June 16, 2010 - The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, holds a press conference condemning any “violence” conducted by the Sea Shepherd conservation society. Shortly after, he hails his host country India, for maintaining “harmony” for over 1,000 years 1.
When did non-violence become the pervading ideology for Buddhism? Considering the history of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s Gelugpa (“Yellow Hat”) tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism; violence was an effective tool used to spread Buddhism throughout Asia. The title “Dalai Lama” (“Ocean of Wisdom”) itself was given to the Third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso, by the former Mongolian King Altan Khan who made Buddhism Mongolia’s religion and reigned terror throughout China during the Ming Dynasty 2 (not to mention the grandfather of the Fourth Dalai Lama Yonten Gyatso 3).
Ironically enough, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama himself advocated violence with the creation of the guerrilla cadre Chushi Gangdruk during the 1959 Tibetan Uprisings to halt Chinese occupation as well as to escape his own country4. More recently, he’s made great efforts to suppress followers of the saint Dorje Shugden 5, who was used as an oracle for his own escape from Tibet.
Many in the West have looked at the current Dalai Lama with great honor and praise; a messenger of peace and a beacon towards an altruistic, non-violent world. This message is also proclaimed from a somehow non-ego 6 manner surrounded by security personnel from both exiled Tibet and the government of India, 7 in sold-out stadiums across the globe (of course there’s no ego attached when you’re giving a speech to a packed stadium) 8,9,10.
The harm seems to be his ideological persistence towards non-violence, going as far as to say that “Violence is against human nature…” (I suppose he never looked around him) and that he would resign from his position if the uprisings in Lhasa didn’t stop back in July, 2008 11.
Conversely, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has saved thousands of lives through direct actions campaigns (which were ambiguously labeled “violent” by the current Dalai Lama, when not one life has been lost); condemning them publicly in Japan (the country where the illegal poachers are protected), serving as a great disservice to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and other groups whose aim is to stop the suffering and slaughter of endangered marine life. It’s this seduction to such extremes that keeps the everlasting Wheel of Suffering and contradiction to turn. Yet the buck doesn’t stop there.
In a July, 2009 Reuters article, the Dalai Lama expressed the importance of free-market capitalism and the benefits it has on multiculturalism; negating its most implicit violent ramifications (human/non-human exploitation, ecological degradation, cultural extinction, stratification, alienation, etc), adding that “Profit is a fine aim…”12. It’s the position of ideological cohesion of non-secular moral consciousness towards capitalism is what solidifies Mao Zedong’s infamous quote that “religion is poison.” 13 However, it’s not solely religion that is the issue but the ideological construct of non-secularism in compassion towards capitalism (capitalism with a human(e) face).
Nevertheless, the discontent towards the Fourteenth Dalai Lama isn’t solely the fact of an overt moral contradiction (though it is apparent) but more so the misguided agency and location projected as a spiritual figure of Buddhism.
Within Mahayana Buddhism, the emphasis of the teacher is extremely imperative; however, when there is such an internal contradiction, there is also a lack substantial validity to the teachings. In this scenario, the location of agency has been displaced into a self-attached, self-projected ideology that has transitioned into cultural hegemony.
