Thor's Day: Who and what is the supreme lama?

Thursday of the week is devoted to airing out religion and religions. The column's title, "Thor's Day," comes from the etymology of the word Thursday, literally "Thor's Day."

Last Thor's Day, I quoted the Dalai Lama (and also Saint Paul and Jesus).
The Dalai Lama had said he had great hopes that the world would become a better, more peaceful and equitable place in the twenty-first century, and I expressed some doubt as to the realistic possibility of such progress's coming about (although it occurs to me now, with some embarrassment, that even a minute increase in betterness, peacefulness, and equality would make the prediction come true, technically).
    But the Dalai Lama is not nearly so well known in our culture as are Paul and Jesus—which is ironic when you consider that the Dalai Lama is alive today and we can read contemporary accounts of his activities. We know next to nothing about the historical Jesus, but familiarity with his received teachings and with passages from the letters of Paul to the early churches is widespread.

Anyway, who is the Dalai Lama? What is he? Why do people listen when he expresses hope?
    Dalai Lama is a title or office in a branch of Tibetan Buddhism, the office of the high (or supreme) guru (or spiritual guide). Tibetan Buddhists traditionally believe that each person who holds the office (each Dalai Lama) is the reincarnation of his predecessors.
    The Dalai Lamas started out as spiritual leaders, but the 5th Dalai Lama (1617–1682) assumed political authority over Tibet.
    The Dalai Lama I quoted last week is the 14th Dalai Lama (born 1935). He, too, directed the Tibetan government, which administered portions of Tibet from the capital Lhasa—but only until the Tibetan uprising against the People's Republic of China in 1959, when China renewed its 1951 claim to sovereignty over Tibet. (Note that the Dalai Lama's statement in Budapest two years ago, that he lost his freedom at 16 and his country at 24, refers to the events of 1951 and 1959.)
    The 14th Dalai Lama fled to India and established a Tibetan government in exile, of which he remained the head until his retirement on March 14, 2011. He is generally well known for advocating for the welfare of Tibetans, teaching Tibetan Buddhism, and promoting compassion. He has spoken about non-violence, interfaith dialog, the environment, economics, women's rights, reproductive health, and sexuality. In 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
    All of that seems to be pretty well agreed on.

But the 14th Dalai Lama has his detractors. They say, for example, that, though he may remain hopeful, he did not remain in Tibet to suffer with his compatriots as they were slaughtered by the Chinese. But I'm not sure that that isn't simply a cheap shot. Would those who say he should have stayed to be slaughtered with his compatriots have themselves remained in Tibet to be muzzled by the Chinese? Would you have remained? I know that I would not.
    The Dalai Lama's religious (and other) pronouncements were mentioned by Christopher Hitchens in his 2007 "case against religion," god Is Not Great:

The human species is an animal species without very much variation within it, and it is idle and futile to imagine that a voyage to Tibet, say, will discover an entirely different harmony with nature or eternity. The Dalai Lama, for example, is entirely and easily recognizable to a secularist. In exactly the same way as a medieval princeling, he makes the claim not just that Tibet should be independent of Chinese hegemony—a "perfectly good" demand, if I may render it into everyday English—but that he himself is a hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient! Dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted; his one-man rule in an Indian enclave is absolute; he makes absurd pronouncements about sex and diet and, when on his trips to Hollywood fund-raisers, anoints major donors like Steven Segal and Richard Gere as holy. (Indeed, even Mr. Gere was moved to whine a bit when Mr. Segal was invested as a tulku, or person of high enlightenment. It must be annoying to be outbid at such a spiritual auction.).... [p. 200]
    Pascal reminds me of the hypocrites and frauds who abound in Talmudic Jewish rationalization. Don't do any work on the Sabbath yourself, but pay someone else to do it. You obeyed the letter of the law; who's counting? The Dalai Lama tells us that you can visit a prostitute as long as someone else pays for her. Shia Muslims offer "temporary marriage," selling men the permission to take a wife for an hour or two with the usual vows and then divorce her when they are done. Half of the splendid buildings in Rome would never have been raised if the sale of indulgences had not been so profitable: St. Peter's itself was financed by a special one-time offer of that kind. The newest pope, the former Joseph Ratzinger, recently attracted Catholic youths to a festival by offering a certain "remission of sin" to those who attended. [p. 212]

    If you'd like read a few things the 14th Dalai Lama has written about sex, you might go here.

