[Marxism] Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth

[milongonsinga <milongonsinga@xxxxxxxxx>]

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
(updated and expanded version, January 2007)



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I. For Lords and Lamas
Along with the blood drenched landscape of religious conflict there is the 
experience of inner peace and solace that every religion promises, none more so 
than Buddhism. Standing in marked contrast to the intolerant savagery of other 
religions, Buddhism is neither fanatical nor dogmatic--so say its adherents. 
For many of them Buddhism is less a theology and more a meditative and 
investigative discipline intended to promote an inner harmony and enlightenment 
while directing us to a path of right living. Generally, the spiritual focus is 
not only on oneself but on the welfare of others. One tries to put aside 
egoistic pursuits and gain a deeper understanding of oneâs connection to all 
people and things. âSocially engaged Buddhismâ tries to blend individual 
liberation with responsible social action in order to build an enlightened 
society.
A glance at history, however, reveals that not all the many and widely varying 
forms of Buddhism have been free of doctrinal fanaticism, nor free of the 
violent and exploitative pursuits so characteristic of other religions. In Sri 
Lanka there is a legendary and almost sacred recorded history about the 
triumphant battles waged by Buddhist kings of yore. During the twentieth 
century, Buddhists clashed violently with each other and with non-Buddhists in 
Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, India, and elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, armed 
battles between Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils have taken many lives on 
both sides. In 1998 the U.S. State Department listed thirty of the worldâs 
most violent and dangerous extremist groups. Over half of them were religious, 
specifically Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist. 1
In South Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought 
each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that 
went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in 
South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its millions of dollars 
worth of property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various 
offices. The brawls damaged the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of 
monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both 
factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, âit would use 
worshippersâ donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars.â 2
As with any religion, squabbles between or within Buddhist sects are often 
fueled by the material corruption and personal deficiencies of the leadership. 
For example, in Nagano, Japan, at Zenkoji, the prestigious complex of temples 
that has hosted Buddhist sects for more than 1,400 years, âa nasty battleâ 
arose between Komatsu the chief priest and the Tacchu, a group of temples 
nominally under the chief priest's sway. The Tacchu monks accused Komatsu of 
selling writings and drawings under the temple's name for his own gain. They 
also were appalled by the frequency with which he was seen in the company of 
women. Komatsu in turn sought to isolate and punish monks who were critical of 
his leadership. The conflict lasted some five years and made it into the 
courts. 3
But what of Tibetan Buddhism? Is it not an exception to this sort of strife? 
And what of the society it helped to create? Many Buddhists maintain that, 
before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a spiritually oriented 
kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting 
vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel 
books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a 
veritable Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated that âthe pervasive 
influence of Buddhismâ in Tibet, âamid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled 
environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed 
freedom and contentment.â 4
A reading of Tibetâs history suggests a somewhat different picture. 
âReligious conflict was commonplace in old Tibet,â writes one western 
Buddhist practitioner. âHistory belies the Shangri-La image of Tibetan lamas 
and their followers living together in mutual tolerance and nonviolent 
goodwill. Indeed, the situation was quite different. Old Tibet was much more 
like Europe during the religious wars of the Counterreformation.â 5 In the 
thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was 
to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several 
centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the 
Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of 
Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet.
His two previous lama âincarnationsâ were then retroactively recognized as 
his predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama into the 3rd Dalai 
Lama. This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to 
his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted 
with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a 
sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in 
other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For these transgressions he 
was murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized divine 
status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high priests or other courtiers. 6
For hundreds of years competing Tibetan Buddhist sects engaged in bitterly 
violent clashes and summary executions. In 1660, the 5th Dalai Lama was faced 
with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of the rival Kagyu sect with 
its high lama known as the Karmapa. The 5th Dalai Lama called for harsh 
retribution against the rebels, directing the Mongol army to obliterate the 
male and female lines, and the offspring too âlike eggs smashed against 
rocksâ. In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.â 7
In 1792, many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks were forcibly 
converted to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lamaâs denomination). The Gelug 
school, known also as the âYellow Hats,â showed little tolerance or 
willingness to mix their teachings with other Buddhist sects. In the words of 
one of their traditional prayers: âPraise to you, violent god of the Yellow 
Hat teachings/who reduces to particles of dust/ great beings, high officials 
and ordinary people/ who pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine.â 8 An 
eighteenth-century memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian strife among 
Buddhists that is as brutal and bloody as any religious conflict might be. 9 
This grim history remains largely unvisited by present-day followers of Tibetan 
Buddhism in the West.
Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with 
economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that 
necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 
1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was 
still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned 
by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. 
Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that âa great deal of real 
estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches.â 
Much of the wealth was accumulated âthrough active participation in trade, 
commerce, and money lending.â 10
Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 
manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of 
the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. 
Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. 
The Dalai Lama himself âlived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala 
Palace.â 11
Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of 
the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lamaâs lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 
square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. 12 Old Tibet has been misrepresented 
by some Western admirers as âa nation that required no police force because 
its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.â 13 In fact. it had a 
professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for 
the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway 
serfs.
Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought 
into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for 
life. TashÃ-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children 
to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of 
