[Buddha-l] Re: Re: The Dalai Lama on Self-Loathing (Stuart Lachs)

[Christopher Fynn]

Stuart Lachs wrote:

...

>   This is in response my guess in response to Parenti's:

> The Dalai Lama himself stated that "the pervasive influence of Buddhism"
> in Tibet, "amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment 
> resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and
> contentment."(4) A reading of Tibet's history suggests a different 
> picture. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the 
> first Grand Lama,  who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. 
> Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into
> Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then 
> gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is 
> quite a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army. His
> two previous lama "incarnations" were then retroactively recognized as his
> predecessors, thereby transforming the first Dalai Lama into the third 
> Dalai Lama.


Isn't it the case that the "Chinese" Emperors concerned were  Mongolians (who 
had already conquered China)?  According to Tibetan sources the armies sent to 
"support" the Dalai Lama during this period were largely Mongolian as well.
(And it was only the *Fifth* Dalai Lama who first gained real control over Tibet 
- with the support of these Mongols).

....

>  To support the Chinese overthrow of the old feudal theocracy is not to
> applaud everything about Chinese rule in Tibet. This point is seldom
> understood by today's Shangri-La adherents in the West.

> The converse is also true. To denounce the Chinese occupation does not
> mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. One common complaint
> among Buddhist followers in the West is that Tibet's religious culture is
> being undermined by the occupation. Indeed this seems to be the case. Many
> of the monasteries are closed, and the theocracy has passed into history.

> What I am questioning here is the supposedly admirable and pristinely
> spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. In short, we can advocate
> religious freedom and independence for Tibet without having to embrace the
> mythology of a Paradise Lost.

I suspect the feudal theocracy would have been overthrown or pretty well 
dissolved in Tibet by now without any Chinese assistance - winds of change had 
been blowing for a long time in Tibet. There was a setback to some reforms which 
had already taken place after the death of the 13th Dalai Lama and during the 
minority of the present one - but I don't think the old social order could have 
survived long increasing contacts with the modern world.

An interesting comparison to Tibet is Bhutan - which if anything was probably 
more backward & feudal than Tibet in 1950 -and has a very similar culture
and so on - (though it of course it was never ruled by the Dalai Lamas).

Bhutan has had none of the supposed "benefits", "modernizations" & "social 
reforms" with which China has supposedly blessed Tibet - yet I think you will 
find that in most ways they have progressed much further, and certainly the 
people are generally in a better and happier condition without any of this
kind of help. Not to say that Bhutan is a perfect paradise or shangrila -
just that positive social changes & development can take place in this sort
of society without the sort of "help"

We can also look at the Himalayan areas of India which were within the periphary 
of the Tibetan cultural sphere (Ladakh & Zangskar, Lahoul & Spiti, Kinnaur, 
Sikkim and parts of Arunachel Pradesh) - Being ruled by India hasn't necessarily 
always been easy in some these places but - I think whatever has occurred there 
has never involved the sort of cultural devastation, brutality and so on that 
took place in Tibet following the Chinese takeover.