GIVING COMFORT IN A WORLD OF CHAOS

Author: By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff

Date: Monday, September 24, 1990
Page: 35
Section: LIVING

A million countrymen and more have been butchered for the crime of asserting that they are Tibetan Buddhists, not Chinese Communists. Instead of living in peaceful contemplation, secure in magic palaces at the top of the world as his predecessors were for centuries, the 14th Dalai Lama travels the world as an exile.

Yet Tenzin Gyatso, spiritual and once temporal ruler of Tibet, winner last year of the Nobel Prize for Peace, is not a wanderer, nor does he despair.
Neither does he recoil when asked what good has come of all this suffering.

That good arises from bad is a cornerstone of his faith.

"This tragedy gives me new life," he said last week, in a conversation on a windswept Vermont hilltop. "If I had remained in Tibet without this problem, my whole way of thinking might be different."

Because the Chinese overran his defenseless homeland and forced him to flee, the Dalai Lama said, he has had "wider contact with the outside world" than would otherwise have been the case, and "Tibetan culture now reaches more places.

"When things are desperate, there is no need to pretend that everything is beautiful. You have to accept reality. This has helped me come closer to reality."

The Dalai Lama dresses in a plain maroon monk's robe, and all his other accouterments -- shoes, eyeglasses, wristwatch -- are the most ordinary imaginable. So, too, is his walk, which suggests neither timidity or pride. His voice is ordinary; his words, while often profound, also are simple.

To come face to face with him is to be embraced. Clear, bright eyes set in an unlined face fix on you and nothing else; extreme concentration and equally extreme relaxation enable him simultaneously to investigate and to empathize.

It is the same with everyone. Sort of.

To young children he is a playmate who wonders out loud about things they had considered only secretly. They gasp when he asks if they love Mother or Father more, giggle when he inquires whether they really prefer toys to military gear when the weapons are so bright and shiny, the uniforms so colorful.

To college students he is a veteran traveler on roads they seek to explore, assuring them that they can make a difference, that their Western civilization implants much that is positive in their approach to the world.

To adults, like those from across New England who streamed into tiny Middlebury to hear him speak last weekend, he is a comforter in a world where they find precious little peace.

"If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry," he tells them. "If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever."

Tenzin Gyatso is widely considered the epitome of the philosophy he espouses, a persona arising out of what is possibly one of the most varied experiences in recent human history.

Born into a farm family in 1935 in the Tibetan province of Amdo -- now reconstituted as the Chinese prison province of Qinghai -- he was identified at age 2 1/2, through a variety of visions and mystical signs, as the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. The first was born in 1351.

At age 5, he took up residence in the fabulous thousand-chambered Potala palace in Lhasa and was seated on the vast, jewel-encrusted Lion Throne and installed as spiritual leader of Tibet. He became political leader at age 15, on the eve of the Chinese invasion.

Before he was 21, he was struggling to keep alive traditionalist, pacifist Tibet's claim to an independent identity as he negotiated with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Their answer was a range of Chinese policies, ranging from coercion to armed repression and massive transfers of ethnic Chinese settlers into Tibet.

Not only was the Dalai Lama's home region separated from Tibet, but the Tibetan province of Kham -- the most fertile and populous region of the country -- was cut up and annexed to the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan.

In contrast to the uproar sparked by Iraq overrunning Kuwait, the world did its best to ignore China's conquest of Tibet, as Western and Asian nations alike kept peace with China's triumphant new rulers. There was no oil to worry about in Tibet.

In 1959, facing imminent attack on Lhasa and on him personally, the Dalai Lama fled across the Himalayas to India.

No nation would recognize the Tibetan government in exile, but the Dalai Lama and his followers were treated well by the Indian government, which provided him with a headquarters station at Dharamsala, in northern India, and has assisted in the resettlement of nearly 100,000 Tibetan refugees and the education of their children in schools that preserve their native language and cultural traditions.

The Dalai Lama never ceased talking about what had been done to his people and homeland. But the effort to focus the world's attention on their problems is gaining momentum as knowledge of Chinese desecration of Tibet's religious and natural environments spreads alongside general disillusion with China's treatment of its own students and citizens.

Of more than 6,000 Buddhist monasteries in the country when Tenzin Gyatso was born, 37 continue to function, and "an ancient nation with a unique culture is almost dying," he told the thousands in Middlebury. "We need your help."

Still, it is not the voice of desperation. Already, he said in an interview, it is certain that the Chinese have failed to wipe out the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, and Chinese Communism itself is wobbling. The still growing prominence of the Dalai Lama, a peacemaker recognized worldwide, as a witness to the Chinese barbarities certainly seems a factor, too. For even as he gives testimony to the tragedy, he speaks with compassion of the humanity of the Chinese people.

Suppression of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square last year demonstrates the regime's weakness, not its strength, he asserts, and shows that a spirit will triumph in China that will improve the future for Tibet.

The regime "cannot destroy the freedom and democracy movement. That is something that human feeling wants," he said. "No force can stop that desire."

Just as he teaches that people should have love and compassion for one another not out of pity, but because that is in the interest of their own welfare and peace of mind, he reasons that the great and powerful of the world have a stake in the fate of Tibet.

"Firstly, the Tibetan issue is a moral issue," he says. "Among humanity, it is important to keep alive moral justice. If humanity loses the value of truth, that is disaster.

"Second, Tibet has a long history, a unique cultural heritage, and culture is something that belongs to the world. The social habit of that culture there is no need to preserve. The part of the culture which offers hope, confidence, mental calmness -- that is very worthwhile to preserve, a contribution to humanity."

He rises, at the urging of his secretaries, to hurry off to another appointment. Still talking about Tibet -- it is the best place for gardening, of course -- he shakes hands.

But nothing is cursory with this man; nothing lacks sensitivity. Shaking hands, he feels that his visitor has been chilled during their conversation on the windy hilltop. Never breaking eye contact, he prolongs the garden talk and clasps the visitor's hands between his own until they are warmed.

Then, he says, "Thank you" and is gone.

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