The Dalai Lama finished his prayers in the Norbulingka palace, put down his saffron robes and donned
a black army coat.
The top leader of Tibetan Buddhism put a rifle on his shoulder and went out into the street.
It was ten o'clock at night on March 17, 1959 and the Chinese occupation of Tibet was complete.
Thousands of monks executed, temples looted, bombs destroyed the holy city of Lhasa.
Dressed as a soldier, it took him two weeks to cross the Himalayas and find refuge in India.
He was twenty-five years old
and told his followers that the Nechung oracle had pointed out the escape route for him.
More than a hundred thousand Tibetans would follow him on foot in the following months.
When it was discovered that the secret map of that leak was operated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency,
the Dalai Lama had become one of the most influential people on the planet.
The Tibetan government in exile was installed at the end of 1959 in the city of Dharamsala, a mountainous area in northern India.
From there the Dalai Lama led the peaceful uprising against
the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
His preaching against violence dazzled the West.
He toured the world teaching –in stadiums of fifteen thousand people– how
the renunciation of desire and meditation
were the way to avoid suffering.
In 1989 he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
He became a regular at the White House and was revered by Hollywood stars.
He opened the dialogue with the Catholic Church and with science.
His wire-framed glasses, thin lips, and abrupt smile became modern symbols of Buddhism.
His figure traced a parabola so fantastic that it hid the cracks.
Until it blew up a few weeks ago.
The life of the Dalai Lama,
from holiness to scandal
The holy child.
Photograph dated in the early '40s.
The Dalai Lama (from the Mongolian word Dalai, "ocean", and from the Tibetan lama, "reincarnated teacher" or "guru") is the title obtained by the head of the Central Tibetan Administration and the spiritual leader of Lamaism or Tibetan Buddhism. .
He defines the master who has achieved partial or total control at death over the form of his reincarnation and the knowledge of the place of his new birth.
The current Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso, born on July 6, 1935, 87 years ago.
Photo: AFP
The Dalai Lama rests with warriors who protected him on his incredible flight of the red backs.
Sixth from the left, dressed in a special suit, the Dalai Lama fled the holy capital of Lhasa on the night of March 17, 1959, when the Chinese opened fire.
At first his personal guards protected him, but they were soon joined by his squad of loyal Khamba tribesmen.
Some carried submachine guns and others flint rifles with bayonets.
The Dalai Lama arrived in the free zone of India on March 31 of that year.
Photo: AFP
Picture taken on April 11, 1959. A Chinese military officer addresses Tibetans, in front of the Potala Palace (former home of the Dalai Lama) in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet after a failed armed uprising against the Chinese.
Tibetans revolted against Chinese rule on March 10, 1959, in a bloody uprising that led to the exile of the Dalai Lama.
Photo: AFP
Throughout the 20th century it moved from political conflicts to global show business.
Hollywood embraced him as a celebrity.
It made him a global emperor of serenity and peace.
But without laurels or titles.
Just as in the photo he appears together with Richard Gere, the heartthrob of the '80s, there are an infinite number of situations of this type in which the Dalai Lama is shown surrounded by celebrities and in circles of power.
PHOTO: AFP / Henny Ray ABRAMS
The Dalai Lama in Argentina.
He visited leading figures in politics and entertainment.
In the photo, together with the diva Susana Giménez.
Throughout his life, the highest authority of Buddhism knew how to lend himself to the media show without brakes.
Susana interviewed the Dalai in 2011. She defined him as "my favorite Buddha".
PHOTO: CLARÍN ARCHIVE
Another of the Dalai Lama's visits to Argentina.
In April 1999, the spiritual and political leader met with who was then a rising politician, fully launched to achieve the presidency of the country: the mayor of the City of Buenos Aires, Fernando De La Rúa.
They walked hand in hand through official salons together.
PHOTO: CLARÍN ARCHIVE
Tensions with China.
The Dalai Lama and the former president of the United States maintained a cordial, historic relationship.
Several times the former president asked the Chinese government to allow the Tibetan leader to re-enter the country from which he had to flee in 1959. He came to decorate him in 2007 with the highest distinction awarded by the American Government, the Gold Medal of the Capitol.
They have birthdays on the same day.
Photo: REUTERS/LARRY DOWNING
The Dalai Lama with the Pope, John Paul II.
