Movement and Identity: Through the Dalai Lama's eyes

What does it mean to be a global citizen? How does your identity relate to your movement throughout the world? In particular, what impact does your identity have on your development in the society you live in? Identity can be defined as your essential self. It is the set of characteristics that you recognize as belonging uniquely to you. In essence, your identity is how you define yourself. The premise of this segment is to describe how one’s identity affects their movement around the world, through culture, and across time. The specific example that I will use to illustrate this idea is the Dalai Lama. Through his life we can see that how he and the world identifies him has greatly affected his movement around the world physically, intellectually, and spiritually.

The Dalai Lama

To begin, a bit of background on the concept the Dalai Lama is very important. According to the Buddhist belief and tradition, everyone is bound to a cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth until they gain enlightenment and step into the “ultimate state of being”. Certain enlightened ones choose to remain in the cycle as an act of charity in order to assist others on their way to finding enlightenment. The Dalai Lama is seen as being the manifestations of Avalokiteshvara, or Boddhisattva, who is 74th in a lineage traced back to a Brahmin boy who lived during the time of Buddha Shakyamuni. There have been relatively few Dalai Lamas, only 14 with the first being born in 1351 AD. The current Dalai Lama was born July 6, 1935 to a poor farming family in Northern Tibet. The process for identifying the Dalai Lama is determined by following a number of signs or revelations that monks or other respected Buddhists receive.

As the group of monks set out to find the next Dalai Lama, they came across a boy named Lhamo Thondup who showed all the signs of being the next Lama in the reincarnation cycle. In 1940, during a ceremony, Lhamo Thondup was installed as the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people where he. Through a ceremony of cutting off all his hair, he assumed his new name Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso. This changing of his name is significant because of his identity. When you assume a name, you become that person. Numerous studies have shown that your name can be linked to all sorts of social outcomes. The idea is that if you have a name that represents some sort of significance, you will be more likely to strive to reach it, than if your name wasn’t related to any significance of achievement.

Potala Palace in Lhasa

In the summer of 1950, the Chinese began raids on Tibetan posts. The previous year, the Chinese had stated their intention of liberating the Tibetans from imperialist aggressors, and in October of 1950, 80,000 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army flooded into Tibet. As the news got worse, people began to advocate for the Dalai Lama’s full power in the government, and on November 17, 1950 at the age of 15, he was enthroned as the temporal leader of Tibet. Shortly after, he sent two ministers to Great Britain and America in the hopes of persuading the countries to intervene, who later returned with the news that neither nation was willing to help. Frustrated with these results, a delegation was sent to Beijing to open dialogue with the Chinese. This, however, turned out disastrously when the Seventeen-Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet was signed when the Chinese forged the Tibetan seal and forced the delegation into signing the agreement. In 1959, as the head of the country and as a prominent religious figure, the Dalai Lama was forced to escape and flee into India when General Chiang Chin-Wu extended a seemingly innocent invitation to the Lama to attend a theatrical show by a Chinese dance troupe, but under the conditions that no Tibetan soldiers were to accompany him. This sent a wave of anxiety throughout the nation and soon a crowd of tens of thousands of Tibetans gathered around the Palace at Lhasa in order to protect the life of their leader.

The Indian government agreed to provide asylum to the Dalai Lama and his followers, and in Mussoorie he began to talk to the Indian Prime Minister about rehabilitating the Tibetan Refugees. The Dalai Lama realized the importance of a modern education for the refugee children and along with the Indian Ministry of Education, set up schools for the displaced Tibetans. As the Dalai Lama, he was still responsible for his people and for their well-being. Because of this, he took it upon himself to make sure that the Tibetan way of life was preserved, even through exile. Finally on June 10, 1959, the Dalai Lama formally renounced the seventeen-point Agreement and began to make sweeping changes such as creating new Tibetan government departments such as the Departments of Education, Home, Security, Religious, and Economic Affairs. Tibet is still not an independent country, but its people have since been carrying out a non-violent movement to regain their freedom.

China may continue to rule Tibet for decades to come

Through the Dalai Lama’s life, we can see that his spiritual identity as the Dalai Lama has influenced his movement spiritually, and his growth and feeling of responsibility to mature and lead his people to enlightenment. His intellectual identity can be seen through his education and vision for a greater Tibetan Nation and the movement for Tibetans to become involved globally and become more modernized. Physically, his identity has displaced him from his home country, forcing him to become a refugee. He has had to endure the hardships of dealing with a Communist regime taking over the nation that he is responsible for and having to rebuild a people displaced from their homes. The Dalai Lama is an excellent example of how one’s identity relates to their movement. Their identity not only relates to their movement, but in many cases, such as the Dalai Lama’s, it determines their movement.

Sources:
http://www.tibet.net/en/index.php?id=84&rmenuid=11
http://www.dalailama.com/page.4.htm#countdown
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/people/dalailama_1.shtml
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071114111138.htm
Encarta Dictionary

Images taken from:
http://www.upi.com/news/issueoftheday/2009/03/10/China-may-rule-Tibet-for-decades-to-come/UPI-38161236701614/
http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/potala-palace-landmark.htm
http://theblackcordelias.wordpress.com/2009/01/