repeated rape, beginning at age nine. 14 The monastic estates also conscripted 
children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.
In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of 
free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the 
âmiddle-classâ families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. 
Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic 
servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15 The 
majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, 
the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime 
bond to work the lord's land--or the monasteryâs land--without pay, to repair 
the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were 
also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their 
masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not 
get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be 
separated from their families should their
 owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17
As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no 
responsibility for the serfâs maintenance and no direct interest in his or 
her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support 
themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, 
guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor 
strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords 
had the best of both worlds.
One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: âPretty serf girls 
were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wishedâ; 
they âwere just slaves without rights.â18Serfs needed permission to go 
anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. 
One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a 
âliberation.â He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant 
toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten 
by the landlordâs men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then 
poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he 
claimed.19
The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child 
and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their 
yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for 
public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. 
Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they 
traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When 
people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent 
interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors 
who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.20
The theocracyâs religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and 
afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves 
because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the 
misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation 
that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful 
treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in 
past and present lives.
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to 
their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, 
sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and 
mutilation--including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, 
and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or 
resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder 
interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging 
to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated 
beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: âWhen a holy lama 
told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.â21 Since it 
was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely 
lashed and then âleft to Godâ in the freezing night to die. âThe 
parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe
 are striking,â concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. 22
In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had 
been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, 
including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and 
ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were 
hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition 
presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or 
crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose 
master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he 
took one of the masterâs cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another 
herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands 
broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper 
lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.23
Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an 
Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the 
âintolerable tyranny of monksâ and the devil superstitions they had 
fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai 
Lamaâs rule as âan engine of oppression.â At about that time, another 
English traveler, Captain W.F.T. OâConnor, observed that âthe great 
landowners and the priestsâ exercise each in their own dominion a despotic 
power from which there is no appeal,â while the people are âoppressed by 
the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.â Tibetan rulers 
âinvented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstitionâ among 
the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, âThe 
Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating 
them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the
 monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is 
used to increase their influence and wealth.â24 As much as we might wish 
otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri 
La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhismâs western proselytes.
II. Secularization vs. Spirituality
What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the country in 
1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible self-governance under the 
Dalai Lamaâs rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to 
conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in 
internal administration âto promote social reforms.â Among the earliest 
changes they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few 
hospitals and roads. At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion 
in an attempt to effect reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property 
was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily 
bound peasants. âContrary to popular belief in the West,â claims one 
observer, the Chinese âtook care to show respect for Tibetan culture and 
religion.â25
Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go, 
and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his 
reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.26 The approval of the Kuomintang 
government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen 
Lama. When the current 14th Dalai Lama was first installed in Lhasa, it was 
with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in 
accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas 
in the early 1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be 
only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing 
their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.
The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of 
the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance 
from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, 
support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.27 Meanwhile in the United 
States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, 
energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai 
Lamaâs eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that 
organization. The Dalai Lama's second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, 
established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later 
upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back 
into Tibet.28
Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were 
chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were 
never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they 
were most likely captured and killed.29âMany lamas and lay members of the 
elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the 
populace did not, assuring its failure,â writes Hugh Deane.30 In their book 
on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: âAs far as can be 
ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining 
countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it 
first began and as it progressed.â31 Eventually the resistance crumbled.

