To describe the manner in which ordinary humans experience reality, the Buddha used the metaphor of a group of blind men who unknowingly encounter an elephant. Unable to see the animal, they each touch whatever is closest to them. One touches the tail and thinks it is a snake. Another touches a leg and thinks it is a tree. A third touches the belly and thinks it is a house.
Each of their experiences was equally valid but also equally invalid. They all experienced something, but their understanding was limited by the various conditions under which they had to operate, such as their blindness and the particular part of the animal that they happened to touch, as well as by their own past reservoir of knowledge, through which the sensory data had to be filtered. In the end each came to a completely different conclusion, yet each was convinced that he was right.
The image fits with our own predicament. We confidently use terms like “facts,” “truth” and “reality”; yet in the end these are mere words, and our experience of any given subject is conditioned by our personal make-up.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the telling of a history. Life is so rich, detailed and multifaceted that we cannot describe in full the things that occur in just one day of an ordinary individual’s life. Words are simply inadequate. Yet we attempt to speak of thousands of years of human experience as though it were a flat object held in the palm of the hand. In the end, the story we tell is really just a summation of our own interests, priorities and perspectives.
The problem is amplified even further when dealing with the life of a mystic. This is perhaps best illustrated by a passage in the biography of the Ninth Dalai Lama, which was written by Demo Tulku Jigmey Gyatso. The Ninth passed away at the tender age of nine, yet his biographer wrote, “The deeds of this great bodhisattva were as vast as the ocean, and I have only been able to catch a few droplets of these with my ink.” He then goes on to write a biography several hundred pages in length.
Buddhists believe that every living being functions simultaneously on many dimensions. For ordinary beings much of this is unconscious. However, the aryas, or highly attained masters, do so consciously. Often their deeds are like seeds, the fruition of which will not be seen for many generations or even centuries. They can be sitting quietly in a room, but at the same time be consciously talking to gods or ghosts, or to beings who are far removed in time and space, or can be sending secret emanations that are performing magical deeds on the other side of the universe. We only see as much of this as our karmic maturity and spiritual evolution allows.
In a biographical poem of the Buddha written by the First Dalai Lama, the latter likens his attempt to tell the Buddha’s life story to the effort of trying to empty the waters of the ocean with an oyster shell. He goes on to say,
The qualities of a Buddha are limitless as the sky;
Who is able to describe them all?
But, ah, how fortunate I am to have the karma
To be able to relate the few of which I know.
In this same way, the deeds of the Fourteen Dalai Lamas and their predecessors are characterized by the multidimensional quality of all mystics, and thus what is said of them in the pages that follow are but glimpses through a very small window.
* * * *
The problem of dealing conventionally with the unconventional world of mystics, yogis, saints and bodhisattvas is one issue. Another is the unique situation with Tibet and Tibetan literature.
Westerners tend to think of Tibet as a Shangri-La-like kingdom, a King Arthur’s Avalon set in the Himalayas, with the Dalai Lama as a combined Arthur/Merlin.
No doubt Tibet had some Shangri-La qualities; its dedication to the enlightenment tradition, and the fact that it was cut off from the mainstream world by its rings of mountain ranges insured it a certain innocence.
However, Tibet had very little in common with Medieval Europe in terms of its internal political structures. Whereas many Medieval European countries were distinct and unified entities, Tibet was a federation of several hundred kingdoms and tribes, each of which had its own king or chieftain.
This lack of centralized power was both Tibet’s strength and its weakness. It made it possible for the country to be invaded and captured with relative ease, and this happened once or more almost every century; but it made it almost impossible to control once captured. The Mongols learned this under Genghis Khan, as did the various Chinese emperors, and later the British. The Chinese Communists who invaded Tibet and captured it in the 1950s are no closer to controlling it today than they were on the day they walked in almost five decades ago.
