Sadly this fascinating piece by Lydia Aran on how Tibetan Buddhism has been rebranded for western consumption is trapped behind Commentary’s subscription wall, but this extract gives a good flavor:
Catering to the tastes of Western academics and New Age adepts alike, the diaspora establishment led by the Dalai Lama also began stressing the elements of the sacred and the mystical in Tibetan discourse. For both internal and foreign consumption, it selected for publication mostly religious texts, especially hagiographies, while barring critical historical analysis and allowing very few translations into Tibetan from other languages. For a long time, contact with foreign cultures was limited to a small, English-speaking elite…
…And yet, despite the achievements of recent scholarship, the Shangri-La image continues to enjoy wide currency in the West, and not only among activists and partisans but among reputable scholars as well. To illustrate, let me briefly focus on the quality perhaps responsible more than any other for Tibet’s popularity in the West: namely, its allegedly deep-seated cultural affinity for nonviolence. Even a cursory look at history reveals that nonviolence has never been a traditional Tibetan practice, or a societal norm, or, for that matter, a teaching of Tibetan Buddhism. Before the present Dalai Lama’s encounter with the Gandhian concept of ahimsa, no Dalai Lama had ever invoked nonviolence as a virtue. Nor does ahimsa—meaning the abstinence from causing injury to any living creature—have any equivalent in Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
True, compassion (Tibetan snying rje, Sanskrit karuna) is an important religious and philosophical tenet, but it denotes above all the wish to save others from suffering by imparting to them Buddhist wisdom. In any case, it is not known ever to have been applied to political life in the way that, for instance, Gandhi took ahimsa as mandating a strategy of passive resistance to evil.
Pre-modern and modern Tibet engaged in many offensive campaigns against its neighbors, all of them sanctioned by Dalai Lamas. Domestically, too, Tibetan monasteries maintained private armies that were deployed in conflicts with the local government, with other monasteries, and sometimes even among schools within the same monastery. Fighting “dobdos” were known to constitute 15 percent of the monks of the great Gelugpa monasteries in and around Lhasa. Political rivalries were often settled by assassination. Some Dalai Lamas may have been kind and compassionate in person, but the historical record before 1960 unequivocally contradicts the image of a Dalai Lama preaching or practicing nonviolence.
Yet here is Robert Thurman, the well-known professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University—and a leading pro-Tibet activist—declaring that the great 5th Dalai Lama (1617-1682) was “a compassionate and peace-loving ruler who created in Tibet a unilaterally disarmed society.” And here, by way of contrast, are the instructions of the 5th Dalai Lama himself to his commanders, who had been ordered to subdue a rebellion in Tsang in 1660:
“Make the male lines like trees that have had their roots cut; make the female lines like brooks that have dried up in winter; make the children and grandchildren like eggs smashed against rocks; make the servants and followers like heaps of grass consumed by fire; make their dominion like a lamp whose oil has been exhausted; in short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.”
Yet another religion of peace, it would seem.
The round-eyed Buddha.
Insofar as your comment at the close of the selection…Bush spoke of Islam as a “Religion of Peace” in the simple hope that they might live up to the marketing. As for Muslims who classify it as such, some do so for the same reason that Bush’s speechwriters did and others to obfuscate the truth about large segments of the current Islamic world and to make it harder to criticize islamofacism.
All of which has nothing to do with Tibetan Buddhism. Yes, fools are ignorant of the historical facts, then again, they’re similarly unaware of the fact that horoscopes are meaningless (though there’s apparently some more academic backing for the Buddhist error). The “Religion of Peace” was an advertising slogan and nothing more. And it was never actually believed by anyone anyway. Correcting misperceptions about Buddhism as a “religion of peace” is better compared to correcting people’s misperceptions about Christianty and Judaism than about Islam about which, again, the “religion of peace” thing was never actually believed by anyone and was never anything more than a slogan.
What does something that supposedly happened in 1660 have anything to do with now? The Chinese have sysematically slaughtered millions of innocent Tibetans and destroyed thousands of irreplaceable temples and religious artwork. Perhaps the anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against these barbarians is your rationale for making this posting.
“Shangri-la image” indeed. It baffles me how so many people fail to recognize the Dalai Lama for exactly what he claims to be: not only a hereditary monarch, but a full-blown god-king — albeit not in the traditional sense. Why do we pretend to tolerate this sort of ridiculous claim in the West?