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they 
did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They 
eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced 
unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking 
the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water 
and electrical systems in Lhasa.32
Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitlerâs SS) wrote 
a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular 
Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese âwere 
predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made 
to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were 
further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists 
arrived.â They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and 
vagrants--all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of 
the Chinese occupation.33
By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed estates owned 
by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres to tenant farmers 
and landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds of communes.. Herds once 
owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. 
Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of 
vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with 
irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian 
production.34
Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But 
monks who had been conscripted as children into the religious orders were now 
free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger 
ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends and extra income 
earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals.35
Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, 
claimed that âmore than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the 
Chinese occupation.â36 The official 1953 census--six years before the Chinese 
crackdown--recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.37 
Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million. If 
the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, 
would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death 
camps and mass graves--of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed 
Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and exterminated 
that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.
Chinese authorities claim to have put an end to floggings, mutilations, and 
amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They themselves, however, have 
been charged with acts of brutality by exile Tibetans. The authorities do admit 
to âmistakes,â particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when the 
persecution of religious beliefs reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. 
After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. 
During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming were 
imposed on the Tibetan peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect on 
production. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls âand tried to 
undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades.â38
In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant 
Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now 
be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for 
themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the 
outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit 
some Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal.39 By the 1980s many 
of the principal lamas had begun to shuttle back and forth between China and 
the exile communities abroad, ârestoring their monasteries in Tibet and 
helping to revitalize Buddhism there.â40
As of 2007 Tibetan Buddhism was still practiced widely and tolerated by 
officialdom. Religious pilgrimages and other standard forms of worship were 
allowed but within limits. All monks and nuns had to sign a loyalty pledge that 
they would not use their religious position to foment secession or dissent. And 
displaying photos of the Dalai Lama was declared illegal.41
In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of Chinaâs 
immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the 
streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. 
Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office 
buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have 
been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in 
Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of 
economic development and âpatriotic education.â During the 1990s Tibetan 
government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged 
from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai 
Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, 
and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in 
âpolitical subversion.â Some were held
 in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, 
subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.42
Tibetan history, culture, and certainly religion are slighted in schools. 
Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus mainly on Chinese 
history and culture. Chinese family planning regulations allow a three-child 
limit for Tibetan families. (There is only a one-child limit for Han families 
throughout China, and a two-child limit for rural Han families whose first 
child is a girl.) If a Tibetan couple goes over the three-child limit, the 
excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and 
education. These penalties have been enforced irregularly and vary by 
district.43 None of these child services, it should be noted, were available to 
Tibetans before the Chinese takeover.

