Chapter 100. The Roof of the World: Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama Institution

Tibet is the clearest Asian case of a Buddhist clergy becoming a state: a warrior monarchy adopted Indian Buddhism, monastic schools then competed for Mongol and Manchu patronage, and one reincarnating line came to rule from the Potala. Sam van Schaik’s Tibet: A History (Yale, 2011) is the backbone here; its chapters run “Tibet Appears, 600–700”, “The Holy Buddhist Empire, 700–797”, “Keepers of the Flame, 797–1054”, “Patrons and Priests, 1054–1315”, “Golden Age, 1315–1543”, “The Rise and Fall of the Dalai Lamas, 1543–1757”, “The Balancing Act, 1757–1904”, “Independence, 1904–1950”, “Under the Red Flag, 1950–1959” and “Two Tibets, 1959 to the Present” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, Contents]. Sharply different readings of the institution, from a Romanian university course to an Orthodox theologian and an American conspiracy author, are given under their authors’ names.

The emperors and the “Holy Buddhist Empire”

In 763 a Tibetan army rode through Chang’an, the Tang capital [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, “Emperor on the Run”]. The empire was built by the tsenpo Songtsen Gampo, who absorbed Zhangzhung (using a royal princess married to its king as a spy), made Nepal a vassal and forced the Tang to grant him a princess. Van Schaik keeps two traditions apart. Chinese historians say the princess “set to work civilising the Tibetans”; Tibetan historians say “the princess’s greatest contribution was Buddhist in nature”, since she brought the first Buddha statue, later housed in the Jokhang. Van Schaik cautions that “Buddhism, for the time being, was only one of many new cultural imports circulating in Tibet” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, “Power and the Princess”].

Trisong Detsen (r. 756–c.800) made “his revolutionary decision to adopt Buddhism as the state religion”, founded Samye and issued an edict branding Mani a “great liar”; “if Buddhism was at first the religion of the court, it gradually became the religion of the people too, thanks to the efforts of Trisong Detsen and his successors” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 2, “The Dharma King”]. Baal Kadmon’s popular account says that, “very much like Christianity as it was forming”, anti-Buddhist kings resisted, the last (838–842) being assassinated and followed by “a protracted period of darkness” of almost 200 years [Kadmon, Tibetan Mantra Magick, #366939, “Tibetan Buddhism”]. Van Schaik notes that the Buddhist histories’ claim that Darma forced monks to become hunters is not supported, since “other sources do not mention such radical persecution” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 3 n. 10].

Bon: the “old religion” that was a new religion

Van Schaik reverses the usual picture of Bon as the pre-Buddhist faith: “the Bonpo religion only started to take shape alongside the revival of Buddhism in the eleventh century”. The “‘old religion’ was a new religion, an inspired conjunction of Tibet’s pre-Buddhist myths and rituals with the teachings of Buddhism”. Hence “when the Dalai Lama declared the Bonpo one of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism, few Bonpos disputed it” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190]. Bon still had political weight in the 1630s, when Gushri Khan’s army was first sent against an eastern ruler “supporting the Bon religion” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 6, “Victory”].

Peter Moon offers a different Bon: citing a Russian scholar, Kuznetzov, he claims that Bon came to Tibet in the fifth century BC with “a massive migration … from northeastern Persia” of “Aryan settlers”. He writes that Shenrab “was said to come from the region of Elam where he was known as Mithra, the bull god”, taught the Kalachakra that Buddhists “borrowed, altered and absorbed”, and that original Bon “was based upon the concept of the goddess as recognized in the symbolism of the Black Sun” [Moon, The Black Sun, #64627, ch. 28 “The Bon Religion”]. These are Moon’s claims, linking Tibet to the Mithraic material of earlier parts of this study.

Patrons and priests: the Mongol model

The eleventh-century second diffusion came from the far west. The 14th Dalai Lama retells how a captured western king told his nephew: “Do not waste a single gold coin on my ransom. Use all the gold to invite Atisha from India.” Atisha “eventually agreed to come to Tibet” and reconciled sutra and tantra [Dalai Lama, The Way to Freedom, #76238, ch. 1]. From this revival grew Kadam, Sakya and the Kagyu lineages beside the older Nyingma.

