I never thought of the Dalai Lama as being “relentless,” but Newsweek thinks he is:
The Dalai Lama long ago perfected a similar performance. He invariably describes himself as a “simple Buddhist monk”. But in his saintly simplicity he has not only survived more than 50 years of exile but has done more than any other individual to establish the cause of Tibetan freedom – whether independence from China or merely autonomy – in the outside world. He has also done more than any other Buddhist to make the Buddha Dharma, the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, accessible to non-Buddhists, trailblazing a 30-year collaboration with scientists on the effects of meditation.
Despite being increasingly restricted in the countries he can visit and the dignitaries he can meet on account of China’s growing diplomatic muscle, he has played a Moses-like role in holding his scattered people together, steering them towards a functioning democracy for the first time in their history. Tibetan Buddhists are divided between four main schools; their interludes of unity over the millennium since they were ruled by a series of great kings have been rare. If they are now more united than they have been for a millennium, despite the theft of their land and the insults of the hostile group demonstrating in Rome, the steely guidance of Tenzin Gyatso must take the lion’s share of the credit.
This is all the more remarkable because the sources of the Dalai Lama’s legitimacy are pretty tenuous. With Pope Francis it’s quite simple. He is the reigning monarch of Vatican state, the bishop of Rome and the latest successor to the throne of St Peter’s. He attained that position by democratic election in the conclave of his fellow cardinals, guided, the devout believe, by the Holy Spirit.
The Dalai Lama, by contrast, is the king of nothing. He is a high monk (or ‘lama’) in the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is also the acknowledged successor to the 13th Dalai Lama, who tried and failed to unify and modernise the Tibetan state and who died in 1933. Three of the Dalai Lamas, including the present one, have staked a claim to being the unifying religious kings of Tibet. But the claim has always been open to challenge because Tibet never became a fully-fledged nation-state.
