The Golden Urn: Buddhist Lamas and Chinese State Control

In November 2016, the Dalai Lama went on a pastoral visit to the Buddhist community in Mongolia. While in Ulaanbaatar, His Holiness announced the recent rebirth of the Bogd Jebtsundampa or the Buddhist patriarch of Mongolia. His statement confirmed the revival of a lineage of reincarnated lamas (or tulkus) previously thought to have died out in the early 20th century.

The trip provoked a furious response from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs about Mongolia disrespecting China’s core values. However, Beijing left unmentioned its frustrations over the assertion of the Dalai Lama’s authority for the recognition of an important incarnate lama.

Since the 1990s, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has used its official interpretation of history and its legal system to contest the Dalai Lama’s ultimate authority over Vajrayana Buddhism, which is the branch of the Mahayana faith in the Himalayas, the Mongolian steppes, and the Siberian forest regions. By making this announcement, His Holiness proved the ongoing international reach of his clerical authority. The clash is the latest episode in a quarrel that has been going on for over 250 years between the Chinese state and the Vajrayana Buddhist community about the tulku reincarnation system.

A Reincarnation System for Monastic Authority

The tulku system is a Vajrayana theological doctrine based upon the Buddhist belief in reincarnation. According to Vajrayana Buddhists, a highly advanced lama has the power to direct the “internal energies” that make up his spiritual consciousness into a new being or even several new beings at the time of his death. Advanced lamas acquire this ability through the cultivation of compassion for all living beings and wisdom that pierces through materialism and falsehood.

When at death’s door, the lama leaves “clues” about his expectations for the whereabouts of his next rebirth. To pinpoint the locality, his followers seek guidance by consulting oracles, holding trances, interpreting signs of nature, or drawing lots after the lama’s passing. Once these clues have been assembled, the followers of the lama travel incognito to the locality indicated by the divinations and look for children who fit the prognostications. They interview candidates to see if a child can recognize former possessions or colleagues of the deceased lama or otherwise match the predictions.

Setting aside theology, secular historians contend that this doctrine indigenously arose in 13th century Tibet as a political mechanism to thwart aristocratic clans from asserting authority over monasteries and their property. In this view, the doctrine was meant to prevent a powerful clan from asserting a hereditary right to be the sole source for important reincarnations who held the ultimate authority in richly-endowed monasteries.

In the 14th century, the tulku reincarnation system was adopted by the “Yellow Hat” order of Vajrayana Buddhism, which is the predominant sect among Tibetan Buddhists today. The Yellow Hats, purportedly so named because of the color of the mitre worn by the founder of the order, produced the lineages of the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama, and the Mongolian Buddhist patriarchs.

With time, many Vajrayana monasteries and monastic colleges acquired resident tulkus. Again, secular historians see the growth of tulkus as a reflection of their political prestige. Buddhists attribute the spread of the tulku institution as the spiritual outgrowth of an expanding community of believers.

Historical Origins of a Quarrel: The Manchu Emperor and the Mongolian Patriarchs

The CPC claims the right to approve the recognition of tulkus primarily because of precedents set during the reign of the Manchu Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty (1736-1795 CE). This attempt at “micro-management” of Buddhist affairs began, fittingly enough in light of the recent dispute, in Mongolia.

Qianlong saw the Vajrayana Buddhist clergy in what is today the sovereign state of Mongolia as a potential source of unrest. Since the inception of the institution in the 1630s, the Buddhist patriarchy had become the dominant symbol of unity for the Khalkha, a tribe of Mongolians who lived to the north of the Gobi Desert. While the Khalkha had become the vassals of the Manchus under an alliance concluded in 1691, the patriarchs and the clergy were able to act autonomously in religious matters. At the time of Qianlong’s accession to the throne, Mongolian Buddhism was under the authority of the Second Patriarch, a Mongolian born into the same noble clan as his predecessor, the Great Zanabazar.

The descendants of the Khalkha Mongolian nobles came to resent the burdens imposed upon their estates by the Manchus for their never-ending imperial wars in the border regions. The nobles were obliged to supply soldiers and sell livestock below market prices to support these military campaigns. Unusually severe winters had also increased hardships by 1754. The monetization of the economy through the circulation of silver ingots meant that more Mongolians were falling prey to the depredations of Chinese moneylenders too.

