Buddhism and Lamaism
Buddhism in China is an alien import, at times denounced as a barbarian religion and banned. Arriving via the Silk Routes from Gandhara (modern-day Pakistan and northern India), it gradually spread from oasis to oasis around the Tarim basin, and by 166 CE could count a Hàn emperor among its devotees.
The religion gained ground in the 4th century, when it attracted the attention of the upper strata of Chinese society through the activities of scholar-monks, familiar with both secular and religious literature, and by the 5th century was widespread.
The speculation in China that daoist founder Lǎozǐ was the originator of Buddhism partially sprang from the use of existing daoist vocabulary to translate Buddhist terms, which gave a false sense of similarity between the two systems. More rigorous translations were produced, and an acceptance of Buddhism on its own terms began towards the end of the 4th century.
The Buddhist begins by recognising that life is impermanent, without real essence, and characterised by suffering. His or her concern is to escape from the cycle of successive lives in which the form of each depends upon behaviour in the one before, and to arrive at nirvana (literally ‘extinction’), a transcendent state without further pain, death, or rebirth. This can be achieved by discipline, moral behaviour, wisdom, and meditation, leading to the denial of all desires and cravings.
The key text of Buddhism is the three-part Tripitaka (‘three baskets’), containing accounts of the origins of the religion and rules for the behaviour of monks and nuns, discourses attributed to the Buddha and his immediate disciples, and various philosophical and psychological texts.
Laying stress on specific texts over others and interpreting them in different ways has led to the creation of numerous different schools of Buddhism, some of them native to China.
The historical Buddha (‘awakened one’) and founder of Buddhism, Sakyamuni, was born the son of a prince in what is now Nepal in 563 BCE. In general, a Buddha is a being who has achieved full enlightenment, and thus nirvana, and during his final passage through life can be identified by numerous signs. According to Buddhist doctrine, Sakyamuni had been preceded by numerous Buddhas and will be followed by many others. These are usually symbolised at Chinese Buddhist sites by the statues of the ‘Buddhas of the three times’ — Dipamkara (past ages), Sakyamuni (present age), and Maitreya (future ages).
The peak of Buddhist strength in China was during the Suí (589–618) and Táng (618–906), when the main Chinese schools were developed and the monasteries became numerous, rich, and powerful. Although Buddhism had been persecuted before, in 845 it received a blow from which it never completely recovered, as the Chinese state ordered the dismantling of the monasteries and the return of monks and nuns to everyday life.
Subsequent centuries saw a fusing of the various schools into one, but the arrival of the Manchu Qīng in 1644 brought the Lamaist version of Buddhism to the fore.
Lamaism, or Tibetan Buddhism, evolved from both the indigenous shamanism of Bon and a particular Indian form of Buddhism. Khubilai Khan appointed the Tibetan Grand Lama as his religious adviser in the 13th century, and by the 17th Tibetan Buddhism had become the dominant creed of the Mongols. The Manchus had been converted to Lamaism before conquering China in 1644, and supported Lamaism to keep the Dalai Lamas happy and to pacify Tibet and Mongolia.
‘Lama’ is a term now often applied indiscriminately to Buddhist monks, but that more exactly is applied only to the most senior and enlightened who have passed rigorous qualifications. The key lamas of Tibetan Buddhism are each seen as a reincarnation of their previous selves, and the two most senior, the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama, have come to hold political as well as spiritual authority.
Following the death of one of them, the other leads a search committee that investigates children with the right physical characteristics and subjects them to tests of recognition of items owned by previous incarnations. The 14th Dalai Lama was born in 1935 and now lives in enforced exile in India (when not globe-trotting), and is still regarded by Tibetans and Mongolians as their spiritual leader. The late Panchen Lama became to some degree a creature of the Běijīng government, although sometimes given to protest at the treatment of his people. He mostly resided in the Chinese capital.
The Panchen Lama’s current supposed reincarnation, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, is an infant recognised by the Dalai Lama in 1995. Promptly arrested by the Chinese government, he hasn’t been seen since, and was often described as the world’s youngest political prisoner, a title he’s grown out of while still under detention. Meanwhile, the officially atheist government announced (despite often trumpeting its belief solely in Marxism and dialectical materialism) that it had identified the ‘true’ Panchen Lama, another very young boy, Gyaincain Norbu. This incarnation was also largely kept out of sight until June 1999, when he was taken for his first appearance at Tashilumpo monastery in Tibet but kept apart from his supposedly devoted followers (who aren’t quite so easily gulled) by tight security.
