The Last Dalai Lama_ - The New York Times

8/18/2019 The Last Dalai Lama_ - The New York Times

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The Last Dalai Lama?t 80, Tenzin Gyatso is still an international icon, but the future of

his

office — and of the Tibetan people — has never been more in doubt.

By PANKAJ MISHRA DEC. 1, 2015

On a wet Sunday in June at the Glastonbury Festival, more than 100,000

people spontaneously burst into a rendition of ‘‘Happy Birthday.’’ Onstage,

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, blew out the solitary candle on a large

birthday cake while clasping the hand of Patti Smith, who stood beside him.

The world’s most famous monk then poked a thick finger at Smith’s silvery

mane. ‘‘Musicians,’’ he said, ‘‘white hair.’’ But ‘‘the voice and physical

action,’’ he added in his booming baritone, ‘‘forceful.’’ As Smith giggled, he

went on: ‘‘So, that gives me encouragement. Myself, now 80 years old, but I

should be like you — more active!’’

The crowd, accustomed to titanic vanity from its icons — Kanye West

declared himself the ‘‘greatest living rock star on the planet’’ the previous

night — looked uncertain before erupting with cheers and claps. The Dalai

Lama then walked into the throng of celebrities wandering about backstage,limping slightly; he has a bad knee. He looked as amused and quizzical as

ever in his tinted glasses when Lionel Richie approached and, bowing, said,

‘‘How are you?’’ ‘‘Good, good,’’ he replied, clasping Richie’s hands.

When the Dalai Lama entered his dressing room, I stood up hurriedly,

as did the Tibetan monk who was sitting beside me. ‘‘Sit, sit,’’ he said and

then noticed a black-and-white photo of naked young men and women

dancing during Glastonbury’s earliest days. He turned to me with a

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mischievous smile, and said, ‘‘Please sit and enjoy the photo.’’ He then

spoke in rapid-fire Tibetan to the monk, cackling with delight: ‘‘These

pleasures,’’ he said, ‘‘are not for us.’’

And yet here he was in his crimson robes — ‘‘just a simple Buddhistmonk,’’ as he describes himself — among Britain’s extravagantly costumed

young revelers in a 900-acre bacchanal in the muddy heart of the English

countryside, inconceivably remote from the mountain passes, high plateau

and rolling grasslands of his Tibetan homeland. For much of his 80 years,

the Dalai Lama has been present at these strange intersections of religion,

entertainment and geopolitics. In old photos, you can see the 9-year-old

who’d received the gift of a Patek Phillipe watch from President FranklinDelano Roosevelt. Another twist of the kaleidoscope reveals him tugging at

Russell Brand’s shaggy beard, heartily laughing with George W. Bush in the

White House or exhorting you to ‘‘Think Different’’ in an advertisement for

Apple.

Though the Dalai Lama has yet to use a computer, the 1990s ‘‘Think

Different’’ ad is a reminder that he was a mascot of globalization in its early

phase, between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the terrorist attacks

of 9/11. In that innocent era, the universal triumph of liberal capitalism and

democracy seemed assured, as new nation-states appeared across Europe

and Asia, the European Union came into being, apartheid in South Africa

ended and peace was declared in Northern Ireland. It could only be a

matter of time before Tibet, too, was free.

The Dalai Lama still travels energetically around the world whilefrequently joking about his age (‘‘Time to say, ‘ Bye-bye!’

 

’’). His Twitter,

Facebook and Instagram accounts help secure his place in the

contemporary whirl. But the cause of Tibet, once eagerly embraced by

politicians as well as entertainers, has been eclipsed in the post-9/11 years.

The world has become more interconnected, but — defined by spiraling

wars, frequent terrorist attacks and the rapid rise of China — it provokes

more anxiety and bewilderment than hope. The Dalai Lama himself has watched helplessly from his residence in Dharamsala, a scruffy Indian town



in the Himalayan foothills, as his country, already despoiled by Mao’s

Cultural Revolution, is coerced into an equally breakneck modernization

program directed from Beijing.

The economic potency of China has made the Dalai Lama a politicalliability for an increasing number of world leaders, who now shy away from

him for fear of inviting China’s wrath. Even Pope Francis, the boldest

pontiff in decades, report edly declined a meeting in Rome last December.

When the Dalai Lama dies, it is not at all clear what will happen to the six

million Tibetans in China. The Chinese Communist Party, though officially

atheistic, will take charge of finding an incarnation of the present Dalai

Lama. Indoctrinated and controlled by the Communist Party, the nextleader of the Tibetan community could help Beijing cement its hegemony

over Tibet. And then there is the 150,000-strong community of Tibetan

exiles, which, increasingly politically fractious, is held together mainly by

the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan poet and activist Tenzin Tsundue, who has

disagreed with the Dalai Lama’s tactics, told me that his absence will create

a vacuum for Tibetans. The Dalai Lama’s younger brother, Tenzin

Choegyal, was more emphatic: ‘‘We are finished once His Holiness is gone.’’

