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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part
II – 4. Social Reality in Ancient Tibet
© Victor & Victoria
Trimondi
4. SOCIAL REALITY IN ANCIENT TIBET
Just
how casual the Tibetans in exile are in dealing
with scholarly works on their history and social
reality in ancient Tibet is shown by an example
from the Tibetan
Review, the English-language mouthpiece for
the exile community. In April 1991, the renowned
American historian Melvyn C. Goldstein could publish
an article in which he presented for discussion
a picture of Tibetan history that contradicted
the official line from Dharamsala. In the subsequent
debate a Tibetan scholar candidly admitted that
Goldstein’s investigations were so well documented
„that he is probably correct in his analysis”
— and then the Tibetan continues, „But his presentation
has succeeded in deeply offending most Tibetans”
(Tibetan Review, January 1992,
p. 18).
Thus, among the exile Tibetan community,
historical truths lead not to a self-critical
stance towards their own history, but rather one
was insulted and thus believed oneself justified
in repudiating Goldstein’s works and denigrating
them as Chinese propaganda. (See above all Phintso
Thondon’s article in the May 1991 issue of Tibetan Review). Goldstein’s reply
to the attacks against him addresses what exactly
is to be held of the freedom of opinion among
Tibetans in exile: „Mr. Thondon seems to believe
that anything which criticizing or contradicting
Tibetan nationalist rhetoric coming out of Dharamsala
and Tibetan Support Groups must be pro-Chinese.
His 'rejoinder', therefore, clearly sets out to
discredit - a
priori - my findings and observations by creating
the impression I have a pro-Chinese bias. In using
tactics resembling those of the McCarthy era in
the US, Mr. Thondon takes sentences out of context,
distorts meanings, and worse yet, imputes meanings,
that were not there. His response represents the
darkest and most unpleasant side of the Tibetan
exile movement” (Tibetan Review, September
1991, p. 18)
One can safely assume that official
statements from Dharamsala will defame as communist
propaganda every
historical analysis of Tibet which strives for
neutrality. To give a further example, we quote
their reaction to A. Tom Grunfeld‘s well-researched
book, The
Making of Modern Tibet. „This book”, a review
in the Tibetan
Review says, „can only be considered a sophisticated presentation of Peking’s version
of events. Although a lot of material is included
in the book which is often overlooked by pro-Tibetan,
and the author has evidently made an attempt to
be impartial [!],his Sinocentric and Marxist seen
to be so extreme that he is quite unable to master
them” (Tibetan
Review, July 1989, p. 13).
The western image of Tibet
Western observers have in the meantime
become more and more blind to the shadowy sides
of the Tibetan monastic state. In countless recent
books and publications the Tibet of old is depicted
as a peaceful state, a sanctuary of calm, the
heart of compassion, an ecological oasis, an island
of wisdom, a refuge of knowledge, a home of the
blissful — in short as a lost earthly paradise,
inhabited by enlightened, peace-loving people
and mysterious, shining gods. As early as the
1940s, Marco Pallis praised the Tibetans as “one
of the earth's most civilized peoples” (quoted
by Bishop, 1989, p. 231). “All the residents of
Lhasa, rich and poor, high and low, are peaceful”,
we can read in a contemporary report. “Even the
beggars of Lhasa have only to ply their trade
for some time in the morning to get enough food
for the day. In the evening they are all nicely
drunk. The people of Lhasa were physically relaxed,
mentally contended and happy. The food of the
city is also nutritious. No one has to strive
to make a living. Life takes care of itself, as
a matter of course. Everything is splendid” (quoted
by Craig, 1997, pp.86-87).
The Kundun also knows to only
report only the most positive aspects of the past
of the Land of Snows: “The continuing influence
of Buddhism produced a society of peace and harmony.
We enjoyed freedom and contentment” (Panorama no. 553, November
20, 1997, p. 2). Or at another point: “A poor
Tibetan had little cause to envy or be hostile
towards the rich lord of his estate, then he knew
that everybody harvested what he had sown in his
earlier lives. We were quite simply happy” (Panorama no. 553, November
20, 1997, p. 2). This image of a poor, deeply
religious, pure, and blissfully happy Tibet has
meanwhile become fixed in the consciousness of
millions.
