Schisms, murder, and hungry ghosts in Shangra-La

Cross Currents, Spring, 1999 by Mike Wilson

Millions of Buddhist monks have been killed, imprisoned, tortured, or driven into exile by the Communist Chinese since the 1950s in a deliberate, systematic destruction of a culture and a religion. The pacifist Buddhist monks are about as innocent and noble as victims can be; the Nobel Prize-winning Dalai Lama is perceived to be equally wonderful, kind, and heroic. Few are unfamiliar with the boy-king's narrow escape in 1959 from the Chinese into India, where he still governs in exile and continues to preach nonviolence. He is one of the most universally respected religious figures in the second half of the twentieth century.

This peace-loving image of Tibetan Buddhism sometimes may not be matched by reality, however. In fact, some observers suspect that internal conflicts - called by some a feud - resulted in the recent assassination of Tibetan leaders in India by Buddhists holding a different point of view.(*) Understanding these conflicts and how they might have led to assassination requires some history of Tibetan Buddhism.

History behind the Conflict: Gods and Tantra

A fundamental Buddhist principle is that all phenomena, including people, lack an inherent "self." We are possessive, greedy, hateful, angry, worried, and frightened because we think we have a self with needs, desires, and rights that must be honored and satisfied. Buddhists say we are deluded about this self. Our clinging to the idea is the cause of all of our problems and the reason we are reincarnated to lives of suffering over and over again. When we stop clinging to the notion of self, we can advance spiritually and eventually attain nirvana, an extinction of all craving that affords blissful release.

Such a principle should, it seems, preclude belief in any kind of deity, since belief would imply that a deity has independent existence and a self. As Buddhism came into contact with indigenous religions, however, it found ways to incorporate local pantheons of gods into, and subordinate to, Buddhism. This is especially true in Tibet, where the form of Buddhism over which the Dalai Lama presides draws heavily upon the customs and beliefs of Tibet's native animistic and shamanistic Bon religion.

The Bon religion divides the world into three realms: Heaven, consisting of gods and demigods; Earth, consisting of Humans and Animals; and the Underworld, consisting of Hungry Ghosts and Demons. Bon shamans invited possession by these spirits in order to access their powers. Buddhism brought to Tibet from north India the doctrines of tantricism. Buddhist tantric practices involve the development of subtle powers of energy and mind to accelerate spiritual development. These practices were as attractive to Bon shamans as they were to Buddhists.

State-sponsored Buddhism began in the seventh century C.E., when warlord and Tibetan King Srontsan Gampo married a Nepalese princess, promising her father that he would become a Buddhist. He also married a Buddhist Chinese princess. When an outbreak of smallpox occurred, the Bon interpreted it as a sign from the gods that Buddhism was bad for Tibet and forced the King to expel all Indian teachers and many of their Tibetan followers from the country. In the eighth century, an attempt was made to reintroduce Buddhism with the aid of Shantirakshita, a great Indian teacher. Shantirakshita came and taught at a palace on the Red Hill in Lhasa. When lightning struck the palace during a violent storm, the Bon again declared the Tibetan gods had been angered and demanded the expulsion of Shantirakshita. Shantirakshita later was asked to come back but is said to have replied that the forces of evil in Tibet were too strong and had to be exorcized. He recommended that Tibet solicit the services of a famous tantric monk Padmasabhava, known in Tibet as Lopon Rinpoche (Norbu, 148-49).

Lopon Rinpoche traveled throughout Tibet for fifty years, exorcizing demons and, it is said, forcing them to work for Tibet, incorporating much of the native pantheon of gods and beliefs into a Buddhist framework. Many of the deities were brought into the Buddhist fold as different aspects of the same deity. Thus, the Buddha or gods may manifest in a variety of forms, in a way roughly similar to Christianity's god manifesting as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

How is this behavior reconciled with the Buddhist doctrine that nothing has an inherent self? Since the world as we experience it is a product of our minds, under Buddhist theory, the gods and hungry ghosts can be thought of in the same way - not having a self, but existing as phenomena of mind. They are therefore no less real than anything else we experience; and in the Buddhist framework, they are subordinate to Buddha whatever their nature. Tibetan Buddhists to the present day pray to gods and utilize oracles, just like the Bon, and believe the unseen world is populated with all sorts of powers and forces that must be reckoned with, even though they are phenomena of mind without an inherent self. In a way, this view could be compared with Christian belief in devils, angels, intervention of saints, and god as a Trinity. This is the first fact necessary to understand the background of the current conflict.