In contrast to the mostly cultural contacts described in the last chapter, the focus of this final chapter is Tibetan political and ideological encounters with the rest of the world. Although it is often repeated that Tibetans were not aware of international affairs as late as the 1950s, these selections demonstrate that many were quite well informed and engaged with the rest of the world. Records from the interlocutors between the West and Tibet, such as the Buryat (Russian) Mongol lama Dorjiev, who served as a teacher to and envoy of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and the Kinnauri (Indian) Christian-convert Dorjé Tharchin, who founded the Tibetan-language newspaper The Mirror, have been included here as well. Although these authors were not ethnically Tibetan, they were part of the greater Tibetan language community and played an important role in informing Tibetans about the world at large. Britain, Russia, and China obviously figure prominently in these selections, as they were the great powers that weighed most heavily on Tibet in the early twentieth century. Maybe more surprising are the letters of Tibetan lamas to an American Tibetologist and ambassador to China, as well as to a Japanese monk.
Tibetan leaders knew very well the challenges that their country and culture would face in the twentieth century. As early as 1927
The Mirror reported about the rising Communist threat in China. By 1932, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was quite explicit about the danger of the Communists to Tibet, even though at that time they hardly had the power to threaten Tibetans. In his efforts to consolidate his country’s position and build a strong centralized polity, the Dalai Lama alienated some other Tibetans. The Pa
ṇchen Lama and other Tibetan lamas discouraged by the developments in Central Tibet ended up in exile in China, where they encountered a range of new ideologies and opportunities. Because the Pa
ṇchen Lama was the leading lama in exile, he was courted by the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) and exposed to the ideas of the founder of the modern Chinese nation, Sun Yat-sen. The main message he took from Sun’s ideology was the idea that all peoples (nationalities) would be treated equally, and in light of this promise he started to identify with the modern Chinese state, at least when speaking to large Chinese audiences. He was the first lama to teach Tibetan Buddhism to truly massive crowds of foreigners (mostly Chinese, but also Westerners), in Beijing and Hangzhou in the early 1930s. Like the other Tibetan lamas whose works are translated below, he was optimistic about the possibility that Tibetan Buddhism could flourish in China. There were centers for teaching Tibetan Buddhism in nearly every large city, and the first modern school founded by a Buddhist monk (in 1932) to teach both laymen and monks about Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism and cultures welcomed these lamas as teachers.
In India, Gendün Chöpel was scarcely as impressed with what he found, and wrote of the horrors he’d heard about Europeans there, from slavery to forcible conversions of subject peoples. He was also quite aware of the economic motivations of the Dutch and the British and traced the British interest in Tibet back to the late eighteenth century. One remarkable fact is clear from all these selections: even in the face of the modern challenges to their culture—from Communists and Christians, Chinese nationalists and European colonialists—these Tibetans remained firm in their conviction that their religion, culture, and society were worth protecting and even deserved to be spread far and wide, to benefit the global society they encountered in this period. GT
Agwang Dorjiev (1854–1938) was a Buryat Mongol, from the region of Lake Baikal in Siberia, and therefore a subject of the Russian empire. He studied Tibetan Buddhism in Lhasa’s Drepung monastery and became close to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. He was vilified by both the British and the Chinese as a spy for the Russians, but the Tibetan leadership seemed to feel that he represented them well in the challenging times of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in the face of the 1904 British invasion, Dorjiev accompanied him. In this section of his biography, the 1889–90 expedition of Prince Henri d’Orléans into the region north of Lhasa is discussed, along with Dorjiev’s hope that the Tibetan government would take advantage of the presence of this French traveler as well his own connections to Russian authorities as part of an effort to resist the British encroachments on Tibet. He and the Tibetan oracle, who was often called on to advise the Dalai Lama about how to govern, seemed to think that the Frenchman might be a bodhisattva sent to aid the Tibetans. Dorjiev also met Alexandra David-Neel (see
chapter 22), one of the great explorers of and an early writer about Tibet, in Paris.
This account shows how widely traveled some of the monks and advisors to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama were, which suggests that Tibetans were not as ignorant of world events in the late nineteenth century as is often argued. However, from the way Dorjiev’s advice about the British invasion was ignored, it is also clear that the Central Tibetans were not willing to listen to him, despite all his knowledge of foreign affairs. His interest in spreading the Geluk traditions of Tibetan Buddhism also extended far to the west, where he founded Tibetan Buddhist monasteries among the Torghud Mongols of Kalmykia (west of the Caspian Sea) and even a temple in St. Petersburg. One of his leading Kalmyk disciples, Geshé Ngawang Wangyal (1901–83), emigrated to the United States in 1955 and founded a Tibetan-Mongolian Buddhist monastery in New Jersey three years later (eventually moving his center to Washington, New Jersey in 1967), thereby continuing the promulgation of the teaching that Agwang Dorjiev had pioneered. GT
ON WORLD TRAVELS
The British or “outlanders” had encircled the world and were very much putting the weaker ones under their hands. Likewise, they thought they would devour Tibet. Sent from afar, they put Sikkim and other countries under their hands; and then, while they displayed military and diplomatic gestures toward Tibet, many were the preparations they made for devouring it.
In those days, there was no sure way to distinguish Russians from British. Russians were also not permitted into Tibet. The Buryats, Kalmyks, Torghuds, and others, being Russian subjects, were said to be definitely forbidden to enter. We Buryats, concealing our names, said we were Khalkhas and there were various disagreements on account of our acceptance into monastic orders.
But especially to my way of thinking, I thought, “Because the Russians and British do not get along with each other, the Russians may be able to help Tibetans and keep Tibet from being swallowed by the British. If that is uncertain, still, it may be necessary to explain the Tibetan situation to the Russians.”
Then I went to the influential lamas and secular officials, gradually telling them how the Russians and British were enemies and how, under Russian rule, the stainless teachings of the Buddha were flourishing among the Torghud and Buryats. At the same time, someone from France named Prince d’Orléans arrived in the Hor country north of Lhasa.
1 Even though various things were discussed, such as the possibilities and ways how Russian and France could keep Tibet from becoming food for the British, he was turned away and not allowed into Central Tibet. In my thoughts and conversations during that time I doubted if what was said was true or not, although some people had that idea. Meanwhile, statements came from the Nechung Oracle, “It is said that a ‘prince,’ emanation of a Bodhisattva, is in the north and east,” and “There is a proverb that even dog fat can be good for a wound.”
While I was considering returning to my fatherland, the Supreme Victorious [Dalai Lama] was a little disturbed by gossipers. I was not able to meet with him personally, but when I conveyed my wishes by way of others, the reply came, “At the end of a three years’ leave, you must return to Tibet.”
While I paid my farewell visit to Purbuchok Rinpoché,
2 he conferred the empowerment of the six-armed Mah
āk
āla seated in the heart. While doing so, he placed me under the protectors’ care so that I might accomplish activities for the aid of animate beings and Buddhist teachings. He performed other very deep kindnesses. As a parting gift, he gave me three receptacles. For the Buddha-body receptacle, he gave an image of the reverend T
ār
ā, the divinity who combines in one the activities of all Buddhas; as Buddha-speech receptacle, the monastic ordination texts; as Buddha-mind receptacle, a st
ūpa in the Kadampa style.
When I paid my farewell visit to the Nechung Oracle, he took off from his hand a golden thumb-ring and gave it to me with a knotted Nyelshel Ashé [a highly valued type of ceremonial scarf] the color of power (red), took me into the temple of the wrathful deities, and talked a lot about the stages of what I should do.
