Why does China care who the next Dalai Lama is?

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0:39Professor:It has gone down like a bucket of sick. I kind of thought that decades of experience meant that you weren't swallowing this vapid... Oh, blimey! Hello and welcome to Electoral Dysfunction with me, Beth Rigby. Me, Ruth Davidson. Me, Harriet Harman. And me, Jess Phillips. Electoral Dysfunction, wherever you get your podcasts. How do you pass on a 600-year-old role as the Dalai Lama? And why does the Chinese Communist Party want to decide who takes that on? I'm Matt Barbette with the Sky News Daily. In just a moment. Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake.

1:22Professor:I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice? I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at carvana.com. The most excruciating period of politics that I can ever remember. I have to say, as a government minister, never quite sure what the Cabinet Office did, but just hold meetings. It has gone down like a bucket of sick. I kind of thought that decades of experience meant that you weren't swallowing this vapid...

2:00Oh, blimey!

2:01Professor:Hello and welcome to Electoral Dysfunction with me, Beth Rigby. Me, Ruth Davidson. Me, Harriet Harman. And me, Jess Phillips. Electoral Dysfunction, wherever you get your podcasts.

2:14Professor:The spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is turning 90 years old and has confirmed this week after years of uncertainty that yes, he will have a successor after he dies. He could have chosen to end the line instead.

2:33Professor:Now, traditionally, Dalai Lamas are reincarnated after they die. Monks search, select and then school a successor who is usually a child. The current Dalai Lama was recognised at just the age of two, so he's been in the job a very long time. He and an estimated 150 ,000 Tibetans now live in exile after China annexed Tibet over 70 years ago. He fled to India at the end of the 50s. And that makes who the next Dalai Lama is a real concern of China's.

3:09Professor:Professor Robert Barnett founded the Modern Tibetan Studies Programme at Columbia University in New York, which he directed for 18 years. He's now also based at SOAS in London and has written lots of books on Tibet and its politics and met the Dalai Lama several times.

3:26Matt Barbett:Well, there are sort of two sides to him, and they're both very intriguing. One is he's a playful person. He's like everyone's favourite uncle. He wants to joke and he likes to tease you and he likes to laugh. Those are the first things you notice when you meet him. For example, one of the times that I met him, somebody, unfortunately for me, had told him that I was good at making chicken noises. And after that, every time I met him for some years, he would make me do imitation chicken noises and then roll around in laughter. And he'd often have me do it in public in front of lots of people. He likes that kind of playfulness.

4:06Matt Barbett:But the other side of him, which is also very familiar to Tibetans, because it's a side we see more when he's speaking to Tibetans in Tibetan, is very stern. It's a serious leadership style, a person who is really thinking intensely about what are his responsibilities, what should he be telling his people, what should he be asking them to do. And then there's a third side, which is, I think, perhaps the most remarkable one. He's an extraordinarily good listener. when you talk to him you feel this person's really interested in what i'm saying even if i'm a complete nobody you know if you're a tourist who's being picked up off the street he really wants to know what you think and that's a very unusual quality actually and a very impressive

4:55Professor:one trying to be a good listener myself here robert i don't think i'm going to make you do the chicken impressions though we'll save those for another time maybe for some extras on the podcast we're thankful could you quickly explain to us uh what the process is for the rebirth of the dalai lama i mean due to his his position as a spiritual leader he can choose if he's reborn or

5:19Matt Barbett:not yes well buddhism not just tibetan buddhism it imagines us people and animals and birds and things. That's basically a consciousness, a mind that is beset by desires and anger and greed and habits. And that mind, they theorize, when its current form, its current body is exhausted, it dies, the mind craves to take form again, and it finds another form. Now, and so you and I will turn up as elephants or hamsters or snails or, you know, sky...

5:54Professor:Or chickens.

5:55Matt Barbett:Sky-tip-e chickens, yes. But llamas are a bit different. In the Tibetan theory, a lama has less attachments, less habits, and doesn't get so driven by desire. So they don't have to turn up in a body again, unless their followers request them to. So this is what's different about Tibetan Buddhism. It says the followers can pray for a previous lama after he's died to return, and he will return because of his vows to help humans in the form that's most useful for those followers, probably as a person. And the other thing about that lama when he returns is that some of his previous qualities can be retained in the new form.

6:36Professor:let's just dig into that for a second because tenzin gyatso which is a name he chose by the way didn't he as his lama dalai lama name effectively he's the 14th dalai lama so there's a lineage of reincarnation there that well will now continue he thinks yes this is the news that

6:55Matt Barbett:has been made public in the last few days the dalai lama has said that his lineage will continue He's done it in a particularly interesting way. From a Tibetan Buddhist point of view, he said he conducted a survey over the last year and a half of Buddhist communities in India, in Tibet, around the world, in Mongolia, other countries. And those communities sent him requests for him to return. So that's, in a way, a ceremonial, traditional Buddhist statement of the lama is being asked to return by the followers. But of course, we live in a world, a modern TikTok world, where it has another meaning, a more political one, which is that's a signal to China that the Dalai Lama is achieving his legitimacy on consent, on popular consultation.

