Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, by Karma Chameleon

Reviewed by Stephen Owen

The New Republic
Vol.219 No.6 (August 10, 1998)
pp.38-41

COPYRIGHT 1998 The New Republic Inc


            Karma Chameleon By Stephen Owen Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan 
            Buddhism and the West by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (University of Chicago 
            Press) 

            The fascination that Tibet has held for the European and American 
            imagination is surely one of the strangest stories in the history of 
            the West's relation to its imagined cultural others, the 
            "non-Western" cultures. Long closed off and unreachable in its 
            Himalayan fastness, Tibet has become almost an allegory of the 
            West's engagement with a civilization that is altogether elsewhere. 
            In the history of the American imagination, the story of Tibet is a 
            story of Orientalism at its zaniest, from Madame Blavatsky's 
            Theosophical Society to Timothy Leary's psychedelic commentary on 
            The Tibetan Book of the Dead to the movie set reconstruction of 
            Lhasa's Potala Palace in Argentina for Seven Years in Tibet. 
            Such visions of Tibet are all tenuously related to historical 
            reality, but they have served as the instrument of our own 
            inclinations. They are a means to criticize many things we are 
            disposed not to like, from the crass materialism of capitalism to 
            the Chinese government. What moviegoer can forget the image, in 
            Kundun, of the Chinese generals stamping underfoot the sand mandala 
            so painstakingly constructed by monks hoping only for peace? The 
            cinematic image arouses powerful indignation. The fact that it never 
            happened that way scarcely matters. 
            This remarkable book by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. is an account of the 
            Orientalist saga of Tibet, in which the unreachable fount of 
            "non-Western" wisdom shifts almost imperceptibly into an equally mad 
            version of the issues now called "postcolonial." It does not make 
            things better that these postcolonial issues arise in a culture that 
            was never colonized by the Western powers--in a culture that was 
            largely oblivious to them. But Tibet was harshly colonized by its 
            very large Asian neighbor beginning in the 1950s; and the resulting 
            diaspora community of Tibetans encountered its own image in the 
            peculiar transformation wrought by the contemporary Western 
            imagination. As the impoverished diaspora community entered into 
            dialogue with the imagined Tibet of their earnest and often wealthy 
            American and European supporters, they both reshaped the image and 
            were themselves reshaped by it. Once outside the enclosed social and 
            spiritual world of geographical Tibet, they had to become the 
            culture that they were imagined to be. 
            To this already seething mix of cultural contradictions, moreover, 
            we must add religion, both traditional Tibetan Buddhism and the 
            recent religious yearnings of America. The one sought to offer 
            salvation, the other sought to be saved; and in that happy 
            complementarity we have a religious moment that transcends 
            historical culture. For the believer's truth is not necessarily 
            identical to the scholar's truth. Like Christianity, Buddhism spread 
            from one culture to another in the hope of saving souls; and 
            whenever one of these religions of salvation enters a new culture, 
            it adapts to the customs of the country in the hope of saving new 
            souls. This was true when Indian Buddhism entered Tibet, and it 
            remains no less true as Tibetan Buddhism enters American culture. 
            And the tale runs the other way, too. The way in which a religion 
            rediscovers itself in new cultural contexts is usually 
            counterbalanced by a fascination with an old and unbroken tradition. 
            Again, this was true when Indian Buddhism entered America and it is 
            true as Tibetan Buddhism puts down roots in America. 
            The issues raised in Lopez's book are a glorious mess, and they are 
            presented to us by someone who is both a scholar and a believer. In 
            his penultimate chapter, Lopez tries to give an account of the 
            uneasy balance between his two roles; and there is here an uneasy 
            genius of contradiction, which, as Lopez explicitly explores, is 
            precisely the problem of Buddhism in America. Lopez looks to a 
            Tibetan Buddhism of rational argument, which is the realm in which 
            it can most comfortably be reconciled with the intellectual 
            commitments of an American scholar. He acknowledges the 
            supra-rational aspect of Tibetan Buddhism, the side of the faith 
            that can put a curse on an enemy or exorcise demons, but he and the 
            Dalai Lama are uncomfortable with it. At the same time he also 
            recognizes the peculiar twists and turns that Tibetan Buddhism has 
            taken in response to the spiritual needs of Americans. The believer 
            here aids the scholar to see the religious core that survives its 
            social and cultural metamorphoses. 
