I see that Tenzin Gyatsu, the fourteenth Dalai Lama turns seventy-five today.
His Holiness certainly is one of the more attractive figures on the public stage today. Well deserving of his Nobel Peace prize, no doubt.
Here in the west those who don’t pay attention to such things often consider him the Buddhist pope. Which, of course, is absolutely not so. Buddhism, while about five hundred years older than Christianity has never had a central authority or one that claims such authority such as the papacy and the Roman church does within the Christian family. The closest to that claim of being able to assert normative “Buddhist” positions might possibly be the Vinaya monastic community, but even they have no head cleric and no councils making authorative assertions in a very, very long time. Rather, the Dalai Lama would be more analogous to the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
It appears to be becoming fashionable in liberal leftist circles to observe the shortcomings of the Dalai Lama and his exile community. First and foremost are charges that he is a theocrat and how the Chinese invasion ended a pretty oppressive totalitarian regime. There is truth to this. But it also ignores the defacto genocide that now has Han Chinese significantly outnumbering Tibetans in Tibet and the liberalization that has taken place within the Tibetan exile community and its government. As more than one writer has observed Lhasa is now just one more Chinese provincial capital with a small dash of local color for the tourists. That there are more Han Chinese in Tibet now than indigenous Tibetans should give one pause. And anyone who think the heel of Chinese tyrany on the necks of a neighboring culture is a good thing, should perhaps think again. But, before I drift into a rant about the new fascism that China represents, and the threat of that fascism to the world’s future, I’ll return to the Dalai Lama.
I have now officially not met him twice.
The first time I was invited to an ecumenical gathering of Buddhist meditation teachers hosted by his Holiness at Spirit Rock in Marin County. I participated in the first several days of the event, but had to leave for a Unitarian Universalist clergy event the day before he was scheduled to spend some time with a hundred or so of us. They were setting up for his arrival. A number of the teachers were passingly annoyed that the set up included swarms of special agents and metal detectors which all would have to pass through before being allowed to meet and greet with the lama. Made it impossible to forget he is also a head of state, if in exile, if under the gun…
The second time I received a call from Bill Sinkford, the then president of the Unitarian Universalist Association who said he saw how the Dalai Lama was coming to Boston and was there any chance I could arrange a meeting? I said, no! I’m a Zen Buddhist and he’s a Tibetan Buddhist. The analogy might be that the president was asking a Quaker to arrange a meeting with the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. Then I thought about it for a minute and realized an old, old friend how runs the publicity for the Dalai Lama when he comes to the Eastern Seaboard. One email was all it took. Turns out those five degrees of separation are true, except in this case it was one degree…
Grateful, President Sinkford asked if I wanted to be his entourage for the meeting. Just the two of us, or three, whatever. I was pleased as punch and said, you bet. That is until it turned out I had a funeral to conduct.
And, as they say in my trade: Death trumps.
Oh, well…
And they do say, third time is the charm!
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