`Living Buddha’ takes 7-day trek to India

The official spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs merely said that New Delhi was “inquiring into the circumstances attendant upon the sudden arrival in India of Lama Orgyen Trinley Dorji as also into the consequences of it”.

The diplomatic fallout ofthe controversy will continue to be watched carefully over the next few days, with the coincidental arrival tomorrow of US Assistant Secretary of State Julia Taft, who is also, significantly, Washington’s special coordinator on Tibet.

Diplomatic sources emphasised that Taft’s arrival had nothing to do with the the young Tibetan spiritual leader’s arrival in India, even as analysts pointed out that Tibetan affairs are an area of “mutual convergence” between India and the US.

Government sources in Delhi, meanwhile, defending their decision not to allow the young Lama official status of the Karmapa sect, pointed out that it was a “very sensitive issue, because that would affect Sino-Indian ties, which are looking up”. The sources, however, added that it was also not possible for India to ask Dorji to return to China. “We can’t throw him out either, because a number of Tibetan refugees enter India and he can stay here just like one of them,” they said.

Clearly, though, Beijing seems to be terriblyembarrassed by the “escape” of the boy, with nearly the entire Chinese media blacking out the news of either his departure from Tibet or his arrival in Dharamshala.

The China Daily, an English-language publication aimed at foreign readers, today noted that “(the) Living Buddha simply went abroad”, reiterating a brief comment yesterday on the official Xinhua news agency’s English service, but ignored by its Chinese-language service and television.

The Chinese authorities confirmed that the Karmapa had left Tibet, but without acknowledging he had defected to the Dalai Lama, Beijing’s sworn enemy. Xinhua quoted a government spokesman as saying he had left the Tsurphu monastery in Lhasa recently, leaving behind a letter saying he was going abroad to collect some musical instruments and black hats used by previous reincarnations of the Karmapa Lama. “This did not mean to betray the State, the nation, the monastery or the leadership,” he said in his letter, according to Xinhua.

In Delhi, aspokesman of the Chinese embassy told The Indian Express that they had “no confirmation that Karmapa was in India. He was staying in China for a long time and was quite comfortable there. He had left only to get the musical instruments of the Buddhist mass and the black hats used by the previous Living Buddha. We hope that he will return soon.”

Significantly, both the Chinese and the Dalai Lama, who belongs to a separate Buddhist sect, have acknowledged that Dorji is the “reincarnation” of the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa sect.

“The guarded response from the Chinese authorities to the news of the Karmapa’s arrival in India and the fact that they have not denounced him suggests that they wish to keep open the option that the Karmapa might return to Tibet in the near future,” said the London-based Tibet Information Network (TIN). “Tibetans have been concerned for some time about Chinese attempts to manipulate the Karmapa and use him for their own political purposes, such as undermining support for theDalai Lama in Tibet.”

The Karmapa is the spiritual leader of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism and ranks third in the Tibetan spiritual hierarchy behind the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama.

According to a website (maui.net/tsurphu/karmapa), run by the US-based Tsurphu Foundation, the Karmapa had spent seven days walking out of Tibet and was now staying with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. The extremely hazardous, high-altitude trek to Dharamsala was also made by the Dalai Lama when he fled Tibet in 1959, after Beijing brutally suppressed an uprising against Chinese rule.

TIN said that since his enthronement at the Tsurphu monastery in 1992, the boy has made officials visits to China during which he has been received by some of its highest officials, including President Jiang Zemin. He has also met the number four in the communist hierarchy, Li Ruihuan, who said that the Karmapa’s “progress” would have a “great impact on the development and stability of Tibet.”

According to TIN, the Karmapamanaged to evade “very tight security” and make the hazardous trek to India from Tibet with a small group of followers. It said he had fled because he was “unable to have access to his teacher”, Tai Situ Rimpoche, who is living in exile in India.