Then, in my forty-fifth year, together with Peljor and Chöjor, I set out from Lhasa. On our way traveling toward India, we were not allowed to proceed when the army officer Mikyé Lingpa who stayed at the Nyadong checkpoint gave us problems. After we prostrated three times and gave a lot of money, he was happy to let us go. And when we looked down on India from the top of the mountain pass of the great Himalayan glacier mountains, the rivers, plains and jungles, etc., made me think, “Isn’t it a divine country?” But when we reached Rinak it was hard to breathe from the great heat. While there were some small difficulties traveling, being unable to sleep at night, etc., when we later became accustomed to things, we had no problems. Traveling gradually, near Darjeeling we took the Jola Bhangar railway to Calcutta.
Then we went to Bodhgay
ā, the supreme Pure Land where our Teacher
Śākyamuni showed the way to obtain supreme Enlightenment, and visited the Mah
ābodhi Temple, the Bodhi Tree and other sacred objects. We prostrated, worshipped, and made offerings of gold for gold leaf, etc. We had good fortune to receive all that our faith could conceive. That finished, we traveled by a great ship from the Bengali city of Calcutta. While on the sea, strong wind arose with huge waves and I thought, “Now the time has come to see the after-world!”
But we did arrive at the great city of Peking. Then we traveled toward Urga. We had an audience with the Refuge Lord Jibzundamba and the Owner Pervading All Buddha-families, the Vajra Holder Great Abbot Pelchö. And, while we asked them for several profound teachings, scriptural, initiatory, and empowerments, the monks and lay people of my fatherland sent two people, a monk and a layman, to welcome us. Then we arrived in Buryatia. We made a petition, “At the five monastic institutions, Ana and the rest, the monks should gather together in an annual program of Dharma sessions according to the system of the Lower Tantra College of Lhasa and very correct rules of behavior and especially teaching procedures and so on should be instituted.”
All the lamas and nobles agreed to this and said, “But, in particular, the Kanjur Lama Rinpoché of Trewo should be invited to come.” I assured them that this could be done. Then there were preparations on the part of a confidant of the Russian Czar named Ukhtomsky for making Russian connections in the districts of China and Mongolia.
3 He was one who could influence the Czar’s thoughts toward that. I got news by way of a Buryat chief that I must go to St. Petersburg and I also thought, “The aims which I had previously pondered may now possibly be fulfilled.”
Traveling together with Taisha Tseten, I arrived at the capital St. Petersburg. I met with Ukhtomsky and then, through his mediation, paid a visit to the Czar. When I talked with him about Tibet, he told me how Russia would help Tibet not be lost to enemy hands. Then I was told through Ukhtomsky that he had said that a Russian would need to be sent.
My reply was, “Definitely do not send a European. The nobles, ministers, ordinary monks and lay people have made an oath not to allow them. For the moment, there is no way to send anyone. Even so, gradually and after asking a few times, an agreement may later come. I do not know. It will be difficult for it to happen immediately.” This made him a little displeased.
At the same time, the monk and lay, the lamas and officials of Buryat sent one Opashi of the Great Dörböd and he asked me how things had gone. At the same time, I arrived at Kalmyk, the land of the Torghud and of the Lesser and Great Dörböd. While they had followed after the successive reincarnations of the Supreme Victorious Power up until Kelzang Gyatso [the Seventh Dalai Lama], after that time, they were unable to go to Tibet. About one hundred and forty years had gone by when I, the Victorious Power’s servant, arrived and all the people, both monk and lay, were delighted. One by one, all kinds of articles arrived which they wished to offer to the Victorious Power. I accepted them and put them in safekeeping.
Later on I was in Da Fa-gué (from Ch. da faguo, “Great France”), otherwise known as Paris, the great city of France; very lovely to look at, but also very crowded. There was a group of about four hundred there who had great respect for Buddhist teachings such as Clemenceau and a lady named Alexandra [David-Neel] who, though she took birth as a woman, had learned scholarship. It was meaningful to behold, hear and know how they made their respects to the sacred Three Precious, and what they called “doing recitations.” I offered worship before the Buddha image and preached a little on the greatness of the Three Precious [Jewels]. While doing only this much, it might have brought into being for a few some aspirations which implanted good karmic seeds.
The one named d’Orléans, who had previously arrived to the north of Lhasa, I did not find. They did not want him to possibly continue the royal line, and so he was exiled to another country.
I again returned to my fatherland by way of St. Petersburg. Opashi came from Tibet and I got the actual reply of the Supreme Victorious. Making special preparations for travel, I arrived by the sea route via China and Peking.
RIVALRY WITH RUSSIAN CHRISTIANITY
My grandfather was Ukhin. His ancestors were Nagatai Buryats living north of Lake Baikal. He moved south and settled in the land of the Khori Buryats. So my family had relatives north of Baikal. The Buryats who stay there are not all Buddhists, but many keep the very widespread tradition of shamanism. Not only outsiders who were sent to them, but also their own people, came and began to urge them to follow the precious teachings of the Buddha. The need to build temples and monasteries was discussed, and some agreed. The longhairs called Pop who adhere to the Russian religious tradition made many plans to induct all those Buryats into their own religious school. To me, whom they did not at all like, they did harm and spread various lies and exaggerations. On my part, I three times petitioned the Czar. The longhairs made obstructions, but nevertheless quite a few of the country people became Buddhists and by various means I was able, both before and after those events, to found about four monasteries. Likewise, I even asked the Czar for permission to build a temple in St. Petersburg, and he agreed. But the longhairs and their followers made trouble and it was postponed for a long time.
At this same time, the Russian and Japanese armies were engaged in combat (1904–5). When the British entered Tibet with an army, I went to the influential people and said, “The English are a great power and the Tibetan army is powerless. If we fight, it will do no good at all. Would it not be better if we make an agreement?” Although I told them again and again, they did not listen. In particular, some pretended to consult the oracles to fool people, proclaiming over and over, “There is nothing to worry about.” It seemed to me that these people had the problem, since they had never traveled abroad in the great countries, that while their knowledge was great, their vision was of a limited scope.
At that time I thought, “When the foreigners come, whatever happens to me will not be good. When they arrive, I will escape by way of Drigung.” So I prepared mules and so forth. By way of government supplies, we had Chinese silver beaten into planks. I had this cut into round coins with shears, but it went very slowly. I had the idea to construct a waterwheel and I was in the process of making a long-term proposal for the construction of an industrial waterwheel when the British army was nearing the Iron Bridge
4 and a letter arrived from the Dalai Lama. In it, He said He would go to Mongolia and asked what would be the best way to go about it. This is the substance of my reply: “How may I tell you that it would be good to leave the capital and flee? But still it would be no good for you to fall into enemy hands. As for myself, I have absolutely no authority to tell you to do this or do that. Whatever you decide, I will be of service. Do whatever you think best. If it should happen that you would travel to Mongolia, I will serve you as much as I know how.” Late in the middle of the following day the message came, “You must come to the Norbu Lingka [the Dalai Lama’s summer palace].” When I arrived in His presence, He said, “We must leave for Mongolia. Make the travel arrangements right away.”
He went to the Potala Palace, arriving at two hours past midnight. Starting from the Great Palace with about eight people in his retinue including the Dalai Lama’s personal servants and priests, the Dalai Lama traveled over the Gola Pass. The Dalai Lama cherished the kind thought of going to Mongolia thinking that the time had arrived when the Buddha’s teachings would be made to shine like the sun, when millions of the fortunate ones capable of spiritual development in the kingdom of Mongolia would follow after Him. Toward this end, I had even obtained the good fortune of serving him with pure thoughts.
The foreigners arrived at Lhasa. Their means of action exhausted, they made negotiations with the Chief Monk Official Yutokpa. They said to the Dalai Lama, “Come back! When you return to Lhasa, you will not be harmed; rather, you will be served and supported.” Not trusting their words, we traveled directly across the northern plateau.
When the Dalai Lama again turned His face toward the supreme Dharmafield of the Glacier Country [Tibet], He sent me to bear greetings and offer gifts to the Russian Czar and ministers. I arrived at St. Petersburg and, as I was offering the gifts, I said I needed to build a Buddhist temple at St. Petersburg. The permission came and, as I was beginning construction, the longhairs could not stand it. From everywhere, near and far, people wrote to the Czar, “Don’t permit them to build that dirty Buddha temple in our pure land Petersburg! Destroy it from the foundation!” They asked him to make such an order.
