TIBETAN BUDDHISM

Buddhism was late in coming to Tibet.  Long after the countries to the south and east of it had yielded to Buddhist missionaries, Tibet remained unaffected.  At last about 630 A.D., a Tibetan prince, Srong Tsan Gam Po, sent emissaries to northern India, for the purpose, in part, of securing the introduction of Buddhism into his realm.  Likely his two wives, princesses from China and Nepal respectively, acquainted him with their own religion, Buddhism, and expressed their desire to practice it in Tibet.  

Yet Srong's introduction of Buddhism into Tibet was not successful.  The native demonolatry was too strong for it; and besides, the Tibetans found it hard to understand.  It would take another century before the true founder of Buddhism in Tibet came up from Bengal.  He was Padma-Sambhava, a vigorous teacher of the corrupt Buddhism of 8th century northern India.  This Buddhism, with it Tantric infusion of sex symbolism, took root, and ultimately, after various vicissitudes and "reforms," became the religion of Tibet.

The clergy of Tibet have had an interesting history.  They early acquired the name of "lamas," a term of respect meaning "one who is superior."  For a thousand years they lived in thick-walled monasteries.  These were originally of the unmilitary Indian model, but finally developed into fortresses of a distinctly Tibetan style, with massive walls rising firmly from the foundation rocks to overhanging roofs far above. The climate, with its extreme cold and its long winters, made necessary the building of walled structures with plenty of room in them for winter stores.  In the early days, the life that went on there was more that of princely magicians than of monks.  The Tantric Buddhism that was practiced encouraged the lamas to take spouses.  Celibacy, at least among the higher clergy, became a rarity.  The monasteries therefore often had hereditary heads, the abbots passing their offices on to their sons.

In the second half of the 14th century, the conditions were created for the final "reform" of Lamaism by the great Tibetan monk Tsong-kha-pa.  He organized the so-called Yellow Church, whose executive head is the Dalai Lama.  Its monks are popularly known as Yellow Hats, for their hats and girdles are yellow--an evidence of Tsong's attempt to purify Lamaism and take it back in theory and practice toward early Buddhism.  The monasteries that resisted reform continued the use of red and constitute the "Red" sects.

Tsong's reform was in part an imposition of a stricter monastic discipline.  There was to be less alcohol and more praying.  But what counted most and had the greatest future consequences was the reintroduction of celibacy.  The practice of celibacy had the obvious and immediate effect of ending hereditary rule in the Yellow Hat monasteries; the abbots had no sons.  But another result ultimately followed, about a century later, which gave the Yellow Church its world-famous theory of reincarnation of the head lamas in their successors.

Born 6 July 1935, Lhamo Dondrub is the 14th Dalai Lama.  He was the fifth of seven children in a farming family in the village of Taktser.  His first language was, in his own words, "a broken Xining language which was a dialect of the Chinese language," for his family did not speak the regional Amdo dialect.  He was proclaimed the tulku or rebirth of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of two.  In 1950 the army of the People's Republic of China invaded the region.  One month later, on 17 November 1950, he was enthroned formally as Dalai Lama: at the age of fifteen, he became the region's most important spiritual leader and political ruler.

In 1951 the Chinese military pressured the Dalai Lama to ratify a seventeen-point agreement which permitted the People's Republic of China to take control of Tibet.  He fled through the mountains to India soon after the failed 1959 uprising, the effective collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement.  In Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, India, he established a government-in-exile.  The most influential member of the Gelugpa or Yellow Hat sect, he has considerable influence over the other sects of Tibetan Buddhism.

Today, Tibetan Buddhism is adhered to widely in the Tibetan Plateau, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Kalmykia, on the northwest shore of the Caspian, Siberia, central Russia, specifically Buryatia and Chita Oblast, and the Russian Far East, concentrated in Tuva.  The Indian regions of Sikkim and Ladakh, both formerly independent kingdoms, are also home to significant Tibetan Buddhist populations. In the wake of the Tibetan diaspora, Tibetan Buddhism has gained adherents in the West and throughout the world.  Celebrity practitioners include Brandon Boyd, Richard Gere, Adam Yauch, Jet Li, Sharon Stone, Allen Ginsberg, and Philip Glass.