The political model for seven centuries was the patron–priest relationship. Sakya Pandita went to the Mongol prince Goden and “never returned to Tibet, passing away in 1251 in the temple that Goden had built for him”. His nephew Pagpa became Kubilai Khan’s preceptor [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 4, “Patron-Priest”]. Kubilai’s “gift of Tibet to Pagpa in the thirteenth century” became the template re-enacted in 1642 [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 6].

Tsongkhapa and the Gelug reform

The Romanian UNESCO course (dating Tsongkhapa “1327–1419” rather than the usual 1357) calls him a Madhyamaka and vinaya specialist who “reforms Tibetan Buddhism by purifying it of the superstitious practices that prevailed at that time and of abuses” [Istoria Religiilor, Curs UNESCO, #81379, “Budismul”]. For van Schaik, “the monasteries and the annual Great Prayer Festival founded by Tsongkhapa made Lhasa very much the centre of the new Gelug school”. Under the Dalai Lamas the Gelug “grew to become the most widespread and powerful of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 5].

The Dalai Lamas: from Mongol title to theocracy

McClelland’s entry reads: “This title (Mongol: oceanic lama) was first given to Snam Gyatsho (1543–1588) the third supreme leader of the Gelug-pa School of Tibetan Buddhism by the Mongol ruler Altan Khan. It was then applied retrospectively to the two previous Gelug-pa leaders” [McClelland, Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma, #66947, “Dalai Lama”]. Van Schaik explains that Altan Khan of the Tumed “saw the political benefits in presenting himself as a new Kubilai; to play this role, he needed a new Pagpa”. Arriving near Hohhot after the 1577 delegation, Sonam Gyatso gave tantric initiation and received a title that “was partly a translation of Sonam Gyatso’s own name … ‘The Wondrous Vajra-Holder, Excellent, Splendid Meritorious Ocean'”, quickly shortened to “Dalai”. The next incarnation was found in Altan Khan’s grandson, “a surprising and ingenious move”; Yonten Gyatso “remains the only non-Tibetan to have held the role of Dalai Lama” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 6].

The Fifth Dalai Lama, Losang Gyatso, admitted in his autobiography that as a child he “utterly failed” the recognition test. His regent Sonam Chopel (the Desi) secretly told Gushri Khan of the Qoshot to invade Tsang; the Dalai Lama later claimed ignorance but wondered whether “the tune of a flute had changed to the whistle of an arrow”. In April 1642 Tsang surrendered and Gushri’s “last gift was Tibet itself”. The Karma Kagyu Encampment was destroyed, some 7,000 Kongpo rebels killed, Kagyu monasteries converted, Jonang and early Sakya works banned: “Printing blocks were locked away, and the voices of dissent silenced”. The Potala rose on Songtsen Gampo’s palace ruins [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 6, “The Chosen One”, “Victory”]. His letter to the new Qing emperor was co-signed by Gushri, and the Manchus courted him to appear “genuine successors to Kubilai”; plate 19 shows his meeting with the Manchu emperor [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 6, “The Great Fifth”; van Schaik, O istorie a Tibetului, #21480, plates].

Qing protectorate, independence, and the Golden Urn

Qing control worked through ambans and the Golden Urn, which after 1792 “was thought to have been used in selecting the 10th, 11th and 12th Dalai Lamas”; the 14th Dalai Lama says it was really used only for the 11th, otherwise “only used to humour the Chinese” [Wikipedia: Panchen Lama]. After Chinese troops in Lhasa were defeated in 1912, the returning 13th Dalai Lama issued a 1913 proclamation “which many considered Tibet’s declaration of independence”, grounded in his authority as Avalokiteshvara’s reincarnation [van Schaik, O istorie a Tibetului, #21480, ch. 8]. Charles Bell saw “the very arched eyebrows and a bushy moustache, its ends well waxed, emphasised the alertness of the administrator rather than the detachment of the meditating priest” [van Schaik, O istorie a Tibetului, #21480, ch. 8, quoting Bell, retranslated]. After 1924 the 9th Panchen Lama fled to China and was considered “extremely pro-Chinese” [Wikipedia: Panchen Lama].

