THE LAST DALAI LAMA
Michael Harris Goodman
Boston: Shambhala, 1986
364 pp., $22.50
"Probably no leader in the world," Thomas Merton wrote of the Dalai Lama, "is so much loved by his followers. He means everything to them." Besides the pope and the Coptic patriarch, no other religious figure is addressed as "His Holiness." The pope is secure in the Vatican State, the Coptic pope lives precariously in Egypt, but the Dalai Lama since 1959 has lived in exile in northern India. His exile is making him into a world spiritual leader.
In some ways, the title of this thorough yet engaging biography of the Dalai Lama is misleading. The present Dalai Lama may be the last to live in Tibet or even the last Tibetan to hold the office, but he will not be the last Dalai Lama. Actually, there has been only one Dalai Lama and fourteen incarnations of his spirit. In Tibetan Lamaism, there are many grades of incarnation of the Buddha. The Dalai Lama is the supreme incarnation of the aspect of the Buddha known as Avalokitesvara (in Tibetan, Chenresi) or the Buddha of compassion. The term Dalai is a Mongolian translation of the Tibetan Gyastso, meaning "ocean." The Dalai Lama is the lama whose wisdom is as wide and deep as the ocean. The second most important incarnation is the Panchen Lama, who manifests the aspect of the Buddha known as Amitabha, or meditation. The Dalai Lama combines both temporal and spiritual authority. The Panchen Lama dedicates himself to pure meditation.
The author's research is penetrating: Much of the book is based on long interviews with the principals involved, but the narrative flows under the guidance of a master storyteller. Goodman alternates the course of the Dalai Lama's story with background chapters on the geography of Tibet, its customs, its special form of Buddhism, the history of the fourteen Dalai Lamas, and the political situation during and after World War II that led up to the Dalai Lama's decision to leave Tibet. This alternation adds to the intensity of the Dalai Lama's personal story and expands the overall scope of the book.
From the time of his birth in 1935, the fourteenth Dalai Lama's life has been related to events in China. After he was discovered in 1937, he was held for ransom by the Chinese warlord Ma Pu-feng before he was allowed to proceed to the Potala in Lhasa, the Tibetan equivalent of the Vatican. These events prefigure the complicated intrigues between Tibet and mainland, China which were to lead to the takeover of Tibet by communist China in 1950 and the voluntary exile of the Dalai Lama in 1959.
A View of Tibet
The author takes his readers on an enjoyable journey through Tibet. The reader is given an introduction to geography, economic life, and social organization of the Land of Snows, of Roof of the World. The mountain rivers of Tibet are the source of many of the East's major rivers: the Indus, the Ganges, the Mekong, the Yellow River. The population - six million in 1959 - is half-nomadic, the beast of burden being the yak, which one English traveler described as "the most melancholy disillusioned beast I have ever seen, and dies on the slightest provocation" (p. 25). Aside from the nomadic caravaneers, many Tibetans are
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