The Tibetan feeling of isolation and helplessness has a broad

historical basis. By late 1951, as many of Europe’s former colonies in Asia

and Africa were aspiring to become nation-states, China’s People’s

Liberation Army occupied Tibet. Not long after, giant posters of Mao

Zedong appeared in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the seat of the Dalai

Lama, traditionally the most powerful leader of the Gelugpa order of

Tibetan Buddhism and the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet.

Previous Dalai Lamas held political authority over a vast state — twice

the size of France — that covered half of the Tibetan plateau and was

supported by an intricate bureaucracy and tax system. But the Chinese

Communists claimed that Tibet had a long history as a part of the Chinese

mother

land. In truth, a complex and fluid relationship existed for centuries

between Tibet’s Dalai Lamas and China’s imperial rulers. In the early 1950s, the Tibetans, under their very young leader, the current Dalai Lama,



failed to successfully press their claims to independence. Nor could they

secure any significant foreign support. India, newly liberated from British

rule, was trying to develop close relations with China, its largest Asian

neighbor. The United States was too distracted by the Korean War to pay

much attention to cries of help from Tibet.

The Dalai Lama had little choice but to capitulate to the Chinese and

affirm China’s sovereignty over Tibet. In return, he was promised

autonomy and allowed to retain a limited role as the leader of the Tibetan

people. He traveled to Beijing in 1954 to meet Mao Zedong and was

impressed by Communist claims to social justice and equality.

But the Chinese program to uproot ‘‘feudal serfdom’’ in Tibet soon

provoked resentment. In 1956, armed rebellion erupted in eastern Tibet. By

then, the Central Intelligence Agency had spotted Tibet’s potential as a base

of subversion against Communist China. The Dalai Lama’s second-oldest

brother, Gyalo Thondup, helped the C.I.A. train Tibetan guerrillas in

Colorado, among other places, and parachute them back into Tibet. Almost

all of these aspiring freedom fighters were caught and executed. (Gyalo

Thondup now accuses American cold warriors of using the Tibetans to ‘‘stir

up trouble’’ with China.) China’s increasingly brutal crackdown led to a big

anti-Chinese uprising in Lhasa in 1959. Its failure forced the Dalai Lama to

flee.

He made a perilous crossing of the Himalayas to reach India, where he

repudiated his previ

ous agreement with Beijing and established a

government in exile. The Dalai Lama quickly warmed to his new home —India was revered in Tibet as the birthplace of Buddhism — and adopted

Mahatma Gandhi as an inspiration. But his Indian hosts were wary of him.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian prime minister, was committed to building a

fraternal association with Chinese leaders. He dismissed the Dalai Lama’s

plan for independence as a fantasy. The C.I.A. ceased its sponsorship of the

Tibetans in exile around the time that Richard Nixon and his national

security adviser, Henry Kissinger, reached out to Mao Zedong in the early 1970s. Though Western diplomatic support for the Dalai Lama rose after



the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, it declined again. By 2008,

Britain was actually apologizing for not previously recognizing Tibet as part

of China.

The Tibetan homeland, meanwhile, has been radically remade. Thearea once controlled by the Dalai Lama and his government in Lhasa is now

called the Tibet Autonomous Region, although roughly half of the six

million Tibetans in China live in provinces adjoining it. The Chinese have

tried extensive socioreligious engineering in Tibet. In 1995, Chinese

authorities seized the boy the Dalai Lama identified as the next Panchen

Lama, the 11th in a distinguished line of incarnate lamas. The Chinese then

installed their own candidate, claiming that the emperors of China inBeijing had set up a system to select religious leaders in Tibet. (The

whereabouts of the Dalai Lama-nominated Panchen Lama are a state secret

in China. It is possible that, if freed from captivity, he would follow the

example of the Karmapa, a lama who represents another Buddhist tradition

in Tibet, who, though officially recognized by the Chinese authorities,

escaped to India in 1999.)

Chinese authorities claim that Tibet, helped by government

investments and subsidies, has enjoyed a faster G.D.P. growth rate than all

of China. Indeed, Beijing has brought roads, bridges, schools and electricity

to the region. In recent years, it has connected the Tibetan plateau to the

Chinese coast by a high-altitude railway. But this project of modernization

has had ruinous consequences. The glaciers of the Tibetan plateau, which

regulate the water supply to the Indus, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Salween,

Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, were already retreating because of global

warming and are now melting at an alarming rate, threatening the

livelihoods of hundreds of millions. Lhasa, the forbidden city of legend, is a

sprawl of Chinese-run karaoke bars, massage parlors and gambling dens.

The pitiless logic of economic growth — which pushed Tibetan nomads off

their grasslands, brought Han Chinese migrants into Tibet’s cities and

increased rural-urban inequality — has induced a general feeling of

disempowerment.



In recent decades, Tibetan monks and nuns have led demonstrations

against Chinese rule. The Communist Party has responded with heavy-

handed measures, including: martial law; forced resettlement of nomads;

police stations inside monasteries; and ideological re-education campaigns

in which dissenters endlessly repeat statements like ‘‘I oppose the Dalai

clique’’ and ‘‘I love the Communist Party.’’ Despair has driven more than

140 people, including more than two dozen Buddhist monks and nuns, to

the deeply un-Buddhist act of public suicide.

