Tibet, the Dalai Lama, Feudalism, Slavery, and the Great Game
If you’re interested in Tibet and the Dalai Lama, this is what seems like essential knowledge.
1. Why do I care?
I have a ludicrous obsession with truth. I don’t mind when my friends joke about it: I know that being nice is more important than knowing the truth, and I’m much fonder of ignorant people who care for others than I am of knowledgeable people who care only about their cleverness. Many people of many faiths manage to be great people while believing things that are contradicted by facts, so when people’s beliefs harm no one else, I respect them. For most of my life, I took that approach to Tibetan Buddhism.
I became interested in Buddhism as a child, thanks to Dr. Strange and Green Lama comic books, the Kung Fu TV show, and Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha. When I was seventeen in Washington, D.C., I spent a few months visiting a Theravada monastery once or twice a week. I liked meditation and the monk who taught us, but I was more interested in girls and art, so I drifted away. For decades, my impression of the Dalai Lama was the common one: I thought he was a pacifist vegetarian who had been driven from a land of herders and farmers by war-loving invaders.
Then I met two lovely people who were followers of the Dalai Lama, so I decided to learn more. But what I…