In reply, the Czar said, “I have given an order for the temple to be built.”
The longhairs held conferences in three places: Kiev, Kazan, and Irkutsk. “This hex Dorjiev has spread the teachings of the Buddha among the Kalmyks and the Buryat shamanists just when they were close to entering our religion. Especially his building a Buddhist temple in the great capital is really improper. We will ask the Czar to order that he not remain in this country, be sentenced to exile or something similar.”
When they made this petition, the Czar’s reply was nothing at all, and he let things stand as they were.
To myself as well, the longhairs sent letters every day, “We’ll kill you and tear down the temple!”
“By such and such a date, you had better run far enough away that we won’t see you!”
“Make smoke with the smoke stuff and you must die!”
“We have an association of many people called Blue Birdies Society.”
I received many such letters. Nevertheless, I stayed in peace, untouched by mishaps, relying on the power of the truth of the Three Precious [Jewels]. While I was building a monastery on a tract of land in the area of the shamanist Buryats called Tüküm, some of the longhairs, including one named Makashikiev made trouble, trying to prevent the temple. Even when they tried to seal off the building for confiscation, they could not, and we even made progress.
[Agwang Dorjiev, Dorjiev: Memoirs of Tibetan Diplomat, trans. Thubten Jigme Norbu and Dan Martin, Hokke Bunka Kenkyū (Journal of Institute for the Comprehensive Study of Lotus Sutra), vol. 17 (Tokyo: Hokkekyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 1991), 16–21, 30–32, 35–36.]
The letters reproduced here, all dating to the early twentieth century, illustrate the connections of Tibetan leaders with foreign scholars and leaders. The first letter was sent after the ninth Pa
ṇchen Lama, Lozang Tupten Chökyi Nyima (1883–1937), met the Japanese monk Ekai Kawaguchi (1866–1945) in Calcutta in 1905. Kawaguchi was a pioneer in reaching Lhasa, which had been largely closed to overseas foreigners since the Gurkha Wars of the eighteenth century. While Nepalese, Kashmiris, Manchus, Chinese, and Mongols from as far away as the Volga River in Europe could travel to Central Tibet, other foreigners, even Buddhist monks, were generally excluded. This exchange is interesting because it records an early instance of what became a frequent pattern of foreign scholars seeking copies of the massive Tibetan Buddhist canon from Tibet. This was probably the first such request a Tibetan lama had received from a non-Tibetan Buddhist, but Americans and Russian scholars were soon to follow.
The next set of four letters is drawn from the extensive correspondence between the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876–1933) and America’s first Tibetologist and eventual ambassador to China, William Woodville Rockhill (1854–1914). The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1904 when the British advanced on Lhasa during the so-called Younghusband Expedition, and by the next year he was in Urga (modern Ulan Bator) in Mongolia. In 1905 the Dalai Lama sent two men from Urga to Beijing to represent his interests there and report to him. He had heard of Rockhill and his travels in Tibet in the late nineteenth century, and of the fact that the American knew Tibetan well. In a reply to a letter from Rockhill, he sent the first letter below. In it the Dalai Lama complained about the unresponsiveness of the Qing government to his requests and asked for Rockhill’s assistance in preserving Tibet from the British invaders. Several years later, the Dalai Lama had been granted an audience by the Qing imperial family and stopped on his way at the Buddhist mountain Wutai shan (see
chapter 20); there, in June 1908, he met with Rockhill. They were able to meet twice and converse freely, the second time discussing India’s relations with Tibet, British trade conventions, the proposed visit of the Pa
ṇchen Lama to Beijing, and the friendship of Americans and others for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans. This exchange was reported immediately upon Rockhill’s return to Beijing to President Theodore Roosevelt, with whom Rockhill enjoyed close relations. When the Dalai Lama came to Beijing that fall, Rockhill again wrote Roosevelt at length regarding Tibetan affairs, including the plans the Chinese government had for changing the administration of Tibet and the inability of the Dalai Lama to influence those plans. The Dalai Lama’s short letter from the Amdo monastery of Kumbum was the last that Rockhill would receive from him as America’s ambassador to China. By the time he received the final two letters explaining the problems with the Qing resident and military, he was no longer in a position to assist the Dalai Lama by intervening in affairs in Beijing. He had been transferred to St. Petersburg to serve as ambassador to Russia, and the Dalai Lama had fled into exile again, this time to British India. Remarkably, even after all the trouble he had had with the Qing forces in Tibet, the Dalai Lama was still seeking a negotiated solution with the Emperor of China. He seemed to feel quite confident that Rockhill, whom he regarded as a faithful Buddhist, would be of assistance.
The final letter, to King Edward VII of England, was sent from Calcutta after the Dalai Lama was received there by the British government in 1910. He had come as an aggrieved and displaced ruler, having fled the Chinese army sent by the Qing dynasty to occupy Lhasa. The diplomatic communications were to be handled by the Viceroy of India, to whom the Dalai Lama reported in detail on his problems with the Chinese minister resident in Lhasa. The text of the letter as given here reproduces the original English translation that was sent together with the Tibetan letter. GT
To the Faithful Japanese Lama, Who is cheerful in the practice of Buddhism and smiling as the anthers of the eight-petaled lotus of youth:
In the year of the wood-serpent [1905], while at Calcutta, you made me a present of a sacred conch-shell encased in a small box. This time you have sent me the book of the Essence of the Buddhist Scriptures in Chinese, through one Buchung of Kabuk (Kalimpong). This having reached here undamaged has pleased me as a medicinal gift. Being in good health, I remain absorbed in the thought about the welfare of all living beings. Now, agreeably to your request, one complete set of the Kangyur, cleanly printed, will soon be ready for presentation (to the Buddhist Church of Japan). Please let me know soon when you will come (to take delivery of the same). Lastly, [please] take care of your health and make progress in doing religious works. You may send me news and topics by and by. This letter of auspicious date is sent with the enclosures of a scarf and silken-charmed knot and with several sacred relics together with sanctified relics.
[Sarat Chandra Das, An Introduction to the Grammar of the Tibetan Language (1915; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1972), Appendix IV, 45–46.]
Letters to the American Minister to China, William Woodville Rockhill
Letter from the Dalai Lama in Urga to the American Minister in Beijing:
It is a joy to us that you are in good health and that you carry out your governmental duties regularly and well. We are highly pleased to hear from the American Minister that the governments of Russia and Japan are terminating the war by concluding a treaty. I, the Dalai Lama, chief of the entire Buddhist religion, have in the interest of Tibetan affairs arrived at Urga. Through the medium of the Minister we have several times reported to the golden ear of the Manchu Emperor. We have been writing for six or seven months, but we have not heard any of the illuminating commands [of the Qing Emperor] in reply. Now we have personally given detailed instructions concerning affairs of State to my household official and have sent him off to Beijing, instructing him thus: the autonomy of the Tibetan State should be safeguarded and efforts should be made so that the affairs of the Faith and living beings may not fall under the evil sway of the British Minister at Beijing. Please take pains in order to get a hearing for these matters in the Palace and to promote the general interests of Tibet there (i.e., in the Palace). Please keep the mutual relations of all the countries, their affairs, and their varying customs well in your mind. This letter has been dispatched from Urga, together with the following presents: a ceremonial scarf, and a gilt copper image of the Buddha Amit
āyus dressed in new garments, on the twenty-second day of the sixth month of the wood-serpent year (1905).
Letter from the Dalai Lama in Kumbum to the American minister in Beijing:
We have safely arrived at Kumbum from Beijing. We propose leaving here for central Tibet on the fifteenth day of the fourth month. Every possible assistance should be given by you to both my men, the abbot and chamberlain based in Beijing. After my arrival in Tibet, I shall send you a letter containing more details. Please do not forget me. Dispatched from Kumbum together with a complimentary scarf on the twenty-seventh day of the third month.