For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was an 
unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, 
who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that 
they would have to work for a living. Many, however, escaped that fate. 
Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 
million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State 
Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lamaâs 
organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions 
of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into 
Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual payment from 
the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other 
Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the 
CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.44
In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a frontpage 
color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican 
senator Jesse Helms, under the headline âBuddhist Captivates Hero of 
Religious Right.â45 In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John 
Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British 
government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile 
and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that 
Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for 
crimes against humanity.
Into the twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for Democracy and 
other conduits that are more respectable sounding than the CIA, the U.S. 
Congress continued to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with 
additional millions for âdemocracy activitiesâ within the Tibetan exile 
community. In addition to these funds, the Dalai Lama received money from 
financier George Soros.46
Whatever the Dalai Lamaâs associations with the CIA and various 
reactionaries, he did speak often of peace, love, and nonviolence. He himself 
really cannot be blamed for the abuses of Tibetâs ancien rÃgime, having been 
but 25 years old when he fled into exile. In a 1994 interview, he went on 
record as favoring the building of schools and roads in his country. He said 
the corvÃe (forced unpaid serf labor) and certain taxes imposed on the 
peasants were âextremely bad.â And he disliked the way people were saddled 
with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation.47During the 
half century of living in the western world, he had embraced concepts such as 
human rights and religious freedom, ideas largely unknown in old Tibet. He even 
proposed democracy for Tibet, featuring a written constitution and a 
representative assembly.48
In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an unsettling 
effect on the exile community. It read in part: âMarxism is founded on moral 
principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability.â 
Marxism fosters âthe equitable utilization of the means of productionâ and 
cares about âthe fate of the working classesâ and âthe victims of . . . 
exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and . . . I think of 
myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.49
But he also sent a reassuring message to âthose who live in abundanceâ: 
âIt is a good thing to be rich... Those are the fruits for deserving actions, 
the proof that they have been generous in the past.â And to the poor he 
offers this admonition: âThere is no good reason to become bitter and rebel 
against those who have property and fortune... It is better to develop a 
positive attitude.â50
In 2005 the Dalai Lama signed a widely advertised statement along with ten 
other Nobel Laureates supporting the âinalienable and fundamental human 
rightâ of working people throughout the world to form labor unions to protect 
their interests, in accordance with the United Nationsâ Universal Declaration 
of Human Rights. In many countries âthis fundamental right is poorly 
protected and in some it is explicitly banned or brutally suppressed,â the 
statement read. Burma, China, Colombia, Bosnia, and a few other countries were 
singled out as among the worst offenders. Even the United States âfails to 
adequately protect workersâ rights to form unions and bargain collectively. 
Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unionsâ.â51
The Dalai Lama also gave full support to removing the ingrained traditional 
obstacles that have kept Tibetan nuns from receiving an education. Upon 
arriving in exile, few nuns could read or write. In Tibet their activities had 
been devoted to daylong periods of prayer and chants. But in northern India 
they now began reading Buddhist philosophy and engaging in theological study 
and debate, activities that in old Tibet had been open only to monks.52
In November 2005 the Dalai Lama spoke at Stanford University on âThe Heart of 
Nonviolence,â but stopped short of a blanket condemnation of all violence. 
Violent actions that are committed in order to reduce future suffering are not 
to be condemned, he said, citing World War II as an example of a worthy effort 
to protect democracy. What of the four years of carnage and mass destruction in 
Iraq, a war condemned by most of the worldâeven by a conservative pope--as a 
blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai 
Lama was undecided: âThe Iraq warâitâs too early to say, right or 
wrong.â53 Earlier he had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention 
against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into 
Afghanistan.54
III. Exit Feudal Theocracy
As the Shangri-La myth would have it, in old Tibet the people lived in 
contented and tranquil symbiosis with their monastic and secular lords. Rich 
lamas and poor monks, wealthy landlords and impoverished serfs were all bonded 
together, mutually sustained by the comforting balm of a deeply spiritual and 
pacific culture.
One is reminded of the idealized image of feudal Europe presented by latter-day 
conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them, 
medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in the secure 
embrace of their Church, under the more or less benign protection of their 
lords.55 Again we are invited to accept a particular culture in its idealized 
form divorced from its murky material history. This means accepting it as 
presented by its favored class, by those who profited most from it. The 
Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic actuality than 
does the pastoral image of medieval Europe.
