You've Got a Friend in Buddha

Mike: We planned to visit McCleodganj, the home of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile, for a few days or a week at most. But as many travelers before us have found, it’s a hard place to leave. The setting is idyllic, the small community perched high on a wooded ridgeline above deep river valleys, with birds of prey soaring by and towering monsoon weather systems filling the panoramic horizon. But the real draw is the Tibetans themselves, and the rare chance to interact face to face with one of the world’s great cultural and religious traditions. As things turned out, we spent over a month in McCleod, teaching English to Tibetan refugees who had recently fled Chinese persecution in their homeland and studying Buddhist philosophy under some of the greatest teachers in the world today, including the Dalai Lama himself.

I should state, for the record and those who don’t know me, that I am not a new-age, spiritual pilgrim kind of dude. If the Age of Aquarius ever dawns, I won’t be at the party – I’ll be down the street, eating a steak and drinking Jack Daniels. But although full-moon festivals, séances and astrology aren’t my scene, I am fascinated by religious philosophy, and the 2,500 year old Buddhist tradition in particular. So my first morning in McCleod, I set off down the hill to the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives to attend their daily Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy class.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I got more than I bargained for. The instructor at the library is Geshe Sonam Rinchen, a highly respected Tibetan scholar-monk with over a dozen books and decades of teaching behind him. Ruth Sonam, a highly accomplished scholar in her own right, translates his lectures into English. The lectures themselves were stunningly erudite, as philosophically complex and cogently presented as any academic talk I’ve heard in the West. Geshe’s presence, though, was what made the experience remarkable. Despite his advanced age, his warmth and energy easily fills the room. The next morning, Susannah joined me. We kept going back.

After our morning classes at the library, we spent the days getting to know the community. We befriended a Tibetan family running a hole-in-the-wall café, refugee monks, a lively group of long-term resident expats, and the members of a local band called The Exile Brothers (Himalayan folk and rock fusion, with Rage Against the Machine-inspired lyrics).

In the evenings, we volunteered as English tutors at a school for young refugees. Time and again, we found ourselves amazed at the warmth and good humor of people who have endured imprisonment, torture, and the loss of friends, family and homeland.

At the suggestion of a few friends, we decided to enroll in a ten-day introductory Buddhist meditation course at the nearby Tushita Meditation Center, a place I now affectionately call Buddha Camp. It was, without a doubt, an interesting experience. We spent the ten days in silence, attending a mixture of classes on Buddhist theology and meditation sessions. Not talking for ten days is, in and of itself, an educational experience. It’s amazing how much mental energy and time one wastes blabbing about nothing all day, and you don’t realize it until you shut your yap for a while, as my mother would say. Susannah and I both found the meditation helpful as well.

As I talked with more and more exiled Tibetans, I began to get a feel for the challenges and uncertainties faced by the refugee community. With the Chinese firmly in control and continuing to eradicate Tibetan culture in their homeland, and their leader the Dalai Lama ageing, there is an increasing sense that the movement for a free Tibet is running out of time. After His Holiness leaves the scene, Tibetans will be without a clear leader, and it will be years before the 15th Dalai Lama is old enough to assume the role. Meanwhile, Beijing will be free to increase Chinese settlement in Tibet via the new railroad to Lhasa, and continue its campaign to subsume the Tibetan identity through repression and state-run education. While this seems like a victory for the Chinese, it may lead to disaster for Chinese and Tibetans alike. Younger Tibetans inside the country and in exile are growing increasingly impatient with the Dalai Lama’s commitment to non-violence, and there is fear that once he has passed, there will no longer be anyone in the Tibetan community with enough moral authority to ensure continued restraint. If China doesn’t reach an acceptable agreement with the Dalai Lama in his lifetime, it looks from here as though the result may well be a guerilla war on the roof of the world.