It has become a favored topic in,
amongst other things, the esoteric literature,
but above all in the American film industry. The
actor Brad Pitt, who played the role of the German
teacher of the Dalai Lama, Heinrich Harrer, in
a melodramatic story (Seven
years in Tibet), came to the following conclusion
once the film had been shot: “Look at the Tibetans,
how poor they are in material terms. And then
look at them, how happy and peaceful they are,
and their attitude to life with which they go
their way. This is simply fantastic. It gets under
your skin. It is the hearts of the people which
make Tibet into Shangri-La, into paradise. In
America this has become a real movement” (Panorama no. 553, November
20, 1997, p. 1).
Such glorifications have spread
like wildfire in recent years. “The result is
a one-sidedly bright image of spiritual purity”,
writes Tibet researcher Peter Bishop. “Many contemporary
western studies go to the great length to avoid
confronting the shadow side of Tibetan spirituality.
One can often encounter a sociological naiveté
that stands in stark contrast to claims of scientific
scrutiny” (Bishop, 1993, p. 73).
In contrast, among the majority
of the earlier travelers, the Tibet of old made
a deeply negative impression, at least with respect
to its social situation, which are these days
all too readily dismissed as imperialist arrogance
and European racism, although identical criticisms
of social conditions were also articulated by
admirers of Tibetan culture. Alexandra David-Neel,
for example, was just as repelled by the general
misery of the country as by the corruption of
the priestly caste. Even such a fanatic devotee
of the Kalachakra Tantra as Nicholas
Roerich complained about the general decadence
in the Tibet of the time.
Likewise, Heinrich Harrer does
not paint a rosy picture of Lhasa in the forties,
but rather depicts the land as an unjust albeit
fascinating anachronism. In his world famous travelogue,
Seven Years
in Tibet, the German mentor of the young Dalai
Lama writes: “The power of the monks in Tibet
is unique and can only be compared to a strict
dictatorship. They keep a mistrustful eye on every
influence from outside which could threaten their
power. They themselves are clever enough to not
believe in the limitlessness of their strength,
but would punish anyone who expressed doubts about
this” (Harrer, 1984, p. 71).
Dozens of such assessments like
that of the “Dalai Lama’s best friend” can be
found in the early literature on Tibet. Many visitors
prior to the year 1959 report that dictatorial
decisions, the arbitrary use of power, brainwashing
and paranoid belief in demons, spiritual control
and crawling servility, bitterest poverty and
oriental wealth, slavery, serfdom, hunger, diseases,
a lack of any hygiene, alcoholism, cruel punishments,
torture, political and private murder, fear and
violence, theft, robbery, and mutual mistrust
were everyday features of the kingdom of the Dalai
Lamas. The Chakravartin from Lhasa ruled
over a vale of tears.
Of course, these negative conditions
in no way exclude the possibility that the Land
of Snows also had oases of peace, equanimity,
erudition, joy, helpfulness, noble-mindedness,
or whatever all the Buddhist virtues may be. But
what is peculiar about the current image of Tibet
is that it only stresses its bright sides and
simply denies and represses its shady side.
The social structure of former
Tibet
For centuries, the education system,
the administration of finances, jurisdiction,
and the police lay in the hands of monastic officials.
Bureaucracy and sacredness have long been compatible
in Asia. Hence we are familiar from the Chinese
example with a boring Confucian heaven of civil
servants, inhabited by heavenly emperors and their
ministers, mandarins, scribes and administrators.
Such images are also known in Tibet. We may recall
how bureaucratic the administrative structure
of the wonderland of Shambhala
was even imagined to be.