As if in response to these multiple crises in his homeland, the Dalai

Lama has embarked on some improbable intellectual journeys. In 2011, he

renounced his role as the temporal leader of the Tibetan people anddeclared that he would focus on his spiritual and cultural commitments.

Today, the man who in old photos of Tibet can be seen enacting religious

rites wearing a conical yellow hat — in front of thangkas, or scrolls,

swarming with scowling monsters and copulating deities — speaks of going

‘‘beyond religion’’ and embracing ‘‘secular ethics’’: principles of selflessness

and compassion rooted in the fundamental Buddhist notion of

interconnectedness.

Increasingly, the Dalai Lama addresses himself to a

nondenominational audience and seems perversely determined to

undermine the authority of his own tradition. He has intimated that the

next Dalai Lama could be female. He has asserted that certain Buddhist

scriptures disproved by science should be abandoned. He has suggested —

frequently, during the months that I saw him — that the institution of the

Dalai Lama has outlived its purpose. Having embarked in the age of the

selfie on a project of self-abnegation, he is now flirting with ever-more-

radical ideas. One morning at his Dharamsala residence in May this year,

he told me that he may one day travel to China, but not as the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama lives in a heavily guarded hilltop compound in the

Dharamsala suburb known as McLeod Ganj. Outsiders are rarely permitted

into his private quarters, a two-story building where he sleeps andmeditates. But it is not difficult to guess that he enjoys stunning views of



the Kangra Valley to the south and of eternally snowy Himalayan peaks to

the north. The cawing of crows in the surrounding cedar forest punctuates

the chanting from an adjacent temple. Any time of day, you can see aging

Tibetan exiles with prayer wheels and beads recreating one of Lhasa’s most

famous pilgrim circuits, which runs around the Potala Palace, the 17th-

century, thousand-room residence that the Dalai Lama left behind in 1959

and has not seen since.

To reach the modest reception hall where the Dalai Lama meets

visitors, you have to negotiate a stringent security cordon; the Indian

government, concerned about terrorists international and domestic, gives

the Dalai Lama its highest level of security. There is usually a long wait before he shuffles in, surrounded by his translator and aides.

I first saw the Dalai Lama in the dusty North Indian town Bodh Gaya

in 1985, four years before he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking without

notes for an entire day, he explicated, with remarkable vigor, arcane

Buddhist texts to a small crowd at the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment.

Thirty years later, at our first meeting, in May of last year, he was still

highly alert; a careful listener, he leaned forward in his chair as he spoke.

When I asked him about the spate of self-immolations by Buddhist monks

in Tibet, he looked pained.

‘‘ Desperation,’’ he replied. But the important thing, he stressed, was

that the self-immolators do not harbor hatred for the Chinese. ‘‘They can

also kill a few people with them,’’ he said, ‘‘but they are nonviolent .’’

He then quickly reminded me that he had renounced his political

responsibilities, ending a four-century-old tradition according to which the

Dalai Lama exercised political as well as spiritual authority over Tibetans.

As part of his democratic reforms, an elected leader of the Tibetan

government in exile now looks after temporal matters; he also deals with

diplomatic and geopolitical issues. ‘‘My concern now,’’ the Dalai Lama said,

‘‘is preservation of Tibetan culture.’’

He told me that he was not against mod erni zation. For instance, the



high-altitude railway from the Chinese coast to Tibet could bring all kinds

of benefits to Tibetans. It depended on what the Chinese intended to

achieve. Then, pointing a finger at me, he said, ‘‘Perhaps, also to strike fear

in Indian hearts!’’ and began to laugh.

I laughed, too, though I was slightly discon

certed by his quick

alternation between seriousness and levity. I was to discover over the next

months that proximity to the Dalai Lama, his weirdly egoless but world-

historical solidity, provokes unease, bewilderment and skepticism, as well

as admiration. He embodies an ancient spiritual and philosophical tradition

that enjoins a suspicion of the individual self and its desires, and stresses

ethical duties over political and economic rights. At the same time, herepresents — and cannot but represent, despite his recent avowals — a

stateless people in a world defined by nation-states, pursuing those very

interests and rights. The Dalai Lama’s life can seem one long, heroic effort

to resolve the contradictions of being both a committed monk and a

reluctant politician.

Born Lhamo Dhondup in a family of farmers in the northeastern

Tibetan province Amdo, he was 2 when a search party of monks identified

him in 1937 as the reincarnation of the recently deceased 13th Dalai Lama.

Taken from his mud-and-stone house to the Potala Palace, he had barely

assumed full political authority when the P.L.A. invaded Tibet.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Tibetans were killed in

the 1950s and ’60s, and the Communists who destroyed Tibet’s temples and

monasteries were as ferocious, by all accounts, as the iconoclasts of radicalIslam are today. Yet the Dalai Lama appears wholly untouched by

bitterness and self-pity — the sense of victimhood that fuels many

contemporary battles for territory, resources and dignity.

