(fwd) Karmapa news story

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In alt.meditation, "Christopher Calder" <calder wrote:

 

Friday 7 January 2000

 

Boy lama flees across Himalayas to escape Chinese

 

By David Rennie in Beijing

 

THE teenage head of one of the four great sects of Tibetan Buddhism has

escaped from Chinese Communist rule to India after a trek through the

Himalayas, sources said yesterday.

 

The 17th Karmapa stumbled with four attendants into Dharamsala, the seat in

exile of the Dalai Lama, after an epic journey at the worst time of the

year. The 14-year-old is now recovering from his ordeal. It is not clear how

he started his 900-mile journey from his remote monastery home, 30 miles

north-west of the capital, Lhasa.

He completed the last week on foot, crossing mountain passes in heavy snow,

before arriving at Dharamsala at 10.30am on Wednesday. "He's extremely

exhausted," a source in Dharamsala said last night.

 

The Karmapa is being shielded from visitors and the Chinese authorities, who

will be enraged at losing a religious leader they had been rearing as a

"patriotic" tool in their 50-year campaign to suppress Tibetan independence.

So delicate is the situation that the Tibetan government-in-exile has yet to

confirm that the Karmapa is in Dharamsala, though an announcement is

expected in the next two days.

The young Karmapa is the head of the powerful Kagyupa sect, often nicknamed

the "Black Hat" sect, which was one of the first to gain Western devotees in

large numbers. There are major monasteries and centres in places as far

apart as Woodstock, in America, and Eskdalemuir in Scotland. The president

of the North American branch of the sect, Tenzin Chonyi, said yesterday that

the news of their leader's escape was "like a miracle".

 

Tenzin Chonyi, who was the personal attendant of the 16th Karmapa and fled

with him from Tibet in 1959, received "reliable information" on Wednesday

from disciples in Dharamsala that the Karmapa had arrived with four

companions. "We have received information that he has met the Dalai Lama,"

added Tenzin Chonyi, who has met the 17th Karmapa several times.

He described the young priest as a great religious leader and the

reincarnation of his former master. He said: "From the first time I met him,

when he was eight years old, you could tell."

 

The boy met the 14th Dalai Lama, the effective leader of all four sects of

Tibetan Buddhism, on the day he arrived, said Tenzin Chonyi. The two would

almost certainly have never met if the Karmapa had not risked his life to

cross the Himalayas. The Dalai Lama is reviled as a "terrorist" by the

Chinese authorities, who routinely beat and detain monks for displaying his

picture inside Tibet.

The Dalai has not set foot in his mountain homeland since he fled during a

failed uprising in 1959, eight years after his capital Lhasa was "liberated"

by Chinese forces. In contrast, the 17th Karmapa had seemed a valuable

puppet of Beijing until his escape. The boy, Ugyen Trinley Dorje, was the

first high lama ever to be officially approved in 1991 by the Chinese

authorities.

 

He has been a guest at state ceremonies in Beijing. In 1995, his remote

monastery was declared outstandingly patriotic and law-abiding by the

authorities. The young Karmapa appears to have left his family behind in

Tibet, unlike the Dalai Lama, whose long years of exile were eased by the

presence of his mother and siblings in Dharamsala. The Dalai Lama's brother,

Tenzin Choegyal, who is know as TC, still runs a guesthouse in the small

Indian hilltown.

 

The 17th Karmapa was born in 1985 to nomadic parents in the Lhathok region

of Tibet. He was nicknamed Apo Gaga, or "happy brother" by his older sister.

His early life was divided between his family and a monastery, where he was

given the special education of a boy believed to be the reincarnation of a

previous lama. In 1992, a party of monks, using a letter handed down by the

16th Karmapa before his death in 1981, reputedly found him with his parents

in a camp he had chosen.

The letter had been lost but was mysteriously found inside an amulet 11

years after the death. It was the centre of a bitter dispute over the

child's authenticity. However, in a gesture of co-operation that has never

been repeated, the Dalai Lama and Beijing both approved the boy.

 

The Dalai Lama's blessing has been conspicuously withheld from Beijing's

other chosen boy-priest, the Panchen Lama, who is widely dismissed by many

Tibetans as a fake. The Karmapa's authenticity in the eyes of the Tibetans

made him a hugely valuable weapon in Beijing's fight to destroy the Dalai

Lama's authority, by aggressive "atheism campaigns", and by raising their

own "patriotic" lamas under Communist control. When the Dalai Lama, who is

64, comes to die, there will be a fierce battle over his rightful

reincarnation. The row will probably dwarf anything seen before, as Beijing

strives to find its own credible candidate.

However, the Dalai Lama has already said that he will not be reborn in

territory under Chinese control. Leading lamas like the Karmapa, and the

Panchen Lama, will carry immense sway. The 14-year-old who staggered into

Dharamsala this week is a prize that Beijing will regret losing for a long

time to come.

 

 

 

 

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