They last saw each other in 2003 at the Holy See.
A courtesy dress, brief and "for peace", as defined by the spokespersons.
On December 10, 1989, the Dalai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his constant resistance to the use of violence in the struggle of his people to regain freedom", making known his point of view regarding the Conflict of the Tibet and the situation in your country.
Photo: AFP
The gesture of scandal.
Last week the Dalai Lama entered the global scandal scene.
Some associate it with a theme of senility.
Apologies are not enough.
He asked a child to "suck his tongue" and it shocked the entire planet.
"His Holiness of him wishes to apologize to the child and his family, as well as to his many friends around the world, for any pain that his words may have caused," according to a statement posted on the official Twitter account. of the.
The holy man in the eye of the storm
Photo: CAPTURE
The images that disturb the world happened on February 28 of this year: the Dalai Lama takes a child and kisses him on the mouth.
He then pulls his tongue out of him and asks the boy to suck on it.
He is 87 years old and around him the monks and the public laugh.
He holds the child against his chest and is silent, as if he wanted to transfer a part of his knowledge to her.
The international community accuses him of child abuse and on the Dalai Lama's Twitter account – with more than 19 million followers – they respond with a brief apology message that minimizes the facts.
Silence is the symptom of the unknown: who really is the Dalai Lama?
Lhamo Dhondup was born on July 6, 1935 in Taktser, a village in northern Tibet: the highest and most extensive plateau in the world.
A frozen territory at 4,900 meters above sea level, which grows behind the Himalayas and since the 15th century has been ruled by political and spiritual leaders known as the Dalai Lama: "
the ocean of wisdom"
.
They are considered the reincarnation of the Buddha, the man who showed the path to enlightenment.
Lhamo Dhondup was sought after through the dreams of a monk, who saw him in a small blue-roofed house.
When a Lama dies, it is the monks who assist him who must find the route to the next one in dreams.
When they found him, Lhamo was two years old.
From then on he was called Tenzin Gyatso: the 14th Dalai Lama.
“They did tests on me.
They showed me objects and I had to choose.
We were three children but one of them died.
The objects they showed us were from the last Dalai Lama.
There were books and cups.
And you can see that I chose well, ”Gyatso said with a laugh in one of the many interviews he gave to the
BBC
.
If there is any record of that search – photos, filming – it has never been known.
Gyatso was taken to a palace with a thousand rooms and trained to lead Tibet.
He instructed in logic, Buddhist philosophy, medicine, poetry, and astrology.
He made retreats in smoky rooms where the rats drank from the bowls that contained the water offered to the gods.
His mission was to find compassion and teach it to his people.
When he was fifteen years old, he assumed political power as Head of State of Tibet and spiritual leader of Lamaism, the Buddhist stream that grows from the Himalayas.
It was 1950 and China was beginning its military occupation of Tibet: controlling that gateway to the East was another silent detonation of the Cold War.
The Dalai Lama held peace negotiations with Mao Tse Tung for nearly a decade.
Until in 1959 the largest Tibetan uprising was massacred by the Chinese army and the Dalai Lama escaped to India.
“Our strength, our power, is based on the truth.
The power of China is based on weapons, ”the Lama would say a long time later, when he would assure that a million Tibetans were murdered by the Chinese government.
"In the short term weapons are decisive, but in the long term the truth is more important."
In Dharamsala, where he found refuge, the history of Tibetan Buddhism was going to go wrong.
For the first time, a Dalai Lama had to rule outside the city of Lhasa, the "Land of the Gods", which over the years of Chinese occupation became known as "
the largest brothel in Asia".
From there, the Lama turned his eyes to the West.
He traveled to Italy, Russia, Japan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, among dozens of other countries.
He met Pope Paul VI in the Vatican, then John Paul II in New Delhi.
"Everyone knows my principles: I am non-violent, I believe that violence is like suicide";
“All religions have the same message of love, of self-discipline.
My commitment is to achieve harmony between religions”;
"Whatever you do with us, never speak ill of the Chinese," he said in his lectures.
On December 10, 1989, he arrived in Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize "for his constant resistance to the use of violence in his people's struggle to regain freedom."
Pacifism can also become a path to fame
.
In 1997, director Jean-Jacques Annaud released his film Seven Years in Tibet, in which Brad Pitt plays Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, one of the men closest to the Dalai Lama.