Letter from the Dalai Lama in Darjeeling to the American minister in St. Petersburg:
I should like to express to you my trouble: that last year [December 25, 1909] when I reached Lhasa, I found the Chinese resident Lianyu and some ministers of China with their ill will ready to snatch away the spiritual as well as temporal power of Tibet. That is the reason why in the Kham districts many monasteries have been destroyed, persons killed, and the properties plundered. Besides, a large number of Chinese troops came to Lhasa and killed and wounded some Tibetan officers of various ranks. I was therefore compelled to leave Lhasa with the Ministers and a small number of my suite to the neighboring country (India), for since the last convention between Great Britain and Tibet we are on friendly terms. When I reached here I made a representation to the emperor of China through the British Government, yet the Chinese in Tibet are dealing more seriously with the Tibetans. I know you personally, that you believe in the Buddhist religion, I should therefore request of you that you will be good enough to help me in this disturbance and advise if there is any way of restoring me to my religious country. Further, I shall be very pleased to hear from you now and then any interesting news regarding Tibet.
Enclosed please find a copy of my photo.
Hillside, Darjeeling, the fourth of October 1910 Dalai Lama
Letter from the Dalai Lama in Darjeeling to the American minister in St. Petersburg:
Recently (on the twenty-ninth of November 1910—thirtieth of the tenth moon) I received your letter from Mr. C. A. Bell, the political officer of Sikkim in a fresh cover duly sealed by him, which was, he said, to have been received in a torn condition from the Post Office. I fully understood its content; I am very glad that you have published a new book
History of the Relations Between Tibet and China and made this known among the foreigners.
5 I am intending to translate this history into Tibetan and distribute it. I believe you know that the relations between ancient \Emperors and the Tibetan Pontiffs [were defined by the fact that they had] taken oaths and written their bond on stones regarding helping each other but not bringing trouble; if anyone violates the oath they will be severely punished by the gods and the Three Jewels. And during the time of the 5th Dalai Lama, the Mongolian Princes were brought under the rule of the Chinese, since then it was going on quite as before. A few years ago the evil-minded Chinese Ministers were trying to snatch away the temporal powers from the Tibetans. The Tibetans memorialized several times to the throne giving the circumstances in detail but to no effect; for the Ministers take the part of the Resident Lianyu of Lhasa and grant whatever he says. With regard to our last convention, we are now discussing matters with the British Government. You are not only so sincere to me and a believer in the religion of Buddha but you are a learned man and know the customs and rules of all the different powers so it will be a great boon if you will kindly see a way to bring to the notice of His Majesty the Emperor of China to settle the present Tibetan affair in a favorable state through the British Government without delay. Besides, kindly do not fail to communicate to me if you find anything important and of interest to me.
Hillside
Darjeeling 25th December 1910
[After translations of the letters in the William Woodville Rockhill Archives. MS Am 2122 (85, 88, 90), William Woodville Rockhill Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University. The first three translations were by the Baron Alexander von Staël-Holstein.]
Letter from the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to King Edward VII
To His Majesty the King-Emperor Who Reigneth Righteously by Turning the Wheel of Government with the Strength of His Moral Merits:
The Dalai Lama presents his best compliments. Himself and his Court, journeying pleasantly, have arrived. Thanks for the excellent arrangements made by the British Government for their residence here. A statement of their difference with the Chinese Ministers has been sent to the Viceroy. Should the Government, taking up the cause in earnest, provide for the present and future (state exigencies) and extend help and protection accordingly, he begs to say that these kindnesses will afterwards be gratefully borne in mind.
At present, in the hurry of business, this letter to avoid being sent empty is accompanied by a long silk-scarf containing holy inscriptions, an image of the Buddha of great sanctity, one bell and
dorjé, gold dust weighing fifteenth
tolas and five pieces of [the] best satin of variegated colors.
[Sarat Chandra Das, An Introduction to the Grammar of the Tibetan Language (1915; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1972), Appendix IV, 45.]
The first enduring Tibetan monthly newspaper, The Mirror: News from Various Lands, was published in Kalimpong, West Bengal, from 1925 to 1963 by Dorjé Tharchin (1889–1976). Tharchin was an orphan from the Kinnaur district (part of northeast India, in the Himalayan foothills near Simla) who had converted to Christianity. This region, though never part of political Tibet, was strongly influenced by Tibetan culture but also open, as part of the British Empire, to Christian missionaries. Because he was fluent in the Tibetan language and culture but raised in a British and Christian milieu, Tharchin was the perfect intermediary to bring such a modern innovation as a newspaper to Tibetan culture. The Tibetan Mirror, as it came to be known in later years, was a critical source of information about international affairs for the Tibetan elite. Although today it is frequently claimed that before 1950 Tibetans, even in the government, were ignorant of world affairs, this paper was well known to the Tibetan government (which was then mainly controlled by some thirty noble families and powerful lamas). The Tibetan Mirror received occasional support from the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and Tharchin sent about one hundred free copies of each issue for distribution among officials in Lhasa. In the youth of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, his monk tutors also read the paper to keep up with the progress of the Second World War. Photographs, carefully labeled line drawings of modern technological innovations, and detailed maps with the names of various countries transliterated into Tibetan were reproduced from English-language newspapers such as the London Times in order to illustrate the stories. The British also supported the newspaper during the war as a propaganda outlet.
The May 1927 issue has advertisements for a clock as well as training in Indian writing and Hindi. There are also articles about the financial and foreign markets (mostly discussing India), news of the birth of a British “king” (referring, in fact, to the birth of the future Queen Elizabeth II in 1926), and brief notices on Mah
ātm
ā Gandhi, Melbourne, London, America, a lama’s reliquary being built in India, Indian and Chinese soldiers, Russian and Chinese disputes, and so forth. The translated passage is drawn from a page dedicated to news of China, and is followed by discussion of the armies of the Five Powers (America, England, France, Italy, and Germany) in China as well as the conflict between the northern and southern armies there, which soon resulted in Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party coming to power. This article also reflects dawning Tibetan knowledge of Communism, as the Chinese Nationalists used their northern campaign to attack the Communist revolutionaries. In this passage, the word “Communist” is not used, but a phonetic rendering of the Russian term “Bolshevik” was created out of the Tibetan words
böl-shi-bik, meaning “soft,” “to die,” and “piercing.” GT
THE STATE OF AFFAIRS IN CHINA
Beijing: the news heard was that on the sixth day of the fourth foreign month [April], after about one hundred soldiers of the warlord Zhang Xueliang’s Northern Army and the armed police suddenly surrounded the four corners of the Russian consulate, those inside jumped out—twenty-two Russians and seventy-five Chinese—[and] were seized.… Bullets and gunpowder, a thousand red flags, and quite a few pamphlets with an evil strategy to cause trouble were brought out from those buildings. Because of that, Zhang Xueliang issued a statement: “For the communities of evil people wrongly agitating the peoples of the state—those Red Russians or the Bolsheviks—capital punishment is required.”
As said above, the news heard was that on the fourteenth day of the third foreign month [March], in the Chinese city of Nanjing, the Chinese soldiers were increasingly stealing the foreign and Chinese peoples’ merchandise and so forth. Blame was also placed on the Yunnanese army soldiers.
