![]() ![]() By March 1959, rumors spread that the Dalai Lama would be abducted or assassinated, fomenting a doomed popular uprising that looked likely to spill into serious bloodshed. Chinese proclamations calling Lord Buddha a “reactionary” enraged a pious populace of 2.7 million. With no political experience or knowledge of the outside world, he was thrust into negotiations with an invading army while trying to calm his fervent but poorly armed subjects.Ĭonditions worsened over the next nine years of occupation. But the arrival of Mao’s troops to reclaim dominion over Tibet in 1950 caused the Tibetan government to give him full authority at just 15. ![]() The Dalai Lama was only supposed to assume a political role on his 18th birthday, with a regent ruling until then. Today the Dalai Lama proudly describes himself as “half Buddhist monk, half scientist.” “He continually astonished me by his powers of comprehension, his pertinacity and his industry,” wrote the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, who became the Dalai Lama’s tutor and was one of six Europeans permitted to live in Lhasa at the time. He took apart and reassembled a projector and camera to see how they functioned. He would gaze from the Potala’s roof at Lhasa street life through a telescope. Despite his tutors’ focus on spiritual matters, or perhaps because of it, he was fascinated by science and technology. The Dalai Lama rarely saw his parents and had no contact with peers of his own age, save his elder brother Lobsang Samden, who served as head of household. He instead advocates for greater autonomy and religious and cultural freedom for his people. He has rejected calls for Tibetan independence since 1974 - acknowledging the geopolitical reality that any settlement must keep Tibet within the People’s Republic of China. “I sincerely just want to serve Chinese Buddhists.”ĭespite that, the CCP still regards the Dalai Lama as a “wolf in monk’s robes” and a dangerous “splittist,” as Chinese officials call him. Having retired from “political responsibility” within the exiled community in 2011, he merely wants “the opportunity to visit some holy places in China for pilgrimage,” he tells TIME. Despite his renown and celebrity friends, he remains a man aching for home and a leader removed from his people. ![]() Still, the Dalai Lama holds out hope for a return to his birthplace. Bush has made a point of meeting the Dalai Lama until Donald Trump, who is in negotiations with China over reforming its state-controlled economy. Even India, which has granted asylum to him as well as to about 100,000 other Tibetans, is not sending senior representatives to the diaspora’s commemoration of his 60th year in exile, citing a “very sensitive time” for bilateral relations with Beijing. Once the toast of capitals around the world, the Dalai Lama has not met a world leader since 2016. Beijing still sees the Dalai Lama as a dangerous threat and swiftly rebukes any nation that entertains him. In January, the CCP announced it would “Sinicize” Buddhism over the next five years, completing a multimillion-dollar rebranding of the faith as an ancient Chinese religion.Īlthough not, of course, the world’s most famous. Officially atheist, the party has proved as adaptive to religion as it is to capitalism, claiming a home for faith in the nationalism Beijing has activated under Xi Jinping. Today the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that drove him out of Tibet is working to co-opt Buddhist principles - as well as the succession process itself. Yet as old age makes travel more difficult, and as China’s political clout has grown, the Dalai Lama’s influence has waned. ![]() The cause of Tibetan self-rule remains alive in Western minds thanks to admirers ranging from Richard Gere to the Beastie Boys to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who calls him a “messenger of hope for millions of people around the world.” He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and was heralded in Martin Scorcese’s 1997 biopic. What’s more, the lowly farmer’s son named as a “God-King” in his childhood has been embraced by the West since his exile. But his prominence extends beyond the borders of his own faith, with many practices endorsed by Buddhists, like mindfulness and meditation, permeating the lives of millions more around the world. In the six decades since, the leader of the world’s most secluded people has become the most recognizable face of a religion practiced by nearly 500 million people worldwide. ![]()
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