Under the Red Flag and the two Tibets

In March 1959 the Nechung oracle told the Dalai Lama “Go. Go now!”; he left the Norbulingka “wearing a long black cloak and carrying only a rifle”. A CIA-trained radio team relayed his asylum request to Nehru; van Schaik judges that “despite later claims from China, this seems to have been the only direct role played by the CIA” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 9]. The exile museum in Dharamsala chronicles “the Tibetan uprising, the invasion by China, and His Holiness’ last trip by horse and mule” [Cryer, The Four Stages of Yoga, #46658, ch. 9].

Thereafter there were “two versions of what was happening inside Tibet”. The Panchen Lama’s 1962 “Seventy Thousand Character Petition” reported that of 2,500 monasteries in 1959 only seventy remained open by 1962 [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 10]. “The Chinese have characterised traditional Tibet as a ‘hell on earth’. Countering them, the Dalai Lama has spoken of life in modern Tibet using the very same words.” In 2009, while the exile government prepared anniversary speeches against the “repressive regime”, Beijing declared the same date “serf liberation day” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, Preface].

In 1995 the Dalai Lama named Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th Panchen Lama; Beijing used the Golden Urn to name Gyancain Norbu, and the first boy “has not been observed by an independent party since 17 May 1995” [Wikipedia: Panchen Lama]. The 1994 Third Forum on Work in Tibet had called the “Dalai clique” a serpent’s head that “must be cut off” [van Schaik, Tibet: A History, #70190, ch. 10, “Struggle”].

Contested readings

The UNESCO course calls lamaism a school “where the most extreme manifestations of human nature join hands” [Istoria Religiilor, Curs UNESCO, #81379, “Budismul”]. Alexandra David-Néel’s chapter XI, “The Dalai Lama Rulers”, asks why he is not “the great master of the initiates”, answers that he takes angkur initiations as Tsongkhapa did, and affirms that “the present Dalai Lama is particularly skilled in these teachings” [Iniţieri şi iniţiaţi în Tibet, #9656, ch. XI]. The Orthodox theologian Radu Teodorescu holds that reincarnation “comes on a pantheist background in which the identity of the person is no longer taken into account” [Teodorescu, Îngerii în marile religii ale lumii, #43926, n. 60].

Peter Moon, drawing on Peter Levenda, describes Ernst Schäfer’s SS Ahnenerbe expeditions (1934–36, 1938–39) returning with the 108-volume Kangyur, and repeats that the Russians found “six Tibetans lying dead in a ritual circle” in Berlin and “over one thousand Asiatic bodies” in German uniform. He states that Karl Haushofer belonged to the “Yellow Hats, known as Dugphas”, while conceding in a footnote that he does “not know exactly what Haushofer’s personal affiliations actually were” [Moon, The Black Sun, #64627, ch. 27].

Key points

• Van Schaik (#70190) shows Buddhism arriving as one court import under Songtsen Gampo and becoming the state religion under Trisong Detsen. He treats Bon as a religion that took shape in the eleventh century, which is why “few Bonpos disputed” the Dalai Lama’s classification of it as a Buddhist school.
• The patron–priest model (Pagpa–Kubilai, Sonam Gyatso–Altan Khan, Fifth Dalai Lama–Gushri Khan, the Manchus) was the constitutional core of Tibetan theocracy.
• The title “Dalai” is a Mongol grant of the late 1570s, applied backwards to two predecessors (McClelland, #66947; van Schaik, #70190).
• The Fifth Dalai Lama’s state was founded by Mongol conquest in 1642 and followed by forcible conversion of Kagyu and Jonang institutions and banning of their books.
• After 1792 the Qing Golden Urn and the Panchen Lama line served Chinese leverage over succession. The 1995 Panchen Lama dispute continues that pattern.
• Since 1959 two governments and two narratives, “serf liberation” against “repressive regime”, have mirrored each other (van Schaik, #70190).
• External readings range from the UNESCO course’s “strangest school” and Teodorescu’s Orthodox charge of pantheism to Moon’s Black Sun theory, which ties Bon to Mithra.