TIBET

Historical Background

Tibet is a country with ancient religious and mystical traditions that, over the last two centuries, have become the focus of occult legends. The peaceful accumulation of data on Tibet was abruptly altered following the Chinese communist invasion in October 1950, when Tibet lost its independent status. On May 23, 1951, Tibetan leaders were obliged to sign a Sino-Tibetan agreement for "the peaceful liberation of Tibet."

Tibetans had formerly been a separate people with a distinctive language, culture, and religion, but had been in an uneasy relationship with China since 1720, when the Manchus entered Tibet to help drive out Mongol invaders and used the situation to become overlords. Over the subsequent period, the acknowledgment of Chinese suzerainty was the price of Tibetan autonomy, but for practical purposes Tibet was an independent state.

The 1950 invasion was justified by the Chinese as necessary in order to destroy inequitable feudalism in Tibet and to bring progress, education, and social justice. In practice, this involved suppression of the Buddhist religion, destruction of monasteries and their libraries, and the public humiliation of priests. Tibet was a theocratic society and any reorganization of its governmental system would necessarily involve the destruction of the power held by the Buddhist religious functionaries.

In all fairness, it must be said that these and other reported violations of human rights were largely paralleled by similar excesses in China itself in the early period of the communist revolution and the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. Since then, however, the age-old Buddhist religion of Tibet has been largely suppressed and related occult practices replaced by practical socialism and exploitation of Tibetan resources and territory.

Religion and Superstition

Buddhism came to Tibet from India in the eighth century

C.E. and it pushed aside the earlier polytheistic and magical religion of the Tibetan people. However, the price of the conquest was the integration of many of the old deities, beliefs, and occult practices into the unique form of Buddhism that emerged in the land. Also moving into Tibet from India was a form of Hindu tantra, with its emphasis upon the subtle energies of the body and ritualized sex. Strong superstitions, belief in ghosts, demons, and magic coexisted with deep mystical thought.

The apostle of Buddhism in Tibet was named Padmasambhava and entered the country in the 1740s. As Buddhism developed, it divided into various sects, the degree of acceptance of the local religion being an important differentiating factor. The four main groups are popularly distinguished by the color of the hats their followers wear. The older Red Caps or Ningmapas, for example, follow the Adi-Yoga or path of the Great Perfection, founded by the guru Padmasambhava, while the Yellow Cap sect or Gelugpas follow a Middle Way Buddhism; the Kargyütpas, or Followers of Successive Order (deriving from the great Tibetan saint Milarepa, died 1135, successor of the revered gurus Marpa, Tilopa, and Naropa) follow the way of Mahamudra or Great Symbol. As with the various sects of Hindu

religious philosophy, with their many subtle emphases, the general overall philosophy of the four groups is the same.

By the fifteenth century a teaching had emerged in Tibet that the heads of all of the many monasteries were bodhisattvas, highly evolved beings who were refraining from entering Nirvana to assist other souls in their spiritual pilgrimage. The monastic rulers, or lamas, thus attained a unique role in Tibetan Buddhism as well as significant political power as temporal rulers.

The present spiritual leader of Tibet, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, who escaped to India in 1959, and the other lamas and their successors, are dedicated to keeping alive the spiritual traditions and the political aspirations to independence of the Tibetan people.

Like his predecessors, the Dalai Lama is claimed as a living incarnation of the Divine Spirit, and was discovered as such by traditional search and testing. When a Dalai Lama (or any lama for that matter) departs from life, priests traditionally conduct a search for his successor through signs and visions. Selected children are tested by their ability to recognize objects belonging to the former Dalai Lama. After identification, the child is brought to the holy city of Lhasa and initiated as a monk in the monastery of the Potala, which becomes a power center of the Divine Spirit, which issues forth from the Dalai Lama over the whole of Tibet. As Tibetan Buddhism has spread to the west and lamas have died in the west, the search for successors has also been conducted in the families of Western converts and several European children have been "identified" as reincarnated lamas.

The title "Dalai Lama" is from a Mongolian term meaning "Wide Ocean," and is not normally used by Tibetans among themselves, who prefer such terms as "Precious Protector" or "Precious Ruler," of Kundun (Presence), implying spiritual association. The first Dalai Lama was Tsong Ka-pa, born in Am-do in 1358. His disciples became the Yellow Hat sect, as distinct from the earlier priesthood of the Red Hats.

In addition to the regular monastic disciplines of complex prayer, meditation rites, and regular religious festivals, lamas traveling through Tibet were expected to act as oracles, fortune-tellers, and healers for the ordinary people. Prayer wheels with the mystic mantra "Om mani padme Hum" (Om, The Jewel in the Lotus) and rosaries were in use all over the country, and groups of prayer-flags fluttered around the villages. In the monasteries, tankas (complex symbolic mandala banners) became a focus for mystical meditation.

It is not difficult to understand why Lamaism should be permeated with demonology in view of the vast and terrifying grandeur of the Tibetan environment, in which the forces of nature appear to have the power of supernatural beings. Belief in magic was once universal.