[Yul phyogs so so’i gsar ’gyur me long II, no. 5 (May 2, 1927), 1–4). Trans. GT]
During the period of his exile in India (1910–12), while the Qing dynasty was making military inroads in Kham and Central Tibet before its final collapse, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama made the acquaintance of the Tibetan-speaking British political officer in Sikkim, Charles Bell (1870–1945). The two men formed a strong friendship, which endured throughout the remainder of the Dalai Lama’s life. For much of this time Bell represented British diplomacy in Tibet and on several occasions visited and resided in Lhasa, becoming a close adviser to the Dalai Lama and, indeed, to the government of Tibet, above all in matters of foreign affairs. Bell paid final tribute to the Dalai Lama in his last book, completed just before his death in 1945, Portrait of a Dalai Lama. There he published an important declaration that the Dalai Lama had delivered in 1932, concerning his vision of Tibet’s vulnerable political situation. About the origins of this text and his own acquisition of it, Bell wrote:
During 1931 the Nechung Oracle let it be known that the Dalai Lama was ill, and likely to depart soon to the Honourable Field. Consequently he advised the Tibetan Government to offer prayers to him to remain in this life. The Cabinet did so.
The Dalai Lama made his reply to their prayers in a book of nine small pages which he wrote with his own hand, it being of so great importance. This is the only book of which it can be said with absolute certainty that it was written by a Dalai Lama. A remarkable book indeed.
The book was printed on the usual Tibetan wooden blocks. The blocks were made in Lhasa; and, later on, the Chief Minister of the subordinate Government at Tashi Lhünpo had fresh printing blocks made there.
Nine or ten months after the Dalai Lama’s death the Chief Prophet of the great Samyé monastery gave me his printed copy of this testament. Himself a most devoted admirer of the Lama, he knew—as most Tibetans did—the close friendship that united the Dalai Lama and myself. When giving me the book, he said, Your mind is seen in it, referring to the advice that I gave to the Inmost One during our long conversations with each other.
In conversation, Tibetans term this little book the Precious Protector’s Kachem; i.e., his Last Testament. In it he justifies his rule, reprimands his subjects, and instructs them how to conduct themselves. It contains a large amount of political matter, and might therefore also be termed his Political Testament. MTK
Water Monkey Year [1932]. In consequence of the prophecy of the Nechung Oracle, all the people of Tibet, the Yellow and the Grey,
6 offered prayers to the Precious Protector to remain for a long time in this life. The essence of that petition and the Precious Protector’s reply to it are printed here together in this book. The reply, like a precious medicine, restores the fat which had become rotten, and enables all to see at once the dark places. It is the fresh nectar of the gods.
The essence of the above petition is given here:
We, the Prime Minister, the Members of the Cabinet, the ecclesiastical and civil officials, in consequence of the Nechung Oracle’s prophecy, have jointly made earnest supplication to the Precious Protector to remain long in this life. We have done this in accordance with the discourses of the Lord Buddha. We have all made these prayers in accordance with our different ranks and duties, and we have made them to the best of our ability. Please do not be angry with us; this is the prayer of us all, the Yellow and the Grey.
The reply of the Dalai Lama then begins thus:
I was not identified in accordance with the previous custom of the golden urn.
7 It was judged unnecessary, for from the prophecies and divinations it was clear that I was the true Incarnation. And so I was enthroned. In accordance with the old custom, a regent was appointed for a time. This was the
Hutuktu;
8 also the Head Lama of the Purchok monastery, a learned and saintly man. I joined the monkhood. I became a novice. I read several books, for instance
The Great Center, and numerous books on theological disputation, and the long succession of exoteric and esoteric discourses by the Lord Buddha with meanings as vast as the ocean. I was invested by my instructors with spiritual power. I worked very hard every day without cessation, to the utmost of my powers, and thus attained a moderate amount of knowledge and ability.
When I arrived at the age of eighteen, in accordance with the former custom, I had come to the time at which I should carry on the secular and the spiritual administration of the country. Though I had not hitherto exercised the religious or secular control, and though I was lacking in skill and resource, yet the whole of Tibet, both supreme beings and human beings, requested me to take up the power. The great Manchu emperor, appointed by Heaven, gave me a similar order, which I placed on my head. I took up the spiritual and secular administration. From that time forward there was no leisure for me, no time for pleasure. Day and night I had to ponder anxiously over problems of Church and State, in order to decide how each might prosper best. I had to consider the welfare of the peasantry, how best to remove their sorrows; how to open the three doors of promptitude, impartiality, and the removal of injuries.
In the Wood-Dragon year [1904] there arrived a great army of soldiers under the British Government. Had I considered my own comfort, I could have come to an amicable settlement with them. But if our country had thereby suffered afterwards, it would have been like the rubbing out of a footprint. Formerly, the Great Fifth Dalai Lama and the Manchu emperor had made an agreement to help each other in the way that a monk and a layman help each other. So although it entailed hardship on me, I paid no attention to that, but went over northern Tibet, through China and Mongolia, to the great capital, Golden Peking. The Sovereigns, mother and son, treated me well beyond measure.
9 But shortly afterwards the mother and the son both died, one after the other.
After this, the Emperor Shontong
10 was enthroned, and to him I represented fully the facts of our case. Keeping the whole case of Tibet in my mind, I returned, but the
amban in Tibet representing matters falsely, Chinese officers and soldiers arrived in Lhasa, and seized the power over the administration of Tibet. Then I, the king, and with me my ministers and other governmental officers, came to the holy land of India, paying no attention to the hardships of the journey. We arrived in good health, and through the British Government we represented matters fully to the Government of China.
Religious services were held on behalf of the Faith and the secular side of State affairs. These ensured the full ripening of the evil deeds of the Chinese, and in consequence, internal commotion broke out in China, and the time was changed. The Chinese troops in Tibet had none to help them; they became stagnant like a pond, and therefore, bit by bit, we were able to expel them from the country. As for myself, I came back to Tibet, the land that I have to protect, the field of religion. From that year, the year of the Water Bull [1913], to this present Water-Monkey year [1932], this land of Tibet has become completely happy and prosperous; it is like a land made new. All the people are at ease and happy.
This is clearly evident from the records in the State archives. You all, supreme beings and human beings, are aware of these facts. I have written these matters briefly, for if I were to explain them in detail, a very long letter would be required. I have been very merciful in all things. Consider this and understand it, all ye people! Do not make your desires great. Make them small! Understand that what has been done is excellent! If the work that has been performed is of advantage to Tibet, harmonize your minds with it, and know that your desires have been fulfilled. I do not say that I have performed all this. I do not recount these matters in any hope that people will say that the Dalai Lama has done this work; of that my hope is less than a single seed of sesame.
Having regard to my present age, it were better that I should lay down the ecclesiastical and temporal power, and devote the short remainder of this life to religious devotion. My future lives are many, and I would like to devote myself entirely to spiritual concerns. But by reason of the Guardian Deities inside my body and my Root Lama, people come to me to hear religion, they come to me to decide their disputes, and their hope lies deep in their hearts that I will not give up the secular administration. So far I have done my work to the best of my ability, but I am nearly fifty-eight years old, when it will become difficult to carry on the ecclesiastical and secular work any longer. This is understood by all, is it not?
The Government of India is near to us and has a large army. The Government of China also has a large army. We should therefore maintain firm friendship with these two; both are powerful.
There are one or two small countries over there that show hostility towards us. In order to prevail against them, you must enlist in the army young, vigorous men, and you must give military training of such a kind as will benefit afterwards.
Besides, the present is the time of the Five Kinds of Degeneration in all countries. In the worst class is the manner of working among the red people [i.e., the Communists]. They do not allow search to be made for the new Incarnation of the Grand Lama of Urga. They have seized and taken away all the sacred objects from the monasteries. They have made monks to work as soldiers. They have broken religion, so that not even the name of it remains. Have you heard of all these things that have happened at Urga? And they are still continuing. It may happen that here in the centre of Tibet the Religion and the secular administration may be attacked both from the outside and from the inside. Unless we can guard our own country, it will now happen that the Dalai and Paṇchen Lamas, the Father and the Son, the Holders of the Faith, the glorious Rebirths, will be broken down and left without a name. As regards the monasteries and the monks and nuns, their lands and other properties will be destroyed. The administrative customs of the Three Religious Kings will be weakened. The officers of the State, ecclesiastical and secular, will find their lands seized and their other property confiscated; and they themselves made to serve their enemies, or wander about the country as beggars do. All beings will be sunk in great hardship and in overpowering fear; the days and the nights will drag on slowly in suffering.