Indeed, even as he seems the paragon of saintly forgiveness, he

advances a claim to ordinariness. ‘‘I am a human being like any other,’’ I

heard him repeat in several public appearances over the last year. In Tibet,

he told me, too many superstitious beliefs had overlaid Buddhism’s



commitment to empirically investigate the workings of the mind. Tibetans

believed that he ‘‘had some kind of miracle power,’’ he said. ‘‘Nonsense!’’ he

thundered. ‘‘If I am a living god, then how come I can’t cure my bad knee?’’

He similarly asserted his nonsupernatural qualities at the summitmeeting of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Rome this December. When the

city’s former mayor asked him how he coped with jet lag, the Dalai Lama,

Newsweek reported, gave a frankly nonreligious explanation. He could

train his mind to sleep well, he said (he goes to bed at 7 p.m. and wakes at 3

a.m. to meditate). ‘‘Traveling the world — time difference — no problem,’’

he added, ‘‘but bowel movement does not obey my mind. But this morning,

thanks to your blessings — after 7 o’clock, full evacuation. So now I am very comfortable.’’

The Dalai Lama works hard to establish a sense of intimacy with his

listeners, usually by goading and teasing them. At Princeton last fall, he

gave a talk on secular ethics to more than 4,000 students and staff

members while sporting the university’s orange cap (droll headgear often

leads his attempts at informality). He broke often into his conversation-

stopping laughs. His audience, not accustomed to his rapid swings between

mirth and thoughtfulness, remained largely earnest.

A solemn hush fell when a student asked the Dalai Lama for the key to

happiness. The Dalai Lama seemed to ponder the question. And then in his

noun-stressing baritone he declaimed:

‘‘Money!’’

‘‘Sex!’’

The crowd, misled by his meaningful pause, was again slow to catch up

with the Dalai Lama, who had thrown his head back and started on one of

his long and deep laughs. Asked for his views on investment banking, he

repeated three of his favorite words, ‘‘I don’t know.’’ In order to answer the

question, he said, he would have to work for a year in an investment bank.

Then, with excellent timing, he added, ‘‘With that high salary!’’



Facing eclectic audiences — atheists and Muslims, hedge-funders and

Indian peasants, the American Enterprise Institute and left-wing activists

— he makes no attempt to appease. He often informs conservative

audiences in America, ‘‘I am Marxist’’ (and he is one — at least in his

critique of inequality). He has also declared himself a true jihadi in his

everyday struggle against ‘‘destructive emotions.’’ In Washington this

February, he told a startled group of American Muslims that ‘‘George Bush

is my friend,’’ before revealing that he wrote to him immediately after 9/11

pleading for a measured response and later chided him for prolonging the

cycle of violence.

The scale of the Dalai Lama’s loss and displacement primes you for amore recognizably human reaction than this endless conciliation: Tibet

should remain part of China; today’s enemies are tomorrow’s friends; all

existence is deeply interconnected; and the other homilies that form part of

his ‘‘secular ethics.’’ And while you certainly don’t expect the Dalai Lama to

match his description by Chinese functionaries — one apparatchik

memorably characterized him as ‘‘a wolf wrapped in robes, a monster with

a human face and an animal’s heart’’ — even those who agree withDesmond Tutu that he is ‘‘for real’’ cannot fail to acknowledge his failure as

a political negotiator.

The Dalai Lama’s readiness to compromise has not prompted more

concessions from the Chinese. Tibet — rich in minerals (copper, zinc, iron

ore) and the site of several nuclear missile bases — may simply be too

valuable a territory for the Chinese to barter away to a powerless monk. The

Tibetan diaspora, denied the rights of citizenship in India, has fragmented,

spreading out from its Indian base into Europe and North America. Some

of its members have long criticized the Dalai Lama’s decision to settle for

autonomy within China rather than full independence, a demand he

publicly abandoned in the late 1980s. More militant sectarian divisions

have also opened up. The Dalai Lama is stalked wherever he goes these

days by drumbeating protesters shouting, ‘‘False Dalai Lama, stop lying!’’

They belong to the International Shugden Community, part of a Buddhistsect that accuses the Dalai Lama of ostracizing worshipers of the deity in



Tibetan mysticism known as Dorje Shugden, as well as, more bizarre, of

being a Muslim.

And the Dalai Lama’s willingness to settle for ‘‘genuine autonomy’’

within China — an enhanced Tibetan hand in policies that affect Tibetans’education, religion, environmental conditions and demographics — has

failed to convince the Chinese that he is not a ‘‘splittist,’’ or secessionist.

Formal talks between the Dalai Lama and China, which were renewed in

2001, went nowhere before ending in 2010. Informal discussions continue,

and there is talk, much of it from the Dalai Lama, of his making a

pilgrimage to Mount Wutai, a Buddhist site in China. There is a broad hope

among the Tibetan establishment that such a visit could pave the way forthe Dalai Lama’s permanent return to Tibet. In the final paragraph of his

memoirs, ‘‘The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong,’’ Gyalo Thondup, a

longstanding emissary between the Dalai Lama and Chinese leaders,

recounts a meeting in which his younger brother urges him to stay healthy.