The discontent reached a flashpoint when the half-brother of the Second Patriarch negligently allowed a famous anti-Manchu rebel to escape from his custody in 1755, triggering Qianlong’s doubts about the patriarch’s loyalty. The half-brother was brought to Beijing for a lingering execution, possibly witnessed by the patriarch and another noble named Chinggünjav. This brutal treatment was seen as an affront to the dignity of Mongolian aristocracy. Upset at this treatment and the Manchu burdens on Mongolians, Chinggünjav raised the flag of rebellion against Manchu domination but failed to attract sufficient support from Khalkha Mongolian nobles – even the Second Patriarch failed to endorse the revolt categorically – because high-born families were reluctant in the end to turn off the spigot of stipends, honors, and titles from Beijing. The rebellion was crushed within two years but at considerable cost to the welfare of ordinary Mongolians, who paid a high price as war ravaged their lands and decimated their herds.

In 1758, the Second Patriarch died. It was rumored that Qianlong had issued a secret order to assassinate the patriarch as a remedy for any residual doubts about his loyalty.

The emperor did not let the matter rest with the passing of an inconvenient cleric, however. He took a further step to micromanage the Mongolian clergy and decreed that subsequent rebirths of the Mongolian patriarch must be found in Tibet and born of Tibetan parents. Qianlong justified this interference theologically by claiming that the Mongolian patriarchs were the incarnations of Taranatha, an early 17th century Tibetan religious leader who had supposedly predicted that his future reincarnations would linger in Khalkha Mongolia for only 100 years before “going home” to be reborn in Tibet. More practically, the decree was meant as a political device to drive an ethnic wedge between the Mongolian elites and the head of their Buddhist church.

Mongolians resented this intrusion but were unable to resist it. The Third Patriarch was found in Tibet as the emperor had ordered but was beaten up by his Khalkha attendants en route to Mongolia and then again later by his own teachers. Unsurprisingly, he died young. In the 1770s, the prospective birth of the Fourth Patriarch yielded much speculation about his “return” to Mongolia when a noble woman was found to be with child, but Mongolian hopes were dashed when she gave birth to a daughter. The clergy located the fourth incarnation of the patriarch in Tibet shortly thereafter.

No patriarchs were found in Mongolia again until the Dalai Lama’s announcement in November 2016.

The Golden Urn

Qianlong vigorously revisited the problem of the reincarnation of high lamas and extended his authority in an unprecedented direction in 1792. This time, the consummate micromanager was reacting to unrest in Tibet, a far-flung possession of his empire.

In the late 1780s, the Tibetan government in Lhasa and the ruling Gurkhas in Kathmandu were locked in a trade dispute over the supply of Nepalese silver coins, which were the primary currency in Tibet, and the terms for the sale of Tibetan salt to Nepalese merchants.

At the same time, a quarrel broke out between the members of a Tibetan family that had sired three prominent incarnate lamas, including the Third Panchen Lama and the only incarnate nun in Tibet.

The conflict was over a matter as petty as an inheritance. The Third Panchen Lama had passed away of smallpox while on a diplomatic trip to Beijing. One of his half-brothers, an incarnate lama of a rival Buddhist order, claimed a portion of the estate property. The gravamen of the dispute was whether valuable gifts given by Qianlong to the Panchen Lama were the lama’s personal property or belonged to the estate of his next incarnation. If the former, the half-brother had a right to a pro-rata share of the inheritance. He lost the argument and then fled to Nepal where he sought military assistance from the Gurkhas, who were looking for an excuse to go to war to loot neighboring regions. The lama gave the Gurkhas what they were looking for.

After setting up an alliance with the renegade lama and his cohorts, the Gurkhas escalated the trade dispute. The Gurkhas invaded Tibet twice and looted the monasteries in their path, forcing Qianlong to dispatch a Manchu army at staggering cost to repel the invaders. In the end, the Qing army chased the Gurkhas to within 20 miles of Kathmandu, crushing any possible repeat invasion. The problem of the renegade lama was resolved by his sudden death.

