MB Civic

A right to self-defense is recognized by the Dalai Lama — indeed, his predecessor tried to recruit an army.

By Dave Kopel
National Review Online
April 05, 2007

An al Qaeda organization is attempting to
assassinate the Dalai Lama. Lashkar-e-Toiba, al Qaeda’s South Asian affiliate, is
acting consistently with Osama bin Laden’s
April 2006 denunciation of “pagan Buddhists.”

This raises an interesting question: Can an
ethical follower of Tibetan Buddhism kill
someone in order to save the Dalai Lama?
Or in order to fight religious
totalitarianism in general?

Absolutely yes. Although some Westerners
imagine that the Dalai Lama is an absolute
pacifist, the teachings of the present Dalai
Lama and of his predecessor, as well as the
traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, all
legitimize the use of deadly force against
killers and would-be tyrants.

This may come as news to certain anti-American pacifists in the United States and
Europe who are guilty of “Shangri-La-ism” – of what Jane Ardley (in her book The
Tibetan Independence Movement)
describes as the “idealized, romantic vision
of Tibet as a land of enlightened, non-violent, happy and exotic people.” She
observes, “For those in the West who look
to Tibetan Buddhism for all the answers to
their insecurities, the image of ‘violent’
Buddhists is uncomfortable particularly
where Buddhism itself can be offered as a
justification for their actions.”

Warrior Monks

The tradition of forceful resistance to
tyranny is very old in Tibet. For example, in
the early centuries of the first millennium,
ancient Tantric Buddhist texts
gave “formulae for killing unjust kings”
(Thomas Cleary, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, vol. 5).

Buddhist Tibet was a powerful warrior
kingdom during the latter part of the first
millennium. Later, during the thirteenth century, Tibet fell under Mongol control.
The Mongols respected Buddhism, granted
Tibet internal autonomy, provided military
protection, and exempted Tibetans from
military service.

Late in the 14th century, the Chinese
overthrew the Mongols, and Tibet
regained independence. Thereafter, China
and Tibet engaged in many wars for
control of eastern Tibet. The Chinese
managed to conquer much of the provinces
of Kham and Amdo, and merged them into
Chinese provinces. The British dubbed this
region “Inner Tibet.” The Buddhist Khampa
tribes of Inner Tibet were battle-hardened
warriors, described by a Chinese observer
in 1666 as people who “delight in wars and
conflicts, not hesitant to die..”

By the middle of the 19th century, the
fierce Khampas had won themselves almost
complete independence from the decrepit
Chinese empire and from the Tibetan
government in Lhasa. Nominally, they lived
in Chinese territory which was claimed by
Tibet. In practice, they ruled themselves.

Outer Tibet was also claimed by China,
although Chinese influence there was very
small.

In Outer Tibet during the nineteenth
century, three large monasteries attained
preeminent power over the government,
and held that power until the Communist
takeover in 1951. As of 1951, the three
monasteries held about 22,000 monks; of
them, about 10 to 15 percent were
dobdobs, fighting monks. They carried
knives and had access to the guns and
ammunition stored in the monasteries. The
dobdobs were stronger than the tiny
Tibetan army and police, and so the
monasteries enjoyed coercive power over
the government, which had an army of only
5,000, plus a small police force in Lhasa only.
 
During the final years of the Manchu
dynasty, the Chinese attempted to assert
real control over Tibet and used military
force. The Dalai Lama fled to India. When
the Chinese Manchus were overthrown by
the Chinese Nationalists in 1911-12, Tibet
declared independence.

Outer Tibet’s independence was not
seriously contested, but the Chinese
eventually began to war for Inner Tibet.
Tibetan troops and monks fought against
the Chinese Nationalist government in
Inner Tibet.

Violence in Practice

Today, the Dalai Lama is the leader of the
Tibetan Buddhist religion. (“Dalai”
means “oceanwide.”) The current Dalai
Lama, Lhamo Thondup, is believed to be
the thirteenth reincarnation of the original
Dalai Lama, and a manifestation of
Avalokitsehvara, the bodhisattva of
compassion.

Winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, the
Dalai Lama is perhaps second only to the
Roman Catholic Pope as a well-known and
respected worldwide religious leader.
Many Westerners are familiar with the non-violent teaching of the current Dalai Lama,
such as “The basis of all moral teaching
ought to be nonresponse to attacks.” But
before Westerners take such sayings as
categorical imperatives, it is essential to
remember that, as the Dalai Lama
emphasizes, Buddhism does not operate on
the binary terms of Western thought.

During Tibet’s wars against the Chinese
Nationalists, the Dalai Lama was Thupten
Gyatso, who died in 1933. In 1935, Gyatso’s
soul was reincarnated, according to
Tibetan Buddhist belief, in the baby who
grew up to be the current Dalai Lama. In
1932 Gyatso left a “Political Last
Testament,” predicting: “In the future, this
system [Communism] will certainly be
forced either from within or without on
this land. If, in such an event, we fail to
defend our land, the holy lamas.will be
eliminated without a trace of their names
remaining; our political system will be
reduced to an empty name; my officials will
be subjugated like slaves to the enemy;
and my people, subjected to fear and
miseries, will be unable to endure day or
night.” “..we should make every effort to
safeguard ourselves against this impending
disaster. Use peaceful means where they
are appropriate; but where they are not
appropriate, do not hesitate to resort to
more forceful means”  (emphasis added).

As the current Dalai Lama explains, Gyatso
knew that independent Tibet could never
overcome a huge nation like China. So he
turned to Nepal and Bhutan and
proposed, “A sort of common defense:
raise an army, train it as best as possible.
Just between us, this isn’t strictly practicing
non-violence.”

Gyatso proposed bringing young men from
Kham to the capital of Lhasa. In Lhasa, they
would receive “a complete military
education. Politically, that was very
farsighted. He was already advancing the
idea that defense of a land has to be
assured by the people who occupy it”
(Dalai Lama with Jean-Claude Carrire,
Violence and Compassion: Dialogues on Life Today).

Gyatso’s program was never implemented.
Nepal and Bhutan ignored the proposal for
mutual defense. Tibetan dignitaries refused
to build up the army, because they were
sure that the gods would protect Tibet.

Would Gyatso’s defense system have saved
Tibet? “I’m convinced it would have,” said
the current Lama.

In 1950, when the current Dalai Lama was
only 15 years old, Mao Tse-Teng’s Red
Army invaded Outer Tibet. In 1951, the
Dalai Lama was forced under duress to sign
a seventeen-point agreement with China
declaring that all of Tibet is part of “the
Motherland” of China. The agreement
pretended that Outer Tibet retained its
internal autonomy.

Armed resistance to Communism began in
1952 with numerous uprisings in eastern
Tibet. Although the Chinese at first
proceeded cautiously in Outer Tibet, they
regarded Inner Tibet as an ordinary part of
China, and pushed Communist “reforms”
(including genocide) in Inner Tibet with the
same vigor with which the Communist
program was enforced in ethnically
Chinese lands ruled by Mao.

About 68,000 Tibetans joined with
approximately 12,000 fighters from the
defeated Chinese Nationalist army to war
against their mutual enemy, the
Communists. The revolt cooled down when
the Chinese backed away from their
program to impose serfdom in eastern
Tibet (that is, farm collectivization in which
the government would own and control
the farms, and the farmers would be de
facto slaves of the government).

More people joined the revolution in 1953.
In 1954 the Chinese 18th Army suppressed
a 25-day revolt of 40,000 farmers in Tibet.
The resistance fighters were known as
the “National Volunteer Army for the
Defense of Buddhism” (Tensung Dhangland
Magar).

The core of the resistance was the men of
Kham and Amdo, the tribesmen of eastern
Tibet. It was they whom the previous Dalai
Lama had wanted to turn into the
foundation of a strong Tibetan army. They
thrived in the thin atmosphere of the
mountains, while their Chinese adversaries
gasped for breath.

Eastern Tibet’s Kanting Rebellion began in
the winter of 1955-56. It was defeated by
the end of 1956, and many of the rebels
fled to Outer Tibet. Yet the Khampas began
a new uprising in 1956-67, and Amdo rose
up in 1958. More refugees and fighters
from Inner Tibet fled to Outer Tibet. Many
of them clustered around the capital,
Lhasa, and the many, disparate tribes and
clans began working to form a united
fighting force.

The Lhasa Uprising began on March 10,
1959, in response to rumors that the
Chinese were about to arrest the Dalai
Lama. The Dalai Lama fled to India, and the
Chinese appointed the Panchen Lama (the
second-highest spiritual leader in Tibetan
Buddhism) as their puppet. Participants in
the Lhasa Uprising included Tibet’s little
army of 3,000 men; about 10,000 Khampas
who had fled to Lhasa; most of the 20,000
Buddhist monks in Lhasa; and thousands
of members of the general public. The
Chinese had to kill more than 87,000
people to suppress the Lhasa Uprising.

Unsurprisingly, in April 1959 the Chinese
forbade the Tibetan male tradition of
wearing swords.

Violence in Principle

How could Tibetan Buddhists engage in
violence? Jampa Tenzin, a former guerilla
and monk, explained, “Generally, of course,
non-violence is good, and killing is bad. But
each and every thing is judged according
to the circumstances of the situation, and,
particularly in Buddhism, according to the
motivations. In order to save a hundred
people, killing one person may be
acceptable. Individual, or self, motivation is
obviously not allowed. “unless we did
something sooner or later we couldn’t
practice religion. Dharma [had to] prevail
and remain, even by violent means.”

Protests and small revolts that began in
1987 culminated in March 1989 rioting
against the Chinese colonists whom the
Communist government had settled in
Tibet, and who now comprise the majority
of Tibet’s population.

China has perpetrated genocide in Tibet,
and continues to do so, having killed
approximately one million Tibetans directly
or by starvation. What the Dalai Lama calls
China’s “final solution” is the subjugation
of the Tibetan people in the lands which
they have inhabited from time immemorial,
their human right of self-determination
crushed by their Chinese colonialist
masters.

Living in exile in India, the Dalai Lama
professes his admiration of Mohandas
Gandhi. Yet, like Gandhi, the Dalai Lama is
not as inflexibly pacifist as some
Westerners imagine. Indeed, the Lama
defended what he calls India’s “right to
nuclear weapons.”

According to the Dalai Lama, “If someone
has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would
be reasonable to shoot back with your own
gun.” (Seattle Times, May 15, 2001).
Elsewhere, the Dalai Lama said: “if the
situation was such that there was only one
learned lama or genuine practitioner alive, a person whose death would cause the
whole of Tibet to lose all hope of keeping
its Buddhist way of life, then it is
conceivable that in order to protect that
one person it might be justified for one or
10 enemies to be eliminated-if there was
no other way. I could justify violence only in
this extreme case, to save the last living
knowledge of Buddhism itself”.

The Dalai Lama has never supported armed
resistance in Tibet. The non-violence of the
Lama’s approach has won him widespread
sympathy in the West, although thus far,
there has been no progress in convincing
the Chinese to relax their iron grip.

Sometimes the Dalai Lama states that non-violence is the most important thing.
Sometimes he offers broad justifications for violence – such as national defense
against Communist imperialism, or
individual self-defense against deadly
attack. Sometimes he allows only an
extremely narrow justification for violence –
namely, saving his own life. To puzzle over
the contradictions is to miss the non-binary spirit of Tibetan Buddhism.

What is clear that the Dalai Lama has never
sold arms to Israel, stationed troops in
Saudi Arabia, sent military forces to fight
for freedom in Afghanistan or Iraq,
reconquered Spain from Islamic invasion,
drawn cartoons mocking Islamic terrorists,
dismantled the Ottoman Empire, or
performed any of the other acts which the
apologists for terrorism claim
have “provoked” al Qaeda. Yet al Qaeda is
still trying to kill him – as it is trying to kill
everyone who does not submit to it
hideous totalitarian “religion.”

To kill the terrorists who are trying to kill
the Dalai Lama would be eminently just,
and fully in accordance with the theory and
practice Tibetan Buddhism. Westerners
who attempt to enlist the Dalai Lama in
their finger-wagging denunciations of self-defense against al Qaeda would do better
to study the history of Tibet, and to ponder
the farsighted teachings of the current
Dalai Lama and “that defense of a land has
to be assured by the people who occupy it.”

– Dave Kopel is research director of the
Independence Institute. Citations for the
material in this article, and further
discussion of Buddhism, may be found in
his working paper “Self-defense in Asian
Religions.”