‘‘We have to return home together,’’ the Dalai Lama says. It seems more

likely, however, that China will wait for the Dalai Lama to die in exile rather

than risk his politically fraught return home.

The prospect of a world without the Dalai Lama has created a new

set of quandaries for the Tibetan community in exile, even as it still looks to

him for guidance. A decade ago, I visited Dharamsala to research an article

for this magazine about young Tibetans disaffected with the Dalai Lama’s

leadership. They belonged to the 35,000-member Tibetan Youth Congress,

a traditional advocacy group for independence. At the time, the most

prominent among this new generation of Tibetan activists was the poet

Tenzin Tsundue. He staged protests in Indian cities during state visits by

Chinese premiers and was subsequently barred by the police from traveling

in India. Lately, though, the pressures on him have come not from the

Indian government, Tenzin Tsundue told me, but from the Tibetan

establishment in Dharamsala, which discounts Tibetans demanding

independence as ‘‘anti-Dalai Lama.’’ In Tenzin Tsundue’s assessment, the

Dalai Lama is trying hard to signal to the Chinese that he speaks for allTibetans in his bid for autonomy: ‘‘ ‘Independence is impossible,’ he has



said. ‘Why should someone waste his or her energy on insisting on

independence?’ 

’’ Tenzin Tsundue told me that the T.Y.C. had split under

the weight of this official disapproval.

The current president of the youth congress, Tenzing Jigme, is a rock musician who spent 15 years in the United States. I met him at the

Moonpeak Cafe in Dharamsala. On the winding road before us, narrowed

by carts vending turquoise and coral jewelry, was the cosmopolitan

multitude that every visiting journalist rhapsodizes about: crimson-robed

monks, longhaired travelers on motorcycles, Tibetan women in brightly

striped chubas, Sikh day-trippers, Kashmiri carpet-sellers and English,

German and Israeli backpackers. But the adventure of globalism, itemerged from my conversation with Tenzing Jigme, had curdled here no

less than in Lhasa. Dharamsala receives fewer seekers of Eastern wisdom

from the West than it did a decade ago. Mindfulness is now commonly

accepted as a boost to corporate effi

ciency. And Indian real estate

speculators seem to be thinking differently by covering the hills around the

Dalai Lama’s residence with cement.

The flow of refugees from Tibet, once running into the thousands, has

slowed to a trickle. Many exiles have returned to Tibet, where urban and

rural incomes have risen. And life for ordinary Tibetans in Dharamsala

remains a struggle. They still cannot own property, and an increasing

number hope to emigrate to the West. (Many of the young T.Y.C. activists I

interviewed in 2005 have scattered across the world.) The United States is a

favored destination; some Tibetans are doing very well there, but many

have ended up working as dishwashers and janitors. Others became

vulnerable to visa racketeers.

Among the elite, accusations of corruption and nepotism have further

roiled the close-knit Tibetan exile community. In the latest scandal, Gyalo

Thondup accused his sister-in-law’s father of siphoning off the Tibetan

government in exile’s gold and silver. His sister-in-law denied the

accusations in a widely circulated Facebook post.



Tenzing Jigme did not blame the Dalai Lama for these setbacks. In

fact, he credited him with ‘‘the democratic shift in the community,’’ the

advent of elected leaders. ‘‘He keeps preparing us for the future,’’ he said.

But there was no doubt, he added, that the Tibetans faced a political

impasse. The possibility that many would lapse into violence after the Dalai

Lama dies had only grown.

One institution that hopes to forestall this bleak future is the Tibetan

government in exile, now known as the Central Tibetan Administration. At

the Dalai Lama’s residence this spring, I met with Lobsang Sangay, who in

2011 was elected the political head of the C.T.A. An imposing figure in his

late 40s, Lobsang Sangay is the first Tibetan to attend Harvard Law School,and also the first nonmonk to rise high in the Tibetan hierarchy. Once a

member of the youth congress and an advocate of independence, he now

performs the delicate job of emphasizing the advantages of the ‘‘middle

way’’ — autonomy under Chinese rule.

He was more sanguine than Tenzing Jigme, even buoyant, and seemed

invested in old-style realpolitik. A year ago, he told me that he hoped the

new Indian government of assertive Hindu nationalists would stand up to

China. This expectation seemed to have been fueled, at least in part, by the

Tibetan community’s diplomatic setbacks in the West. The Dalai Lama was

scheduled to visit Oslo in May 2014 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his

Nobel Peace Prize, but even the president of Norway’s Parliament, who

once headed its pro-Tibet committee, declined to meet him. Lobsang

Sangay was incredulous. ‘‘This is in Norway, an oil-rich country! It is clear

that China wants the West to kowtow.’’

When I saw him again in late May this year, Lobsang Sangay said he

hoped China would learn from its struggles with growing anti-mainland-

Chinese sentiment in Taiwan and Hong Kong and reconsider its policy in

Tibet. This seems a common expectation among the Tibetan establishment,

though it is not much shared outside it. The Dalai Lama told me that the

Chinese ‘‘are facing a kind of dilemma.’’ In Tibet, ‘‘they tried their best toobliterate, like Tiananmen event, but they failed.’’