Seen in all its grim realities, old Tibet confirms the view I expressed in an 
earlier book, namely that culture is anything but neutral. Culture can operate 
as a legitimating cover for a host of grave injustices, benefiting a privileged 
portion of society at great cost to the rest.56 In theocratic feudal Tibet, 
ruling interests manipulated the traditional culture to fortify their own 
wealth and power. The theocracy equated rebellious thought and action with 
satanic influence. It propagated the general presumption of landlord 
superiority and peasant unworthiness. The rich were represented as deserving 
their good life, and the lowly poor as deserving their mean existence, all 
codified in teachings about the karmic residue of virtue and vice accumulated 
from past lives, presented as part of Godâs will.
Were the more affluent lamas just hypocrites who preached one thing and 
secretly believed another? More likely they were genuinely attached to those 
beliefs that brought such good results for them. That their theology so 
perfectly supported their material privileges only strengthened the sincerity 
with which it was embraced.
It might be said that we denizens of the modern secular world cannot grasp the 
equations of happiness and pain, contentment and custom, that characterize more 
traditionally spiritual societies. This is probably true, and it may explain 
why some of us idealize such societies. But still, a gouged eye is a gouged 
eye; a flogging is a flogging; and the grinding exploitation of serfs and 
slaves is a brutal class injustice whatever its cultural wrapping. There is a 
difference between a spiritual bond and human bondage, even when both exist 
side by side
Many ordinary Tibetans want the Dalai Lama back in their country, but it 
appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he represented. A 
1999 story in the Washington Post notes that the Dalai Lama continues to be 
revered in Tibet, but 
. . . few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans 
that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many 
Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they 
gained during Chinaâs land reform to the clans. Tibetâs former slaves say 
they, too, donât want their former masters to return to power. âIâve 
already lived that life once before,â said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former 
slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, 
one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai 
Lama, but added, âI may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better 
off than when I was a slave.â57
It should be noted that the Dalai Lama is not the only highly placed lama 
chosen in childhood as a reincarnation. One or another reincarnate lama or 
tulku--a spiritual teacher of special purity elected to be reborn again and 
again--can be found presiding over most major monasteries. The tulku system is 
unique to Tibetan Buddhism. Scores of Tibetan lamas claim to be reincarnate 
tulkus.
The very first tulku was a lama known as the Karmapa who appeared nearly three 
centuries before the first Dalai Lama. The Karmapa is leader of a Tibetan 
Buddhist tradition known as the Karma Kagyu. The rise of the Gelugpa sect 
headed by the Dalai Lama led to a politico-religious rivalry with the Kagyu 
that has lasted five hundred years and continues to play itself out within the 
Tibetan exile community today. That the Kagyu sect has grown famously, opening 
some six hundred new centers around the world in the last thirty-five years, 
has not helped the situation.
The search for a tulku, Erik Curren reminds us, has not always been conducted 
in that purely spiritual mode portrayed in certain Hollywood films. 
âSometimes monastic officials wanted a child from a powerful local noble 
family to give the cloister more political clout. Other times they wanted a 
child from a lower-class family who would have little leverage to influence the 
childâs upbringing.â On other occasions âa local warlord, the Chinese 
emperor or even the Dalai Lamaâs government in Lhasa might [have tried] to 
impose its choice of tulku on a monastery for political reasons.â58
Such may have been the case in the selection of the 17th Karmapa, whose 
monastery-in-exile is situated in Rumtek, in the Indian state of Sikkim. In 
1993 the monks of the Karma Kagyu tradition had a candidate of their own 
choice. The Dalai Lama, along with several dissenting Karma Kagyu leaders (and 
with the support of the Chinese government!) backed a different boy. The Kagyu 
monks charged that the Dalai Lama had overstepped his authority in attempting 
to select a leader for their sect. âNeither his political role nor his 
position as a lama in his own Gelugpa tradition entitled him to choose the 
Karmapa, who is a leader of a different traditionââ59 As one of the Kagyu 
leaders insisted, âDharma is about thinking for yourself. It is not about 
automatically following a teacher in all things, no matter how respected that 
teacher may be. More than anyone else, Buddhists should respect other 
peopleâs rightsâtheir human rights and their religious
 freedom.â60
What followed was a dozen years of conflict in the Tibetan exile community, 
punctuated by intermittent riots, intimidation, physical attacks, blacklisting, 
police harassment, litigation, official corruption, and the looting and 
undermining of the Karmapaâs monastery in Rumtek by supporters of the Gelugpa 
faction. All this has caused at least one western devotee to wonder if the 
years of exile were not hastening the moral corrosion of Tibetan Buddhism.61
What is clear is that not all Tibetan Buddhists accept the Dalai Lama as their 
theological and spiritual mentor. Though he is referred to as the âspiritual 
leader of Tibet,â many see this title as little more than a formality. It 
does not give him authority over the four religious schools of Tibet other than 
his own, âjust as calling the U.S. president the âleader of the free 
worldâ gives him no role in governing France or Germany.â62
Not all Tibetan exiles are enamoured of the old Shangri-La theocracy. Kim 
Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk in Berkeley, 
California, had occasion to talk at length with more than a dozen Tibetan women 
who lived in the monkâs building. When she asked how they felt about 
returning to their homeland, the sentiment was unanimously negative. At first, 
