference of foreign forces in the internal affairs of Tibet, even though it did imply the payment of tributes to the suzerain state, and so forth. Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa (1907–89), the finance minister and senior diplomatic representative of the Dalai Lama in India during the first years of the Chinese occupation, writes in his massive historical treatise One Hundred Thousand Moons that after conquering most of Tibet, Goden Khan “needed a good lama who knew how to teach the essential path of Buddhism in Hor and Mongolia” (Shakabpa 2010: 209). He then asked the Hor Golden Calligrapher,⁶ an office of the Mongolian Empire akin to an envoy, to send a letter to Sakya Pandita, who had the reputation of being one of the most accomplished Tibetan Buddhist teachers of his time, summoning him to a meeting.

Shakabpa, who was encouraged by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama himself to write his treatise on Tibetan history,⁷ identifies in this encounter (and the circumstances leading up to it) the beginnings of the so-called “preceptor–patron relationship” (Tib. mchod gnas dang yon bdag) with the Mongols. Briefly stated, this relationship implies that the lama act as a teacher to a powerful leader, who offers in return protection and patronage. In Shakabpa’s narrative, which is based primarily on Tibetan sources, Sakya Pandita is said to have healed Goden Khan of leprosy and to have further impressed the Mongol warrior with his ability to unmask a ruse created to test his powers (ibid.: 212–13). According to this version of history, the particular kind of relationship established between Sakya Pandita and Goden Khan would be repeated and strengthened by the Tibetan lama’s nephew, Phagpa Chögyal (1235–80), and the next important Mongol leader, Kublai Khan (1215–94).

The discussion around the Sakya–Mongol partnership sets the stage for the central argument of One Hundred Thousand Moons. In the words of Derek Maher, who translated and annotated the English edition of the book, it is the preceptor–patron relationship that Shakabpa “sees as animating the rest of Tibetan history” (ibid.: 199). This is a crucial point for the appreciation of differences in the Tibetan and Chinese historical interpretations. Without necessarily denying the particulars of the Chinese arguments connected to their “ownership of Tibet,” as it is stated in the White Papers, Tibetans assert their independent status through expounding historical facts on the basis of the preceptor–patron relationship, i.e., seeing them mainly through the lenses of religion.

The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) succeeded the Yuan, becoming the “first native Chinese dynasty to control all of China since the T’ang” (Smith 1996: 101). In the White Papers document it is asserted, “The central government of the Ming Dynasty retained most of the titles and ranks of official positions instituted during the Yuan Dynasty.” This claim and others associated with it, such as the conferral of titles to lamas, are directly contested by Shakabpa right at the beginning of Chapter 5 of One Hundred Thousand Moons, which discusses the religious and political developments from the middle of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century (Shakabpa 2010: 249). Western scholars tend to agree with Shakabpa that Tibet experienced during this period a situation of total independence in relation to Chinese imperial forces. In a paper that seeks to clarify some of the contradictions between Tibetan and Chinese positions, historian Elliot Sperling is categorical: “Bluntly put, there was no Ming political authority over Tibet – no ordinances, laws, taxes, etc., imposed inside Tibet by the Ming” (Sperling 2004: 27).⁸

Matters became more complicated during the ruling period of the Qing (1644–1911), the dynasty that succeeded the Ming. Like the Yuan dynasty, the Qing also had a foreign origin, more specifically Manchu. Despite this fact, as historian Jonathan Spence puts it, “While some descendants of the Ming ruling house fought on with tenacity, most Chinese accepted the new rulers because the Manchus promised – with only a few exceptions – to uphold China’s traditional beliefs and social structures” (Spence 1990: 4). The PRC Government White Papers lead us to believe that the involvement of the Qing dynasty in Tibet’s affairs came in the first years of the new rule:

When the Qing Dynasty replaced the Ming Dynasty in 1644, it further strengthened administration over Tibet. In 1653 and 1713, the Qing emperors granted honorific titles to the 5th Dalai Lama and the 5th Bainqen Lama [i.e., the Fifth Panchen Lama], henceforth officially establishing the titles of the Dalai Lama and the Bainqen Erdeni and their political and religious status in Tibet.