            The first chapters of Lopez's book concern the formation of the 
            popular image of Tibet that took shape in Europe and America, an 
            image relatively untouched by the participation of real Tibetans. 
            Lopez is intensely aware that the scholarly field of Tibetan Studies 
            bears a complicated relation to the history of Tibet's popular 
            image: it attempts to distinguish itself from that image, yet it is 
            tied to it at every level. Nothing can more perfectly epitomize the 
            issues at stake than Lopez's discussion of The Third Eye, the 
            ostensible autobiography of T. Lobsang Rampa. 
            What are we to make of a scholarly discipline many of whose founders 
            were deeply influenced by the book of an English correspondence 
            clerk and photographer who claimed to have been molecularly replaced 
            by the spirit of a Tibetan monk, and who then composed the monk's 
            autobiography (molecular replacement evidently preserving the 
            linguistic capabilities of the host form)? Lopez initially tells the 
            story of T. Lobsang Rampa, who was born in 1910 as Cyril Henry 
            Hoskin, with as straight a face as he can. We are never sure whether 
            Rampa's/Hoskin's story is a fraud or a self-delusion; but the 
            self-awareness and the sincerity of the author is less important 
            than the enthusiasm with which his book was received even after it 
            was shown that the transmogrified monk had forgotten his Tibetan. 
            The lesson is simple: the truth of Tibet evidently matters less than 
            the illusion. 
            This is Lopez's first lesson, and he drives it home forcefully. His 
            first chapter, on "Lamaism," begins with three epigraphs. The first 
            two are from 1835 and 1915 respectively, each decrying the 
            impropriety of the term "Lamaism." The second expresses approval 
            that it is dropping out of use. Yet the third, from 1991, continues 
            to use the term to describe Tibetan Buddhism. Thus we learn from the 
            very first page that the forces that sustain illusions about Tibet 
            are impervious to the truth, or to scholarly animadversion. 
            If we accept this--as I think we must--then this aspect of Lopez's 
            book becomes a quixotic enterprise itself. It places the "story of 
            Tibet" in Western cultural history, understanding that we will 
            always take the imagined Tibet as the real one. Each of his early 
            chapters treats a different entrance into this imaginary Tibet. 
            First "Lamaism," then The Tibetan Book of the Dead (which, as Lopez 
            patiently explains, is actually a very minor example of a particular 
            genre of religious writing), then the autobiographical The Third Eye 
            by Rampa/Hoskin, then a chapter on the mantra Om Mani padme hum. 
            Woven throughout are the cultists from Blavatsky to Leary, and the 
            beginnings of a historical scholarship seeking to find a place for 
            itself in the giddy realm of religious and cultural enthusiasm. 
            When we come at last to the chapter on "The Field," about Tibetan 
            Studies in the academy, we enter the more troubled territory of 
            Lopez's book, which also raises some of the most interesting issues. 
            The very presence of such a chapter is owed to a turn taken in 
            intellectual circles during the past decade. When one writes on 
            another culture as object, one must now reflect also on the position 
            from which one writes--its institutional imperatives, its vested 
            interests, and the way in which it, too, is part of a culture. 
            This scruple is excellent in the abstract, admitting that knowledge 
            is as much a function of the position of the knower as of the object 
            known. In practice, however, it is a problematic enterprise, 
            producing excesses of selfjustification, self-flagellation, and 
            uninteresting confession. To describe "where one stands" may be 
            impossible, if only because such descriptions are themselves subject 
            to the same criticism that motivated them. 
