http://coombs.anu.edu.au/asia-pacific-magazine

The Asia-Pacific Magazine quarterly is published by the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University (ANU), Canberra ACT 0200, Australia.

---

|| Asia-Pacific Magazine home page || Board || Editorial Advisory Board || Notes for the Contributors || Current Issue || Past Issues || Subscription & Advertising Details || Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library || Asian Studies WWW Monitor || Asia-Pacific Conferences & Events ||

---

[Past issues of the Quarterly become available online approximately 12 months after their appearance in print.
Also, as a service to the Readers of the Asia-Pacific Magazine web site, email addresses and links to web-pages of the authors are provided whenever they are available.]

Asia-Pacific Magazine
No. 1 April 1996
pp. 4-11.

Opiate of the Atheists?: The Panchen Lama controversy

by John Powers

China's leaders have an image problem. As members of the Communist Party, they are officially committed to atheism and to Karl Marx's doctrine that religion is the 'opiate of the masses,' a false superstition that will eventually be eradicated in the communist society of the future.

On the other hand, they also want to convince the world that they promote religious freedom. The tension between these two stances is nowhere more evident than in Tibet, a remote plateau with a deeply religious populace, many of whom feel that the Chinese government is working to eradicate their ancient religious traditions.

The conflict between the Chinese rulers of Tibet and its Buddhist inhabitants has reached a particularly critical phase in recent months, with the focal point being the search for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second most prominent religious leader of Tibetan Buddhism. This lama (religious teacher) is believed to be a physical emanation of the Buddha Amitabha (whose name means 'Limitless Light'), and is second only to the Dalai Lama in religious authority. Tibetan Buddhists view him as a 'tülku,' a spiritually advanced being who consciously chooses to reincarnate in successive bodies in order to work for the benefit of others. When a tülku dies, the search for his or her successor begins, and the child identified as the reincarnation is usually brought to a monastery for training in Buddhist philosophy and meditation practice. Their fellow tülkus are generally responsible for locating and identifying reincarnations. This process is often aided by divinations, pronouncements by oracles, and predictions by the tülkus themselves prior to their deaths.

The 10th Panchen Lama was the highest-ranking religious leader who remained in Tibet after the People's Republic of China (PRC) invaded and annexed the country in the 1950s. Allowed to remain in his traditional seat at Tashi Lhünpo ('Mount Fortune') Monastery in Shigatse, he worked with Chinese authorities, attempting to ameliorate the depredations of the People's Liberation Army and the Red Guards. Denounced by many Tibetans as a collaborator, he was a highly controversial figure until his death in 1989. Because of his status among Tibetans, he was appointed to several high-level positions in the Chinese Government administration, including that of vice-chairman of the People's Congress.

Despite his overall attitude of cooperation with Chinese authorities, however, beginning in the early 1960s he wrote a number of letters to officials in Beijing that criticised Chinese human rights abuses, environmental degradation, the destruction of Tibetan culture, and the millions of Han Chinese flooding into Tibet due to the central government's program of population transfer. As a result he was imprisoned for almost ten years during the Cultural Revolution. He was later placed under house arrest for seven years and 're-educated' for refusing to make a public speech denouncing the Dalai Lama.

Apparently the re-education was unsuccessful, because in one of his last meetings with Chinese Government officials he declared that although the occupation of Tibet had produced some benefits for Tibetans, overall 'Chinese rule in Tibet has cost more than it has benefited.' He even went so far as to challenge Chinese Government authorities to take away his chair in the People's Congress. His death was widely believed by Tibetans to have been engineered by Chinese authorities, but the Chinese government officially declared that he had succumbed to a heart attack. His demise left a vacuum in the Tibetan leadership, and Chinese authorities soon ordered monastic officials at Tashi Lhünpo to form a search committee, under the leadership of Chadrel Rinpoche, abbot of the monastery.