In the meantime, it was imperative, Lobsang Sangay told me, for

Tibetans to remain united. Tibetans, he said, needed to keep in mind four

key points: survive, sustain, strengthen and succeed. Briskly, Lobsang

Sangay sketched a vision in which Tibetans grow richer and more

resourceful through private entrepreneurship. He said, ‘‘Mahatma Gandhi,

after all, received blank checks for his activism from big Indian

businessmen.’’

The C.T.A.’s previous leader, a senior Buddhist monk named Lobsang

Tenzin but better known as Samdhong Rinpoche, also insists on the middle

way with the Chinese and is also a self-professed Gandhian. (He is one of

the Dalai Lama’s closest political advisers.) Only Tenzin Choegyal, the DalaiLama’s younger brother and the most influential of his relatives, dissents

from the establishment line. T.C., as he is known, is robustly skeptical of

both C.T.A. leaders. ‘‘Lobsang Sangay,’’ he said, ‘‘is already preparing for his

next election.’’ Samdhong Rinpoche, he told me, was too rigid.

T.C. trained as a monk — he was discovered to be a rinpoche, or

incarnate lama — before relinquishing his robes; his bold public statements

have made him the enfant terrible of the Tibetan community in exile.

Autonomy, he told a French newspaper recently, would give the Tibetans

one foot in their homeland. They would then use the other foot to kick out

the Chinese. The Chinese media quickly seized upon these remarks as proof

of the Dalai Lama’s perfidious ‘‘splittism.’’

I first met T.C. in February this year, at one of the Dalai Lama’s

freewheeling public talks on secular ethics in Basel. Thousands of people —some Tibetans, but a majority of them Europeans — packed the St.

Jakobshalle. The Dalai Lama sat on the stage with Basel’s mayor, who

looked very awkward wearing a Tibetan khatag over his suit. The Dalai

Lama repeated many of the things I heard him say at other venues: It was

up to the young to strive for peace in the new century. If that seemed

unrealistic, then they should ‘‘forget about it.’’ ‘‘My generation,’’ he said, ‘‘is

20th century. Our time is gone. Time to say, ‘ Bye-bye.’ 

’’ Asked during theQ. and A. if he planned to reincarnate, the Dalai Lama boomed, ‘‘No!’’



Abruptly, he leaned toward his interpreter and asked in Tibetan, ‘‘What is

the topic of this talk?’’

T.C. turned to me and murmured, ‘‘His Holiness is getting more

forgetful with age!’’

A dead ringer for his brother, with the same high cheekbones, sharp

eyes and kindly expression, T.C. speaks English with an Anglo-Indian lilt, a

result of his boarding-school education and stint in the Indian military. As

the Dalai Lama spoke, T.C. grew gloomier. He was convinced the Tibetans

had no future. Tibetans were far from secure in India; they could be asked

to leave any time by the Indian government. The various incarnate lamas in

exile who made money off gullible Westerners were sectarian at heart, as

were the Shugden. He did see some signs of hope, however. The Chinese

president, Xi Jinping, was supposedly rethinking his stance on Tibet. The

Dalai Lama had enjoyed friendly relations with his father in Beijing. Also,

Xi’s wife is Buddhist and has visited Lhasa. Did I know that the wife of a

senior Chinese leader had an affair with a restaurant owner there?

I did not. I remarked on the number of Tibetans in Basel. (Tibetans began to settle in Switzerland in the 1960s.) Many of the volunteers

controlling the crowd in the arena, I learned, were hedge-funders and

bankers. One of them turned out to be T.C.’s own son. In general, T.C. said,

the small Tibetan diaspora had flourished in their host societies.

Cut off from both Tibet and Dharamsala, the Tibetans in the West can

be extra-zealous in their devotion to their cherished leader. During the Q.

and A., a member of Shugden was able to say no more than ‘‘Millions of

Shugden people — ’’ before Tibetan volunteers snatched away his

microphone and quickly bundled him out of sight. The Dalai Lama went on

to explain his position yet again, which is, broadly, that he had not banned

but merely expressed his disapproval of the Shugden deity. I told T.C. that

it would have been better to let the Shugden member speak. T.C. agreed.

Shugden members, he said, ‘‘want His Holiness to lose his cool. But it won’t

happen.’’



For two days, Basel was enlivened by thousands of Tibetan

expatriates in brilliant crimson sashes and brocade jackets. They waited for

the Dalai Lama outside his hotel, keeping warm in the bone-chilling cold by

singing and dancing, their exuberant drums drowning out the Shugden

protesters chanting, ‘‘False Dalai Lama, stop lying!’’

Inside the arena one evening, the Dalai Lama started his speech with

an effort to reconcile his audience to their displacement. He confessed that

the last time he traveled there, he promised he would be in Tibet soon. But

Switzerland was also ‘‘the land of the snows.’’ And, he added, ‘‘it feels like I

am there. We are all from the land of the snows, not just those who were

born in Tibet but also those born here.’’