Do not be traitors to Church and State by working for another country against your own. Tibet is happy, and in comfort now; the matter rests in your own hands. All civil and military matters should be organized with knowledge; act in harmony with each other; do not pretend that you can do what you cannot do. The improvement of the secular administration depends on your ecclesiastical and secular officials. High officials, low officials, and peasants must all act in harmony to bring happiness to Tibet: one person alone cannot lift a heavy carpet; several must unite to do so.
What is to be done and what to be omitted, consider that, and do all your work without harboring doubt, in the manner desired by the Teacher, who knows everything as though it lay before his eyes. Work in that spirit and all will turn out well. Those who work zealously like that on the religious and secular side in accordance with my will, not those who show obedience before my face, but plan evil behind my back, those I will take under my protection, both in this life and the next. All will see that the Protectors of the Religion help those who walk in The Way. Those who break away from law and Custom and follow an evil road, these the Protectors will certainly punish. Those who regard only their own interests, who help only those who please them and do not help others, those who, as at present, are untrustworthy, and do not exert themselves to work well, the aims of these will not be fulfilled, and all will see it. Then these may say, ‘What ought we to do now?’ and many repent of their former actions, but there will be no advantage therefrom. You will all see that, as long as I live, Tibet will remain happy and prosperous, as indeed it is at present.
Whatever troubles befall the people, I shall see, and I shall hold religious services for them in the future, as I have done in the past.
Now, I have given you clear instructions. There is no need for me to continue it further. The most important need for the welfare of the inside is that you should repent of your wrong actions in the past and ponder carefully and always on my instructions in the future.
If you are able to do this, I for my part will carry on the religious and civil administration to the best of my ability, so that good may result both now and in the future. I will keep in my mind the names and the purposes of all you ecclesiastical and secular officials. As for all the subjects, I will arrange that for the space of several hundreds of years they shall remain happy and prosperous as at present, and be free from great suffering. Be all of one mind, and work with zeal to the best of your ability, as in the olden days. That in itself will constitute a religious service; there is no need for you to perform any other religious services.
The above are my instructions in answer to your representations. It is of great importance that, day and night, in your four actions,
11 you should deliberate carefully on what I have written, and that without error you should reject what is evil, and follow what is good.
[Sir Charles Bell, Portrait of a Dalai Lama: The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth (1946; reprint, London: Wisdom, 1987), 426–432. The original Tibetan of the text is preserved in the anthology of “lessons” (lapcha) contained in the fourth volume of the Collected Works of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. The traditional xylographic edition was published at the Zhöl Printery in Lhasa during the years following the Dalai Lama’s death.]
These short passages are extracted from the collected works of the ninth Pa
ṇchen Lama, Lozang Tupten Chökyi Nyima (1883–1937). They include some of the most politically pointed remarks in this collection, all the more so because in the two tantric ritual ceremonies in which they were pronounced, the Pa
ṇchen Lama was addressing large crowds (said to number in the tens of thousands) of Chinese citizens on their own terms. For this reason, he invoked the Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen’s ideology, which had been embraced by the Chinese Nationalist Government in power at that time. To indicate how closely he employed Sun’s rhetoric, the Chinese phonetics of terms he used have been given. What is most remarkable about these texts is that he uses the phrase “our China” several times, which seems to indicate an acceptance of Tibet as being part of a greater China. This is less surprising when we remember that the Pa
ṇchen Lama was relying on the Chinese government to assist him in returning to his homeland. He had been exiled since 1924, when the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s government had started to imprison his followers in an effort to extract taxes (for use in building up the Tibetan army) from the Pa
ṇchen Lama’s substantial estates. GT
1932 KĀLACAKRA CEREMONY HELD IN THE FORBIDDEN CITY, BEIJING
In the Hall of Great Peace in the imperial palace, the pure place and home of the virtuous Mañjughoṣa [emperor of the Qing dynasty] in Beijing, for the students of the venerable Kālacakra in the Buddhist community of religious people accepted by the lama, this text, The Thousand Forms of Open Lotuses Called Made-by-the-Rising-of-the-Sun, containing the preliminary practices of the seven initiations as if for a child coming of age, was set down in brief and in a way that can be easily understood, without scriptural or detailed explanations.
At this time, I completely bestow on you the stages of the empowerment of the Bhagavat’s [Lord Buddha’s] Kālacakra Tantra. In general, these tantric empowerments are only taught to a few worthy vessels who practice the secret Dharma. However, the reason for the need for such a public teaching as today’s is because at this time, if one says, “What is the reason that our country of Zhongguo [China] is unsettled and without happiness and both the state and the common people are very miserable?” then the answer is: “There is no proper adopting and abandoning of good and evil actions and their fruits.” Therefore, now, although I do not have the ability to explain this Dharma, my wish is that the blessings of the jewels [of Buddhism] will give rise to the happiness of the state and the common people. Now my prayer is also thus.
You all should not be motivated only to realize your own self-interest; also be helpful to all the common people. The state and the common people really need to find a proper way to live. In that respect, if the religious and the political are not combined in numerous ways, it will be very difficult for there to be individual benefit. The way for that method to bring happiness and peace to the whole country—the way to live, for the
Zhongguo [Chinese] state and the common people is through the Dharma, holding aloft the explanation of the evils to abandon and the virtues to practice. Moreover, you must be concerned with the importance of truly becoming of one mind with one another, as secular affairs are also your responsibility. Although I cannot now explain in detail the method for doing that, based on the advice in [Sun Yat-sen’s]
Sanminzhuyi [
The Three Principles of the People], discard its offensive aspects and gather its good aspects and then put them into practice. If you are capable of benefiting the state, since the root of the Mah
āy
āna Dharma is also for the sake of others, I request that you continue to see it through to the end.
Written by the Buddhist Monk, Lozang Tupten Chökyi Nyima Gelek Namgyel Pelzangpo [the Paṇchen Lama]. May all be well.
1934 KĀLACAKRA CEREMONY IN HANGZHOU, CHINA
Our
Zhongguo [China]’s races will become united in purpose. If this happens, no matter what external and internal affairs arise, large or small, they will be effortlessly resolved. As it says in our Tibetan proverb, “Having good fortune in internal affairs, external affairs will all be resolved.” In the Director [Sun Yatsen]’s
Sanminzhuyi [
The Three Principles of the People] it also says,
ping zuo [“made equal”], which is to say, “All races will be united in purpose and made equal [with one another].” Our
Zhongguo officials should take care of the common people in whatever competent ways they can. The common people should also pay attention to the orders of the officials. Individually, your lands, your communities, and your businesses, whatever work you turn your hands to, make it all beneficial to the state. In actuality, through abiding in the ten virtuous [Buddhist] precepts,
12 this our
Zhongguo state, whether from the religious or the worldly perspectives, will also be superior to foreign countries and remain so for a long time. Please, all of you take care to make effort and be kind, through the unified vision just discussed, so that all peoples can also have leisurely and happy lives.