For the next several years, monks from Tashi Lhünpo searched for the reincarnation. In October of 1994, a group of monks conducted religious ceremonies on Shugtri Ridge, above the sacred lake Lhamö Latso, which is renowned for producing visions of the locations of tülkus . Blowing three meter long horns, ringing bells, and clanging cymbals, they chanted ancient prayers asking for assistance in their search. For several days they remained 1,000 meters above the lake, the chill breeze blowing through their monastic robes. They finally saw a rainbow that led them to the house of Gendün Chökyi Nyima, the young son of semi-nomadic parents from the Nagchu region of north-eastern Tibet.

The Dalai Lama, from his northern Indian home in exile, on several occasions offered assistance in the search process, but his overtures were rebuffed. Chinese officials confidently predicted that their representatives at Tashi Lhünpo would find the reincarnated Panchen Lama, but Chadrel Rinpoche, apparently uncomfortable with the idea of usurping the Dalai Lama's traditional authority in the search process, sent him the names of several leading candidates.

The Dalai Lama then performed a divination (called a mo) to determine whether or not the true Panchen was among the candidates. The answer came back in the affirmative. He repeated the divination process two more times, with identical results. Following this, names of the candidates were written on slips of paper and rolled into balls of dough. The Dalai Lama held each ball in his hands while pronouncing the child's name, and 'the dough ball [containing the name of Gendün Chökyi Nyima] emerged as if jumping out on its own.' The Dalai Lama repeated the process, and the same ball emerged again, which convinced him that the correct candidate had been identified. He next consulted the Nechung Oracle (a being that possesses a human host and delivers often cryptic messages), who informed the Dalai Lama that he had correctly identified the reincarnation with the words, 'There is no need for me, the formless one, to do or say anything more. My teacher, the Meaningful to Behold [the Dalai Lama] has already investigated the matter through the mind of the three secrets.'

According to a statement from the Tibetan government in exile, further confirmation came from the boy himself, who is reported to have declared at a young age, 'I am the Panchen, my monastery is Tashi Lhünpo. I sit on a high throne.' Despite this corroboration, further divinations indicated that the time was not yet ripe to make a public announcement. Consulted a few weeks later, the Nechung Oracle declared that the announcement should be made on 14 May, an auspicious date in Tibetan Buddhism.

In his official proclamation, the Dalai Lama stated that his decision was 'purely a religious matter,' and he called on the Chinese Government to 'extend its understanding, cooperation, and assistance.' It was a master stroke on the part of the Dalai Lama, and it took Chinese officials completely by surprise. The Chinese Government had apparently been waiting to make its announcement in September, the 30th anniversary of the formation of its puppet state in Tibet (called the 'Tibet Autonomous Region').

For several days, there was no response from the Chinese authorities. The Dalai Lama's unilateral announcement had created a dilemma: If they accepted his choice, it could be perceived as an endorsement of the Dalai Lama's continuing role in Tibetan Buddhism; but if they denounced his choice, they would be put in the untenable position of claiming that communist government officials had the authority to choose Buddhist tülkus , while Tibet's primary religious leader did not.

The Chinese Government chose the latter course, launching a vigorous campaign of verbal attacks on the Dalai Lama and his motivations. On 17 May, the Chinese Government's Xinhua news agency carried an interview with an official of the State Council's Bureau of Religious Affairs denouncing the Dalai Lama's choice as 'illegal and invalid,' adding that his announcement 'fully demonstrates the political plot of the Dalai clique in its continuous splittist activities by making use of the Panchen Lama's reincarnation after repeated failures in its acts abroad aimed as splitting the Motherland.' Subsequent statements by high-ranking Chinese officials have echoed this sentiment and accused the Dalai Lama of undermining the authority of the Central Government of China, which they contend is the sole legitimate arbiter in the selection of tülkus .

Fearing a public outcry over their attempt to usurp the traditional authority of the Dalai Lama, Chinese Government leaders quickly moved to prevent opposition. Gendün Chökyi Nyima, along with his family, disappeared shortly after the public denunciations of the Dalai Lama's choice appeared in Chinese newspapers, and they are believed to be under military guard in Beijing while their eventual fate is being decided. Chadrel Rinpoche has also been arrested. Recently, monks at Tashi Lhünpo were ordered to attend a 'prayer meeting,' at which Chinese Government officials demanded that they denounce the Dalai Lama. A reported forty-eight refused to do so, and most of them are now being held in Nyara prison. A senior monk committed suicide, and subsequently the entire senior leadership of Tashi Lhünpo was replaced by Chinese sympathisers whose loyalty was unquestioned.

In addition, Chinese authorities have denounced Gendün Chökyi Nyima and his parents, claiming that the young boy 'once drowned a dog', a heinous crime in the eyes of the Buddha' and that his parents are 'notorious for speculation, deceit, and scrambling for fame and profit.' More significantly, as this article is being written, Chinese authorities have moved to prevent potential protests by Tibetans, declaring discussion of the Panchen Lama succession illegal and banning meetings of more than three people in the cities of Lhasa, Shigatse, and Nagchu. Monks and nuns are also being warned to avoid any public disapproval of the Central Government's actions, and senior religious leaders have been pressured into signing statements denouncing the Dalai Lama's actions.

In addition to these moves, China's leaders have launched a propaganda campaign which claims that Chinese government officials have overseen the selection of tülkus since the Qing dynasty, a claim that is historically baseless. Several recent articles in government newspapers have asserted that the Qing emperor Qianlong in 1793 sent a golden urn to Tibet with instructions that the ninth Dalai Lama should be chosen by lots drawn from the urn. Tibetan historical records indicate that the emperor's instructions were ignored, and the Dalai Lama was chosen according to traditional methods of selection, but in a face-saving move that was to have long-term implications, the emperor's representatives (amban) convinced Tibetan authorities to allow them to proclaim in China that the emperor's directives had been followed.

While Chinese officials have often visited Tibet for enthronement ceremonies and passed on the good wishes of emperors or other heads of state, there is no historical evidence that a Chinese official has ever had any direct role in the selection process, nor have any been more than observers. The present situation is roughly comparable to the Australian government sending a representative to the Vatican for the investiture of a Pope and later claiming to have sole authority to choose his successor.

After the Chinese Government officially rejected the Dalai Lama's Panchen Lama choice, in early November high-ranking lamas were ordered to travel to Beijing to participate in selecting another boy, and they were further informed that no excuse would be accepted for failure to make the journey. Even those who were in hospital were instructed to come. The official communique informed them that the summons was viewed as a 'test of your nationalism and your political stand.'

When they arrived, they were placed under heavy guard at the military-owned Jingxi Guesthouse, which is used for secret meetings of Party officials. To underscore the importance of the proceedings, five of the seven members of the ruling Politburo attended, including the Party Secretary Jiang Zemin, one of China's top generals, two vice-premiers, the head of the legal system, and the government's chief of propaganda.

After several days of deliberations, the Chinese leadership declared that the assembled lamas had chosen another Panchen Lama, a young boy named Gyeltsen Norbu, who is the son of Party officials in Nagchu. This violates China's own stated policies, outlined in a directive several years ago, in which Tibetan cadres were instructed not to allow their children to be selected as tülkus , as the institution of reincarnating lamas was a 'superstitious' remnant of Tibet's past. Moreover, in order to enter the party, cadres must demonstrate a strong commitment to atheism.

In a statement revealing a marked insensitivity to Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, the Xinhua agency declared that pieces of ivory were placed in the Qing emperor's golden urn and that the successful candidate's 'lucky number came up.' Tibetan Buddhists believe that the selection of tülkus is not a matter of luck and that the search process should be rigorous in order to insure that the correct reincarnation is identified.

After the announcement was made, a rushed enthronement ceremony was arranged. No details of the event were provided in advance, and on 8 December a group of high-ranking lamas and Chinese officials gathered at Tashi Lhünpo, where Gyeltsen Norbu was officially declared to be the eleventh Panchen Lama. Security was unusually tight for the ceremony: 500 soldiers of the People's Liberation Army were stationed inside the monastery compound, and only Party cadres with specially-issued identity cards were allowed to enter the premises. The local populace and even monks of the monastery whose loyalties were in doubt were not allowed to enter the grounds.

During the ceremony, broadcast on Chinese television, the young Gyeltsen Norbu looked distinctly nervous, a justifiable reaction considering the circumstances. Given the extraordinary importance attached to the ceremony by Chinese leaders, he may have suspected that his life is about to become more difficult than he ever could have imagined, as he becomes a pawn in the conflict between the Chinese Government and the Tibetan government in exile for the loyalties of the Tibetan people. The official Chinese Government press reported that the Tibetan people were 'ecstatic' over the news of the enthronement and that crowds gathered to cheer and throw barley into the air, a traditional Tibetan manner of expressing happiness. The Chinese press denied reports carried by Western media outlets of anti-Chinese demonstrations in Tibet's major cities.

The most prominent of Tibet's tülkus is the Dalai Lama, whose title means 'Ocean Teacher,' indicating that he is an 'Ocean of Wisdom.' This title was conferred on Sönam Gyatso (1543-1588, recognised as the third member of the reincarnation series) in 1578 by the Mongol chieftain Altan Khan. His two predecessors were retroactively given the title 'Dalai Lama,' and as the prominence of the incarnational line grew, the Dalai Lamas came to be viewed as physical manifestations of the buddha Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of compassion.

According to traditional Tibetan histories, the first Dalai Lama was Gendün Drüp (1391-1475), one of the principal disciples of Tsong Khapa Losang Drakpa (1357-1419), the founder of the Gelukpa school, which today is the largest and most powerful of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Gendün Drüp is particularly renowned for his efforts to spread the Gelukpa tradition, and he founded a number of important monasteries, including Tashi Lhünpo.

During his lifetime, Gendün Drüp was given the title 'Panchen' ('Great Scholar') by his contemporary Bodong Choklay Namgyel. The successive abbots of Tashi Lhünpo inherited this title. In the seventeenth century, the fifth Dalai Lama gave Tashi Lhünpo to his teacher, Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen (1567-1662), the fifteenth abbot of the monastery. As head of Tashi Lhünpo, he was known as 'Panchen,' but he received the distinctive title 'Panchen Lama' from the fifth Dalai Lama, who announced that Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen would reincarnate as a recognisable child. The title 'Panchen Lama' was retroactively conferred on his two previous incarnations, although they did not belong to Tashi Lhünpo monastery. Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen's successor was later recognised as the fourth Panchen Lama. From that time until the present day, the Dalai Lamas have traditionally recognised the Panchen Lamas, and the Panchen Lamas in turn figure prominently in the search for the Dalai Lamas.

The ongoing conflict between the Chinese Government and the Tibetan government in exile has primarily been waged in international forums like the United Nations and in the international press. The Chinese leadership labels the Dalai Lama a 'splittist' intent on creating dissension within the 'great family' of China, and it rejects the Dalai Lama's claims that the Chinese occupation of his country has led to over one million Tibetan deaths and to widespread human rights abuses. The fact that these claims are largely corroborated by human rights monitoring organisations such as Amnesty International and Asia Watch is also dismissed by China, which claims that all such criticisms are false, politically motivated, and that they constitute an unacceptable meddling in its internal affairs. Further, China claims to be in full compliance with international human rights standards and asserts that the Tibetan people today are infinitely better off than in the past. China characterises Tibet as a peaceful and increasingly prosperous land whose inhabitants are overwhelmingly grateful to China for their 'liberation.' Chinese newspapers describe Tibet as the 'Socialist Paradise on the Roof of the World,' and China's leaders dismiss reports of Tibetan dissatisfaction with their rule as the unfounded complaints of a small minority of the populace that perversely clings to Tibet's 'feudal' past.

A cornerstone of the Chinese campaign to convince the rest of the world of the benevolence of its rule in Tibet is its recent policy of allowing greater religious freedom. During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese troops and fanatical Red Guards waged war on Tibet's religious institutions and leaders, with the result that by the end of the period only a handful of an estimated 6,254 religious monuments were left standing. More significantly, the few religious leaders who had remained in Tibet were actively persecuted; many were killed outright, and Chinese soldiers took great delight in publicly humiliating religious leaders. As an example, monks and nuns, bound by strict vows of celibacy, were forced to copulate in public; if they refused, other people would be killed or tortured until they complied.