            At its best, however, introspection can lead a writer to the hard 
            questions. This is what happens here. Lopez undertakes an account of 
            the formation of Tibetan Studies as an academic discipline. He first 
            gives an account of early Orientalist studies of Tibetan Buddhism, 
            beginning in the mid-nineteenth century as an offshoot of the study 
            of Sanskrit, and then moves to the establishment of Religious 
            Studies programs in American universities after World War II. Here 
            he addresses the complicated relationship between these liberal arts 
            programs in religion and theological seminaries, posing the question 
            of religious commitment on the part of those who teach religions as 
            a scholarly discipline. This question of scholarship and faith is a 
            subtext throughout the book, and it is especially urgent for the 
            Tibetan scholar who is also a believer. 
            In a religion whose American version is fraught with 
            misunderstanding and cultic excess, how do you tell the baby from 
            the bathwater? After describing the establishment of Buddhist 
            Studies in the context of Religious Studies programs, Lopez moves to 
            the establishment of Tibetan Buddhist Studies. The flight of the 
            Dalai Lama and the Tibetan diaspora seem to Lopez to have provided 
            credible arbiters of what is the baby and what is the bathwater. 
            Learned Tibetan monks, rigorously trained in traditions of doctrinal 
            debate, were invited to teach in many of the new Tibetan programs 
            established in the United States, which is rather analogous to 
            having Thomas Aquinas come to the States to teach medieval Christian 
            philosophy--though one suspects that the intelligent modern scholar 
            of medieval Christian philosophy would be in equal measure delighted 
            and troubled by such a resurrection in the classroom. 
            With evident pride, Lopez describes his own program of study at the 
            University of Virginia, where visiting Tibetan monks lectured and 
            the curriculum was at least partially shaped as a miniature version 
            of Tibetan scholastic training, with students memorizing scholastic 
            definitions and practicing the set forms of monastic debate. Clearly 
            this gave students (including Lopez himself) a sense of confidence 
            and continuity in their scholarship; the critical intelligence at 
            work throughout Lopez's book shows clearly that the miniature 
            traditional curriculum did not produce merely a miniature of 
            traditional learning. Lopez clearly knows how to participate in the 
            tradition and how to reflect upon it from the outside. 
            To his credit, Lopez never forgets that religious faith overflows 
            both the monastery and the courses in Classical Tibetan at 
            Charlottesville. In looking for a Tibetan Buddhism in America, he 
            has to confront a community of white American monks who do not know 
            Tibetan and the tradition of learning that normally would define a 
            monk. At the same time there is a small community of Tibetan 
            scholars (including women) who do possess the learning, but they are 
            not monks. So where is this religion really located? And what really 
            is this religion, after the radical translation to this continent 
            and this culture? In a religious tradition centered on an unbroken 
            transmission of learning from master to disciple, what does it mean 
            when the disciples are American university teachers, who have 
            commitments other than the accumulation of merit and the 
            transmission of faith? 
            Lopez's final chapter is called "The Prison." It begins with the 
            Sanskrit legend of the kingdom of Shambhala (the origin of 
            Shangri-la), a fastness protected by mountains where Buddhism is 
            preserved in its pure form, awaiting the final apocalyptic battle in 
            which Buddhist forces would emerge and triumph over their enemies. A 
            part of the legend involves the kingdom's 35 million brahmans, who 
            are given a choice to convert to Buddhism or to leave. When they 
            decide to leave, the king realizes that this cannot be permitted. He 
            assumes the form of a wrathful deity to frighten them on their 
            journey, after which he brings them back and allows them to convert 
            to Buddhism. 