If you want to see the uglier side of the current Dalai Lama, you need look no further than a quick search for “Dorje Shugden” and see the violence and intolerance taking place over that.
There seems to be a huge research gap here… though perhaps my POV is different from significantly closer to inside the story, and being a history geek. MY resources are NOT Shirley McLaine or Professor Thurman.
Oddly enough, reading articles by and about the Dalai Lama since the mid 60s, He’s REGULARLY said that he picked up the idea of Non-violence FROM the example of Ghandi.
Even a cursory reading about the 59 uprising will include information about how totally unprepared (and ill equipped) the Tibetan MILITARY was to deal with China.
This information is clearly and readily available in much of his writings as well as readily available historical accounts.
(The first Dalai Lama didn’t NEED much for violence/military, since he had the support of the Mongol Empire.)
The Dorje Shugden discussion is an even more complicated internal dispute. Currently, the Dalai Lama has an over sized job, of trying to unify a community that is for the most part in exile. The Dorje Shugden practice belongs to the denomination/lineage of which he’s the head… He is essentially The POPE in this particular case, deciding that a practice that encourages fundamentalism isn’t helping the community. The Dorje Shugden practice is making a request of a particular guardian to pretty much wipe out all the other denominations/lineages… Not helpful to keeping the extended community united.
If the POPE is saying “Any clergy members who have molested children will be excommunicated.” He’s well within his rights as the leader of THAT particular religious community.
ALSO, For at LEAST the last 20 years, the Dalai Lama has been reminding the population and the other governmental representatives, that he originally took the national leadership role on a TEMPORARY basis (albeit centuries ago) and suggests that Democracy will get him off the hook for this “extra job”.
I’d also like to add that for the most part the Tibetans themselves are often annoyed by the “Shangri-la” analogy. No human being or human culture can live up to that.
I sometimes despair of the general run of western writers ever learning anything to speak of about Buddhism.
This article hasn’t relieved my despair.
Let’s see: Yes, Buddhism generally is somewhat pacifist; no, Buddhism doesn’t have a tradition of ahimsa, at least interpreted as the rather extreme pacifism Ghandiji taught. Tibetan Buddhism has had violent periods, but thing have changed significantly in 450 years. Yes, Thurman takes that maybe a bit far; no, Thurman isn’t the only expert on Tibetan Buddhism, and even better now we’ve got our own Tibetans who grew up in the West and can talk to us directly about the traditions. Thurman does, however, produce excellent daughters. No, the Dalai Lama isn’t a “god king”: bodhisattvas aren’t gods. And it’s not a hereditary position, although I presume from your phrasing that you actually understand that and just wanted the pejorative implication. (If you don’t like the tulku explanation, it might be better understood as picking a child of some obvious intelligence and good nature, and then training him from the age of 5 or 6 to be a leader.) And, as #6 notes, the whole “Shangri-La” thing is a pleasant fiction concocted by an Englishman out of the Shambhala legends; Shambhala is more like Augustine’s New Jerusalem than any physical location.
But other than being weak on the history, weak on the philosophy, weak on the religious concepts, and generally kind of ignorant, not a bad piece.
This is incorrect:
“He is essentially The POPE in this particular case, deciding that a practice that encourages fundamentalism isn’t helping the community. The Dorje Shugden practice is making a request of a particular guardian to pretty much wipe out all the other denominations/lineages… Not helpful to keeping the extended community united.”
The Dalai Lama is not the Pope of Buddhism or even of the Gelugpa tradition, which he is undermining with this political ban of a religious practice.
And the practice of Dorje Shugden, while traditional, is far from fundamentalist — Shugden practitioners stick to their own tradition (that passed down from Je Tsongkhapa) but also respect the right of others to practice their’s.
Certainly I have been relying upon the Wisdom Buddha Dorje Shugden for over a quarter of a century and I have not once requested him to harm another living being, let alone wipe out another lineage!! That is propaganda spread by the TGIE to cause people to hate Dorje Shugden and Shugden practitioners. Yet Trijang Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama’s own teacher, as well as other great Gelugpa Lamas too numerous to mention relied upon Dorje Shugden and never harmed a fly. Indeed, they prayed for the happiness and freedom of every single being, as we continue to do today, requesting Dorje Shugden to help us in bringing about this aim by attaining enlightenment.
The recent book, “The Bloody White Baron”, has some interesting insights into the non-pacifism of Tibetan Buddhism.