The clerical administration functioned
well for as long as it concerned the immediate
affairs of a monastery. But it could hardly cope
with all the state and social political divisions
of the highlands. Western researchers who visited
Tibet in the 19th and 20th centuries thus encountered
a completely inflexible administration: decision-making
processes stretched out over weeks, ignorance
and timidity dominated the incapable civil service
and nowhere could be anything be attained without
bribery. [1]
The social structure of the Tibet
of old in no way corresponded to an ideal-typical
model of happy individuals it is so often depicted
as being. Alongside the omnipresent clergy, the
country was ruled by circa 150 to 300 “secular” families. Different
groups were distinguished among the aristocracy.
The highest stratum traced their ancestry to the
old Tibetan kings, then followed the members of
the Dalai Lamas‘ families. These were ennobled
simultaneously with the enthronement of the new
god-king. Every family in the country was proud
to have a monk as a son. For aristocrats, however,
it sufficed that the novice spend just one night
in the monastery in order to — for an appropriate
fee — be considered ordained. Equipped with the
considerable privileges of a lama he could then
return home.
The absolute majority of the sedentary
population were the “serfs” of a wealthy ruling
elite, and saddled with high taxes. The lives
of these Tibetans was hard and frugal, they were
badly nourished and the medical services now praised
in the West were largely unsuccessful. Forms of
slavery were known up until the twentieth century
— something which is denied these days by the
Tibetans in exile. As in India there was a caste
of untouchables. Among these were to be counted
beggars, prostitutes, blacksmiths (!), fishermen,
musicians and actors. In many parts of the country
members of these stigmatized groups were not even
permitted to become monks.
In contrast, the nomads preserved
a relative autonomy, in relation to both the clergy
and Chinese or Mongolian invaders. This was even
true of their customs and traditions. For example,
the killing of animals — strictly forbidden in
Buddhism — was normal practice among them. The
monks in Lhasa — none of them vegetarians — had
the animals slaughtered by Muslim butchers who
thus brought the bad karma from the killings down
upon themselves, then the consumption of meat
is not a “sin” for the Tibetans, but the slaughter
of animals decidedly is. The Fourteenth Dalai
Lama, himself a meat-eater for “reasons of health”,
nevertheless campaigns constantly (in the West)
for a vegetarian lifestyle.
On the basis of the doctrine of
karma, the privileged strata of the Tibet of old
saw their advantages as a reward for previous
good deeds in past lives. Anyone born into the
lower castes had a badly led past life to blame
for this and was marked from the outset as a former
villain. Such degrading judgments are still prevalent
among the Tibetans in exile. Rebecca Redwood French
reports on a case, for example, where a child
who made strange noises and threw a picture of
the Dalai Lamas to the ground was recognized as
the reincarnation of a dog (Redwood French, 1995).
One can imagine how easily such classifications
could lead
to a general social arrogance and the abuse
of power.
Tibetan criminal law
On the basis of a western orientation
towards democracy and human rights, we would have
to describe the Tibet of old as a totalitarian
state. The legal system was for three hundred
years unchangingly based upon the Ganden Podrang Codex which
was commissioned by the “Great Fifth”. Yet criminal
law was already codified in the thirteenth century
by the Sakyapa sect. It displayed a strong Mongolian
influence, was derived from the Yasa (statute-book) of Genghis
Khan, and, like the penal system of the European
Middle Ages, was extremely cruel. Bizarre mutilations
like blindings, the cutting off of limbs or tearing
out of tongues, deliberately allowing people to
freeze to death, the pillory, shackling, yoking,
lifelong imprisonment in damp pits all count as
common punishments up until the 20th century,
even after the Thirteenth Dalai Lama had introduced
a number of moderation’s. In 1940, a British
envoy still saw „all over Tibet […] men who had
been deprived of an arm or a leg for theft” (Grunfeld,
1996, p.24).
Since Buddhism fundamentally forbade
the killing of a living creature, criminals were
often tortured to the point of death and then
left to fend for themselves. If they now died
of the consequences this was purely a matter of
their own karma. These days the power elite in
Dharamsala maintains an embarrassed silence about
such inhuman acts and brushes them aside as Chinese
propaganda; western observers of the Tibet of
old and their reports are considered to be prejudiced
and examples of European arrogance. It is truly
astonishing how this obscuration of their own
dreadful past by the lamas in the West has succeeded.