He then gave a pep talk of sorts. Tibetans should be proud of

themselves, he said. They and their culture were now respected all over the

world. Modern science was validating the insights of Tibetan Buddhism and

confirming Tibetan medicine’s assumptions about the indivisibility of body

and mind. Millions of Chinese were also attracted to Tibetan Buddhism.

But it was important for Tibetans not to grow complacent, to preserve their

‘‘moral culture of compassion.’’

By the time the Dalai Lama left the arena, making his way through the

large assembly of Tibetans — chatting, holding hands, bumping foreheads

with babies — most people had moist eyes. The Tibetans gathered here

were the Dalai Lama’s devoted people, those he had held together and led,

Moses-like, into the modern world. His speech made clear that, to him,

Tibet had become more than a geographical and political entity; it was now a noble idea, a different way of being in the world. Its fulfillment did not

require political sovereignty, let alone nationalist passion. It could be

realized in any part of the world and was available to anyone, Tibetan or

not.

Cynics might argue that the Dalai Lama has lapsed into a woolly

internationalism; others, that his motives are pragmatic: He must

constantly improvise to appear conciliatory to the Chinese, on whom Tibet’s



future depends. (As Tenzin Tsundue told me, the Dalai Lama has lately

invested his faith in Xi Jinping. But Xi has only hardened his stance on

Tibet. So now the Dalai Lama says that ‘‘many Chinese are Buddhists, and

will bring change in China.’’)

But neither cynicism nor pragmatism entirely explains his stance. It

may be that he is trying to actualize the insights he has gathered as a global

nomad in his post-Tibet existence — that he has transmuted his own

homelessness into a vision of freedom that accords with the Buddhist

emphasis on change and impermanence. Over the previous months he had

expressed various versions of a drastic prospect: The institution of the Dalai

Lama had outlived its purpose, he said. ‘‘If it is not needed, then do away with it.’’

A few months after we met in Basel, I went to see T.C. at his secluded

hillside home in Dharamsala, a 15-minute walk from the Dalai Lama’s

residence. A modern two-story building, it overlooks the British-built

bungalow where the Dalai Lama’s mother used to live and which is now a

guesthouse. Sitting in his book-lined study, T.C. seemed more despondent

than he did in Basel. There had been, he reported, no initiative on Tibet

from Xi Jinping, and early signs from India’s Hindu nationalist government

were alarming. ‘‘I am really scared,’’ he said. An August 2014 meeting

between the Dalai Lama and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi,

was a cloak-and-dagger affair. The Dalai Lama was ushered into the prime

minister’s official residence in Delhi at night, and in secret. ‘‘As if His

Holiness is some kind of criminal,’’ T.C. said indignantly. Modi then

proceeded to ask ‘‘insulting’’ questions: Why, for instance, was the Dalai

Lama organizing a meeting of religious leaders in Delhi?

‘‘As a Tibetan,’’ T.C. said, ‘‘I am very hurt over this.’’ The Dalai Lama

had been for decades the ‘‘best ambassador’’ for India, publicizing the

virtues of Indian philosophy and culture. T.C. was also mortified by his

elder brother Gyalo Thondup’s book and its denunciation of the Tibetan

establishment. ‘‘Why write a book like that?’’ The Tibetan elites were

already floundering. ‘‘You look at our directors and ministers; they are not



spiritually grounded.’’

T.C. spoke for a bit on what seems his favorite subject: the ills of

organized religion, as distinct from private spirituality. The Dalai Lama

system, too, was ‘‘pretty reactionary.’’ He then added, ‘‘Tell His Holinessthat I said this.’’

When I arrived at the Dalai Lama’s residence the next morning, those

waiting for an audience lined the long driveway: Mongolian monks,

Swedish backpackers and recently arrived Tibetan refugees. Flanked by a

retinue that I had come to recognize — two close aides, a translator, a

senior monk or two, bodyguards — the Dalai Lama patiently, even

energetically, clasped their hands and posed for photos.

He chuckled when I told him that his younger brother thought his high

office was past its sell-by date. Then, quickly becoming serious, he added

that all religious institutions, including the Dalai Lama, developed in feudal

circumstances. Corrupted by hierarchical systems, they began to

discriminate between men and women; they came to be compromised by

such cultural spinoffs as Sharia law and the caste system. But, he said,‘‘time change; they have to change. Therefore, Dalai Lama institution, I

proudly, voluntarily, ended .’’

‘‘So,’’ he concluded, ‘‘it is backward .’’

We sat in his reception room, flanked by his aides and an interpreter

he turned to whenever he lapsed into rapid Tibetan. He sought his

translation services frequently after I asked if he expected to travel toChina. It was, he said, the ‘‘main request’’ of all Tibetans. He was ready, he

said, if he was invited. ‘‘I feel I can be useful for at least next 10 years.’’

There were now, he said, 400 million Chinese Buddhists; it was the largest

population of Buddhists anywhere in the world. So he was ‘‘very, very keen

to return,’’ adding, ‘‘not as the Dalai Lama,’’ but as a ‘‘practitioner of

Buddhism.’’