Some 30 years on from the Chinggünjav rebellion, Qianlong must have had an irritating sense of deja vu. A marble pillar still stands in Beijing’s famous Lama Temple bearing Qianlong’s solution for a problem that would not go away. The solution continues to bedevil Sino-Tibetan relations today.

The emperor saw the unrest in Tibet and Mongolia as growing out from intrigues among noble clans intent on producing reincarnate lamas as a way to seize power, prestige, and wealth. After conducting an extensive review of Tibetan scriptures, Qianlong declared that Yellow Hat Buddhism “inside and outside (of China proper) [was] under the supreme rule of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama.” However, the rebirth of incarnate lamas in princely families had become a practice that had degenerated into lucrative hereditary ranks and offices inconsistent with Buddhist principles. He faulted this “evil” and arbitrary practice among elite families as the cause for civil unrest.

As a remedy, he stated that he would send a golden urn to Lhasa along with instructions on how to conduct the search for subsequent rebirths of the Dalai and Panchen Lamas and other high lamas. Qianlong decreed that “whenever a case arises in Tibet of electing a [tulku for the position of] Grand Lama,” the four head clerics of the main temple in Lhasa were to, “in accordance with their custom, enter into a trance and recite the sutras, and all [people concerned] shall write down the names of the designated [tulkus], place them in the golden [urn] and have the [appropriate] sutras read before the Buddha [image in the temple].” The next step in the process went like this:

The Dalai Lama or the Panchen Lama, with the cooperation of the [Manchu amban or representative in Lhasa], shall draw the lot and appoint one person as the [tulku]. Although we cannot eliminate all abuses [by this procedure], it seems to be a great improvement upon the former way of arbitrarily appointing a [reincarnated lama].

While drafting the decree, Qianlong must also have been ruminating about the threat of unrest in Khalkha Mongolia. He ordered another golden urn to be placed in the Lama Temple in Beijing. The Manchu administrators of the Frontiers Office and the ruling lama of the temple would select the patriarch for Mongolia in the same way.

Historical Interpretation and Reality

Despite the CPC’s protestations to the contrary, Qianlong’s decree does not unambiguously stand for the subordination of the Vajrayana clergy to state control. Qianlong acknowledged that the Dalai Lamas and the Panchen Lamas were the “supreme rulers” of Yellow Hat Buddhism wherever it was established, inside or outside China proper. It is more plausible to argue that, as a Confucian ruler and a practicing Buddhist, Qianlong sought to remedy the harm caused by clan disputes rather than establish a superstructure for non-Vajrayana authority to take precedence over the Buddhist clergy in religious matters. 

At the risk of introducing modern Western legal concepts into a vastly different time and place, it seems that Qianlong imposed this final step for the recognition of a reincarnate lama for evidentiary rather than regulatory purposes. Under the decree, the emperor’s representative in Lhasa needed to be present at the conclusion of the ritual as an evidentiary guarantee for transparency and openness in order to prevent intrigues by noble families. Under this interpretation, the amban in Lhasa did not occupy the apex of government authority in the tulku reincarnation system but rather served as an important witness to verify a process conducted under clerical authority. One searches in vain for any indication of Qianlong seeking to establish an “approval authority” (or shenpi jigou) as that term is used in China today to mean a final, binding, and unchallengeable state organ.

While the emperor pompously protested his loving concern for Tibetan Buddhism, the decree reveals Qianlong’s primary anxieties and fears to be over stability in his huge empire. In this sense, the CPC government shares the same interests as its imperial predecessor in seeking to hold together a multi-ethnic state.

Tibetans would have interpreted the golden urn in terms of their own traditions. Specifically, the cho-yon or the priest-patron relationship is a concept initially applied by Tibetans to their relations with a foreign people, namely the Mongols under Kublai Khan during the 13th century. Under the cho-yon relationship, secular rulers supported a monastic community in exchange for religious instruction and honors. The concept had been refined by the Fifth Dalai Lama to mean that the function of any government was to support the spiritual mission of Buddhism but not exercise control over it. In this light, Qianlong’s edict would have been seen as Manchu support for the propagation of the faith.