7:44Matt Barbett:We could almost call it democratic rather than through force or just relying on tradition and authority. So China can't claim any kind of legitimacy that's really based on consent, at least not in Tibet. So there's some political signaling going on there. But that's the Dalai Lama's great strength. It can continually remind China he has a stronger basis of legitimacy than they do.

8:08Professor:We will come back to the Chinese side of things, Robert, in a second. But just a couple more questions on the reincarnation aspects of this. the current Dalai Lama was named as the Dalai Lama when he was two years old so does that mean there's a child out there now who could potentially be the next Dalai Lama do we know who they might be or does all that have to wait until the current one dies and is then reincarnated yes everything

8:37Matt Barbett:has to wait so in the theory of reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism when you when you die your consciousness goes into what's called a bardo, an intermediate state, for 49 days when it doesn't know where it's going to end up. At the end of those 49 days, it takes form. If you're going to take form as a human, you're going to have another nine months before you're born. If you are going to turn up, as I'm sure you might, as an elephant, it might be nine years before you emerge. But that's a long process, and that's one of the big weaknesses of the reincarnation system. There's going to be a gap after the death of this lama before a child is identified and then educated and brought up.

9:22Matt Barbett:A gap of four or five years before they find the child very often and another 15 or 20 years while that child grows up.

9:29Professor:So is that a point of weakness then for Tibetan Buddhism? That's what we would call in the West an interregnum, that period where there is a lack of leadership.

9:37Matt Barbett:Politically, that's a disaster for a country. If your country is ruled by reincarnation, as Tibet was for the last 400 or 500 years, you're going to have these interregnums. And that's a period when there has to be a regency. Another person is appointed to rule the country while you're growing up or you're being looked for. And that is probably the main reason why Tibet is part of China today. It wasn't a strong country during those gap years when it was ruled by regents. And regents are very weak rulers. There are some allegations that historically in the 18th, 19th century, some regents in Tibet may have even murdered young Dalai Lamas before they grew up so that they could keep their positions as regents.

10:21Matt Barbett:But anyway, it seems to be one reason why Tibet was not able to modernize fast enough to become a powerful state before the Chinese decided to take Tibet over in 1950.

10:32Professor:Out of the 14 Dalai Lamas we've had thus far, they haven't all been found born in Tibet. A couple have been from outside Tibet, Mongolia being one of those places. How important, Robert, is it that the next Dalai Lama is Tibetan, given that we've already alluded to the fact that it's under Chinese control?

10:53Matt Barbett:I think it doesn't matter very much in religious terms. Tibetans are really looking to see, does that person have accomplishments? Is he an inspiring person? does he have mystical abilities? They don't mind what nationality is. But politically, there's a very different story. And so here we have a system where the Dalai Lama was the head of the state. He was the monarch of Tibet for those 400 years. And so that matters a lot to politicians, and particularly to Chinese politicians. They don't want a potential claimant to leadership, or even a person who has major charisma, a major public following, they don't want the risk of a charismatic alternative leader appearing in another country where they can't control that person.

11:44Matt Barbett:So the Chinese communists have introduced this vast apparatus of largely imaginary laws that say the Dalai Lama has to be reborn inside China.

11:56Professor:Because the Dalai Lama, who's turning 90, he fled China at the end of the 50s, didn't he, and has been exiled in India ever since. There is a precedent, though, as to how China acts when things change within Tibetan Buddhism. And that is in the form of the Panchem Lama, the second most important individual in Tibetan Buddhism.

12:21Matt Barbett:What's happened historically is in the early 1950s, when China annexed Tibet, it sent its military, 30 ,000 soldiers into Tibet. They were able to defeat the Tibetan army and they were able to capture Tibet. The Chinese were very respectful to the Dalai Lama. They said he could keep his position, keep his powers, and the monasteries could stay open. But that changed after several years. there was an uprising against them by Tibetans. And that's failure of that uprising is what led the Dalai Lama to flee to India, where he still is. And what you just described, this issue over the Panchen Lama, the second most prominent of Tibetan Lamas remaining in Tibet, it marked the switch from a relatively somewhat tolerant view of religion to an extremely hardline view.

13:11Matt Barbett:And And that's when the Chinese decide we have to have total control over reincarnations. That means that a kind of hardline faction within the policy system in China managed to get control of Tibet policy and religion policy. That's where we still are in China. But yes, the choice of the Panchen Lama, 1995, that was the turning point. And the child that was recognized then by the Dalai Lama unilaterally as being, he was in Tibet but recognised from outside, that child has never been seen again in public, was abducted with his family by China. So that was a signal of the hardline China that the Dalai Lama is dealing with at the moment.