That same year, Martin Scorsese shows him as a devoted fighter from Tibet in his film Kundun.
The Dalai Lama's preaching on forgiveness is broadcast by Richard Gere and he takes photos with Michael Jackson, visits Nelson Mandela and is received by George HW
Bush and then Bill Clinton in the White House.
But that rockstar
conversion
of spirituality imploded among declassified documents.
In the late 1990s, the US government revealed that it had covertly supported the Tibetan resistance in the 1950s through the CIA.
They allocated a million and a half dollars a year with the aim of weakening the Chinese army and studying their strategies.
They had engineered the Dalai Lama's escape to India and had since paid him a salary of $180,000.
In an interview with
The New York Times
on October 2, 1998, the Dalai Lama's administration acknowledged that he received this money and clarified that “the grant for the Dalai Lama was used to establish offices in Geneva and New York and to international lobbying. ”.
But there were no such offices in Geneva and New York.
In the eyes of the world, the Lama appeared as a CIA cog.
A few years later, the German weekly Stern published a report detailing that the mountaineer Heinrich Harrer –the Lama's loyal friend and later spreader of Buddhism in the West– had been a member of the Nazi army and collaborated with the SS in the search for the origin of the Aryan race, which they believed could be found in Tibet.
"Back then there was not the slightest indication that the Nazis would become the biggest criminal organization of all time," Harrer said when he acknowledged the facts and withdrew from social life. "However, I believe that what happened with the SS was one of the mistakes of my life, perhaps the biggest”.
The Dalai Lama never spoke about Heinrich Harrer.
On November 12, 2005, battered by criticism but upheld by the White House, the Dalai Lama appeared at the annual meeting of the
Society for Neuroscience
.
He said in his speech: “Buddhism and modern science share the same deep mistrust of any absolute notion, conceived as a transcendental being, or an eternal and unchanging principle like the soul.
They prefer to explain the evolution and appearance of the cosmos and of life as a consequence of the complex interaction between the natural laws of causes and effects.
Science became a new ally to spread his ideas, but his people were further and further away.
With the arrival of the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, Tibet rose up against China and in Lhasa the resistance set fire to cars and supermarkets.
The Chinese army responded with machine gun fire and there were at least fifteen deaths.
"The protests are a sign of the deep resentment that the Tibetan people have against the current government," said the Dalai Lama at the time, accused by the Chinese government of being the "brain" of the revolt.
But then the Lama pointed in the opposite direction: “I support those games.
I am not against China.
If the violence gets out of control, my only option is to resign."
That position would push him, in March 2011, to delegate the political power of Tibet to a leader elected by the people.
For the first time in history, the Dalai Lama was now occupying only a religious position.
“We are suffering from exile a cultural genocide.
But I do not seek independence or separation from China, but total autonomy to preserve Tibetan culture and Buddhist spirituality", declared in those years and an increasingly large group of Tibetans was accused of abandoning the fight for independence from China. Tibet.
The Lama attended to other problems
.
"India should not accept pressure from developed nations who want it to get rid of its nuclear weapons," he said. "India is no longer an underdeveloped country and should have the same access to nuclear weapons as developed countries."
Peace seemed to be relegated to other times.
In September 2018, during one of her visits to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, a group of women handed her a letter denouncing five
Buddhist teachers for sexual abuse.
Among them was Sogyal Rinpoche, author of the famous Tibetan Book of Life and Death.
“It's not new to me;
I already knew all these things ”, the Lama replied and confessed that since 1992 he had received letters with these denunciations.
And he only added: "They should make the identity of their aggressor public, so that the teachers are worried about being humiliated."
He had recently declared, in one of his classic BBC interviews
,
that "Europe belongs to the Europeans" and that the refugees should return "to rebuild their own country."
In one of his last global appearances, the Dalai Lama agreed to star in a documentary alongside cleric and pacifist Desmond Tutu, a key figure in the fight against apartheid, released on Netflix in 2021. Mission: Joy: Finding happiness in difficult times is a space where he redisplays the phrases with which he captivated the world.
Near the end, the Dalai Lama tells his fellow traveler: "I feel lucky to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it."
Today on his official page he is shown exercising on a treadmill, clinging to the arms of the machine.
A second escape from the Dalai Lama, this time, does not seem possible.
GS