And there is a lot of authentic photographic evidence;
a public whipping, which took place in the middle
of Lhasa in 1950 was reproduced in the American
magazine, Life, for example (Life, November 13, 1950, pp.
130–136).
The punishment of criminal delinquents
was by no means confined to this world, rather
the monks condemned people to millions (!) of
years in the most dreadful hells, more grotesque
and sadistic even than their counterparts in the
Christian Middle Ages. Voltaire’s cry of “Remember
your cruelties”, by which he primarily meant the
politics of the Christian clergy and with which
he launched his struggle for human rights, ought
to be heard in Dharamsala as well!
Equality before the law varied
in Tibet according to social status and wealth.
For a murder, one had to pay a so-called “life
tax” (mistong) to the surviving
dependents and could thus avoid criminal prosecution.
According to a statement from one of the current
Dalai Lama’s brothers, this practice was still
being followed in the mid-twentieth century. The
price was naturally related to the status of the
victim. Hence, in the fifties the life of a high
monastic official was worth between US $8,000
and $10,000. (Grunfeld, 1996, p. 24). For the
murder of a woman from the lower castes, 10 Liang
(about 11 ounces) of silver was to be paid.
Clerical commerce
The Buddhist clergy was also commercially
active and the most important monasteries were
regarded as significant trading centers. The lamas
even dealt in credit. Production was mostly devotional
objects which the monks usually manufactured themselves:
holy images, statuettes of gods, amulets, and
similar things. As services, soothsaying, astrology,
and the performance of all manner of rituals were
offered for sale. A further source of income was
mendicancy. Bands of monks were dispatched through
the country to collect donations. They often returned
with great cargoes. The rent for a domestic cell
within a monastery had to be paid by the monk’s
relatives. If this was not possible, then the
novice had to earn his keep. Franz
Michael thus referred to the Tibetan monastery
as a „private, profit-making, ‘capitalist’ enterprise.
It was capitalist in the sense that the manager’s
[the administrator of the monastery] aim was clearly
and admittedly to make the greatest possible profit
for its owner, the incarnation [of the abbot]“
(Michael, 1982, p. 49).
The Lamaist dispensaries bloomed
splendidly. The excreta (stools and urine) of
higher tulkus were manufactured into pills and
sold as valuable medicines. The supreme palliative
was of course the excrement of the “living Buddha”
(Kundun). When the Fourteenth
Dalai Lama was staying in China, his chamberlain
collected his excrement daily in a golden pot
so as to then send it to Lhasa to be manufactured
into a medication (Grunfeld, 1996, p. 22).
Traditional Tibetan medicine, now
on offer worldwide, and which the western admirers
claim can cure cancer, had to be content with
less success in its home country. The majority
of the population suffered from sexual diseases. Smallpox was widespread
and even the Thirteenth Dalai Lama fell victim
to it.
Political intrigue
There is no question that the lamas
constantly employed their charismatic religious
aura to amass worldly power and to generate personal
grandeur. “The original Buddha teaching”, Matthias
Hermanns writes, “of the 'flight from worldly
life‘ was transformed into the Machiavellian principle
of unrestrained, moral-free power politics” (Hermanns,
1956, p. 372). Only the monks would never have
called it this. It was a part of their ruling
ideology to present every expression, no matter
how secular and decadent, as the decision of a
deity.
An important instrument of Tibetan
power politics was the political intrigue. This
is admittedly a universal phenomenon, but in Tibet
it developed such a high status because the worldly
resources available to the lamas were barely adequate
to the task of controlling central Asia. Above
all there was only a rudimentary army. Hence,
time and again it was necessary to seek armed
allies, or to play armed opponents off against
one another. The great abbots, regents and Dalai
Lamas have made extensive use of these strategies
over the course of history. They were masters
of the game of political intrigue and were for
this reason as much feared by the Chinese emperors
as the Mongolian Khans.
Poison and assassinations dominated
even the internal Lamaist scene. Not all “living
Buddhas” reached the age at which they could govern.
