[Buddha-l] A More Encouraging Read

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

By way of contrast to Patrick French, I share this different  
perspective (in several ways) on the Dalai Lama's political acumen. It  
came to me via a Buddhist email list and was written by Siddiq Wahid,  
a person unknown to me but who was identified in the email's  
introduction as professor and Vice Chancellor at the Kashmir Islamic  
University. The entire piece is too long to share here and I cannot  
find a url for it. But I share its final three paragraphs, followed by  
a comment from me.

> The Dalai Lama, in his wisdom, has pronounced that the Olympics must  
> not be damaged. We can attribute this wisdom in part to his concern  
> for the lives and limbs of Tibetans in Tibet and his identification  
> with compassion incarnate, being as he is the embodiment of  
> Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. In part we can also  
> attribute it to his political wisdom in keeping the door open for  
> dialogue. But what option do the ordinary Tibetans have? Especially  
> in the face of the vicious personal attacks on the person of the  
> Dalai Lama and the continued disingenuousness with which they have  
> rejected huge concessions he has made to the Chinese State over the  
> years. The Tibetans are doing what any peoples who are threatened  
> with cultural extinction will do: they are saying, "thus far and no  
> further."
>
> Elliot Sperling, in a recent opinion piece published in the Times of  
> India (March 17th, 2008), has faulted the Dalai Lama for his  
> "political naiveté and desperation" which has resulted in  
> "ratchet[ing] down" his position "from Tibetan independence, to real  
> autonomy to simple cultural rights." This is the argument of a  
> political historian, looking at events from a perspective  
> sympathetic to Tibetans but unable to identify with the real danger:  
> a long term arrangement that regains territory but compromises a  
> worldview. The Dalai Lama's approach has served to expose this  
> intent of the Government of the PRC. Its complete disregard for his  
> reconciliatory line of attack has shown how confident it is in its  
> disregard for the truth. The Dalai Lama's method, in fact, is a  
> measure of how confident he is of the strength of Buddhism to  
> survive, even in China, if the latter guarantees real freedom to the  
> Tibetans to practice their religion. As a Buddhist monk he cannot  
> deny change, but he is confident enough to ask that the Tibetan  
> people be allowed to dictate its nature and pace. The truth is that  
> China is unwilling to do this. In the face of China's turning a deaf  
> ear to the truth, the only way the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans can  
> fight back is to continue to tell the truth again and again to China  
> and the world at large. As Chinua Achebe has said, "Telling the  
> truth is the only way, in the long run, to get listened to."
>
> Cherish the Tibetan people, for they show the way to all who fight  
> the uphill battle against today's politics and ideologies of  
> hegemonic homogeneity, everywhere.

It seems to me that Wahid is pointing out something that ought to be  
obvious from a Buddhist perspective, but is entirely absent from the  
media coverage I've seen on the protests: that Buddhism doesn't care a  
fig for nations and just maybe the Dalai Lama doesn't, either. It is  
simply not important to the Buddhadharma or to the awakening of all  
beings or even to the happiness of the Tibetan people whether there is  
a Tibet. Freedom, as Americans are perhaps at last remembering, is not  
given to us by government. Not even government by Tibetans. The  
Tibetans proved that for some centuries.

Sperling sees as "ratchet[ting] down" the shift from independence to  
cultural rights. Perhaps the Dalai Lama sees it as simply refocusing.  
Wahid seems to see this strategy as good politics in the face of  
hegemonic ideology. I see it as good Buddhism.

Franz