One of the joys of living in India is that I have built strong frien,dships with Tibetans, both refugees in exile, and those born in the land of Buddha. An auspicious personal experience was meeting His Holiness in Dharamsala in 1995.
To me, he was pure love in action. The compassion and respect he showed as he greeted each and every new refugee from Tibet was motivating. His eyes glistened as he beheld their tears on seeing him for the very fist time.
His vision for Tibet and its people has remained positive and unchanged despite the documented human rights violations, including mental torture, physical torture, imprisonment, solitary confinement, and murder committed against Tibetans by the Chinese authorities over the past 50 years.
Our Beloved Buddha Incarnate said in his usual optimistic way, “Even if the Chinese leave nothing but ashes in our sacred land, Tibet will rise from these ashes as a free country.”We know his story; it remains fresh in our hearts.
We see him fleeing across the Himalayas to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. He was young and sick, and seated on a white horse.
But he did not flinch in his resolve to save his country. He continued his political claim to power in Tibet with a government-in-exile in Dharamsala in the state of Himachal Pradesh.
While he infuriates the invaders of his Snow Kingdom, he brings succour and hope to those who are his followers and supporters from Australia to Zambia. In addition to his spiritual role, each Dalai Lama Incarnation exercised political power over Tibetans since 1642.
However, in May of 2011, this present 14th incarnation relinquished his political claims to assume a purely spiritual role. Supposedly this was to strengthen the role of the prime minister of the Tibetan exile government.
When Chinese authorities threatened that they would choose his successor, Tenzin Gyatso announced that only he and authorities of his lineage, but not Chinese authorities, could do this task.
Surprisingly, he also announced that he hadn’t decided whether there should even be another Dalai Lama. Then he allegedly noted that perhaps the next Dalai Lama would be born as a woman in the US.
He also predicted, “When I am about 90 I will consult the high Lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan public, and other concerned people who follow Tibetan Buddhism, and re-evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not,”
Despite his abdication of political power, the Dalai Lama remains the most potent rallying point for Tibetans, both in exile and in their homeland, and is the universally recognised face of exile movement.
When asked whether he may ever be able to return to Tibet, he said, “Yes. I am sure that China can no longer isolate itself; it must follow the global trend towards a democratic society.”