            In this connection Lopez cites Wilde's great essay "The Decay of 
            Lying," in which nature imitates art, and continues: 
            If we extend Wilde's theory, it would seem that Western enthusiasts 
            of Tibetan Buddhism are more authentic in their Buddhism than 
            Tibetans precisely because they are more intimate with the 
            simulacrum of Tibet that is the invention, that is the artifice. But 
            what happens when the people of such an invented land leave it and 
            come to the place of its invention? The answer to this question, 
            involving the flight of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan diaspora, is 
            not that the "real thing" shatters the illusion. It is, rather, that 
            the "real Tibetans" join in shaping the illusion and are themselves 
            reshaped by it. 
            Thus the Dalai Lama emerged into a culture of "Buddhist modernism," 
            in which Buddhist thinkers had already shaped a version of the 
            religion that could take its place among other world religions. A 
            more philosophical and universal Buddhism was achieved at the 
            expense of local practices that did not exactly suit the image that 
            the cosmopolitan proponents of the faith wanted to present to the 
            world. Yet Tibetan Buddhism came out of its mountains replete with 
            such local practices; and it was the Dalai Lama's task to recast the 
            religion into the form that its foreign enthusiasts anticipated. 
            Lopez proceeds to an account of the "Shugden affair." Shugden was a 
            protective deity of the Geluk Sect, of which the Dalai Lama was the 
            head. In 1976, the Dalai Lama decided to oppose the propitiation of 
            Shugden. This provoked great resistance from many figures in the 
            religious establishment. Lopez stresses that this was an ecumenical 
            move on the part of the Dalai Lama, to deemphasize his role as head 
            of one sect and to strengthen his legitimacy as head of the entire 
            Tibetan community. Still, while Lopez assures us that quite a few 
            Tibetan deities have distinctly demonic traits, let it be said that 
            Shugden, who would be at home in a blood-and-guts computer game, was 
            not a particularly reputable deity for an international religion of 
            compassion and nonviolence. Significantly, when pro-Shugden 
            hostility to the Dalai Lama surfaced on a visit to England, the 
            English newspapers came out strongly for the Dalai Lama, portraying 
            the pro-Shugden group as a cult. 
            We have here an interesting cultural moment. For a start, the 
            propitiation of Shugden played an important role in the historically 
            authentic Tibetan Buddhism of the dominant Geluk Sect. Moreover, we 
            usually think of a "cult" as a small group of devoted followers 
            gathered around a charismatic leader and devoted to religious 
            principles that lack historical foundation; but as the Dalai Lama 
            reshapes Tibetan Buddhism for the world stage, his Western admirers 
            respond with glib approval to his authority to determine what does 
            and does not constitute the proper "religion." 
            From Tibetan Buddhism, Lopez turns at last to the Tibetan "nation." 
            It is in large measure a construct of the Tibetan diaspora, of 
            displaced Tibetans discovering themselves in their mirror image in 
            the West. (Lopez notes young Tibetans who are disappointed that 
            monks do not live up to the representations of them in Western 
            writings.) And finally Lopez arrives at the idealized Tibet, at 
            "Shangri-la," with the "patron-priest" relationship that once 
            existed with China now shifting to international patrons. The pure 
            kingdom of Shambhala exists in the imagination, and it now looks to 
            a much wider and grander field for the laity that is required for 
            the preservation of the religion, until the day comes when it will 
            emerge triumphant. As Lopez observes, it was in the diaspora that 
            Buddhism came to define "Tibet," as it was transformed into 
            Shambhala, where the Buddhist Dharma is preserved in its pure form. 
            But the historical realities are much more complex. In truth, the 
            Geluk Sect, whose head is the Dalai Lama, held secular authority 
            over the region around Lhasa; and there were other sects, and other 
            groups in other regions. Lopez the scholar is aware that religion 
            continually shifts shape; but here Lopez the scholar collides with 
            Lopez the believer. Consider the following passage, in which Lopez 
            describes the roles of monks and laity in preconquest Tibet. 
