Tibet and the Budda

A Tibet of the mind December 2010

By: Tenzing Sonam
For the generations of Tibetans now raised in exile, ‘home’ has taken on a complex tapestry of meanings.

Like most Tibetans born and brought up in exile, I grew up, in India, with a certain idea of my homeland, one that was informed by two extreme but inseparable views. On the one hand was an idealised state of grace that existed before the Chinese invasion; on the other, the violated and transformed land – a veritable hell on Earth – that it had since become. We were taught that we, the exiles, were the keepers of the true flame of Tibet’s national identity, the guardians of its culture and traditions, which, as far as we knew, were being destroyed in our homeland. And we were also raised to believe that one day we would triumphantly return home, that the entire raison d’etre for our displacement was to fight for that moment.

Over time, this lofty aspiration lost some of its bearings, instead becoming simply another component of our lives as refugees. Our world evolved its own particular reality; we were neither Tibetans in the way that our parents were – and Tibetans in Tibet still are – in the sense of having a physical connection to our land, nor were we truly a part of our adopted countries. Our peculiar in-between lives seemed to demand the expectation of returning to our spiritual homeland for sustenance, but not necessarily its fulfilment. As far as we knew, this was our life – being an exiled Tibetan, inhabiting an ersatz Tibetan world.

For the first two decades of exile, we had very little communication with our homeland. China, then in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, was closed to the outside world, and the ensuing shroud of silence fell even more heavily over Tibet. We had no idea what had befallen our families back home, and the occasional snippet of news only confirmed our worst fears. Tibet seemed to be undergoing horrors that we could not remotely imagine; the very fabric of its existence seemed to be in the process of being dismantled. This knowledge gave us the impetus to rebuild our lives in our new home in exile. The preservation of Tibetan culture, especially its Buddhist traditions, and the development of a modern education system for the younger generation, became the Dalai Lama’s most pressing concerns. And in this, helped by India’s generous accommodation and the support of many international agencies, we proved remarkably proficient. Within a few years, we were able to create a parallel Tibetan world, complete with our own religious establishments, educational and cultural institutions, settlements and, most importantly, our own government, headquartered in Dharamsala. We became, in the words of one academic study, ‘one of the most resilient and successful refugee groups in the world’.

In the early years, however, the belief remained strong that, sooner or later, we would be returning to Tibet. For people of my father’s generation, this goal was a very real one. They retained strong memories of home, and the thought of one day being able to go back sustained them through the trauma of escape and relocation. But with each passing year, this hope became remote and unattainable. By the time my father died in a Delhi hospital, in 1999, most people of his generation had already passed away. The expectation of return thus shifted from being a credible goal to an abstract ideal. By this point, the majority of us had only ever known the state of exile as our home. Over the years, as fewer and fewer of us had any direct memory or link with Tibet, we drifted further away from the reality of its contemporary situation. Instead, we retreated deeper into the cloistered world we had created for ourselves, an alter-Tibetan universe that was validated by the existence of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the various religious, educational and cultural institutions we had established. But above all, it was the presence of the Dalai Lama that gave us a kind of moral justification, a redeeming reason for our continuing existence as refugees.