In Exile From the Land of Snows

  PRAISE FOR JOHN F. AVEDON’S

  In Exile from the Land of Snows

  “What Alexander Solzhenitsyn did for the Soviet Union, John F. Avedon does for Tibet.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Marvelous, heartrending, and heartwarming.”

  —William Shawcross, author of

  Counting One’s Blessings and The Queen Mother

  “The detailed life stories Avedon recounts are nothing short of stunning.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Utterly engaging. There are passages dealing with India that will have you smelling the dust. This book deserves wide readership, the author our applause.”

  —The San Diego Tribune

  JOHN F. AVEDON

  In Exile from the Land of Snows

  John F. Avedon has written for The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Maclean’s, Parade, and other publications. He lives in New York City.

  SECOND VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2015

  Copyright © 1979, 1984, 1997, 2015 by John F. Avedon

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company. Originally published in hardcover in the United States in slightly different form by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, in 1984, and in paperback, in revised form, by Harper Perennial in 1997.

  Vintage and colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Portions of this work have previously appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  The New York Times: An excerpt from “Exploring the Mysteries of Tibetan Medicine,” from January 11, 1981, The New York Times Magazine by John F. Avedon and “Tibet’s ‘Exile Generation’ ” from February 26, 1984, The New York Times Magazine by John F. Avedon. Copyright © 1981, 1984, by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission of The New York Times Company.

  The Central Tibetan Authority and the International Campaign for Tibet: “Chronology of Tibetan-Chinese Relations, 1979 to 2014” was prepared using materials provided by the Central Tibetan Authority. Reprinted with permission of the Central Tibetan Authority and the International Campaign for Tibet.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

  Avedon, John F.

  In exile from the land of snows / John F. Avedon. —first edition

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  1. Tibet (China)—History—1951 I. Title. DS786.A94 1994 951’.505—dc20 94-9866

  Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8041-7337-7

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-7338-4

  Cover design by Mike Jones

  Cover photograph © Georg Hafner/Getty Images

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  For the People of Tibet

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Map

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface to the Vintage Edition

  Preface

  PART ONE

  1

  Before the Fall

  1933–1950

  2

  Occupation

  1950–1959

  PART TWO

  3

  In Exile from the Land of Snows

  1959–1960

  4

  Reconstruction

  1960–1974

  5

  The Fight for Tibet

  1959–1984

  PART THREE

  6

  Tibetan Medicine

  THE SCIENCE OF HEALING

  7

  On Pilgrimage with the Dalai Lama

  8

  The Wheel of Protection

  PART FOUR

  9

  Tibet Enslaved

  1959–1965

  10

  The Long Night

  1966–1977

  PART FIVE

  11

  Return

  1977–1984

  Afterword

  AN INTERVIEW WITH

  THE DALAI LAMA

  The Value of Religion for Society

  His Life

  Tibet: Today and Tomorrow

  The Universe: Mind and Matter

  Cyclic Existence and Sentient Beings

  Emptiness: The Two Truths

  Notes to An Interview with the Dalai Lama

  Chronology of Tibetan–Chinese Relations, 1979 to 2014

  A Note on Sources

  Ackowledgments

  Bibliography

  Picture Credits

  Illustrations

  Preface to the Vintage Edition

  SINCE FEBRUARY OF 2009, one hundred and thirty-one Tibetans have burned themselves alive protesting China’s occupation of Tibet.1 Drinking kerosene, while draped in gasoline-soaked robes and blankets, monks, nuns, fathers, mothers, and teenagers have burst into flame shouting “We need freedom! Long live the Dalai Lama! Return the Precious Protector to Tibet!” Often running past markets, monasteries, and police stations, they have been shot and sprayed with fire extinguishers or doused with fire extinguishing chemicals, or—on the rare occasions when Chinese patrols have been absent—have collapsed into burning, charred corpses.2 “I am giving my body as an offering of light to chase away the darkness,” one lama explained his sacrifice. “To my spiritual friends living in exile: I want to request you not to be sad.”3

  The self immolations all indict six decades of Communist oppression: from Beijing’s initial million-death conquest to the current demographic onslaught destroying, with legions of settlers, Tibetan identity. Tibet’s apartheid relies on a ubiquitous surveillance grid of “Nets In The Sky and Traps on The Ground” to ensure “stability maintenance” for a “harmonious society.”4 Vast Chinese “new towns” engulf Tibetan old quarters. Two and a half million Tibetan nomads have been forcibly resettled into regimented compounds. China’s colonial economy, having long marginalized the Tibetan underclass, plunders billions of dollars from lumber, minerals, and tourism. While a Sinocized parody of Tibetan ethnicity is proffered in theme parks and luxury hotels, the key to Tibet’s 2,100-year-old civilization is missing. “Taking away a person’s language [through forced Mandarin schooling],” grieved one young Tibetan, “is like having your tongue pulled out of your mouth.”5 A new truism describes Beijing’s rule: “In Lhasa nowadays there are more Chinese than Tibetans, more soldiers than monks, and more surveillance cameras than windows.”

  In 2008, the largest uprising since the 1956–59 Tibetan revolt swept Tibet. As the capital burned and protests spread, People’s Armed Police backed by armored personnel carriers bearing .25 caliber machine guns shot hundreds, arrested thousands, and permanently locked down the plateau.6 Beijing reflexively ascribed the unrest to “Sabotage masterminded by the separatist Dalai clique,” whose head it derided as “a wolf in monk’s clothes; a devil with a human face.”7

  “I feel helpless,” the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, said as reports of the first eighty killings reached India, “frightened of further bloodshed.… I want to appeal once again for Tibetans to practice non-violence.”8 When they did, by incinerating themselves, he dolefully reflected, “It is very, very sad. I doubt that such drastic actions will be effective.… However, under a rule of terror, Tibetans are sacrificing their own lives—not hurting others.”9

  China, though, remains unmoved. Nine rounds of Dharamsala–Beijing talks on the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way Approach—relinquishing Tibetan independence for secure autonomy—have failed to win a sing
le Chinese concession.10 Beijing now waits for Tenzin Gyatso’s death to end its “Tibet problem.” Meanwhile global support for Tibetans—exemplified by the Dalai Lama’s 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, 2007 Congressional Gold Medal, and extensive multi-governmental and NGO backing, as well as the United States Congress’s 1991 Resolution 41 declaring Tibet “an occupied country under established principles of international law whose true representatives are the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile”—falters before China’s rise.11 Tibetan refugees, moreover, are unnerved by Tenzin Gyatso’s 2011 devolution of political authority to a young, popularly elected prime minister, Lobsang Sangay. Although the Dalai Lama’s historic creation of a constitutional democracy—ending his lineage’s 369-year-long Ganden Phodrang Government—fosters pride in a modern polity, fear of his “retirement” is rife. “There is absolutely no need to worry.… I will continue to serve the cause of Tibet,” he has reassured the refugee parliament. “If we have to remain in exile for several more decades, a time will inevitably come when I will no longer be able to provide leadership. Therefore, it is necessary that we establish a sound system of governance while I remain able and healthy.”12

  Such is Tibet’s plight sixty-four years after two-thirds of its 8,500-man army perished fighting 40,000 PLA soldiers, in the largest annexation of a sovereign state since the Second World War.13 “One ancient nation is dying,” the Dalai Lama often pleads for his people’s salvation, yet genuine Tibetan autonomy would broadly benefit all.

  The PRC’s invasion of the Tibetan plateau removed, for the first time in history, the vital buffer balancing Asia’s dominant civilizations. Today India and China—comprising one-third of humanity—station 150,000 opposing troops across a 1,200-mile Himalayan front. Sixteen rounds of border talks have failed to resolve territorial disputes remaining from the 1962 Sino–Indian War, Tibet’s volatility grows, and, with India recently declaring China its main strategic threat, the future risks large-scale conflict.14 The Dalai Lama’s first Sino–Tibetan settlement bid—the Five Point Peace Plan presented to the U.S. Congress on September 21, 1987—addressed the danger in Asia by calling for the “transformation of the whole of Tibet into a zone of peace”—a demilitarized region whose traditionally neutral, nonviolent Buddhist heritage could restore mutual trust between the continent’s major powers. With China’s destabilizing megadamming of Tibetan rivers—holding hostage much of South and Southeast Asia’s water supply—the need for such comity has, again, increased greatly.

  “A Tibetan settlement must come for India and China to achieve peace,” says Tempa Tsering, a former cabinet minister of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.15 “And for that, the Chinese have to accept our right to self-rule. China, though, only negotiates if its opponent has the upper hand.” Some Tibetans, accordingly, ponder discord: either a second Sino–Indian war, in which one of Beijing’s regular incursions would goad India into a counterattack; or a low-intensity conflict, allowing Delhi’s high-altitude Tibetan commando brigade, the Special Frontier Force, to coordinate a popular insurgency, cutting off China’s isolated garrisons—as in the 1909–12 Manchu invasion. Even so, the vast majority of Tibetans favor a peaceful solution with a more moderate Chinese government accepting the framework for self-rule as outlined in the 2008 Government-in-Exile’s “Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People.” That, in turn, would enable the Dalai Lama’s return with renewed Chinese respect for his time-honored role as an ethical paragon. “His Holiness will win over young Chinese with the power of his compassion,” Tempa Tsering predicts of the last, best scenario.16 “Just as he personally created a worldwide Tibet movement, he’ll even more powerfully touch those who’ve been most brutalized—the Chinese people themselves. Then you’ll see His Holiness giving, as he first hoped for in the 1990s, the Kalachakra Initiation in Tiananmen Square.”

  Indeed, the Dalai Lama’s ability to assuage China’s “moral crisis”—by restoring indigenous Buddhist principles—has long shown its value. “Right from the beginning His Holiness said, ‘We don’t hate the Chinese people,’ ” recounts Tenzin Geyche Tethong, the Dalai Lama’s foreign secretary for forty years.17 “He constantly encouraged Tibetans and Chinese to develop trust and friendship. Finally I told His Holiness, ‘Please don’t say “we.” Say, ‘I have no hatred of the Chinese.’ He just laughed. But almost no Tibetan feels good about the Chinese. Everyone has family members who died in a prison camp, were tortured, or killed. Then, when China opened in the 1980s, His Holiness went all-out to meet and befriend mainland Chinese. And when they learned what had really happened in Tibet, many were deeply sorry. Some would get up, in front of hundreds of others, and shamefully apologize in tears. I was moved and shocked and then totally convinced that His Holiness had been right all along. When he said ‘Ordinary Chinese are just like Tibetans: we’re all the same human beings,’ he knew that honest observers, seeing injustice, would oppose it. It finally penetrated my thick skull that problems are solved by touching people’s humanity.” The thousands of Chinese who annually attend the Dalai Lama’s teachings in India share, no doubt, the same sentiment that widely greeted his first Taiwan visit in 1997, “Now we know what a real Buddhist monk is like!”

  “Tibetan culture has great potential to benefit all of humanity.” Thus Tenzin Gyatso tirelessly describes his deepest motive for saving Tibet. And while altruistic principles and a profound philosophy—describing phenomena as illusory-like appearances ultimately empty of inherent existence—heighten Buddhism’s appeal, a pioneering exchange between Buddhist mind and modern material science shows more tangible proof of Tibetan expertise.

  In 2011, in Washington, DC’s Verizon Center, the Dalai Lama told 20,000 attendees of Tibetan Buddhism’s largest rite, the Kalachakra Initiation: “During the last fifty years in India there have been twenty to thirty cases of tukdam, or death meditation; an advanced yogic practice in which the subtlest clear light consciousness is volitionally held, for nondual absorption in emptiness, after vital signs cease. In the longest case the meditator’s body remained, without decomposing, for almost a month. So, this is a completely new subject for scientists whereas for us Buddhists, who accept different levels of mind and energy, it is known.”18 But Tenzin Gyatso was not discussing Buddhist understanding of the subtlest psycho-physical substrates of the mind-body complex. He was giving, instead, a paradigm-shattering hint—with results yet to be published—of EEG, EKG, and postmortem temperature readings during the eighteen-day 2008 tukdam of the 100th Ganden Tripa, a great yogi whose body was the first to be monitored collaboratively between neuroscientists, at the University of Wisconsin, and the Tibetan Medical Institute in Dharamsala. “When the Ganden Tripa died,” the Dalai Lama continued, “they were able to clearly record, with electrodes on the body and head, for more than ten days. Now there might be some sign of some very subtle energy that survives death of the gross body,” he carefully suggested. Indian neurologists, who attended the experiment, more excitedly declared, “You must see this to believe it. We are simply speechless.”19

  Finding neural and cardiac signals of a “dead” meditator’s core warmth, along with pliant invulnerability to decay (in India’s putrefying tropics), and erect posture would push neuroscience far past recent evidence of consciousness in level 3 coma victims. It would surely support Tenzin Gyatso’s long-held conviction that Buddhist contemplatives have “a tremendous scope” to help science correct a centuries-old error, conflating “reductionist method into a metaphysical standpoint,” of radical materialism.20 While one psychologist enthused “What other religious leaders have said to scientists, ‘Please determine the objective validity of my practices’? The Dalai Lama matter-of-factly states, ‘Modern science, compared to Buddhist knowledge of the mind, is still in kindergarten.’ ”21

  Tenzin Gyatso, however, does not proselytize. Avidly promoting inter-faith harmony—for diverse creeds’ equal ability “to create good human beings”—he has “merely offered the Buddha’s teaching
s,” as Tibetans describe his global guidance, “for the peace and happiness of this world.” For more than a thousand years China has especially revered, in both popular and state religion, Tibetan Buddhism’s unique preservation of all Buddhist lore. One day, consequently, it must be that China’s contemporary leaders will cease assaulting a society which has so benefited their own.

  “It is China’s intention to be the greatest power in the world” Lee Kuan Yew, modern Singapore’s founder, has written.22 “At the core of its mindset is the Middle Kingdom, recalling a world in which it was dominant and other states related as supplicants.… China’s strategy is to bide its time until it becomes strong enough to successfully redefine the [international] political and economic order.” Yet China’s self-professed “peaceful rise” is incompatible, Lee objects, with “inculcating enormous pride and patriotism in Chinese youth.… It is volatile.”23 Certainly Sinocentrism, fueled by aggrieved nationalism, cannot stabilize prosperity in an interdependent world. Hence China’s insecure grandiosity must evolve, as all progressive Chinese advocate, into pluralistic self-worth. That won’t occur until China amends its largest crime, against another nation, in history—the destruction of Tibet. Tibet’s worst tragedy remains China’s greatest shame. If Beijing fails to restore Tibetan rights—and, most especially, if the Fourteenth Dalai Lama perishes in exile without returning home—the current Communist government will have seeded strife for decades, if not centuries, to come.

  “There is a word in Tibetan—sipa,” says the Dalai Lama’s senior attendant, Lobsang Gawa, explaining Buddhist optimism. “It means ‘anything is possible.’ ” Buddhism’s account of reality—that dependent causality mutably governs apparent phenomena—inspires optimistic activism. Because good causes yield good effects, and bad can be removed, the future is improvable—and Buddhists are hopeful. “From the midst of suffering happiness is found,” thus Tibetans proverbially draw insight from tragedy. It is my hope, shared by millions of others, that China’s leaders will swiftly do the same.