Tibetan and western historiographies present this period in a more complicated light. As we will see in more detail in the following chapter, the Fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (1617–82) came to power in 1642 with the help of Gushri Khan (b. 1582),⁹ leader of the Qoshot Mongols, establishing the Ganden Podrang government,¹⁰ which lasted until the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. After the war led by Gushri Khan, vast segments of Tibetan territory were unified and brought under the rule of the new government. During the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his powerful Mongol protectors, there seemed to be a reasonable degree of independence on the Tibetan side in relation to the Manchu court, even if a certain level of ceremonial subordination was present.

Things gradually became more complicated with the weakening of Qoshot Mongol leaders and the consequent rise of external threats. In 1718, Chinese imperial troops had to intervene in Tibet in order to expel Jungar Mongol invaders. After successfully completing the task, the emperor installed a provisional military government in Lhasa (Petech 1950: 62), subsequently establishing the norms for a Chinese protectorate. The grip of the Manchu court over Tibet became stronger than ever after the Gorkha invasion of Tibet in 1792, when the Ganden Podrang government pleaded for Chinese military help once more. In 1793, the Qing court promulgated the “Regulations for Resolving Tibetan Matters” (Sperling 2004: 13), a document with 29 articles that, according to the White Papers and other Chinese documents, was created “to better govern Tibet.”

The presence of representatives of the Manchu emperor in the Tibetan court known as “ambans,” or “high commissioners,” from this time on represents perhaps the most damaging fact against the argument for Tibet’s full autonomy during that time. The “Regulations for Resolving Tibetan Matters” elevated the rank of these representatives to a “level equal to that of Chinese provincial governors” (ibid.: 13). The extent of power of the ambans in Tibetan affairs varied over time, but in general terms they served as intermediaries between the Ganden Podrang government and the Manchu emperor. The institution of the so-called “Golden Urn,” which at least in theory granted the Manchu emperor the final word in the process of recognizing important Tibetan lamas, such as the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, represented yet another serious interference in Tibetan affairs.¹¹ Notwithstanding Shakabpa’s assertion that the Golden Urn was “either not used, or a pretense was made of having used it” (apud Sperling 2004: 21), the fact remains that some authority – albeit purely ceremonial – was granted to the emperor in a very crucial terrain, creating in this way a precedent that has engendered serious consequences even in recent times, as I will discuss in greater detail below.

In the same vein, another important matter that emerged during the Qing era is directly connected to the figure of the Panchen Lama – called “Bainqen Erdeni” in the Chinese document – the second most important lama in the political hierarchy of the Gelug School. In 1728, the Manchus presented the Fifth Panchen Lama, Lobsang Yeshe (1663–1737), with an imperial edict establishing his secular power over “gTsaṅ [Tsang] and Western Tibet as far as Kailasa [Mount Kailash],” which marked, according to historian Luciano Petech, the creation of “his political importance as some sort of balance against that of the Dalai Lama” (Petech 1950: 139). Partly due to this historical event, the Chinese communists would later develop a very close relationship with the Tenth Panchen Lama, Chökyi Gyaltsen (1938–89), attempting to transform him into their most important Tibetan ally in their occupation of Tibet.

With the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the subsequent establishment of the Republic of China (1912–49), it is generally agreed among Tibetan and western scholars that Tibet became a de facto independent territory. The Chinese official position, however, is that the “continuous rule over Tibet” was effective also during this period. In the words of historian Tsering Shakya, however, “When the Qing regime collapsed in 1911, the Tibetans severed all ties with China, expelled the Amban and his military escort and declared independence, thus ending nearly two centuries of Qing authority in the region” (Shakya 2009: 100). The situation of civil war that erupted in China around that time ma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Death
• PART II Bardo
• PART III Rebirth
• PART IV Once more death …
• Bibliography
• Index