Published by: World Tibet Network News Sunday, October 19, 1997
If anything good has come from the Dalai Lama's expulsion, it is his exposure to the world - and the world's love affair with him.
By Tony Clifton
Newsweek, October 13, 1997
[This article has been excerpted.]
Only a few of the Tibetans kneeling in front of him have ever laid eyes on the Dalai Lama before. About 300 of them are gathered on this crisp morning in September, and almost all have just made the treacherous journey out of Tibet across high, snow-covered mountain passes, through Nepal and finally to Dharmsala, a small hill town in northern India that is the Dalai Lama's home in exile. Like people seeing a vision, all have their eyes fixed on this man. To them he is the God King; to the Chinese occupying Tibet, "the serpent's head." From old monks to small children, the refugees have faces blackened by the vicious sunlight reflected from the snows they have...crossed, and some have lost fingers and toes to frostbite. Their silence is broken...by the quiet weeping of an old woman who had seen her leader once before - 40 years ago in Tibet. The Dalai Lama sits on a couch in front of his visitors. He tries to put them at ease by asking where they come from, and if any have traveled from Amdo, his own province
. ...the few stuttering replies show how overawed they remain. Then, he gives them what they have come for. "Tibet has survived these past 40 years of Chinese occupation because of your strength and determination," he says in his deep...voice. "I know you have come here with great difficulty, and you have suffered on your journey. ...by coming here you have shown not only your own but Tibet's determination. I give you my greetings, and my gratitude for what you have done." This is not the role to which he was born. The Dalai Lama would never have spoken and mixed with ordinary people in the Tibet from which he was driven by Chinese invaders in 1959. As he says in his autobiography, "Freedom in Exile," on the rare occasions he left his official residence, the 1,000-room Potala palace in Lhasa, he moved past them on a yellow silk palanquin, pulled by 20 army officers in green cloaks and red hats and surrounded by hundreds of men: monks and musicians, sword-wielding horsemen and "porters carrying my songbirds a
nd my personal belongings all wrapped in yellow silk." To make sure the people didn't get too close, the whole entourage was surrounded by...monastic police. "In their hands they carried long whips, which they would not hesitate to use," he wrote. "Exile has made me tougher," the Dalai Lama told Newsweek.
It has also, according to his younger brother Tenzin Choegyal, "enable him to realize his full potential. In the Potala, he was secluded and isolated. If one good thing has come out of his having to leave, it was...he was exposed to his own people and the world. He was given the chance to see things as they really are." From being the century's most secluded leader, the Dalai Lama is now among the most traveled and best known. The bespectacled figure in maroon robes has become the focal point for the world's anxiety about Chinese authoritarianism. He will be in the Czech Republic with his friend President Vaclav Havel in one week, in Hollywood, Calif., with Richard Gere and Sharon Stone the next. Then perhaps on to Australia, where on his last visit he lectured leading businessmen on "Ethics and the Bottom Line." ...this is a man of two worlds. In one, he mixes with world leaders and goes to glittering fundraisers with Hollywood stars. In the other world of Tibbetan Buddhism, he is a great sage and teacher,
the 14th reincarnation of the first Dalai Lama, chosen as a small child. He consults state oracles who go into trances to predict the future of Tibet. In the tradition of a religion that venerates great teachers, he keeps the plastic-coated corpse of his beloved teacher Ling Rinpoche, who died in 1983, seated in a room in his palace. At home or on the road, the Dalai Lama rises...about 4 in the morning, prays and meditates until about 6, has a shower and breakfasts on tsampa, the Tibetan roasted-barley porridge that is usually mixed with butter and honey. When traveling, he then begins a long day of meetins. One day in Melbourne, Australia, last year, he had 17 appointments, starting with a meeting with a rabbi at 7:50 a.m. and ending with an evening lecture to 20,000 people on "Inner Peace, World Peace." On most foreign trips he gives extended "teachings" on Buddhist ethics and practice. ... In newspaper and television interviews, he argues to Tibetan autonomy. Recognizing...full independence is impossible,
he says he would accept Chinese control over international and defense policy - but Beijing hasn't even replied.
Recently, he has examined whether the "one country, two systems" arrangement in Hong Kong might work for Tibet. ...he seeks out Overseas Chinese communities, lobbying the people who will always be Tibet's neighbors... At home, his routine is more ordered. He prays and meditates for hours at the beginning and end of each day, but will have time to get on his exercise bike for half and hour and watch the BBC-television evening news, brought in through a dish antenna given by an American friend. Then he may go into his workroom to repair broken watches and any clock in the "palace" that has stopped. Mechanical things have always fascinated him. The routine belies his erudition - and the risks he runs. He is a great master of all four major branches of Tibetan Buddhism. As such he has earned the hatred of a fundamentalist minor sect that believes he should participate only in the rituals of his own Yellow Hat sect. Indian police think this group may have murdered three of the Dalai Lama's closest religious assoc
iates in a room just a hundred yards frm his...home earlier this year; an attack so frenzied it left blood high on the walls. One of the most peaceable men in the world now lives behind high walls and iron gates, guarded by armed Indian soldiers. Yet the Dalai Lama is supremely optimistic. "I feel so healthy. I think I'm going to live to be 100," he says. "...if I do, then I'll die in a free Tibet." That sounds like wishful thinking. But, as he point out, the Soviet Union lasted less than 75 years, and its breakup freed a dozen countries. China's totalitarian regime is 48 years old. If he is right abut the shelf life of communism, he could see the Potala again. His undaunted people will be waiting for him.