When Jon Wiener spoke with Hitchens in June 2007 (in an interview titled "Christopher Hitchens: Religion Poisons Everything," published on truthdig: drilling beneath the headlines), he asked the author about the Dalai Lama specifically:

Wiener: Is the problem you have been describing religion per se, or is it the monotheistic religions of the West: Judaism, Christianity, Islam? Are Eastern religions different and better? Especially Buddhism, with its compassion for all living things; especially Tibetan Buddhism, with its impressive leader, the Dalai Lama.
    Hitchens: The Dalai Lama claims to be a hereditary god and a hereditary king. I don’t think any decent person can assent to that proposition. You should take a look at what Tibet was like when it was run by the lamas. Buddhism has some of the same problems as Western religion. Zen was the official ideology of Hirohito’s fascism that was used to conquer and reduce the rest of Asia to subservience. The current dictatorship in Burma is officially Buddhist. The Buddhist forces in Sri Lanka are the ones who began the horrific civil war there with their pogroms against the Tamils in the 1950s and 1960s. Lon Nol’s army in Cambodia was officially Buddhist.

    Hitchens would seem inclined to disagree with my friend (whom I deeply respect) who has a sticker on his car's rear bumper that says, "We need a Buddhist president." Perhaps we need a Buddhist president as little as we needed a born-again Christian one in 2000 and 2004.

In the limited research I have been able (and willing) to do to try to answer the question, Who and what is the Dalai Lama?, I came across the "Dorje Shugden controversy." So far as I have been able to determine, Dorje Shugden is a deity in the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is regarded as a guardian angel. (Apparently, belief in guardian angels is common among practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism.) The controversy started when the 14th Dalai Lama opposed the worship of Dorje Shugden because it was "not Buddhist in nature." (I can't say to what extent it is or isn't.)

Western Shugden Society logo

    The Dalai Lama's opposition has apparently provoked quite a stiff resistance. There's even something called the Western Shugden Society, which has an official website that defines the Society as

an international coalition of Buddhist practitioners who engage in traditional prayers to Dharma Protector [guardian angel] Dorje Shugden. This practice has been banned by the Dalai Lama for political reasons and in violation of basic human rights and constitutional law. Enforcement of this ban by his Tibetan government has resulted in intensive persecution and discrimination of Shugden practitioners worldwide, including in Western countries. This action has created a deep schism in the Buddhist community and is endangering the purity of the Buddhist religion.

My brand of Buddhism is purer than yours? Shia Islam is better than Sunni Islam? (Do you care?)

A supporter of the Western Shugden Society, who identifies him or herself as "goldenmala," maintains an unofficial blog whose mission seems to be to put the Dalai Lama down. In an essay titled "What has the Dalai Lama achieved?," goldenmala writes bluntly:

The Dalai Lama has not been able to do anything to reverse Beijing’s integrationist policy in Tibet, the prospects for the exiled Tibetans’ return to Tibet are as remote as ever, negotiations with the Chinese are in deadlock, and there is no inclination amongst the world’s governments to recognise Tibet as an independent state. The Dalai Lama has become a world-famous figure, but has failed to gain anything concrete for his people.

When the Dalai Lama was invited to speak in Budapest two years ago, Ms. Szabo Timea, the deputy chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights and the deputy leader of the Politics Can Be Different party (Lehet Más a Politika, or LMP—its ideology is "green liberalism"), said,

We are here to express our full support for the Tibetan causes. We'll support regional general autonomy to preserve Tibetan culture and identity dating back to thousands of years.

    Some, at least, in the Hungarian Parliament thought highly enough of the 14th Dalai Lama to want to hear about his hopes for the future. And he did meet with President George W. Bush, you know.

I'm left in some doubt, as perhaps you are too, as to how to judge the 14th Dalai Lama, if we are willing to judge him one way or the other. I haven't read any of his books. I don't know the man and am unable even to confirm Hitchens's admission that "the current 'Dalai' or supreme lama is a man of some charm and presence."