[Blo bzang thub bstan chos kyi nyi ma, Paṇchen Lama VI [IX], Paṇ chen thams cad mkhyen pa rje btsun blo bzang thub bstan chos kyi nyi ma dge legs rnam rgyal bzang po’i gsung ’bum (The collected works of the ninth Paṇchen Lama Blo bzang thub bstan chos kyi nyi ma) (1944; reprint, New Delhi: Reproduced from the Bkra shis lhun po blocks, 1973), vol. 1, 529, 533–535; 388–389. Trans. GT]
These short but remarkable phrases and poems were written by monks trained at Tibet’s largest monastery, Drepung, in Lhasa. They served as teachers in a Chinese school for Tibetan Buddhism, the World Buddhist Institute’s Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Institute,
13 founded by a famous Chinese reformer and monk, Taixu, in 1932. It was the first modern institution for Tibetan Buddhist studies in the world and was a hybrid between a seminary and a regional studies center, producing both translations into Chinese of Tibetan scriptures as well as the tools necessary to learn Tibetan and study Tibetan culture (including one of the first Chinese-Tibetan dictionaries, language textbooks and readers, and history textbooks). Little is known about the Tibetan teachers there except these writings, but given their presence in China and references to India (which was part of the British Empire at the time), we can imagine that they were Tibetan sympathizers of Republican China, who worried that Tibet might be in danger of falling under the sway of the British. These passages clearly indicate that the vision of these Tibetan monks resident in China was to work together with the Chinese to spread the Buddhist teachings. The first verse, by Lodrö Jamyang, appears under the heading “Congratulatory Speech” (
zhuci, made at a ceremony) in the 1932
Special Memorial Issue at the Start of Classes at the World Buddhist Institute’s Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Institute, just after the opening phrase, “Sino-Tibetan Friendship” (literally: “China and Tibet in mental harmony”). In the second poem, by Tupten Gyatso, Tibet is clearly identified with the spread of the Tibetan Buddhist teachings. Since the premise of this text is that religion and politics should be united, it follows that any union with China is clearly to be both political and religious. This entails a mutual diffusion of China’s (political) dominion with Tibet’s (religious) dominion. The vision of a united realm in which Tibet would provide religious guidance and a China-based political power would administer Tibet resonated with some Tibetan understandings of the union of religion and politics that had shaped relations with their eastern neighbors since the Mongol dynasty of the thirteenth century. But note how central the Tibetan Buddhist teachings are to any success: this is to be a union of dominions, not simply an acceptance of China’s rule over Tibet. In this poem, Lozang Drakpa refers to the founder of the Gelukpa tradition, also known as Tsongkhapa, and the “predictions of previous persons” perhaps refers to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s
Last Testament (see above), in which he warned of the future troubles likely to plague Tibet. GT
THE FOUNDING OF THE CHINESE TIBETAN [BUDDHIST] TEACHINGS’ METHODS INSTITUTE
The extremity of virtues beyond conception,
May the Buddhist teachings’ methods,
Which pervade the trichiliocosm,
Long abide in the world, as desired.
[A verse of] praise written by the monk Lodrö Jamyang of Lhasa’s Drepung monastery, Loseling College.
[Shijie Foxueyuan Han Zang jiaoli yuan kaixue jinian tegan/’Jig rten sangs rgyas gyis chos grwa rgya dang bod pa’i bstan tshul bslab grwa khang da ltar bkod pa’i shin tu rnyed dka’ ba’i dpe cha, 1932. Trans. GT]
PROTECT THE METHOD FOR REALIZING WHAT CHINA AND TIBET HAVE IN COMMON
For eternity I make mental prostrations to
The lord of the ten powers, excellent guide, pinnacle of the Śākya clan [Buddha],
The lord of the ten grounds, treasure of holy wisdom [Mañjuśrī],
The lords of the spoken traditions, scholars of the past.
The method to realize what China and Tibet have in common:
Such is the aspirational prayer for the teachings to spread in the ten directions.
At present, foreigners have caused the teachings to decline
And the people of the world have no happiness;
The suffering of sentient beings is inconceivably pervasive.
Now in a time of chaos, if the method to prevent it is not used,
For example, like the body getting an epidemic disease,
Without the application of medicine
The sick one’s illness will not be eliminated from the body.
Similarly, our lives should be under the protection of the Dharma.
We go for refuge to the Three Jewels.
At present, if a method of quickly bringing chaos to an end is not acted on,
Our own people will kill one another over our country’s disagreements.
The disastrous times and illnesses will be apparent to all.
In the end, our own country will be put under other people.
Besides that, the region’s dominion will be dispersed in the wind.
The Buddhist teachings are far from our minds and awareness.
Being without the teachings is like being without one’s own mind.
The teachings are the world’s essential mainstay;
Without the essence, from what would the world arise?
Having felt thus, maintain the Buddha’s teachings,
Because this is surely the path to liberation!
According to the predictions of previous persons,
In the end, Tibet will be put under China.
However, assuming China and Tibet harmonize all their affairs soon,
Then Lozang Drakpa’s teachings will be proclaimed in the ten directions.
At present, Lozang Drakpa’s teachings
Need to spread without obstruction in the direction of China.
Since Tibet is spreading its teachings into the Chinese regions,
Therefore in China and Tibet all happiness will arise.
Once China and Tibet are in harmony, sentient beings will be happy.
At this time, from the east [i.e., China], the teachings will be protected.
The time of the [Tibetan Buddhist] teachings spreading to the east has come.
Now it is essential that China and Tibet are in unpolluted harmony.
Eventually, Sino-Tibetan dominion will be proclaimed everywhere.
If the teachings are protected, then Sino-Tibetan dominion will spread.
If there are no teachings, there will be no spreading of Sino-Tibetan dominion.
Because the teachings are synonymous with Sino-Tibetan dominion,
Having considered it in this way, once China and Tibet have become entirely in harmony,
Having protected the teachings, our own country’s dominion will spread.
Once China and Tibet are in harmony, there will be no dependence on others.
Now, in India, [India’s own] dominion has been dispersed in the wind.
Because of China and Tibet being not in harmony like that,
Having observed the example of India’s dominion,
Once we spread our own country’s dominion, know that
China and Tibet will trust each other and not rely on others.
This is thus the method for realizing what China and Tibet have in common.
Tupten Gyatso, teacher of the World Buddhist Teaching Method’s China Tibet Institute, entitled this: “Protect the method for realizing what China and Tibet have in common.” [A verse of] praise:
By this little abbreviated utterance bestowed
Through speech before the excellent scholars,
May living beings completely enjoy
The virtuous wish-fulfilling fruit.
[Han Zang jiaoli yuan nian gan di yi qi/’Jig rten sangs rgyas gyis bstan tshul rgya bod bslab grwa khang lo dang po ba’i dpe cha, 1934. Opening pages (n.p.). Trans. GT]
Gendün Chöpel (1903–51) was one of the most important Tibetan intellectuals of the twentieth century, renowned as a scholar, translator, historian, essayist, poet, and painter. (For a brief biographical sketch, see the preceding chapter.) He spent the years 1934–46 traveling in India and Sri Lanka. During his time there, he wrote a collection of essays on Indian and Tibetan culture entitled Crains of Cold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan’s Pilgrimage. The following selection is drawn from the beginning of the seventeenth and final chapter of the book, simply entitled “Conclusion.”
The chapter ranges widely over a number of topics, including a discussion of the “new religions” Gendün Chöpel encountered in India, such as the teachings of Ramakrishna and of Madame Blavatsky. It also contains the most sustained discussion of Western science ever written by a Tibetan up to that time. The chapter begins, however, with a scathing account of European colonialism and a condemnation of the religion of the European colonialists, Christianity. Gendün Chöpel continues with a brief and somewhat eccentric account of British rule in India up to 1939, the year he wrote this.
Although Gendün Chöpel writes at length, and often admiringly, about classical Hindu civilization, he is often critical of the contemporary Hindu religion that he encountered during his travels. Thus, one should not conclude that his harsh judgments were reserved for Europeans. Elsewhere in the book he writes, “Today Magadha, the home of our forefathers, is under the control of the Hindus as wife and the English as husband; it is not a happy place.” In this extract, Gendün Chöpel introduces his readers to, among other topics, the Inquisition carried out by Catholic Church in the Portuguese colonies of India, Dutch and British colonial efforts, and the notorious event in 1756 known in English accounts as the “black hole of Calcutta.” At the conclusion of the selection, after describing the harm that the British have inflicted on the Indian people, he praises them for banning what he considered the barbaric practice of
satī, the immolation of a widow on her husband’s pyre (see
chapter 20 above on Nepal), and ends with a poem mocking the narrow-minded. DSL
About one thousand nine hundred fifty-nine years after the Teacher passed away, the Europeans began crossing the oceans, demarcating great distances. In particular, the people of Portugal, a small country located in a remote corner of the western foreign lands, became emboldened. By crossing the distant ocean, they discovered many lands, such as Africa. Before long they even controlled the maritime routes of India, and in the one thousand nine hundred and forty-third year after the passing of the Buddha, a ship captain named Waliko [Vasco da Gama] arrived at the coast called Calicut.