Lewis assumed that their reluctance had to do with the Chinese occupation, but 
they quickly informed her otherwise. They said they were extremely grateful 
ânot to have to marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time,â or deal 
with sexually transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband. The 
younger women âwere delighted to be getting an education, wanted absolutely 
nothing to do with any religion, and wondered why Americans were so naÃve 
[about Tibet].â63
The women interviewed by Lewis recounted stories of their grandmothersâ 
ordeals with monks who used them as âwisdom consorts.â By sleeping with the 
monks, the grandmothers were told, they gained âthe means to enlightenmentâ 
-- after all, the Buddha himself had to be with a woman to reach enlightenment.
The women also mentioned the ârampantâ sex that the supposedly spiritual 
and abstemious monks practiced with each other in the Gelugpa sect. The women 
who were mothers spoke bitterly about the monasteryâs confiscation of their 
young boys in Tibet. They claimed that when a boy cried for his mother, he 
would be told âWhy do you cry for her, she gave you up--she's just a woman.â
The monks who were granted political asylum in California applied for public 
assistance. Lewis, herself a devotee for a time, assisted with the paperwork. 
She observes that they continue to receive government checks amounting to $550 
to $700 per month along with Medicare. In addition, the monks reside rent free 
in nicely furnished apartments. âThey pay no utilities, have free access to 
the Internet on computers provided for them, along with fax machines, free cell 
and home phones and cable TV.â
They also receive a monthly payment from their order, along with contributions 
and dues from their American followers. Some devotees eagerly carry out chores 
for the monks, including grocery shopping and cleaning their apartments and 
toilets. These same holy men, Lewis remarks, âhave no problem criticizing 
Americans for their âobsession with material things.ââ64
To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to applaud 
everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is seldom understood 
by todayâs Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is also true: To 
denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former 
feudal rÃgime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not 
perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. âTo idealize them,â 
notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), 
âis to deny them their humanity.â65
One common complaint among Buddhist followers in the West is that Tibetâs 
religious culture is being undermined by the Chinese occupation. To some extent 
this seems to be the case. Many of the monasteries are closed, and much of the 
theocracy seems to have passed into history. Whether Chinese rule has brought 
betterment or disaster is not the central issue here. The question is what kind 
of country was old Tibet. What I am disputing is the supposedly pristine 
spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. We can advocate religious 
freedom and independence for a new Tibet without having to embrace the 
mythology about old Tibet.Tibetan feudalism was cloaked in Buddhism, but the 
two are not to be equated. In reality, old Tibet was not a Paradise Lost. It 
was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty, a long 
way from Shangri-La.
Finally, let it be said that if Tibetâs future is to be positioned somewhere 
within Chinaâs emerging free-market paradise, then this does not bode well 
for the Tibetans. China boasts a dazzling 8 percent economic growth rate and is 
emerging as one of the worldâs greatest industrial powers. But with economic 
growth has come an ever deepening gulf between rich and poor. Most Chinese live 
close to the poverty level or well under it, while a small group of newly 
brooded capitalists profit hugely in collusion with shady officials. Regional 
bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and looting 
local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious 
developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost 
everyday occurrences. Tens of thousands of grassroot protests and disturbances 
have erupted across the country, usually to be met with unforgiving police 
force. Corruption is so prevalent,
 reaching into so many places, that even the normally complacent national 
leadership was forced to take notice and began moving against it in late 2006.
Workers in China who try to organize labor unions in the corporate dominated 
âbusiness zonesâ risk losing their jobs or getting beaten and imprisoned. 
Millions of business zone workers toil twelve-hour days at subsistence wages. 
With the health care system now being privatized, free or affordable medical 
treatment is no longer available for millions. Men have tramped into the cities 
in search of work, leaving an increasingly impoverished countryside populated 
by women, children, and the elderly. The suicide rate has increased 
dramatically, especially among women.66
Chinaâs natural environment is sadly polluted. Most of its fabled rivers and 
many lakes are dead, producing massive fish die-offs from the billions of tons 
of industrial emissions and untreated human waste dumped into them. Toxic 
effluents, including pesticides and herbicides, seep into ground water or 
directly into irrigation canals. Cancer rates in villages situated along 
waterways have skyrocketed a thousand-fold. Hundreds of millions of urban 
residents breathe air rated as dangerously unhealthy, contaminated by 
industrial growth and the recent addition of millions of automobiles. An 
estimated 400,000 die prematurely every year from air pollution. Government 
environmental agencies have no enforcement power to stop polluters, and 
generally the government ignores or denies such problems, concentrating instead 
on industrial growth.67
Chinaâs own scientific establishment reports that unless greenhouse gases are 
curbed, the nation will face massive crop failures along with catastrophic food 
and water shortages in the years ahead. In 2006-2007 severe drought was already 
afflicting southwest China.68
If China is the great success story of speedy free market development, and is 
to be the model and inspiration for Tibetâs future, then old feudal Tibet 
indeed may start looking a lot better than it actually was.
Notes:

