It is a question on everyone’s mind, Tibetan or otherwise: who and what after the Dalai Lama? It is a question that has often been asked to the Dalai Lama, and he, sort of, answers it in his latest book―Voice for the Voiceless: Over Seven Decades of Struggle With China For My Land And My Pride. As the title suggests, the book is more of a chronicle of his people’s history and their fight for independence and later autonomy, what the Dalai Lama calls the Middle Way Approach.
The book begins with China’s invasion of Tibet in 1950, when the Dalai Lama was all of 16, his struggles with governing a land that was no longer his, and his eventual escape to India. It covers in detail the various ways in which he and his people tried to come to a settlement with the Chinese leadership, from Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping, while he was in Tibet and following his exile. While the book reads like a crash course in Tibetan history, it is the anecdotes that make the political personal. Take, for instance, the Dalai Lama’s meeting with Mao: “Your mind is scientific... a very revolutionary mind,” Mao told the Dalai Lama. But then he also told him that religion is poison, reduces population and negates material progress, and the Dalai Lama inferred that nothing concrete would come of their dialogue. It is also during this visit that the Dalai Lama met President Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun―“He had an affable personality and seemed quite broad-minded,” wrote the Dalai Lama, who was told that Xi’s father had treasured all his life a wristwatch that the Dalai Lama had given him then.
Despite the dialogues, formal and informal, the situation remains the same. Anyone would feel despair, even the Dalai Lama did. And so, in between the chapters on the negotiations with China, he has shared practices that helped sustain his sense of hope in the face of suffering. Only the Dalai Lama would think of that.
Excerpts:
At the time of publishing this book, I will be approaching my ninetieth year. If no resolution is found while I am alive, the Tibetan people, especially those inside Tibet, will blame the Chinese leadership and the Communist Party for its failure to reach a settlement with me; many Chinese too, especially Buddhists―some people told me that there are more than two hundred million in mainland China who self-identify as Buddhists―will be disappointed with their government for its failure to solve a problem whose solution has been staring at them for so long.
Given my age, understandably many Tibetans are concerned about what will happen when I am no more. On the political front of our campaign for the freedom of the Tibetan people, we now have a substantial population of Tibetans outside in the free world, so our struggle will go on, no matter what. Furthermore, as far as the day-to-day leadership of our movement is concerned, we now have both an elected executive in the office of the Sikyong (president of the Central Tibetan Administration) and a well-established Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile.
People have often asked me if there will be a next Dalai Lama. As early as the 1960s, I have expressed that whether the Dalai Lama institution should continue or not is a matter for the Tibetan people. So if the Tibetan people feel that the institution has served its purpose and there is now no longer any need for a Dalai Lama, then the institution will cease. In which case, I would be the last Dalai Lama, I have stated. I have also said that if there is continued need, then there will be the Fifteenth Dalai Lama. In particular, in 2011, I convened a gathering of the leaders of all major Tibetan religious traditions, and at the conclusion of this meeting, I issued a formal statement in which I stated that when I turn ninety, I will consult the high lamas of the Tibetan religious traditions as well as the Tibetan public, and if there is a consensus that the Dalai Lama institution should continue, then formal responsibility for the recognition of the Fifteenth Dalai Lama should rest with the Gaden Phodrang Trust (the Office of the Dalai Lama). The Gaden Phodrang Trust should follow the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past Tibetan Buddhist tradition, including, especially, consulting the oath-bound Dharma protectors, historically connected with the lineage of the Dalai Lamas, as was followed carefully in my own case. On my part, I stated that I will also leave clear written instructions on this. For more than a decade now, I have received numerous petitions and letters from a wide spectrum of Tibetan people―senior lamas from the various Tibetan traditions, abbots of monasteries, diaspora Tibetan communities across the world, and many prominent and ordinary Tibetans inside Tibet―as well as Tibetan Buddhist communities from the Himalayan region and Mongolia, uniformly asking me to ensure that the Dalai Lama lineage be continued.
In the official statement I issued in 2011, I also pointed out that it is totally inappropriate for Chinese Communists, who explicitly reject religion, including the idea of past and future lives, to meddle in the system of reincarnation of lamas, let alone that of the Dalai Lama. Such meddling, I pointed out, contradicts their own political ideology and only reveals their double standards. Elsewhere, half joking, I have remarked that before Communist China gets involved in the business of recognizing the reincarnation of lamas, including the Dalai Lama, it should first recognize the reincarnations of its past leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping! In summing up my thoughts on the question of the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama in that 2011 official statement, I urged that unless the recognition of the next Dalai Lama is done through traditional Tibetan Buddhist methods, no acceptance should be given by the Tibetan people and Tibetan Buddhists across the world to a candidate chosen for political ends by anyone, including those in the People’s Republic of China. Now, since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama―that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people―will continue.
―Excerpted with permission from HarperCollins UK.
VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS: OVER SEVEN DECADES OF STRUGGLE WITH CHINA FOR MY LAND AND MY PEOPLE
By His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Published by HarperCollins
Pages 272; price Rs699