My Spiritual Journey by Dalai Lama (good books for 8th graders txt) 📕

to China lends itself to contradictory interpretations because of the complex and often misunderstood relations between the two countries, in each of which politics and religion have long been entangled. After having been in the past a warring kingdom that fought in Mongolia, China, and the city-states on the Silk Road, Tibet comprised, at its military apogee in the eighth century, Indo-European peoples, Turks, and Chinese, and even occupied the Chinese capital of Chang’an. Though conquered by the Mongols in the tenth century, Tibet was never integrated into their empire.

A spiritual master-lay protector relationship was established between the Tibetan Dalai Lamas and the Khans of Mongolia,1 and when, in the thirteenth century, the Mongols established the Yuan dynasty in China, the same link was established between the Son of Heaven and the Dalai Lama. The emperor of China was regarded by the Tibetans as an earthly emanation of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of enlightened Wisdom, and a power of temporal protection was assigned to him. The Dalai Lama, whose reincarnation lineage descends from Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of enlightened Compassion, exercised a spiritual authority that was respected in both China and Mongolia.

In the context of this special relationship, in the eighteenth century the Chinese army intervened to reestablish the Seventh Dalai Lama on his throne when Tibet was torn apart by a civil war. Two ambans settled in Lhasa, but they were required to report to the Dalai Lama’s government, and they never exercised any prerogative on behalf of China.

Later on, in the twentieth century, Tibet became a stake in Central Asia when it aroused the greed of both Russia and the United Kingdom. First the British tried to sign commercial agreements with China about Tibet and to redraw unilaterally the borders of the Himalayan kingdoms. But the Tibetans protested the validity of these treaties.

In 1904 a British military expedition tried to impose the supremacy of Great Britain by force, and the Thirteenth Dalai Lama had to flee his occupied capital. The English and the regent signed the Convention of Lhasa, which designated war compensation and bestowed commercial advantages on the British. This treaty established a de facto recognition of Tibetan sovereignty in relation to the Chinese nation. It was confirmed in 1906 by the document that the British signed with the Chinese, which explicitly accepted the Anglo-Tibetan treaty.

Still, in 1907, to confirm their advantages, the British renegotiated with the Chinese and concluded the Treaty of Peking, in which they agreed not to deal with Tibet except through the intermediary of China. In flagrant contradiction to the previous agreements, this new treaty explicitly recognized a Chinese “suzerainty” over Tibet. Thus, a historic countertruth was legitimized, forming the basis for later Chinese claims that Tibet was part of China.

The Dalai Lama deplored the contradictions in the Treaty of Peking, the consequences of which would turn out to be grave for his country: “Suzerainty is a vague and ancient term. Perhaps it was the nearest western political term to describe the relations between Tibet and China from 1720 to 1890, but still, it was very inaccurate, and the use of it has misled whole generations of western statesmen. It did not take into account the reciprocal spiritual relationship, or recognize that the relationship was a personal matter between the Dalai Lamas and the Manchu emperors. There are many such ancient eastern relationships which cannot be described in ready-made western political terms.”2 Subsequent Tibetan protests before the United Nations did not succeed in overriding Chinese authority and having Tibetan sovereignty accepted.

I endorse the Kashag’s appeal to the United Nations

ON NOVEMBER 7, 1950, the Kashag [the Tibetan cabinet] and the government appealed to the United Nations, asking them to intercede for us. I approved of the terms of the letter:

The attention of the world is riveted on Korea where aggression is being resisted by an international force. Similar happenings in remote Tibet are passing without notice. It is in the belief that aggression will not go unchecked and freedom unprotected in any part of the world that we have assumed the responsibility of reporting to the United Nations Organization, through you, recent happenings in the border area of Tibet.

As you are aware, the problem of Tibet has taken on proportions in recent times. This problem is not of Tibet’s own making but is largely the outcome of unthwarted Chinese ambition to bring weaker nations on its periphery under its active domination.

3

The strategy of the People’s Republic of China was to make the Western world believe that it was sincerely committed to a peaceful settlement of the Tibetan question. The leading nations were at the time preoccupied by the threat of nuclear war, with Korea at the epicenter of that concern, and the Soviet Union had declared its support for Maoist China. The only UN member country to launch an appeal against the invasion of foreign forces into Tibet was El Salvador, in November 1950. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, who was concerned about preserving his friendship with his great neighbor in the north, refused to intervene. Great Britain showed itself indifferent, and the United States took the side of prudence for fear of aggravating its relations with the Soviets.

On Tibetan soil, however, the Chinese armies were perpetrating acts of violence in eastern Tibet. The Tibetan government had sent a delegation to Beijing to negotiate. But the discussions came to an abrupt halt, and threatened with a forced march on Lhasa, on May 23, 1951, the Tibetan emissaries signed the Agreement for Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, also called the Seventeen-Point Agreement, which organized the annexation of their country by China.

According to the International Commission of Jurists,4 this text is worthless under international law because it was signed under the threat of weapons.

The motherland, a shameless lie

IUSED TO LISTEN TO the broadcasts of Radio Beijing in Tibetan. One night when I was alone, I suddenly heard a shrill voice announcing that the Seventeen-Point Agreement for the Peaceful