        1. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (University of 
California Press, 2000), 6, 112-113, 157.

        2. Kyong-Hwa Seok, "Korean Monk Gangs Battle for Temple Turf," San 
Francisco Examiner, 3 December 1998.

        3. Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2006.

        4. Dalai Lama quoted in Donald Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: 
Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 
1998), 205.

        5. Erik D. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the 
Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today (Alaya Press 2005), 41.

        6. Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet 
(Monthly Review Press, 1964), 119, 123; and Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion 
and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (University of California 
Press, 1995), 6-16.

        7. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 50.

        8. Stephen Bachelor, "Letting Daylight into Magic: The Life and Times 
of Dorje Shugden," Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 7, Spring 1998. Bachelor 
discusses the sectarian fanaticism and doctrinal clashes that ill fit the 
Western portrait of Buddhism as a non-dogmatic and tolerant tradition.

        9. Dhoring Tenzin Paljor, Autobiography, cited in Curren, Buddha's Not 
Smiling, 8.

        10. Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of 
Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University 
Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64. 

        11. See Gary Wilson's report in Worker's World, 6 February 1997.

        12. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174.

        13. As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9.

        14. Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and TashÃ-Tsering, The 
Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of TashÃ-Tsering (Armonk, N.Y.: 
M.E. Sharpe, 1997).

        15. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110.

        16. Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: 
University of California Press, 1989), 5 and passim.

        17. Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 
1959), 15, 19-21, 24.

        18. Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25.

        19. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31.

        20. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan 
Interviews, 25-26.

        21. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113.

        22. A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk, N.Y. 
and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal Tibet; see 
also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 
241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 3-5; and Lopez, Prisoners of 
Shangri-La, passim.

        23. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-96.

        24. Waddell, Landon, O'Connor, and Chapman are quoted in Gelder and 
Gelder, The Timely Rain, 123-125.

        25. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 52.

        26. Heinrich Harrer, Return to Tibet (New York: Schocken, 1985), 29.

        27. See Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in 
Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002); and William Leary, 
"Secret Mission to Tibet," Air & Space, December 1997/January 1998.