13:55Professor:Robert, I'd like to make a comparison with another religion right now, if I may, and it's Roman Catholicism because, of course, recently we've seen a changing at the top with a relatively new pope now in the Vatican, chosen by the cardinals, would Tibetan Buddhists think, oh, it's okay for the Chinese Communist government to choose our next leader? Or would they just discredit that in the same way if the Italian government tried to choose the next pope? I think this is a very serious question

14:27Matt Barbett:that's very hard for us to answer. Because I think that fundamentally, Everything in history and politics rests on this question. Has the Chinese state, which in effect means the Chinese Communist Party, been able to win over ordinary Tibetans? And we don't really know. There's basically no communication with Tibet. And most Tibetans aren't allowed to travel. That's kind of a signal in itself that China thinks it hasn't won people over. But the signs are that the long years of Chinese policy shutting off Tibet from the outside world, so that the only information they get is from within China, that that may be having an effect on ordinary Tibetans.

15:21Matt Barbett:So therefore, they might well believe the constant propaganda they're getting. Every day we read about another political education team going to a Tibetan monastery or village to tell people only the Chinese state can choose Yorlamas. That may be having an effect. That effect is going to be rapidly accelerated now because China decided in 2021, a very radical, important change, that only Chinese language can be used in teaching kindergarten children for most teaching, with a few exceptions. And that's going to mean Chinese language, Chinese ideas, Chinese communist history, Chinese communist values are going to be delivered to children in Tibet who are three, four, five, six years old, even before they start formal schooling.

16:10Matt Barbett:And that's really one of the big fears that I think many ex-Sel Tibetans and certainly Tibetans inside Tibet are concerned about. Chinese, they've had 70 years to do this. They haven't succeeded so far in winning over ordinary Tibetans, but that could be coming in the future.

16:29Professor:Robert, let's finish off with one or two questions about the man himself again. You talked about those three facets to his personality, fun, but also a respected leader, a strong leader, if you like. He's not been without some controversy for all the smiliness and the warmth and the Hollywood celebrities that have gravitated towards the current Dalai Lama. there have been those comments he's made about the attractiveness of female Tibetan Buddhists an incident a couple of years ago of inappropriate behavior certainly to westernize with a child and some suggestion of a reluctance to find a solution with China so across his 90 years it

17:13Matt Barbett:hasn't all been plain sailing well I think what's remarkable is that it hasn't been worse There's incredibly few cases of controversy of a serious kind around him, very few allegations. We do have these social media incidents when we have explosions of controversy about, you know, his behavior with the child. That was an interesting event because the child didn't complain. The parents were there, 100 people were there in that incident, and they all seemed to see it as normal. It was only about a month later that somebody kind of said, look at this video.

17:49Professor:We should remind people, Robert, it was to do with him sticking out his tongue, which is a cultural difference around that kind of thing. But he asked the child to suck his tongue, which just seemed wrong to a lot of people, of course.

18:02Matt Barbett:Yeah, sticking out your tongue in Buddhism, as in many cultures, that's a sign of openness. It supposedly means, you know, my mouth is clear. I'm showing respect to you. So the tongue part is normal Tibetan behavior for that generation. And then it seems that, according to a lot of Tibetans from his area of Tibet, that's the Far East, that the word sucking maybe or maybe eating my tongue is quite a normal phrase there for elder people talking to children. It means, you know, we share food, we share, we touch each other by mouth. It seems to be a fairly innocent cultural expression in his generation in that area of Tibet.

18:44So that's a kind of, as you say, a kind of cultural difference.

18:49Matt Barbett:And then the other thing about women is very interesting because in Tibetan Buddhism, everything is decided by your karma. and there's this rather unfortunate idea that if you have good karma, you've done something good in the past, you will have a good result so that a good result might be seen as being you're born wealthy and you're born attractive. Now that sounds pretty awful to us but it is a kind of very ordinary sort of logical idea in Tibetan Buddhism and I think the thing about Dalai Lama is he has expressed those kind of conventional ideas that we find a bit odd now, but they're very conventional within thousands of years of Buddhist culture, Buddhist tradition.

19:35Matt Barbett:And the interesting thing about him is not that he says them clumsily, makes us wince a little bit, but that he learns from them. So he used to say those kind of things about homosexuality, about the war of women 20 years ago, and then people would complain and say, no, this is out of date. And he changed from time to time. We see these instruments where he seems out of tune. But that's because he's insulated in a kind of gilded palace of Tibetan respect and admiration. He's not circulating in society like you and I are. So he learns these different modern ideas a bit more slowly, perhaps, than us.