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“Buddhism With Chinese Characteristics”

In Search of the 15th Dalai Lama

Christopher Harding

This time next year, the world may find the arcane of Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation taking centre stage in global politics. For the 14th Dalai Lama, who celebrated his 89th birthday a few weeks ago, has long promised to reveal his succession plans when he turns 90. In the past, he has suggested that his reincarnation might take place in India or somewhere in the West. This will be a moment fraught with danger for Tibet and Tibetans in exile, but also for relations between two of the most powerful countries on earth: China and India.

Tibet and China go back a long way together, and theirs has rarely been a happy history. At the height of its power in the eighth century, the Tibetan kingdom’s armies fought their way into the great capital of Tang China, Chang’an, and occupied it. The Tibetan Empire would later fragment after the last king of Tibet was murdered in 842, and Buddhist teachers known as lamas would eventually come to rule in his place. They helped the Mongols to govern Tibet in the 13th century. Then, in 1279, Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongol-led dynasty of China, and Tibet became nominally part of his empire.

The degree of authority over Tibetan affairs exercised by Chinese emperors of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties fluctuated a great deal over time, but in general they preferred indirect influence to outright control. Crucial to these arrangements was the maintaining of good relations with Tibet’s Buddhist leaders and in particular its tulkus. These were lineages of men and sometimes women that were regarded as manifestations of a particular bodhisattva: an enlightened being who puts off their entry into paradise in order to help others. By controlling the intermediate realm between death and rebirth, they were able to choose specific human incarnations, again and again, in order to continue their lineage and fulfil their salvific purpose in the world. Among the best-known Tibetan lineages are the Karmapas and the Panchen and Dalai Lamas.

The lineage of the Dalai Lama goes back to the turn of the 15th century peaking with the “Great 5th” Dalai Lama who united Tibet under his rule in 1642. Subsequent Dalai Lamas enjoyed both spiritual and political authority but found them embroiled in struggles for power between neighbouring Mongols and Chinese. In 1720, the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty won a decisive victory over a Mongol rival and managed to install his favoured candidate as the 7th Dalai Lama. From then on, China’s Qing dynasty regarded Tibet as a protectorate of sorts and the question of a Dalai Lama’s reincarnation as very much their business.

Yet the mysteries of reincarnation were often hard to control. Traditionally, an elderly Dalai Lama might leave written information about where he intended to be reincarnated or drop hints during the last weeks of his life. The direction in which the smoke drifted at his cremation might be watched for clues. Senior lamas would weigh these things alongside dreams or intuitions of their own before paying a visit to the homes of children who appeared to be likely candidates. There they might lay in front of the child some of the predecessor’s possessions, alongside unrelated objects, to see whether the child recognised the correct items as his own.

Concerned about the political quarrels and corruption that sometimes accompanied this process, and worried more broadly about Tibetans dabbling in divination when this was supposed to be the prerogative of the imperial court, the Qianlong Emperor sought to exert some control over Tibetan reincarnations. In a move that may well have important repercussions next year, the Emperor decided in 1792 to intervene in the process of identifying reincarnations within tulku lineages. Personally doubting the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation but resigned to managing the people of Tibet on their own terms, the Emperor had a golden urn made and sent to Lhasa. When it came time to identify a reincarnation, candidates identified in the usual way would have their names placed inside the urn. After prayers were said, a single name would be drawn by a Qing official.

This wasn’t about luck or having China’s preferred candidate fortuitously selected, though it did rather usefully allow for the latter. The Golden Urn method was based on a form of divination already used in branches of China’s imperial administration and was intended as a means of avoiding human corruption and allowing fate to take its course. Qing efforts to make the method acceptable to Tibet’s elites were helped by the fact that the chosen children frequently came from wealthy and influential families. The Golden Urn method ended up being used, over the decades that followed, to finalise a number of reincarnations. Precisely how many is debated, but they may have included the 10th, 11th and 12th Dalai Lamas.

After the Qing dynasty fell and a Republic of China was proclaimed in 1912, the 13th Dalai Lama sought independence for Tibet. But both the Republic and then, after 1949, the People’s Republic continued to regard Tibet as belonging to China. After the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India in 1959, China moved steadily to consolidate its control over Tibetan affairs. This included the use in 1995 of the Golden Urn to identify the 11th Panchen Lama. It was an important moment: the Dalai Lama’s favoured candidate was rejected and both the candidate and his family were disappeared into “protective” custody. The People’s Republic has since gone further still, creating a register of all those who are permitted to reincarnate after death. The state can revoke that permission at any time. It also claims authority over when the search for a new reincarnation may begin.

