THE TABLET 5 July 1997

Kundun: A biography of the family of the Dalai Lama

Mary Craig - HarperCollins, =A317.99

Mary Craig's intelligent and sensitive story of the Yapshi family, like her earlier account of Tibet's crucifixion under Chinese rule in her book Tears of Blood, suggests in how extraordinary a way this deeply religious and peaceful people on the roof of the world have become a parable for the end of the twentieth century.

After his recognition as the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso moved into the cold and forbidding one-bathroom Potala palace in Lhasa. His parents and brothers and sisters began immediately to prostrate before him and to call him "Kundun" which means, "Presence of the Buddha".

The family were catapulted overnight from the happy peasant life of their native Amdo in eastern Tibet into the politics and high society of the capital. It all went to their father's head but Amala, the "Great Mother", mother of the Dalai Lama as of two other tulkus or reincarnations, never lost her naturalness and simplicity. Her kindness to those in need became legendary. But in a conversation with his family's biographer, the Dalai Lama acknowledged that while lie was sad at his mother's death, he only wept tears when Ponpo, the old monk who had taken care of him as a boy, died. Perhaps as Tolstoy said, every happy family is happy like other families but unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. This family, like all families, is a mixture of the two. It is composed of the great abiding sadness of their exile but also of the joy that comes from the certainty of strong bonding.

A Christian will sense the oddly biblical motifs throughout the intertwined stories of the family and of the Tibetan people. The wise men going in search of the new-born god-king meet the Herod of the story, a wily local warlord who ruled the area in China's name. The Dalai Lama, escaping with his family after China had betrayed its promises and showed the savage ruthlessness of their true intentions towards Tibet, leaves riding on a dzo, a lowly beast of burden. A miracu-lous sand-storm, like the parting of the Red Sea, allows them to pass safely through Chinese lines. They cross, like the Jews after the destruction of the Temple, into one of the great cultural and religious diasporas of history. Like the Jews they have suffered -and still do, according to the International Commission of Jurists - systematic genocide.

The family, like that of most previous Dalai Lamas, were poor farmers and it is from the happy memories of their early life together that the family draws its central unity - that and the abiding influence of Amala, their adored mother. The surviving family is char-acterised by the trait of a short temper inher-ited from the father and by their respect and love for their brother, the Dalai Lama, unfailing even when they disagree with him.

But the experience of exile has eaten deep into the Dalai Lama's family, as it has into all Tibetans. There is, for example, the agony of cultural adaptation. Three of his brothers disrobed as monks and even speak sceptically about the tulku tradition of reincarnation. The Dalai Lama himself admits that like all traditions it has good and bad elements in it. Young Tibetans born and educated in exile may challenge the Dalai Lama's commitment to non-violence and his policy of compromise with the Chinese invaders of their country but their religious and cultural identity has been changed forever.

The previous Dalai Lama had once prayed that in his next reincarnation he would have a large devoted family to help him in his responsibilities. The prayer seems to have been answered. The Dalai Lama's six brothers and sisters have all variously worked in his government-in-exile or with the refugees. Mary Craig does not hesitate to describe the failures, the political divisions, the clinical depression, the occasional scan-dals within the family's attempts to serve their brother and their people. But her frank reporting is set in the larger picture of the Tibetan tragedy and of individual attempts to rise to the scale of the story. Her weaving of the family and national stories is skillfully and convincingly done, deeply moving and challenging.

This gripping book tells one of the most painful and dramatic stories of history. It is plainly born of love for the family and the people but it is told with balance. The fact that the family endorse a book which shows how many personal wounds they have suffered during nearly half a century of persecution, betrayal and exile makes one admire them all the more. In fact beside the effrontery of Chinese lies and distortion their frank openness to their biographer seems heroic. The corruptions of the old Tibetan political system, like the human fail-ings of its first family, are graphically but fairly recounted.

One of the most poignant episodes describes the politically naive 18-year-old Dalai Lama meeting Mao Tse-tung and being initially entranced by the older leader and persuaded of the need for change in Tibet. Chairman Mao, however, misreading the young Buddhist's enthusiasm, showed his true hand too soon when he spoke hate-fully about the "poison of religion". The Dalai Lama recoiled suddenly, aware of how he had been deceived and misled. The awareness of the cruel political dilemma of his people then fully dawned and has never left him. His own family bear the marks of the divisions that dilemma creates.

The family has, like other Tibetans in exile, learned to conserve tradition while mod-ernising. In the conviction that they will one day return home the Dalai Lama has intro-duced democracy into the Tibetan constitu-tion, despite popular resistance to his reduc-tion of his own traditional powers. His sister-in-law, who directs the Tibetan Nuns project, is aware that a reform of the traditional role of women in Tibetan religion is under way, rather than just a conservation of the past.

Kundun helps the reader to penetrate the significance of the parable of Tibet - the meaning of its story for a world whose politi-cal and religious leaders have so often renounced courage and the love of justice in favour of economic advantage and appease-ment. If the truth does eventually triumph, then the Tibetan exile and the Dalai Lama's fidelity to non-violence and his care for the happiness of all peoples may one day mean that the world will honour the Tibetan people for what, in their defeat and failure, they have taught us about the real meaning of history.

Mary Craig tells a painful yet strangely hopeful story. Its importance is perhaps in the way it challenges us to understand why, at the end, we feel less shame at the inhu-manity than pride in the human greatness which the story reveals. Even when the might of China makes the nations of the world cower and the cowardly abandon the oppressed, the Dalai Lama's refusal to hate or to use violence against his people's ene-mies teaches us where true greatness - and human triumph - is to be found. Perhaps it is not only the dharma but the love of his fami-ly which has helped him express that so clearly.

Laurence Freeman OSB