As we have already described above, the four divine
children (the Ninth to Twelfth Dalai Lamas) fell
victim to powerful cliques within the clerical
establishment. The great abbots were especially
feared because of their magical abilities which
they employed against their enemies. Alongside
the authority of state, magic was the other significant
control mechanism of which constant use was made.
It played a more important role at an elevated
political level than the bureaucratic administration
and international diplomacy.
More recent developments
in the historical image
The marked differences of opinion
in the assessment of the Land of Snows and its
culture are not just a product of the western
imagination, but must likewise be explained in
terms of a gaping disparity between Lamaism’s
own ideal-typical claims and an “underdeveloped”
social reality. A devout Tibetan Buddhist tends
to have his eyes fixed upon the ideals of his
doctrine (Dharma) and to be blind to the social
realities of his country. This is almost always
true when the Tibet of old is concerned. As Tantric,
the “law of inversion” also grants him the possibility
of seeing all that is bad and imperfect in his
surroundings as the formative material for the
work of spiritual transformation, then according
to logic of inversion Vajrayana makes the base social
reality into an element of the becoming whole,
into the prima materia of the tantric
experiment.
It goes without saying that the
lamas thankfully adopted the western ideal-world
vision of a peaceful and spiritual Tibet. They
combined this with images of paradise from their
own, Buddhist mythology and added historical events
from the times of the Tibetan kings to the mix.
The result was the picture of a society in which
all people had lived happily since time immemorial,
with a smile on their face night and day. All
the needs of a meaningful human existence could
be filled in the Tibet of old; nothing was lacking.
Everyone respected all others. Humans, animals,
and nature lived together peacefully with respect.
The ecological balance was assured. The Tibetan
kings ruled like goodly fathers and the ecclesiastical
princes followed in their stead. Then came the
Chinese military with guns and artillery, enslaved
the people, tortured the priests, destroyed the
culture and planned to totally exterminate the
Tibetan race.
With such or similar images, the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama has up until most recently
largely succeeded in implanting the image of a
pure, noble, humane, ecological, spiritually highly
developed Tibet, this stronghold against materialism
and inhumanity, in the awareness of the world’s
public. Even the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, normally extremely
critical of such matters, becomes rapturous: “Tibet
as a symbol of the good, as the last stronghold
of spirituality, where wisdom and harmony are
preserved, while the world lies in darkness and
chaos: Has the 'Roof of the World' become a projection
of all our longings? What is the secret behind
the western fascination with this distant land,
its religion and its god-king?” (Spiegel, 16/1998, p. 110).
But under the pressure of the vehement
critique of the history of the country which has
been building since 1996, and which can table
indisputable evidence, in Dharamsala one is also
becoming more careful of unrestrainedly glorifying
the Tibet of old. For this reason the Dalai Lama
ever more often now employs the handy formula
that Tibet, like all nations, has its good sides
and its bad sides; the future will, however, only
stress the good. That is more or less all. Hence,
the shadows which cast their pall over the history
of the Land of Snows are only referred to in very
general terms — roughly in the sense that where
there is much light there is also much darkness.
It is not our task here to offer
an assessment of the improvements much praised
by the Chinese which they claim to have brought
to the medieval country. We personally believe
that in social terms the Tibetan people today
live better than they did under the rule of Lamaism.
But we in no sense mean by this that the current
social situation in the Land of Snows is ideal.
We hold many of the accusations and criticisms
leveled at Beijing’s “minority politics” by the
Tibetans in exile to be thoroughly relevant. It
can also not be denied that resistance to China
is today growing among the Tibetans and that it
primarily makes use of religious arguments. Like
everywhere in the world, there has also been a
religious renaissance on “roof of the world” since
the mid-eighties. We see a problem in this Lamaist
revival, not in the Tibetan democracy movement.
What is peculiar and confusing about the political
situation is, however, that the clerical revival
itself very successfully pretends to be the democracy
movement, and manipulates the awareness of both
the Tibetans and the West with this deception.
Footnotes:
Next
Chapter:
5. BUDDHOCRACY AND ANARCHY: CONTRADICTORY OR COMPLEMENTARY?
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