Much of this appears to be designed to ensure that the 15th Dalai Lama will be a person with whom the Chinese Communist Party can do business. The current Dalai Lama, alongside Tibet’s government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, rejects the idea of using the Golden Urn to identify the next Dalai Lama and insists that no candidate who is effectively chosen by the People’s Republic will be acceptable. It is highly likely as a result that within a few years Tibetans will have two people both claiming to be the 15th Dalai Lama: one in China selected using the Golden Urn, and another elsewhere chosen in the traditional way. Assuming that both are children–likely, but not inevitable–they will probably have regents speaking and acting on their behalf.

Why would the CCP go to all this trouble? More than a decade ago, the current Dalai Lama relinquished his political authority in favour of a prime minister, or sikyong, elected by Tibetans in exile. But although the Dalai Lama no longer holds political power, over the course of a long life he has become synonymous with Tibet’s spirit and its hopes of independence–the question of who succeeds him is therefore enormously important. The United States made clear its position in 2015: Chinese government interference in the Tibetan reincarnation process would go against the internationally recognised right to religious freedom. The Tibetan government has been working hard, of late, to persuade European countries to follow suit, but much will depend on how willing those countries are to risk antagonising China. Standing up to China over Tibet in the Sixties was a relatively cost-free exercise for Westerners. That is no longer true in 2024.

India, meanwhile, will face a particularly difficult decision. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently warmed to the Dalai Lama, sending him birthday greetings and attending a Global Buddhist Summit alongside him in 2023. It is all part of an effort to deploy Buddhism as part of India’s soft power, especially with countries such as Japan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and South Korea, in whose cultures Buddhism runs deep. Modi has spoken of India’s “Buddhist cousin nations” around the world and of his desire to develop Bodh Gaya–the place where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment–as the “spiritual capital” of Buddhism. In April 2023, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting produced “Lessons from Lord Buddha”: a compendium of speeches by Modi that emphasise his spiritual debt to Buddhism. India’s Prime Minister is “a huge admirer and follower of Lord Buddha”.

India cannot, however, afford to ignore its relationship with China. India recognises China’s sovereignty in Tibet and has to tread carefully when it comes to disputed border areas in the Himalayas–many of which are home to significant Buddhist populations. China’s leadership has already shown its displeasure, on a number of occasions, with Modi’s wooing of the “anti-China” Dalai Lama. It also hopes that a “Buddhism with Chinese characteristics” will be capable of enhancing relations with its neighbours. Both Modi and Xi Jinping, it seems, regard Buddhism as key to their attempts to win friends and influence people in Asia.

Modi may also need to worry about how the search for the next Dalai Lama could cause divisions within Tibet’s exile community in India. Without the current Dalai Lama there to act as a unifying figure, older rivalries may once again come to the fore. Meanwhile, it is no longer sensible to assume that Beijing’s candidate for the 15th Dalai Lama will be uniformly rejected or ignored by Tibetan Buddhist leaders living in Tibet and China. Some of these have made converts among Han Chinese who find the drama of Tibet’s landscape and esoteric religious traditions a refreshing–perhaps even a countercultural–alternative to urban Chinese life. For Tibetan monks and lamas ministering to these Han Chinese Buddhists, the backing–or at least the tacit permission–of the Chinese state is essential in going about their work.

The countdown, then, is on. A Hindu leader in India, an atheist one in China and their Christian and secular counterparts around the world must soon decide how to respond to what a nonagenarian Tibetan Buddhist will say about his forthcoming reincarnation. Perhaps this strange moment will be the last of its kind. The next Dalai Lama may well lack their predecessor’s charisma, gift for communication and international status. The lineage may fall into semi-obscurity as geopolitics moves on. China’s leaders may well be hoping for just such a turn of events. For Tibetans in exile, it would be a disaster: their greatest spiritual and diplomatic asset gone, with no-one to take his place. Lacking a homeland and having lost a powerfully symbolic leader, the challenge will be daunting of retaining–perhaps remaking–Tibetan identity.

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 15 - 18, Oct 5 - Nov 2, 2024