As for the person entrusted with the Dalai Lama office, he was generally a figurehead leader of the country rather than an actual hands-on one. It was hoped that he would be someone everyone could look up to and admire, a kind of national role model. His principal job was that of peacemaker between the hundreds of kingdoms and tribes that constituted the Tibetan “federation.”
Each of the kingdoms and tribes that were united under the general umbrella of the Lhasa government had its own kings, queens, chieftains and/or emperors. The Tibetans also used a variety of titles for the personages who held these positions. For example, the king of Tsang, who was the Fifth Dalai Lama’s chief antagonist and probably the most powerful man in central Asia during the early seventeenth century, appears in Tibetan literature with the title Depa, or “Head,” and not as Gyalpo, or “King.” At the same time the king of Gongkar, a relatively insignificant and tiny region to the southwest of Lhasa, is referred to as a Gyalchen, or “Great King.” Similarly the king of Neudong, a region near Lhasa, is referred to as a Gongma, or “Emperor,” even though at that same time his power was greatly eclipsed by that of the king of Tsang.
I have not attempted to sort out the historical backgrounds of these various figures, but rather just present them in accord with the manner in which they impacted the lives of the Dalai Lamas.
This picture of Tibet as a loosely affiliated federation of quasi-independent states is rarely presented in Western literature on Tibet, and has led to a considerable misunderstanding of the role of the Lhasa government in the life of the average Tibetan.
* * * *
There are a number of technical hitches in dealing with Tibetan history. One of these has to do with the treatment of dates.
Tibetans have their own calendar. They use a twelve-year cycle named after twelve animals, much like China, combining the twelve animal years with the five elements to get a sexantry system of twelve times five. They did not number the sexantries prior to the mid-eleventh century, so an “Iron Dog Year prior to that time can be in any sexantry cycle. Later Tibetan historians
tried to sort things out retroactively, but generally made a mishmash of things. Therefore, no Tibetan date prior to the eleventh century is reliable, with the exception of cases involving incidents with China, when a Chinese record can be invoked as a cross reference.
The Tibetan year is lunar, and the months begin on the new moon. The new year generally occurs on the first new moon of February, but does not always do so. Because of the nature of the lunar cycle, a few days are lost each year from the solar cycle. To make up the difference, an extra month is added to the calendar every fourth year, thus creating a super-leap year. Because a whole month is added, the year that follows a leap year begins rather late, with each succeeding year beginning approximately a week earlier. The new year immediately before a leap year can begin as early as the new moon of late January, whereas the new year following a leap year can fall at the end of February. To further complicate matters, other wrinkles in the calendar are smoothed over by doubling a day, e.g., having two days both called “the twelfth,” or by dropping a day out, e.g., having a month in which there is no twelfth day.
Western scholars generally skirt around the problem by treating Tibetan years as though they coincided perfectly with the Western calendar. For this reason the date of the First Dalai Lama’s death is usually stated as 1474, because he died in the Wood Horse Year, which in that particular sexantry cycle coincided with 1474. However, his death occurred at dawn of the eighth day of the twelfth month, meaning that in fact he died in mid-January of 1475.
For this reason, whenever an important event occurs in the twelfth month of a particular year I often indicate the predicament by giving both Western years, e.g., 1474/5.
Another problem emerges in dealing with Tibetan biography. Tibetans speak of a child as being a year old from the very moment of birth, although their sense of it is “being in his/her first year.” However, as soon as New Year’s Day comes, the child is said to be two years old, or “in his/her second year.”
Thus a child born on the last day of a particular year will be spoken of as “in his/her first year” for only one day, and the next day will be described as two years old, or “in his/her second year.” For example, a child may see one day of the Wood Bird Year, and the next day be in the Fire Dog Year. He/she would consequently be said to be “in his/her second year,” although technically the child is only two days old.
In such cases, a child can be described as being as much as two years older than he or she would be reckoned to be in the West.
