Forty years ago, I stood in the Dalai Lama’s bedroom contemplating a cup with a skull carved above it, which he drank from as a child, so that he would be always aware of death’s imminence.
He had left that bedroom in 1959, aged 14, to avoid having the Chinese capture him and make him sing the government’s praises, abusing Tibetans’ passionate Buddhist faith to weaken Tibetan resentment over the Chinese invasion in 1959. He escaped to Dharamshala, India. One moving morning, after witnessing a sky burial, I climbed to the top of a hill behind Serra Monastery, one of the three most important monasteries around Lhasa, where a man who lived up there showed me religious items that the Chinese had destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. He unrolled them from a dusty bag as if they were treasures.
Tibetans revered the Dalai Lama. In Lhasa, giving someone a picture of the Dalai Lama was one of the biggest kindnesses a visitor could do.
He, and other tulkus, are believed to be reincarnations of important Buddhist lamas. After a death, signs lead religious leaders to a home, and a child who might be such a reincarnation. They observe the child. Sometimes he seems to recognize someone who was close to the dead lama. Often they’ll spread on the floor before him several things, some shiny and appealing, and when he selects a less appealing article that belonged to the dead lama, as if it were familiar, that is also a sign.
We feared then that when he died the Chinese would appoint his “successor,” from some family they controlled. Tibetan Buddhist leaders would search as usual for his tulku, necessarily among Tibetans in India, but the Chinese would beat them to the punch.
Four decades have passed. Wandering around China, I was moved by Hong Kong folks’ justified fears that when the PRC recovered Hong Kong from the British, in 1997, the Chinese promises of semi-autonomy would be like dust on the wind. Tibetans mostly resented Chinese rule. At the time, I studied carefully what I could see on the ground, but also befriended China’s leading English-language apologist for its invasion. Mao, having liberated much of China from bondage, sought to do the same for Tibetans, and considered religion, as Marx had said, the opiate of the people, a mechanism by which aristocrats kept the ordinary people under control. That’s often true, but the Tibetans loved their religion with a humility and passion of which I was always in awe. Imagine folks making pilgrimages to Lhasa from their rural homes, across land not unlike New Mexico’s, and pausing, every three steps, to prostrate themselves flat on their bellies, as they did when circumamulatingg the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. And the Chinese, as the U.S. did with surviving members of indigenous tribes, wanted also to turn the Tibetans into imitation Han-Chinese. It’s called “progress.”
The Dalai Lama lives the “loving kindness” he advocates. He knows all religions, but remains quirky, funny, and warmly informal with everyone. As he says, "A tree can make ten thousand matches, but a single match can burn ten thousand trees.”
Recently he turned 90. His longevity has frustrated Chinese plans. The Chinese are rubbing their hands in anticipation now. In July, he confirmed his plan to be reincarnated, with his non-profit trust locating his successor. Sadly, we will see dual – and dueling – Dalai Lamas.
-- 30 –
[The
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July,
2025, in
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For me, traveling in Tibet was a marvel. Nearly died of illness at one point, but learned a lot.
For you, probably the best book introducing you to the 14th Dalai Lama is Pico Iyer’s The Open Road: the Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Iyer is both a noted travel writer and a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama.
Bakground Tibet stuff, or Tibetan Buddhist stuff? I loved The Way of the White Clouds, which I read while traveling there. The writer was a German, a Buddhist but initially a bit of a skeptic about Tibetan Buddism – until he met the tulku of a lama he’d known personally, and the kid recognized him. Anyway, I recall enjoying that and also Alexandra David-Neel’s My Journey to Lhasa. I also recently read a biography of Patrul Rinpoche that I really liked, that really gave one the flavor of the faith. And humility! Typical of him, walking the countryside to a town where he was to speak, he fell in with a poor old woman, and traveled with her, and she treated him like a beggar-servant. He said nothing of who he was, and made no complaint. She, on her way to hear him in that town, was rather startled when she arrived.
For any person who is grieving, I would recommend The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. When my mother died I gave a copy to my father, a militant atheist, and he ended up greatly appreciating it. For someone seeking a fine introduction to Buddhism and the Buddha’s life, you might try _______’s . I read it decades ago and again within the last few years. Thich Nhat Hanh’s Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha. I think of it more as a novel based on the Buddha’s life than as a historical biography, because it mixes historical accuracy with good storytelling.
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| A favorite shot of the Potala -- from the Banak Shol |
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| Tibetan at Norbu Linka w DL pic |
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| Doubt the DL would approve flag or soldier at Potala |
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| The Potala -- Note name of bar in foreground |
This last image is incredibly moving for me. The photo backdrop of the home with a TV near Guilin or Yang Shuo was Chinese vision of perfection, favorite Chinese scenery and a nice place with a TV. It was among five or six photo-backdrops at which Chinese tourists could have their pictures taken -- and, to me, rather unpleasant, as a sign of the Chinese transforming the Potala, which was both the DL's home and the seat of the Tibetan government before the Chinese came, into a tawdry tourist attraction. The Tibetan passing on the bicycle, pausing to regard this, was irresistible as an image -- but what he was thinking I can't know.
All these photos were shot in 1985 or 1987, and are copyright Peter Goodman
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| Our [illegal] road to Lhasa included a stop at this nomad camp |
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