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Archbishop Tutu has invited the Dalai Lama to his 80th birthday but South Africa is blocking the Tibetan leader's visa. Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images
The South African government's reluctance to grant the Dalai Lama a visa for Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday celebrations looks like straightforward realpolitik. China is powerful and growing rich; Tibet is smaller, sparsely populated and powerless. Why should the increasingly thuggish government of President Zuma hesitate at all?
But if you ask that, you might go on to ask why anyone in the wider world cares about Tibet; and the answer shows that there is a lot more to international politics than simple self-interest. The Dalai Lama has kept his country's cause alive through a remarkably sophisticated appeal to the simple sense of fairness that most outsiders have. His power, such as it is, has long been mostly spiritual. Yet this has kept the plight of Tibet in front of the world's eyes for decades.
Now he is playing the remains of his poor hand with extraordinary skill and imagination. He has already announced a handover of political power to a body elected from among Tibetan exiles. Last week he took the even wider and more subversive step of saying that he might choose not to be reincarnated. This sounds absurd. But it is a subtle way of reducing Chinese power over the Tibetan diaspora.
The problem for the present Dalai Lama is that tradition demands he be reincarnated in Tibet, which means that the Chinese would get to choose who he was and then bring him up as a loyal Chinese citizen. This is already their policy with other incarnate lamas; in fact it's very similar to their policy towards Christians, who are also welcome to their beliefs provided their hierarchies are loyal to the Beijing government – and savagely persecuted if not.
So he announced last week that he might choose not to be reincarnated at all after his death; and he certainly would not be reincarnated in anyone recognised by Chinese authorities and methods:
"Reincarnation is a phenomenon which should take place either through the voluntary choice of the concerned person or at least on the strength of his or her karma, merit and prayers. Therefore, the person who reincarnates has sole legitimate authority over where and how he or she takes rebirth and how that reincarnation is to be recognised. It is a reality that no one else can force the person concerned, or manipulate him or her. It is particularly inappropriate for Chinese communists, who explicitly reject even the idea of past and future lives, let alone the concept of reincarnate Tulkus, to meddle in the system of reincarnation and especially the reincarnations of the Dalai Lamas and Panchen Lamas. Such brazen meddling contradicts their own political ideology and reveals their double standards. Should this situation continue in the future, it will be impossible for Tibetans and those who follow the Tibetan Buddhist tradition to acknowledge or accept it."
Actually, the whole of his long address is worth reading. It is the product of a highly intelligent and disciplined thinker coming at the world from an angle wholly strange to most of us. But this piece is concerned only with the interaction of religion and politics.
Tibet is not just a cold and stony desert, of interest only to anyone who wants to corner the world market in yak butter futures. It is rich in minerals. Large quantities of gold, copper and uranium are being extracted there. The Chinese are not going to let it go. But neither, it seems, will they be able to subvert the religion of the people. The Dalai Lama can make convincing statements about reincarnation because he really believes in them. The Chinese authorities will never be able to counter them because we know their hearts aren't in it. The whole story is a wonderful illustration of the fact that religious traditions are living things, able to turn towards justice after their own inner logic.
Desmond Tutu will continue to illustrate this, whether or not he gets the Dalai Lama as his birthday guest.
Posted by seangkhun
on 7:17 AM. Filed under
Mahayana Buddhism
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