I told him about an invitation I had received to a conference about



‘‘spiritual consciousness’’ in Beijing that had the imprimatur of the

Communist Party. He was unexpectedly curious about it. He said that I

should have gone, and that if I was invited again I should go and speak

frankly to the Chinese: ‘‘You should criticize Dalai Lama institution, like my

younger brother.’’

I laughed, but he was again making a point. ‘‘We voluntarily changed

that. Why? If there is something good , then no need for change. Because it

is outdated .’’ He added, ‘‘As a Buddhist, we must be realistic.’’

The ‘‘world picture,’’ as he saw it, was bleak. People all over the world

were killing in the name of their religions. Even Buddhists in Burma were

tormenting Rohingya Muslims. This was why he had turned away from

organized religion, engaged with quantum physics and started to emphasize

the secular values of compassion. It was no longer feasible, he said, to

construct an ethical existence on the basis of traditional religion in

multicultural societies.

As he walked onto the veranda, he saw a woman standing there and

exclaimed with delight. She was French and visited Dharamsala each yearto see His Holiness. The Dalai Lama hugged her and introduced her as a

friend he made on his first visit to Europe in 1973. ‘‘Sometimes,’’ he said, ‘‘I

describe her as my girlfriend.’’

The Frenchwoman, a sprightly figure at 96, riposted, ‘‘You could get a

younger one!’’ Chortling with laughter, the Dalai Lama walked down the

veranda, holding her tightly to his waist.

At Glastonbury a few weeks later, the Dalai Lama emerged from a

helicopter into a summer drizzle, followed by T.C. Recognizing a monk

among the reception party, he clasped his hand and gently bumped his

forehead against his, examining his strange new setting with a frank

curiosity.

From a vantage point over the large tent-city that sprouts there every

summer, he asked the organizers a series of cryptic questions: ‘‘How old ?’’



‘‘When?’’ and — inevitably, since regular bowel movements concern him

greatly — ‘‘Toilets?’’ At Green Fields, a 60-acre site dedicated to ‘‘peace,

compassion and understanding,’’ he walked through the reverential crowds

with a T-shirt draped around his head and started his talk with, ‘‘We are all

the same human beings.’’

I sheltered from the rain with T.C. in a Land Rover. T.C. said that Modi

had sent a minister to wish the Dalai Lama a happy birthday. But he was

still worried. ‘‘Who knows what Modi will do to Tibetans in India?’’ he said.

He was also still upset about his elder brother’s book. Gyalo Thondup had

traveled to Dharamsala to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s birthday. The

brothers met up but had not discussed the book. ‘‘Why write it?’’ T.C. saidagain.

Out in the rain, the Dalai Lama aimed some lighthearted but sharp-

edged remarks at drowsy British flower children. The British, or ‘‘You

Britishers!’’ as he called them in his simultaneously blunt and disarming

English, had ben efited from imperialism and self-interest. Now it was time

for them to acknowledge that they lived in an interconnected world.

At lunch — a vegan buffet arranged by Greenpeace — the Dalai Lama

saw me and gestured to the bench in front of him. I sat down, acutely aware

of the envious and resentful eyes of many people who wanted to eat lunch

with the Dalai Lama. He examined my plate. ‘‘You are not having soup? I

am having soup first and then more food!’’

A Greenpeace host complained at length about Modi’s government,

which was cracking down on Western nongovernmental organizations. The

Dalai Lama listened with concern and then said, ‘‘Criticism in India of Modi

is growing.’’

At a panel discussion on climate change hosted by The Guardian, he

criticized Vladimir Putin’s decision to enhance Russia’s nuclear arsenal and

endorsed Pope Francis’ call for moral action. He stressed the importance of

personal responsibility. But when the English moderator turned to him andasked, in an earnest, almost pleading voice, ‘‘What should we do?’’ the Dalai



Lama replied, ‘‘I don’t know.’’ Earlier, at Green Fields, he was asked about

music. He did not think much of it, he said: ‘‘If music really brings inner

peace, then this Syria and Iraq — killing each other — there, through some

strong music, can they reduce their anger? I don’t think so.’’

While waiting to cut his birthday cake, he watched Patti Smith and her

fellow musicians perform. I would read the next day that Smith ended her

performance by holding aloft her guitar and shouting: ‘‘Behold, the greatest

weapon of my generation!’’ before wrecking her instrument. Given his

views on ‘‘strong music,’’ I wondered what the Dalai Lama would have

made of this war cry. But by then he was on his way to London. Three days

later, he would cut another cake with his friend George W. Bush, with whom he shares a birthday, at the Bush presidential center in Dallas, and

announce to the diamonds-and-pearls Republicans, ‘‘I love George Bush,

although as far as his policies are concerned I have some reservations.’’

Pankaj Mishra is the author of, most recently, ‘‘From the Ruins of Empire: The

Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia.’’

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A version of this article appears in print on December 6, 2015, on page MM40 of the Sunday

Magazine with the headline: The Last Dalai Lama?.

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