            By adopting a certain lifestyle, then, in which the transient 
            pleasures of married life are renounced, monks provide the 
            opportunity for the layperson to amass a certain karmic capital. In 
            return, monks receive the fruits of the labor of the laity--labor 
            that they themselves have eschewed--in the form of their physical 
            support. More specifically, monks do what laypeople cannot do 
            because they generally do not know how: recite texts, perform 
            rituals, and sometimes mediate. Laypeople do those things that monks 
            are forbidden to do: till the soil, engage in business, raise 
            families. Recast in a different rhetoric for different purposes, 
            this description is essentially the Chinese justification for the 
            havoc that they have wreaked on Tibetan Buddhism. For if, as Lopez 
            and others note, l5 percent of the population were (male) monks, we 
            have roughly every two males supporting one monk. If we exclude 
            non-working children and the aged from the non-monastic population 
            in a pre-industrial society, the Buddhist establishment was 
            receiving one whopping proportion of "the fruits of the labor of the 
            laity." We are substantially beyond tithing. 
            So Shangri-la had a dark underbelly. With such a large proportion of 
            productive surplus going to support the monasteries, a family with 
            too many children to feed had no choice but to give males to the 
            monastery, thus perpetuating the system. And it is useful to 
            remember that the monastic establishment is a place where a 
            religious point of view and a nonreligious point of view must part 
            company. From the religious point of view described in the passage 
            quoted above, Tibetan society before the Chinese conquest was 
            characterized by a contractual relation between the monastic 
            establishment and the laity, with religious merit given in exchange 
            for physical labor. One has to believe strongly in the efficacy of 
            religious merit to think that this was a good bargain, considering 
            the very pragmatic social burden that it entailed. 
            It is, moreover, a dangerous and ethically problematic position to 
            assume confidently that the Tibetan laity were completely content 
            with this bargain. There is some truth, then, in the Chinese charge 
            of monastic serfdom. To be sure, the laity were believers; but there 
            is a strong element of social coercion in this kind of belief. You 
            support the monks in the belief that good things will happen to you 
            if you do and bad things will happen to you if you do not. 
            From another point of view, of course, the charm of Tibet's 
            isolation was that it made possible the enforcement of a religious 
            and social system that admitted no alternatives. This may be another 
            lesson of the myth of Shambhala that Lopez tells in his last 
            chapter. For the purity of the kingdom, there must be uniformity. No 
            outside influences are permitted. Is this what we mean, however, 
            when we demand "freedom of religion" for the Tibetans? Enthusiasts 
            are drawn to the "purity" of Tibet as a realm devoted entirely to 
            the Buddhist Dharma. Yet outside the Himalayas our judgments must be 
            quite otherwise, when we are confronted with the drive to such 
            ideological and religious purity. 
            This is one of those occasions when cultural relativism threatens to 
            become odious. Should we defend social practices that we ourselves 
            would never tolerate in the name of protecting the purity of another 
            culture, which we can then regard aesthetically, as an object of 
            contemplation? The alternative, of course, may be to destroy the 
            culture, which is what the Chinese are now doing. There are no good 
            answers to such questions. But this much is certain: we must avoid 
            romanticizing. In appreciating the considerable wonders of Tibetan 
            Buddhism, we must not forget that toiling laity, driven by faith or 
            fear or force to give a large proportion of "the fruits of their 
            labor" to the monasteries. We do not know exactly how they felt. 
            Some probably made their gifts gladly, some bitterly. But we should 
            not trust the reports of monks in this matter. 
            Such a spirit of disenchantment allows one to provide a second 
            ending, and a happy one, to Lopez's book, an ending in keeping with 
            his vision of a new community of Tibetan Buddhist laity spread out 
            over the globe. For it is also the fact that the diaspora religious 
            establishment of Tibetan Buddhism is now free of the ugly social 
            contract that preserved it in the past. Finally it can continue to 
            exist by drawing not only on a greater worldwide surplus, but also 
            on a surplus that is truly given freely. 
            Stephen Owen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard 
            University. 
            (Copyright 1998, The New Republic)