Throughout the 19th century, Tibetans only occasionally paid attention to the golden urn, which would have been seen as just another imperial gift given in homage to the Buddhist monastic community. While neutral historians have yet to examine the historical record in detail, the golden urn appears to have been used for the recognition of only a total of five Dalai and Panchen Lamas. In each case, it was an adjunct to the traditional Buddhist rituals. From the 1880s until 1995, it mostly gathered dust, presumably locked away in a storage room somewhere in the Potala Palace and perhaps brought out occasionally as a supplemental step in ceremonies to recognize junior tulkus.

For Khalkha Mongolians, the golden urn in Beijing’s Lama Temple might have been more relevant because of their proximity to the Qing capital and the fading but residual alliance with the Manchu throne.

In the 20th century, the golden urn became an irrelevant issue as Vajrayana Buddhism declined. In 1929, the Communist government of Mongolia officially announced the extinction of the lineage of the Mongolian Buddhist patriarch. Thirty years later, the Tibetan theocratic government was abolished after an uprising against the Chinese in Tibet. These events suggested that the golden urns would be relegated to an arcane topic in obscure history books.

The Golden Urn Revival

As the Cultural Revolution raged throughout China in 1970, it would have taken a bold China watcher to predict that in a mere 25 years, the CPC would proudly hail an incarnate lama chosen through the golden urn ritual. But this is what happened at the end of 1995 when the Chinese government announced the discovery of the “soul child” of the reincarnated Panchen Lama.

In the aftermath of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the Dalai Lama elected to go into exile in India while the Tenth Panchen Lama stayed on in China, expressing his support for the CPC. However, within three years, the Panchen Lama began to have doubts about the CPC’s policies in Tibet. He wrote a 70,000-character report to the central government, outlining his views on how the CPC was mishandling Tibetan matters and hoping for a constructive response. He spent the next 20 years under arrest as a counter-revolutionary.

The CPC formally rehabilitated the Panchen Lama in 1982 and restored some of his clerical authority, even though he had returned his vows as a monk, married, and raised a family. When he passed away in 1989 at his monastic seat in Tibet, the question of his succession presented both the opportunity for reconciliation between the CPC and the Dalai Lama as well as the prospect for a renewal of conflict. Sadly, it proved to be the latter.

While there were some tentative attempts at cooperation, the search for the Eleventh Panchen Lama was soon bogged down in disagreements between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, with high lamas living in Tibet caught in the middle. The lamas had relied upon traditional rituals to locate several candidates while covertly updating the Dalai Lama and simultaneously reporting progress to the CPC.

As Beijing and His Holiness could not agree on the ritual to conclude the selection, the Dalai Lama took matters into his own hands. He held a divination, selected a candidate, and unilaterally announced the identity of the Eleventh Panchen Lama to the world in May 1995. In retaliation, CPC officials staged a revival of the golden urn ritual in November 1995 at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa and declared its pre-selected candidate to be the tulku. The highest executive organ of the Chinese government, the State Council, applied its “final seal” on the process and approved the choice one week later. The state-sanctioned Panchen Lama was taken to Beijing to meet President Jiang Zemin the next summer – the lad chosen by the Dalai Lama has never been seen since. At that point, relations between the Dalai Lama and Beijing fell to a post-Maoist nadir from which they have not quite recovered.

Freedom of Religious Belief and State Authority

The 1995 golden urn ritual highlighted the question of state control over religion in China. Since 1954, four versions of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China have granted Chinese citizens the freedom of religious belief, but these guarantees have provided only cold comfort for dissenting members of China’s religious communities. The 1982 Constitution, currently in effect, stipulates that the state protects “normal religious activities” and forbids “foreign domination” of religious affairs. These inchoate constitutional rights were to be gradually defined through regulations promulgated by the State Council and its administrative departments.

As China entered the 21st century, the dispute about the Panchen Lama foreshadowed further clashes over religion, such as Pope John Paul II’s canonization of Roman Catholics martyred during the Boxer Rebellion, the rise of Falun Gong practitioners, and civil unrest among Muslim Uighurs. In response to these events, the State Council overhauled the State’s administrative system for religion and promulgated the 2004 Regulations on Religious Affairs (the “Religious Affairs Regulations”), which apply to all religious organizations. The Religious Affairs Regulations stipulate mandatory approval requirements for places of worship, the distribution of printed religious materials, property ownership by religious organizations, large scale celebrations and festivals, and the appointment and training of clerics. The central government’s State Administration of Religious Affairs (the “SARA”) and its lower level departments were authorized to be an invasive regulatory superstructure for all religious organizations.

Against this administrative backdrop, the next episode in the tulku quarrel began to take shape in 2005. The lamas at the Zagor Monastery in Lhokha Prefecture in Tibet sought the approval of the regional government to search for the Sixth Dezhub Rinpoche, a lower level tulku whose predecessor, a loyal supporter of the CPC, had passed away in 2000. In the absence of any regulatory guidance, the regional government put the request on hold.

The Rule of Law for Reincarnation

The regulatory gap was soon fixed for the tulku reincarnation system. The SARA issued the Measures on the Administration of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas (the “Reincarnation Measures”), which took effect from September 1, 2007. In a unique departure for a Communist state, the Reincarnation Measures set out the framework for mandatory state approval for tulku lineages, using the standard Chinese administrative hierarchy of central, national, and provincial approval authorities whose jurisdiction is triggered by the importance of the matter under regulation.

Under Article 5 of the Reincarnation Measures, each tulku lineage must be approved by the state. Prequalification criteria have to be fulfilled before the start of the approval process. A majority of the monks at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery and its management organization must agree to submit a request for the state to approve the lineage. Further, the lineage must be a part of Tibetan Buddhism and must not have “died out” or otherwise discontinued because the reincarnate lama had not been found previously. The monastery applying for the approval must also be the registered residence for the tulku and have the “ability” to raise and train tulkus in accordance with state directives. Finally, the lineage must not have been banned by a government at the municipal level or higher.

The approval certificate for a specific instance of the tulku lineage that is “relatively important” must be issued by the provincial counterpart of the SARA. The reincarnation of tulkus with “great importance” is approved by the SARA at the national level. The State Council approves “especially important” tulku lineages. In making a determination about the level of importance of a tulku, the state may seek the views of the Buddhist Association of China, which is a governmental organization set up to be a (one-way) bridge to China’s Buddhist communities, conveying state policies and “preferences.” In all circumstances, the state is the final arbiter of the question of the importance of a tulku lineage.

Once the lineage has been approved, a “search guidance” team, consisting of members of the relevant branch of the Buddhist Association and the management organization of the temple, conducts the search for the reincarnate lama. After the candidate has been identified, official recognition as a tulku is subject to an approval issued by the SARA or the State Council, again depending upon the “importance” of the tulku. At the end of the process, an approval certificate is issued to the tulku along with a registration card.

Article 8 of the Reincarnation Measures marks the formal entry of Qianlong’s golden urn into the law books of the officially atheistic People’s Republic. The article holds that the drawing of lots from the golden urn must be used for the recognition of any tulku who had been selected through this method historically. An exemption from the golden urn ritual may be granted subject to an approval by the State Council or the SARA. No further elaboration is given in Article 8, nor is there an enumeration of tulkus who have been “historically” selected through the golden urn. Presumably, the State decides this issue on a case-by-case basis.

Elsewhere in the Reincarnation Measures, there is a clause mirroring the Constitution’s prohibition against foreign domination or interference, an unmistakable allusion to the Dalai Lama. It also holds that the tulku reincarnation system may not be used to revive abolished “feudal prerogatives” (undefined). The absence of definitions in Chinese laws and regulations often signifies that the state reserves the power to adjust the rights and obligations of citizens at a later date in response to actual developments.

Qianlong would have coveted the powers that the CPC arrogated to itself under the Reincarnation Measures. The regulation uses the Chinese term pizhun for the state’s approval of the tulku lineage and each tulku within that lineage. As a long-standing principle articulated in the Chinese Civil Code, an act cannot be legally performed if its performance requires the fulfilment of qualifying criteria, which, in this case, is the issuance of a mandatory and discretionary state approval. The Reincarnation Measures also expand State authority beyond the “Grand Lamas” mentioned in Qianlong’s decree. It implies that all tulkus are subject to the state’s discretionary approval authority, marking a level of state involvement in monastic affairs beyond Qianlong’s wildest dreams.