The Panchen Lama plays an important role in helping to identify the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, so control over him is seen as crucial for the future of China’s control over Tibetans. In early 2000, a 14-year-old boy recognised in infancy both by Tibetans and by the Communist Party as the 17th reincarnation of the Karmapa, the spiritual leader of the black hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism and the third most important reincarnating lama, walked away from more than a decade of political indoctrination and over the high passes to Dharamsala, the north Indian seat of the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile, throwing the communists into confusion.
‘He’s not left — he’s in the monastery praying,’ said one official. ‘He’s just gone shopping for black hats, and left a note saying he loves China and he’ll be back,’ said another at the same time. The Indian government received warnings not to give him refugee status.
Within days, Běijīng announced, coincidentally, that it had identified a two-year-old boy, Soinam Puncog, as the 7th Reting Lama, and promptly enthroned him in a ceremony at Lhasa’s Jokang Temple, giving him a certificate of authenticity. This is a little like Donald Duck giving a sainthood authenticity certificate to the Pope, and hardly likely to gain him much credit with Tibetans, as the Dalai Lama did not recognise the appointment.
The 5th Reting led the party searching for the reincarnation who subsequently became the current (14th) Dalai Lama. He ran Tibet as regent between 1933 and 1940, becoming the Dalai Lama’s senior tutor before being imprisoned in 1947 for collaboration with the Chinese and dying shortly afterwards. His next reincarnation, the 6th Reting, was also a communist sympathiser, and the Party expects the new reincarnation to be no different: ‘Child Tibetan Lama to Love Communist Party,’ announced the government-controlled press.
In 2016 the Party absurdly launched a website to help the public tell true reincarnate lamas from fake. The true lamas were its own choices, of course. hf.tibet.cn (Chinese and Tibetan only).
The Party now hopes it has gained the upper hand, and is simply waiting for the current Dalai Lama to die before using its choice of Panchen Lama to support its own selection of a new and pliable successor. In late 2007 the Dalai Lama announced he was discussing with his advisers whether a different system for choosing his successor might be adopted, although how that would tally with the idea of identifying a reincarnation of the same person, essential to the office-holder’s authority as a god-king, wasn’t clear. The Běijīng government reacted furiously and absurdly, with turgid pronouncements and ‘laws’ on the correct way to identify reincarnations, repeated in 2015 after the Dalai Lama commented that he wouldn’t be reborn in China, might be reborn while still alive, might be reborn as a woman, and might let ordinary Tibetans decide.
Buddhists are usually vegetarians, but most Tibetans and Mongolians are not. The mountainous regions they occupy, not to mention the nomadic lifestyle of the Mongolians, make intensive vegetable farming impractical. Even if it were possible, such a diet would be unlikely to provide the calorific needs of life in a harsh environment.
But the matter of the occupation of the body of an animal by the soul of another being remains a concern:
I learned that by the Mongol way of thinking it is not right to fire at antelope, nor at wild asses, when they are in big herds. It may be that the soul of a saint or a Buddha has passed into the body of a wild animal, whose holiness gathers the others about it in great numbers. A Mongol will spend a great deal of time first breaking up a herd and then going after two or three evidently profane animals which have separated, rather than run the risk of shooting a ‘magic’ creature.
Owen Lattimore, The Desert Road to Turkestan, New York 1929
Since the communist victory of 1949, a nominal freedom of religious belief has not included the right to believe anything that deviated from the Party line. Land reforms of 1950–2 stripped the monasteries of their lands and forced the monks to return to conventional life. The Cultural Revolution of 1966–76 caused the mass destruction of Buddhist buildings and relics. Since then there has been partial restoration of a few monasteries, and a limited amount of teaching is permitted.
Despite the destruction there are still vast numbers of Buddhist temples, pagodas, and cave sites, often richly furnished with statuary and paintings. Constantly repeated images include those of the Buddhas of the three times, the four celestial kings (guardian figures), bodhisattvas (beings on the road to enlightenment willing to share their spiritual credit with others), arhats (beings about to attain nirvana), and the eight auspicious symbols (parasol, two fish, conch shell, lotus blossom, vase of sacred water, wheel of teaching, knot of eternity, banner of victory.)
See:
Next in North and East of the Imperial City: Sōngtāng Zhāi
Previously: Lama Temple
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
For discussion of China travel, see The Oriental-List.