This does not create a problem when the name of the year is clearly mentioned, e.g., “During the Iron Dog Year, when he was in his third year...” However, if the name of the year is not mentioned in this way the actual age of the child is questionable.
The situation manifests frequently in the biographical literature of the early Dalai Lamas, although less so with the later incarnations, and generally during the first decade of their lives. Whenever it does, I have not attempted to establish the precise year unless the issue is central to the story.
A technical issue with any book on Tibet concerns the Romanization of Tibetan names and terms. This is no small matter (although it has generated considerable laughter over the decades). There is little consensus among Western scholars on what approach to take in this regard.
The problem comes from the Tibetan fascination with the consonant. A given syllable will have only one vowel sound, but can easily have as many as four or five consonants in it. Most of these are silent, or affect the pronunciation in particular ways that are not obvious to the casual reader. For example, the Fifth Dalai Lama’s ordination name, Lobzang Gyatso, is formally written as bLo-bzang-rgya-mtsho. The First Dalai Lama’s guru Khedrupjey is written as mKhas-grub-rje. Lama is written as bla-ma. The present Dalai Lama’s personal name, Tenzin Gyatso, is written as bsTan-‘dzin-rgya-mtsho.
This book is intended as pleasurable reading and not as an academic study of Tibetan history. Therefore, I have followed a system of easy transliteration, writing Tibetan personal and place names as they sound. Here I take my inspiration from the excellent grammarian Sir Winston Churchill, who once said of the hyphen, “It is an eyesore and a blemish on the English language; and unless all of nature revolts, dispense with it.” The same could be said of the Western academic habit of inserting formal Tibetan spellings into a text, such as the names listed above. I had considered placing a glossary with formal spellings at the end of the book, but decided against it. Any well-trained Tibetologist will easily be able to re-create the formal spellings without relying on a glossary of this nature, should he or she desire to do so; and the tool would not be of value or interest to anyone but these scholars for whom it is unnecessary. Hence it would just add to the volume and thus expense of the book, without serving any useful purpose.
One liberty I have taken in my transliteration of Tibetan names is that of closing the hanging letter “e” by following it with a "y,” so as to ensure a more
accurate sounding by the casual reader. For example, whereas many Tibetologists write “Rinpoche,” I have closed the “e” with a “y” and written it as “Rinpochey.” Similarly, whereas some write “Geshe,” I write “Geshey.” My reason here is personal; after twenty years of lecture touring, I simply can no longer endure hearing people mispronounce these words respectively as “Rin-poach” and “Gaysh.” Westerners cannot be blamed for this mispronunciation; the standard rule in English syntax is that an open “e” is always silent and merely causes the preceding vowel to be made hard, such as in words like “pore” and “more.” In Tibetan, however, a concluding “e” does not affect the preceding vowel at all, and rather than being silent, is pronounced as “ey.” Therefore I have written it as such. There are dozens of words of this nature in Tibetan.
Another issue that my editors asked me to clarify is the manner in which I mention the different schools of Tibetan Buddhism. For example, I sometimes write Kadam School, and sometimes Kadampa School. Similarly, I use both Geluk School and Gelukpa School, Nyingma and Nyingmapa, Kargyu and Kargyupa, Sakya and Sakyapa.
Technically the former in each case is the name of the school as an objective entity. The syllable “pa” indicates a person or people. The difference is similar to that between “Christianity” and “Tradition of the Christians.”
In fact both forms — with and without the suffix “pa” — appear commonly throughout Tibetan literature. I like to do the same in my writing.
* * * *
Several earlier Western writers on Tibet have suggested that the traditional Tibetan biographies of the Dalai Lamas are somewhat superficial, in that Tibetan biographers invariably tend to treat their subjects as perfect in every way, and thus present their life stories in an overly favorable manner. The implication has been that the Dalai Lama biographical tradition is distorted by court stenographers pandering to their ruler.
This attitude is born from a lack of knowledge of Tibetan culture in general and Tibetan Buddhism in particular.