The non-legal Chinese terminology of the Reincarnation Measures is seeped with ethnic bias that shows the persistent cultural gap between Chinese and Tibetans. A young tulku is called a “soul child” or ling tong. By using the Chinese term ling, the regulation alludes to the concept of a permanent individual soul, which is alien to Buddhist beliefs. Elsewhere in the Reincarnation Measures, tulkus are referred to as “living Buddhas” or huo fo. This term implies that each tulku is a reincarnation of the historical Buddha, or a simplistic reincarnate “god,” another concept that has no basis in Buddhism. The choice of language evinces misconceptions that point to a profound gap in empathy and understanding.

Because of draconian micromanagement by the state, Tibet erupted in widespread protests in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As a reaction to rising unrest, the SARA issued a bundle of new regulations in 2010 for state control over all aspects of a functioning Vajrayana monastery. Under the regulations, the State takes control of the management and registration of monasteries, the appointment of training personnel, and the teaching methods and materials for clerics. Most controversially for resident monks, these regulations formalized an invasive demand for “patriotic education” sessions, taught by communist cadres with no empathetic understanding of Buddhism or even Tibetan language skills. Instead, the lectures consisted of dated Marxist theory that affronts Vajrayana principles.

The Golden Urn Revival: Part II

With the Reincarnation Measures and other regulations in hand, the state turned its attention back to the application for the search for the Sixth Tulku Dezhub. The lamas of Zagor Monastery enlisted the assistance of the state-sanctioned Panchen Lama, who conducted a divination ritual to determine where the lamas should look for the tulku. Five candidates were found, and through further divination, they were winnowed down to two. The SARA granted its permission to conduct the golden urn ceremony in July 2010 under the supervision of the Panchen Lama and the regional government. Tonsure and enthronement ceremonies for the tulku followed rapidly.

The CPC had pressed into an area never envisaged by Qianlong, who had ordered the golden urn to be used for the selection of “grand lamas” (unless the CPC saw the Fifth Tulku’s sycophancy as an attribute of greatness). Predictably, the State’s choice for the Sixth Tulku Dezhub was rejected by Tibetan Buddhist organizations in exile while Tibetan lamas within China declared that the ceremonies complied with Chinese law and Tibetan tradition. The monastic spokesmen in China were at pains to point out the golden urn process was handed down by Qianlong and not the Chinese communists, perhaps in a self-conscious admission of their own moral quandary.

Most importantly, the timing of the golden urn ceremony for the Sixth Tulku Dezhub was meant to send a pointed message. It was conducted two days before the 75th birthday of His Holiness. The ritual served both as a stern reminder and a dress rehearsal for what the CPC plans to do once the Dalai Lama passes.

Resistance and Unrest

The symbolic act of the state using the golden urn failed to coax the Tibetan clergy and laity to acquiesce to Chinese control. Self-immolations by protesting monks and nuns continued to surge.

In 2012, the Politburo elected to double-down forcefully on Tibet and endorsed a recommendation from the Ministry of Public Security for the installation of party cadres in each Vajrayana monastery. This replaced the so-called “democratic management organization system” that had been, in theory, applied to Buddhist monasteries since 1963. The former system provided for monastic residents to supervise their affairs, a principle that often devolved into fiction. Instead, the state physically placed cadres, who, by law, must be atheists, into the management of each monastery while the “patriotic education” classes were extended to ten hours a day for six days each week. The intensified classes continued to be taught by ersatz religious experts from the SARA whose interpretation of Vajrayana Buddhism was deeply offensive to the monks.

By 2014, the Chinese press was carrying articles on incidents of corruption in the tulku reincarnation process and the prevalence of swindlers or “fake Living Buddhas” defrauding the faithful. There was also much applause for the tulku approval process by the State, the issuance of official reincarnate lama identification cards, and even the online registry for all “official” tulkus while denunciations of the “Dalai Lama clique” continued unabated. By 2015, over 1,300 tulkus had been approved, but in May of that year, the Eleventh Panchen Lama suggested that the Vajrayana community was troubled by the lack of a sufficient intake of monks to cater to its spiritual needs. One wonders whether the state-sanctioned Panchen Lama was implicitly criticising the disturbances caused by the patriotic education sessions or other state mismanagement.