        28. On the CIA's links to the Dalai Lama and his family and entourage, 
see Loren Coleman, Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti (London: Faber and 
Faber, 1989).

        29. Leary, "Secret Mission to Tibet."

        30. Hugh Deane, "The Cold War in Tibet," CovertAction Quarterly (Winter 
1987).

        31. George Ginsburg and Michael Mathos Communist China and Tibet 
(1964), quoted in Deane, "The Cold War in Tibet." Deane notes that author Bina 
Roy reached a similar conclusion.

        32. See Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance, 248 and passim; and Grunfeld, 
The Making of Modern Tibet, passim.

        33. Harrer, Return to Tibet, 54. 

        34. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 36-38, 41, 57-58; London Times, 
4 July 1966.

        35. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 29 and 47-48.

        36. Tendzin Choegyal, "The Truth about Tibet," Imprimis (publication of 
Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999.

        37. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 52-53.

        38. Elaine Kurtenbach, Associate Press report, 12 February 1998.

        39. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 47-48.

        40. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 8.

        41. San Francisco Chonicle, 9 January 2007.

        42. Report by the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A 
Generation in Peril (Berkeley Calif.: 2001), passim.

        43. International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in 
Peril, 66-68, 98.

        44. im Mann, "CIA Gave Aid to Tibetan Exiles in '60s, Files Show," Los 
Angeles Times, 15 September 1998; and New York Times, 1 October, 1998.

        45. News & Observer, 6 September 1995, cited in Lopez, Prisoners of 
Shangri-La, 3.

        46. Heather Cottin, "George Soros, Imperial Wizard," CovertAction 
Quarterly no. 74 (Fall 2002).

        47. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 51.

        48. Tendzin Choegyal, "The Truth about Tibet."

        49. The Dalai Lama in Marianne Dresser (ed.), Beyond Dogma: Dialogues 
and Discourses (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1996)

        50. These comments are from a book of the Dalai Lama's writings quoted 
in Nikolai Thyssen, "Oceaner af onkel Tom,"Dagbladet Information, 29 December 
2003, (translated for me by Julius Wilm). Thyssen's review (in Danish) can be 
found at 
http://www.information.dk/Indgang/VisArkiv.dna?pArtNo=20031229154141.txt.

        51. "A Global Call for Human Rights in the Workplace," New York Times, 
6 December 2005.

        52. San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January 2007.

        53. San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 2005.

        54. Times of India 13 October 2000; Samantha Conti's report, Reuter, 17 
June 1994; Amitabh Pal, "The Dalai Lama Interview," Progressive, January 2006.

        55. The Gelders draw this comparison, The Timely Rain, 64.

        56. Michael Parenti, The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories, 2006).

        57. John Pomfret, "Tibet Caught in China's Web," Washington Post, 23 
July 1999.

        58. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 3.

        59. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 13 and 138.

        60. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 21.

        61. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, passim. For books that are favorable 
toward the Karmapa appointed by the Dalai Lama's faction, see Lea Terhune, 
Karmapa of Tibet: The Politics of Reincarnation (Wisdom Publications, 2004); 
Gaby Naher, Wrestling the Dragon (Rider 2004); Mick Brown, The Dance of 17 
Lives (Bloomsbury 2004).

        62. Erik Curren, "Not So Easy to Say Who is Karmapa," correspondence, 
22 August 2005, www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=22.1577,0,0,1,0.

        63. Kim Lewis, correspondence to me, 15 July 2004.

        64. Kim Lewis, correspondence to me, 16 July 2004.

        65. Ma Jian, Stick Out Your Tongue (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006).

        66. See the PBS documentary, China from the Inside, January 2007, 
KQED.PBS.org/kqed/chinanside.

        67. San Francisco Chronicle, 9 January 2007.

        68. "China: Global Warming to Cause Food Shortages," People's Weekly 
World, 13 January 2007 
 
 
 A student asked Soen Nakagawa during a meditation retreat, "I am very 
discouraged. What should I do?" Soen replied, "Encourage others."


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