I opened this essay with a reference to Buddha’s metaphor of blind men touching an elephant and mistaking their subject. The Buddhist attitude is that the manner in which we experience the outer world is so strongly shaped by our own likes, dislikes, prejudices and preconceptions, that we are generally better off to avoid judging others.
This sentiment was expressed as a proverb by an eleventh-century lama of the Kadam School, who said, “Avoid criticizing others. If you are in the mood to criticize, then criticize yourself.” The same lama also said, “When speaking of others, say only good things. If you have to say something negative, say it about yourself.”
Of course, as with all precepts, individual Tibetans will occasionally fail in their efforts to practice well. As a result one will occasionally hear a Tibetan speaking badly of another person. However, most Tibetans would take the negative words as reflecting more badly on the speaker than on the object of his or her criticism.
A second factor that contributes to the strong positivism that is characteristic of Tibetan biographical literature is the tantric teachings on pure perception. All tantric Buddhists are trained to regard the world that appears to the senses as being a manifestation of the beyond-duality wisdom of bliss and void. As the Seventh Dalai Lama put it in a poem,
All things found in the world and beyond Are illusions created by one’s own thought.
Grasping at them but further distorts perception.
Give up grasping and see things as they are.
And elsewhere,
Whenever you meet anyone,
Greet him/her with eyes smiling with love.
Why mention that you should not even consider Holding harmful intentions or deceptive thoughts?
Also,
Always hold the pure view
That sees others as emanations of mandala deities:
That interprets all events as divine theater,
That hears all sounds as tantric music and song,
And that takes all thoughts as bliss linked to wisdom.
This is the essence of the tantric life.
In other words, the very heart of tantric training is the commitment to an intense positivism. A strong emphasis is placed on the exercise of consciously avoiding conventional negative attitudes, and on cultivating the
vision of the world and its inhabitants as supporting and supported mandala. When this is the case in general life, we should expect it be reflected in the literary tradition.
The criticism by Western scholars seems to suggest that the positivism characterizing the traditional biographies of the Dalai Lamas is exclusively connected to their high status as the spiritual and secular leader of Tibet. However, a glance at other Tibetan biographical literature reveals that this is not the case. Positivism is a quality common to almost all traditional Tibetan biographies.
No doubt this is not only due to the spiritual and philosophical considerations discussed above, but also due to the fact that a person who chooses or is chosen to be the biographer of a particular personage is in all probability someone who admires the subject of the work. In traditional Tibet, only the rarest of birds would expend the time and energy necessary to write a biography of—and thus immortalize—someone whom he or she disliked.
I have tried to honor this tradition of sympathetic positivism throughout my treatment of the fourteen Dalai Lamas, and to avoid bringing an imposed Western critical approach into the telling of the tale.
The story could, of course, be just as easily written the other way round, with each chapter being dedicated to a personal assessment of the shortcomings of each of the fourteen Dalai Lamas. However, to do so would not make for particularly inspiring reading, and would be in utter contrast to the tradition. In brief, it would just be a cause of negative karma for both me and my readers. You can thank me for sparing you the exercise.
In general 1 have attempted to avoid relying on Western academic sources throughout this book. This is done not out of disrespect for the Western academic tradition, but because Tibetan studies are still at a pioneer stage in the West, particularly in the fields of history and biography, and thus drawing from them runs the risk of repeating errors.
I felt that it would be better to tell the Dalai Lama story by looking to primary—and thus Tibetan—sources. Tibetans tell their own story with a charm and flair that deserves its own coverage. I have only deviated from this policy and used Western sources when these are direct eyewitness accounts, such as those of the Christian missionaries who were posted in Tibet in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By keeping to this approach I hope to provide the reader with a fresher look at the Dalai Lama tradition than otherwise would be the case.
Avalokiteshvara, reproduction of an 18th Century tangka. Photo by Armen Photographers, courtesy of The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey.