Quo vadis Dalai Lama and today’s young Tibetans?

Who, really, is the Dalai Lama? Will young Tibetans reject him as a political leader? Is he OK with that? Just what is the Tibetan exile community today like? Pico Ayer tackles all this and more, but in the end, may sink too much into Richard Gere-level hagiography.

And, Iyer doesn’t seem to fully grasp the question of his relevance, or not, to young Tibetans. Book review Louis Bayard notes that his “middle way” is considered appeasement by some:

If what the Dalai Lama professes is truly Buddhism, then it raises the question, finally, of whether a monk can be an agent for political change in such a complex and dangerous world. Certainly, many of his own followers have begun to doubt it.

To talk about peace while Tibetans are being killed, suggests one dissident interviewed by Iyer, is “tantamount to manslaughter.” A 28-year-old protester in Kathmandu, Nepal, recently told a reporter, “I’m Tibetan, but I’ve never seen Tibet. All my life, we’ve been campaigning peacefully — and what have we achieved?”

“Nobody takes the middle way seriously anymore,” declares writer Jamyang Norbu. “This is not non-violence. It is appeasement.”

And, Iyer seems to give a free past to Tibet’s history under the lamas.

Too many people rightly condemn China’s crackdown on Tibetan spirituality and religion without acknowledging that the previous “reincarnations” of the Dalai Lama, and other senior lamas, ran Tibet like a feudal state of 13th-century Europe. Beijing did bring, over time, modern amenities, healthcare, and more, to the Tibetan plateau.

Bayard notes this, also:

Something quite disarming, I would counter. In the warmth of the Dalai Lama's bespectacled gaze, we can more easily forget the less attractive aspects of his thinking — his endorsement of nuclear weapons in India, his acceptance of contributions from Japanese terrorists.

Church and state can be a bad mix everywhere, not just here.