During this period, hundreds of thousands of Tibetans followed the Dalai Lama into exile in India. In 1959, as China was consolidating its hold over his country, he crossed the Indian border shortly before Chinese troops shelled his summer residence, the Norbulingka. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister, offered political asylum to the Dalai Lama, who set up a government in exile in the former British hill station of Dharamsala, in the foothills of the Himalayas.

From that time until the present, the Dalai Lama has fought for Tibet's independence in international forums. His advocacy of a program of a non-violent resolution to the conflict won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. The awarding of the prize to the Dalai Lama was denounced by China's leaders as unconscionable meddling in the country's 'internal affairs.'

Several commentators have wondered aloud why China is so concerned with this particular tülku selection process. The Chinese Government has invested 6,000,000 yuan (A$1,000,000) in financing the search, and senior government officials have taken a leading role in denouncing the Dalai Lama and in asserting the central government's sole authority in selecting reincarnations. The idea of atheists choosing a tülku when they do not believe in the validity of reincarnation is of course ludicrous, and the pressure exerted on Tibetan lamas by senior Chinese Government officials has demonstrated the hollowness of Chinese claims that the government is promoting religious freedom in Tibet.

China has also been subjected to humiliating condemnations from other governments around the world, including a unanimous resolution passed in the US Senate and others in the European Parliament and the Australian Parliament. In addition, the European Parliament has taken on Gendün Chökyi Nyima as its youngest 'prisoner of conscience' and called for his immediate release. At a time when China is concerned with improving economic and political ties with other countries, one may well wonder why it has chosen a course of action guaranteed to diminish its international reputation.

The reasons lie in the long-term view taken by China's leaders. Tibet has from the beginning been restive under Chinese occupation, and it has periodically erupted in demonstrations, and sometimes violence. The Dalai Lama has travelled the world, successfully winning converts to his message, much to the chagrin of the Chinese leadership. But the central government clearly looks forward to his demise, and as he is now in his sixties he will be nearing the end of his life as the new Panchen Lama reaches maturity.

If China is able to control him, the Panchen Lama's traditional role in selecting the Dalai Lama could leave China with compliant tülkus in the two top positions, which would help immeasurably in solidifying its control over Tibet. Because of Tibet's vast natural resources, its strategic importance as the high ground separating China from India, and its potential to absorb millions of excess people, China's leaders are determined to hold onto it at any cost.

In addition, the current dispute is apparently being viewed by China's leaders as a litmus test of the loyalty of Tibetan cadres, who are being urged to denounce the Dalai Lama and express support of Beijing's choice. The Chinese leadership distrusts Tibetans, fearing that they may not truly believe the party line they are required to espouse, and so the current situation provides an opportunity to identify 'reactionaries.'

Recent statements from Chinese authorities have even indicated that public reaction to their selection may influence the future of Tibetan Buddhism. In a thinly-veiled threat to Tibetans opposed to their decision, the New China News Agency in December carried a statement that warned, 'Any legal religion must firstly demand that its believers be patriotic.' The article went on to state that religion should always be dedicated to the service of the state and that a faith whose believers are unpatriotic or disloyal should be banned.

With memories of past repression of religion under Chinese rule still fresh in the minds of most Tibetans, such warnings sound an ominous note, which was undoubtedly intended. The stakes are enormously high for the Tibetans, as the exile government clearly realises: They have already lost their country, many of their senior religious leaders are nearing the ends of their lives, and their homeland is being flooded by Han Chinese, who are remaking the country in the image of modern China. Caught in the middle are two six year old boys, who are probably wondering how they came to be pawns in this struggle.

Further reading:

• Melvyn Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989).
• Purshotam Mehra, Tibetan Polity, 1904-1937 (Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1976).
• David Platt, A Strange Liberation: Tibetan Lives in Chinese Hands (Snow Lion, Ithaca, 1992).
• Ronald D. Schwartz, Circle of Protest: Political Ritual in the Tibetan Uprising (Columbia University Press, New York, 1994).

About the author:

Number of accesses made to this page since the counter was added to this document (16 Apr 1997):

(plus the times when this graphics file was not loaded by a browser)

Page last updated: 22 April 1997.