The Dalai Lama came under attack in 1998 when he publicly announced that Dorje Shugden practices should no longer be performed by any sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Shugden has been regarded as a protector spirit of the Geluk sect, to which the Dalai Lama himself belongs. However, after studying ancient texts and consulting the state oracle, the Dalai Lama is convinced that Shugden is a hungry spirit and therefore incorrect to worship and regard as a protector for the Buddhist. Due to the Dalai Lama's opposing view, he is accused by some Buddhists for being a religious censor. Since the Tibetan culture and religion is thought to be near extinction, the Dalai Lama attempted to set a level of commonality between all sects of Buddhism. The great controversy that resulted from this attempted act of unification, may have also been the cause for the deaths of three monks in the Dalai Lama's inner circle.

Dissent within the Tibetan culture may be the result of the larger issues that still exist between Chinese and the Tibetan government-in-exile. The Chinese government seeks to control, and ultimately squelch, the Tibetan Buddhism religion. Ultimately the set-up of the religious hierarchy may become the demise of the religion itself. The Dalai Lama exists as the highest, top authority, while the Panchen Lama is the second in command, and the Karampa is the third in power. Presently the Panchen Lama, a boy of ten years, will be the one to choose the next Dalai Lama. However, with the aging Dalai Lama living in India, the Panchen Lama is still being held under Chinese supervision. This is a direct example of the Chinese wishing to control the Buddhist chain of command, and influence the continuity of the religion. The Chinese government conducted the search for this present Panchen Lama but the Dalai Lama announced their discovery publicly before ever having met him. The boy has never even been in Dharmsala, India. Thus, the boy has become a political pawn between the Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhism) and the Chinese government.

The Karampa, third in command, has been raised to heed the Chinese government as well. However, on December 28, 1999, he made his escape from Tibet to India to be united with the Dalai Lama. The two men met " 'as if a father was meeting his dear son after a long separation' ". The Dalai Lama reported his spirit as clear and strong saying after proper instruction he will be able to make great contributions. The struggle between Tibet and China continues and therefore the outcome of the survival of Tibetan Buddhism.

David-Neel's Psychic Sports

For centuries, Tibet was a forbidden territory to Westerners, and only a handful of Europeans succeeded in penetrating the country, usually in disguise. From 1912 on, an intrepid French-woman, Alexandra David-Neel, began a series of travels through Tibet over fourteen years. She acquired the rank of lama.

An Oriental scholar, David-Neel learned Sanskrit and Tibetan and studied the various forms of Buddhism and Lamaism. She became the first European woman to penetrate the holy city of Lhasa. Although skeptical regarding the supernatural, she gained firsthand experience of Tibetan ghosts and demons and saw the paranormal feats of mystics. In her book With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet (1931), she revealed how Tibetan mystics acquired the ability to live naked in zero temperatures by generating a protective body heat (tumo), how they learned to float in air and walk on water, and how they brought corpses back to life or created thoughtforms that had independent existence.

She described such feats as "psychic sports," acquired by special mind and body training. Amongst such feats was the lung-gom training of "inner breathing" and meditation, which enabled an individual to travel at high speed for days and nights without stopping, sometimes with the feet hardly touching the ground. David-Neel herself witnessed a lung-gom-pa, or swift traveler. She described the special training necessary for feats of levitation and for thought-reading and telepathy ("sending thoughts on the wind").

She successfully experimented in the creation of a tulpa or phantom thoughtforms. After a period in isolation following special concentration techniques, she claimed that she succeeded in creating a phantom monk, who became a guest in her party, seen and accepted by the others. But in the course of time, this phantom form changed from a fat jolly monk, becoming lean, mocking, and somewhat malignant, and it was necessary for her to concentrate on special techniques to destroy a phantom, which was beginning to take on independent life.

She explained that Tibetans believed that such psychic phenomena were the result of utilizing natural forces by the powers of the mind. Her experiences seem to have been the result of a long and intimate association with Tibet and its peoples in a period when magic and mystery were more common. Few subsequent travelers have reported such remarkable phenomena, and her books survive as a unique record of a Tibet that has largely been destroyed. However, they helped create the image of Tibet as a place where the most successful mastery of the occult arts had been made. The spread of Buddhist masters to the

west has done much to offer a more mundane picture of Tibetan life.

Tibetan medicine, the fundamentals virtually unchanged for 2,000 years, is completely intertwined with Tibetan Buddhism, in that they are based on the most essential Buddhist belief, that of karma. Thus, unhealthy human actions, such as, greed, hatred, and desire can be the cause of disease. Like karma, disease can be caused from present as well as past actions. Disease is also thought to be caused by an imbalance of the three basic humors of the body—air, bile, and phlegm. Diagnosis consists of three techniques, visual observation, pulse reading, and questioning. Simply put, Tibetan medicine is highly holistic in the areas of diagnosis and treatment. Treatments are usually always of the non-invasive variety. Lifestyle changes are recommended, medicines are made of herbs, and "surgery" consists of acupuncture, cauterization, hot and cold compresses, hot springs and vapor treatments.

A lot can be learned from Tibetan medicine by Western countries, as it and its practitioners listen and are aware of the individual body, as an extension of religion. The body then exists as only part of the whole scheme of the universe.

It is still too early to predict whether the upheavals of the last half of the twentieth century will involve a permanent loss of spiritual and psychic identity for the Tibetan people. Those many Tibetans who moved into exile have established strong enclaves of traditional Tibetan culture and many people have given of their time, energy, and financial resources to see that the manuscripts and artifacts taken out of the country are preserved.

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