Dalai Lama dodges hard questions

BY JESS MELVIN

Tens of thousands of people around the country attended public meetings featuring Tenzin Gyatso, Tibet’s 14th Dalai Lama, in late May. His May 20 Melbourne address attracted 9000 students.

Gyatso received the 1989 Nobel peace prize and is probably the world’s most famous refugee. He was introduced at the Melbourne meeting as a “light in this troubled world”.

In exile for nearly half a century, he is a vehement critic of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and the serious human rights abuses carried out there by the Chinese government.

In Costa Rica in 1989, Gyatso said: “My hope and my dream are that the entire Tibetan plateau will one day become a genuine sanctuary of peace; a completely demilitarised zone, the largest national park or biosphere in the world; a place where all human beings will be able to live in perfect harmony with nature.”

Yet while most of us would support this vision — not just for Tibet, but for the whole world — the strategy pursued by Gyatso is unlikely to get us there.

The Melbourne meeting was frustrating because Gyatso, answering only selected questions around the theme of “dialogue” avoided giving an opinion on many of the hard questions activists wanted his opinion on.

Asked about how Australians could show compassion for refugees fleeing persecution, he said “the situation in Tibet makes me very sad”, and “lots of people are showing concern and sympathy but it is still the same situation”. He then described how he had to leave his pet dog behind when he fled Tibet.

Asked about a pacifist response to terrorism, he said: “The September 11 event was a very clear example of human activity motivated by hate, causing such unthinkable destruction ... civilian passengers were used as a bomb ... how can we imagine these things.”

“Whether US President George Bush”, he continued, “is right or wrong [in his use of violence] is very hard to say, we must look at his motivation.”

Yet at no point did Gyatso speak of Bush’s motivation — the need to maintain US hegemony over the world in order to protect the rapacious greed of US corporations. Gyatso even failed to mention that one of the key reason’s the US government has not come to the aid of Tibet is its pursuit of economic ties with China.

Later in his discussion, Gyatso did say, “Globally we must reduce debt ... look at the US billionaires they are increasing, but the poor are still poor”. But he did not identify the causes of this growing gap.

Instead, Gyatso argued that, “rich or poor, educated or uneducated we can all utilise one form of our potential properly”.

This is consistent with Buddhism, which promotes acceptance of one’s position in life — arguing that who one is more important than what one does. Buddhists suggest that we should concentrate on perfecting our own consciousness rather than changing society. But a society in which people treat one another as equal can only come about when people actually are treated equally materially.

Buddhism, said Gyatso, “can make some contribution to the peace of mind of humanity”. This peace of mind is nothing but an acceptance of oppression. Like Christianity and other Western religions, Buddhism and Eastern religions promote the idea that there is something greater determining an individual's social status than their relationship with other people. Equality and peace come, most religions argue, through some sort of eternal life — be it heaven or nirvana.

This can, and usually does, lead to religious leaders dissuading people from seeking to change their social position through struggle. This is why Karl Marx described religion as the “opium of the people” — but why should we take opium when it is possible to change things now?

Apart from educating ourselves and cultivating a “warm heart” Gyatso gave the feeling that nothing more can be done. But when thousands of Australians took to the streets, in support of the East Timorese people’s dogged and courageous battle for freedom from Indonesian occupation, it helped win that country’s independence.

One of the greatest victories for peace in the 20th century — the US abandonment of the Vietnam War — was won by an armed struggle and its support by hundreds of thousands of First World citizens taking to the streets against their government.

We should learn from the past. We do not have to accept the injustices of the society in which we live. Perfecting ourselves will not bring about the world of which Gyatso speaks. For the freedom of Tibet and for the collective freedom of humanity we must stand up together and fight.

[Jess Melvin is a member of the youth organisation Resistance.]

From Green Left Weekly, June 5, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.