14Generally, the intelligence of the Europeans in every kind of worldly pursuit is superior to ours in a thousand ways. Because they were accomplished in the ability to easily spin the heads of those peoples of the East and the South, who, honest but naive, had no knowledge of anything other than their own lands, they came to many countries, large and small, together with their armies. Their hearts filled only with self-interest, in their sexual behavior their lust was greater than even that of a donkey. They were sponsored by kings and ministers for whom the happiness of others counted less than a turnip trampled on the ground; it was they who sent out great armies of bandits, calling them “traders.” The weak peoples who earned their living in the forests of the small countries, who became terrified when hearing even the braying of donkeys, were caught like sheep and taken to the [Westerners’] own countries. With feet and hands shackled in irons and given only enough food to wet their mouths, they were made to perform hard and terrible labor until they died. Moreover, it is said that due to this severe hardship, even the young ones were unable to last more than five years. Similarly, young women were captured and, to arouse the lust of the gathered customers, were displayed naked in the middle of the marketplace and sold. Thus, they treated the bodies of humans like cattle. If thoughtful people were to hear what they did, their hearts would bleed. It is in this way that the foundations were laid for all the wonders of the world, such as railroads stretching from coast to coast and multi-storied buildings whose peaks cannot be seen from below. From Africa alone the people thus captured were more than one million, and large numbers of useless ones were put in huge boats and abandoned at sea. The things [the Europeans] did like this cannot be counted.
During the reign of the Mughal king Shah Jahan,
15 Hindu and Muslim orphans were captured and taken into slavery by the Portuguese. Because two servants of his queen Taj were also captured, the king became angry. He destroyed the cities that had been built by them, and took three thousand people prisoner. Furthermore, having gone to the small Portuguese villages with his armies, those who refused to immediately change their religion were fed alive to the crocodiles.
The religion of Jesus [under the Portuguese] is strict in the way that it carries out everything that its scriptures say about the appropriate way to punish those who believe in false religions. They have laws prohibiting the birth of any new children. If someone has the great courage to give birth to a child, they forcibly seize the people from the Hindu and Muslim temples, and perform their own baptism ritual and so forth. They did such things as place children inside a brass vessel and make people count the beads. They told them that, once they had renounced their old faith and joined theirs, they must destroy the lineage of those who believed in false religions. Thus, they alienated everyone wherever they went. Still, these others, forsaking shame, traveled to distant places and talked about how the kingdom would be filled with compassion because of the Christian religion. How pathetic. Some scholars from Christian countries say that nothing has spread sexual perversion, killing, lies, and divisive speech like the religion of Jesus. In my opinion, when it comes to putting the empty [words of their] scripture into practice, the Dutch and especially the English are not at all like that. They go abroad with deceit, and as long as the power and money they need for themselves are not interfered with, whatever religion someone chooses to practice is fine with them. They are unbothered by thinking about anything. Indeed, because they are certain to punish those who forcibly convert people to the religion of Jesus, in most places [the people] began helping them.
The kings Shah Jahan and Jahangir very much liked the Dutch. The English first established the East India Trading Company in the region of Madras. The city of Calcutta was newly built by Job Carnok two thousand two hundred thirty-seven years after the Teacher passed away, about two hundred fifty years before now. A young Muslim king named Daulah was enthroned in Bengal about sixty years later. He did not think about anything other than drinking and fornicating. Due to a minor disagreement, he plundered the factories of the foreigners who lived there. He captured all the women and children that were there. In each place, he gathered one hundred forty-six people and forced them into a dungeon less than three arm-spans [across], where they remained for an entire day in the terrible heat of the summer. At sunrise all but a few had suffocated and died. Having heard about that, the English army captain named Clive arrived with an army of three thousand, and waged a battle on the banks of the Bhagirathi River, defeating the Indian side. They caught the fleeing Daulah and beheaded him. After the death of that [king], they installed the Muslim king Mir Jafar. However, all the authority of the new king, apart from his title, was taken away by the foreigners. Every year they had to gather 264,000 gold coins. Then, from that point on, when the Hindu and Muslim kings, such as the Barbarian kings of Maharastra and Malaya, fought [with each other], the foreigners would ally themselves on the side of whatever income would be greater [for themselves] in the future. In each region they acquired, they would establish a nominal ruler. Their extraordinary desire, arrogance, and so forth remained utterly unaffected. In fact, they held authority over all the income of the entire region.
At the time of Paṇchen Lozang Yeshé (1738–80), a messenger of the foreigners named Bogle arrived in Tsang from Bhutan and stayed for a long time. He received great gifts from the supreme Paṇchen. It seems that there is an extensive account of how he met this Paṇchen. Because this Paṇchen’s mother was a close relative of the king of Ladakh, the Paṇchen knew the Indian language very well and took great delight in Indian culture. At that time, at Zhigatsé one hundred sadhus and thirty Muslim priests were paid salaries from his monastic household and permanently resided there. It is said that he would come out on the balcony of his private quarters and converse with them each day. Two or three of the sadhus were lay officials [in the Paṇchen’s government]. The foreigners, in order to please the Tibetans, erected a Buddhist temple on the banks of the Ganges River and provided land, which remains like a mission to this day. In order to cause a permanent rift between the Chinese and the Tibetans, the foreigners wrote a history about this Paṇchen that strongly denigrated the Qianlong emperor, but I will not go into this here.
Because it is extremely difficult for a single kingdom to be ruled by two kings, finally, during the reign of the English Queen Victoria, she was proclaimed empress of India. It has been eighty-one years up to this present rabbit year [1939] that the entire authority was held by the foreigners. She reigned for a period of sixty years. Some credulous Tibetans say things like this [Victoria] is an emanation of Tārā. I think that it would be amazing if she was even familiar with the name of Tārā. Then, [the throne] was held by her son Edward the Seventh for only ten years, and then there was George the Fifth. He even came to India once and was crowned as emperor in the capital of Delhi. He died during the spring of this past rat year [1936]. Now there is a new king called George the Sixth in the capital, and it appears his is a period during which his land is suffering from a great war. A governor was sent to India as a viceroy, and they made it the custom for each to remain for five or six years.
They introduce the new aspects of modern times, such as railroads, schools, and factories. Their law is only good for the educated and for wealthy families. If one has money and education, anything is permitted. As for the lowly, their small livelihoods that provide the necessities for life are sucked like blood from all their orifices. Such a wondrous land as India appears to be filled with poor people who are like hungry ghosts.
During the time of Governor Belham, because they [the British] forcibly prohibited the religious practice of wives being burned with the corpse of their husband, they ruled with great kindness. It is said that before, in Bengal alone, each year almost seven hundred women were killed. As for the numbers in the rest of India, one need not say anything. However, [Hindus] say that in the end it was the women who were harmed because their great path, going to heaven like a soaring arrow, was blocked. This cannot be true.
Incurable and unchangeable,
The mistaken crowd is diamond-hard.
Who can possibly argue
With iron-faced fools?
[From the forthcoming translation of Gendün Chöpel’s Grains of Gold by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. and Thupten Jinpa (from Dge ’dun chos ’phel, Rgyal khams rig pas bskor ba’i gtam rgyud gser gyi thang ma, in Dge ’dun chos ’phel gyi gsung rtsom [Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1989], vol. 2, 156–162).]
