RSS

Contact us

Friday 5 December 2008

Homage to His Holiness

George Fitzherbert on a selection of books about the Dalai Lama

Norman’s book, by contrast, opens that closed door, and allows us to see the long history of Tibet’s peculiar brand of ‘religion and politics combined’. Having ghost-written the Dalai Lama’s autobiography, Freedom in Exile, Norman knows the Dalai Lama probably better than any Englishman alive. By putting His Holiness in his own historical context, his book sheds light on the tightrope he walks between the arcane world of traditional Tibet and the globalised and often disenchanted modern world. His exile since 1959 in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, has given him the opportunity to make his Buddhist learning (he has been studying Buddhist philosophy intensively since the age of six) relevant for all humanity. The problem is that this globalised ‘stadium Buddhism’, stripped of its ritual and esotericism, can become as bland and obvious as the moral platitudes available at any Sunday school. So it is the occult, the magic, which in the end attracts the world to the Dalai Lama. Despite his disavowal of blind superstition and of his own deification — ‘I am just a simple Buddhist monk’ he is often heard to say — the Dalai Lama still has a magical presence for his devotees. People go to him for blessings more than lessons. In the annals of the Dalai Lamas, the 14th will surely go down as one of the holiest. In the political annals of Tibet, however, unless a long-prayed-for volte-face is forthcoming from the Chinese government, his tenure will be recorded as one of failure and disappointment.

Two other books on the Dalai Lama are published this month. Mayank Chhaya’s Dalai Lama: The Revealing Life Story and his Struggle for Tibet (I. B. Tauris, £8.99, pp. 360, ISBN 9781845117634) is a somewhat melodramatic, but nevertheless informative account of the Dalai Lama’s life, with interesting discussions of, for example, Nehru’s ambivalent position towards the plight of Tibet in the 1950s. Also published is The Leader’s Way, a work co-authored by the Dalai Lama with Laurens van den Muyzenberg, a Dutch management consultant, a somewhat bland manual on the relevance of Buddhism to corporate ethics and leadership in business (Nicholas Brearley Publishing, £16.99, pp. 202, ISBN 9781857885118).

George FitzHerbert has a DPhil in Tibetan Studies from Oxford University. His first book on the Tibetan national epic of Gesar is soon to be published by Oxford University Press.

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment   |  Apollo Art Books

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved