TRUTH IS WEAK BUT STEADY
A review by Simon Scott Plummer of THE STORY OF TIBET: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DALAI LAMA, by Thomas Laird
Publishe May 18, 2007
Thomas Laird has come up with an original formula—a popular history of Tibet as interpreted by its exiled head of state, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. An American journalist of long acquaintance with his subject, Laird has done the basic research and the writing. The Dalai Lama’s contribution takes the form of eighteen tape-recorded audiences given in Dharamsala, the headquarters in India of the exiled government, between November 1997 and July 2000.
With customary self-deprecation, the Dalai Lama denies being a historian, reminding his interviewer that his monastic curriculum was devoted to Buddhist philosophy. But Laird soon discovers that he has since made good that deficiency: on one occasion he relates in amazing detail the construction of the Potala, the great seventeenth-century palace in Lhasa. However, the Dalai Lama does not see the past with the same eyes as a Western historian. This is, after all, a man who, according to reliable sources, believes he spent an earlier life as a disciple of Tsongkhapa, founder in 1409 of the first monastery of the Gelugpa, the Buddhist school to which he belongs. The Dalai Lama also distinguishes between two levels of truth, one the conventional materialistic view, the other developed through spiritual practice, both, to him, different aspects of reality. To help his interlocutor understand the miracles surrounding the life of Padmasambhava, an Indian master invited to Tibet in the eighth century, the Dalai Lama says that Buddhists, in that they accept two levels of reality, have no difficult explaining the resurrection of Christ. As can be imagined, this holistic approach at times proves frustrating to Laird, who admits to no faith in divine guidance of human affairs. But it does deepen his understanding of how Tibetans see the world.
Not surprisingly, the most interesting part of the book covers the period from 1937, when the two-year-old Lhamo Dhondup, having been recognized as the reincarnation of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, entered history. Once he was installed in the Lhasa, the lower-ranking monks and the sweepers in the Potala and Norbulingka palaces were his playmates, whether marching through the garden with wooden guns or acting out stories from Tibetan opera. Meanwhile, the country was run by a notoriously corrupt regency, which sold government offices and ran down the army. It was in that febrile atmosphere, shortly after the Chinese invasion of eastern Tibet in the autumn of 1950, that the fifteen-year-old Dalai Lama, largely unschooled in affairs of state, came to power.
In the face of overwhelming Chinese military superiority, the young ruler concluded that his people could only be protected by dialogue wit the invader, a decision which took him to Beijing for numerous meeting with Mao. Hints of outside help came to nothing and reforms with the Dalai Lama wanted to carry out inside Tibet were blocked by the Chinese, whose first concern was to occupy the country, not to change it. He describes to Laird his feeling of helplessness, then, characteristically, cracks a joke.
Since his flight to India in 1959, the Dalai Lama has become a religious figure of world renown and thereby brought the charisma of Tibetan Buddhism to a wider audience than at any other time in its history. At the same time—and he is well aware of the paradox—the 6 million inhabitants of Tibet have been subjected to a relentless programme of Han colonization which has destroyed a large part of their cultural heritage. In all this, their exiled leader has held fast to a policy of non-violence and, wherever possible, sought to renew dialogue with Beijing. This irenic approach, which has involved shifting his goal from independence to autonomy within China, has been criticized in the Tibetan diaspora, particularly by the young.
“In our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we posses:, the Dalai Lama said on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. In his final audience with Laird, he explains why he thinks that that struggle is moving in the right direction. The secrecy of the Chinese state is a sign of weakness; on the Tibetan side the spirit remains strong and support from the outside world is increasing; and hardliners within the Communist Party are deceiving themselves if they believe that Tibetans’ resistance to Chinese rule will peter out once their exiled head of state is dead.
If he ever returns to Tibet, the Dalai Lama tells Laird, he will effect a separation of “church” and state, handing over the powers of government to civilians and taking monks out of politics. The then expounds his Nobel Prize argument.
My basic belief is that the power of truth, although it may be weak at times, does not change as time goes by. The power of the gun is immediate and strong, but as time goes by, it easily becomes weak. Truth is weak but steady, weak but eternal and sometimes increasing slowly. The Tibetan case is exactly like that.
In its patient willingness to take the long view, this shows remarkable faith in the power of the spirit. Laird deserves thanks for illuminating his history of Tibet by the insights of its most famous son.