When the Dalai Lama visited Mongolia in November 2016 and confirmed, as the “final seal” of authority, the rebirth of the Mongolian Patriarch, Beijing responded with threats. The government of Mongolia caved into the pressure and promised not to permit another visit by His Holiness. This has not been enough to pacify Beijing’s experts completely. In February 2017, the Chinese press continued to report critical comments by Chinese academics about the Dalai Lama’s visit while also holding out a carrot, namely the possibility of financial support to help Mongolia meet its $580 million bond payment obligations on March 21, 2017.

State Policy Without Empathy

While one would expect an ardent secular materialist in China to have no truck with “religious mumbo-jumbo,” the Reincarnation Measures show that the CPC has tacitly acknowledged the geopolitical reality that it cannot govern Tibet without the Vajrayana hierarchy and its tulku reincarnation system.

However, as discussed in John Powers’ recent book, The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism, the State’s severe bias is seen time and again in the pronouncements of the cadres in charge of religious affairs. The antagonistic policy underlying Chinese law ensures resentment and resistance by Tibetans and other Vajrayana Buddhists.

As an illustration of the state’s antagonism, Ye Xiaowen, the former head of the SARA and the overseer for the Eleventh Panchen Lama’s 1995 recognition ceremony, frequently articulates official policy to state media. When once asked how he, as an atheist, could regulate religion in China, Ye replied, "In China, the director of sports does not play sports; the director of tobacco does not smoke; and the director of religious affairs does not believe in any religion.” He appeared to be unaware of the false equivalence between a sense of the sacred and an intramural varsity football match or a pack of Lucky Strikes.

Other observations by Ye reenforce the official lack of empathy for Tibetan Buddhism through his references to the pseudoscience of a dogmatically archaic Marxist historicism: “The future of religion in China is more cultural, moral, and ethical than holy and spiritual.” When speaking specifically about Vajrayana Buddhism and the tulku reincarnation system, Ye again showed an ethnic Han bias that fails to be conducive to a mutually respectful relationship with Tibetans:

The problem is the whole doctrine has been magnified and Tibetanized, and the Living Buddhas’ status have been exalted….The existence of Living Buddhas is just a “preliminary stage”; the reincarnation system will eventually disappear and enter a stage of the divine much like other religions.

Left unsaid is why a Tibetan Buddhist should not feel threatened or insulted by Ye’s forecast and its implication about the state’s long term objectives.

The current head of the SARA, Wang Zuo’an, expresses an even more alarming view based on China’s current cold war mentality against religious belief. Last year, Wang urged that religion in China should be “Sinicized” to avoid attempts by hostile foreign forces to alter China’s ideology and political system. This confrontational perspective postulates faith to be an ideological and nationalist battlefield devoid of spirituality. Moreover, to my view, the forcible Sinification of a religious tradition is about as rational as promoting “Sinicized” science. The suggestion to tie religion to a nation-state also ought to remind Wang of the unintended consequences of emperor worship during China’s unhappy experiences with Japan in the last century. Nationalistic religion is “fake” religion that fails to foster spirituality.

Empathy for China’s Legitimate Concerns and Common Ground

It is wrong to dismiss the CPC’s legitimate concerns about its national security and sovereignty, but the harsh views of high-ranking SARA officials are counterproductive to their purpose and exaggerate the “threat” posed to China.

Foreign powers did once pursue intrigues in Tibet in an attempt to destabilize the newly established People’s Republic. In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States used its operatives in the Central Intelligence Agency to recruit, train, and equip Kham guerrilla fighters, parachuting them into Tibet to gather intelligence and launch violent attacks against the PLA. The American operatives initially relied upon the support of the exiled older brother of His Holiness, who was an important “asset” for covert programs that were reportedly not disclosed to His Holiness until after his flight to India. This is uncannily reminiscent of why Qianlong had cause to doubt the bona fides of the Second Mongolian Patriarch. While Washington pursued these operations for a “nuisance value” which never posed a serious threat to Chinese control over Tibet, the affairs contributed to the civil unrest leading up to and after His Holiness’ flight along with a hardening of Chinese policies in Tibet. These past affronts make the CPC’s skepticism about the Dalai Lama’s ulterior motives seem less misguided. Unsurprisingly, the CPC continues to turn an overly suspicious eye to donations by foreign powers to the Central Administration of Tibet in Dharamsala despite His Holiness’ disavowal of hostile subterfuge.

The Nyemo Incident of 1969 also illustrates what the Chinese Constitution may seek to avoid by only permitting religious activities that are “normal.” The incident occurred during the excesses of the Cultural Revolution when a mentally unstable nun declared herself to be an incarnation of a local deity. As her health declined, she led hundreds of villagers in mob violence, beating, maiming, and murdering local officials and PLA soldiers. What is often left unsaid, by all sides in Tibetan polemics, is that such an egregious act of brutality may have come about because of domestic unrest fueled through the combined effect of short-sighted CPC policies and geopolitical Cold War interference in Chinese affairs.

The CPC’s legitimate concerns also extend to the fraudulent misuse of the tulku system for personal gain, as witnessed recently by the reports of scams committed by a tulku-impersonator with “movie-star looks.” What the CPC forgets is that its atheist administrators are no less prone to abuse the system for personal gain than religious swindlers seeking to defraud the faithful. It is a cutting irony that the SARA functionaries fail to recognize that His Holiness is an ally in the battles against fraud, intrigue, and ignorance because of his promotion of a modernized form of Vajrayana Buddhism that rejects magic ritual in favor of science, rationality, and non-violence.

The CPC appears to believe that time is on its side because with the passing of the current Dalai Lama, it will be able to select and groom a candidate who will pacify Tibet. In truth, time is working against the CPC for meaningful reconciliation with the Dalai Lama, which is the only way that Tibetans will come to accept Chinese control. The alternative is for the CPC to carry on with current policies, which means to continue flooding Tibet with ethnic Han migrants and micromanaging religion and culture in order to “Sinicize” Tibet. In other words, since the CPC stubbornly insists upon treating its Tibetan problem as a nail to be hammered in forcefully, CPC policies all but guarantee that Tibetan civil unrest will continue to plague the Chinese government long after the current Dalai Lama is off the scene.

Vajrayana Buddhism as an International Religion

The CPC is also blind to another significant geopolitical reality that was made evident during His Holiness’ exercise of cross-border clerical authority in Mongolia. “Tibetan” Buddhism is not an exotic religion confined solely to a remote region in the Himalayas. It is a global faith that has been brought into the mainstream of the world’s religions primarily through a Vajrayana renaissance led by His Holiness in exile. His charisma and intellect, and the appeal of Buddhist spiritual values, have charmed the world beyond Asia – can one imagine the youthful crowds at Glastonbury singing “Happy Birthday” to Xi Jinping (or to any other world leader) as they did for His Holiness in 2015? Despite the CPC’s grave assertions of his clandestine capabilities, His Holiness has achieved global recognition through empathy, persuasion, and his irrepressible cheerfulness.

In the future, the CPC is likely to face rising international criticism because it has not been able to move beyond perceiving Vajrayana Buddhism as a Westphalian domestic matter. When the last Mongolian Buddhist Patriarch passed away in 2012, Beijing warned Mongolia against cooperating with the Dalai Lama for the recognition of the tulku’s successor. This demand was as unacceptable to Mongolian sentiments then as it is now, and it failed to achieve its objective.

And what of Vajrayana Buddhism in the non-Chinese Himalayan regions, Siberia, and the Volga delta? These communities also look to the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader and will reject any CPC-sanctioned successor. Moreover, as Vajrayana Buddhism spread thought the world during the past six decades, it is now a religious phenomenon in advanced countries where it was previously unknown outside academic circles. Certainly, these believers will not “fall in line” behind Chinese law and policy, and they are bound to petition their politicians not to do so.

Time is running out for the CPC because His Holiness’ influence will not end with his corporeal existence. The current dispute over the leadership of Vajrayana Buddhism will be surely reborn in the future if the CPC cannot come to a compromise now.