DURING one of my excursions to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama I pulled over for a Tibetan meal at a roadside restaurant near Dharmashala, his mountain retreat in India. The waiter turned down the request to swat away the swarm of flies that had covered the table like a black carpet. “We are Buddhists, we don’t kill,” he reprimanded. When the thukpa was served, the traditional thick soup had chunks of meats that would offend not one but several religions.

The waiter had read my mind. “We are Buddhists,” he explained pre-emptively. “We eat meat but we don’t kill.” Tersely put, the essential message was: As long as the killing is left to someone else, we are fine with the outcome.

An incident like that could trigger a pattern of cogitation in anyone’s mind. For me, it travelled to the way of the bhiku, the Buddhist monk who begs for food, as Buddha himself is believed to have done after he gave up a life of luxury. The philosophy in this is at once pragmatic and opportunistic. On the one hand it literally translates the saying “beggars are no choosers” into practice. You get to eat what you earn from a benefactor’s generosity on a given day.

If the alms-giver likes meat and he shares it with you, so be it.

That’s a pragmatic thing to do, as the waiter also seemed to believe.

The flip side is a bit trickier to justify. If the ideal way for a Buddhist is to give up the worldly ways of the “sansar”, and the prescribed way here is to be a monk who begs for food for a living, then where does this leave the farmer who produces the grain or his wife who bakes the bread, or the butcher who slaughters the animal?

Theoretically, it occurred to me as I hastily gulped down the soup to get out of the place, that there would have to be a pressure on the farmer, the bread-maker and the butcher to stay away from the melee to attain the higher form of spiritualism, and thence the coveted nirvana. For if they too joined the rush, life would become fraught with serious risks to the economic equilibrium of society at large.

Ergo: your nirvana comes at a material cost to others. As Sarojini Naidu told Gandhi, it was expensive to keep him poor.

I once met the Dalai Lama’s oracle, a genial man in his 30s who gave me grains of unpolished rice as a boon. If that has transformed my life or given me protection against malevolent forces, I have no way of knowing. The oracles are an important part of the Tibetan way of life.

Tibetans rely on them not just to foretell the future but also as protectors and sometimes as healers. In the Tibetan tradition, the oracle is a spirit that enters those men and women who act as mediums between the natural and the spiritual realms. In his autobiography,

Freedom in Exile, His Holiness the Dalai Lama writes: “This may sound far-fetched to twentieth-century western readers. Even some Tibetans, mostly those who consider themselves ‘progressive’, have misgivings about my continued use of this ancient method of intelligence gathering. But I do so for the simple reason that as I look back over the many occasions when I have asked questions of the oracle, on each one of them, time has proved that his answer was correct. This is not to say that I rely solely on the oracle’s advice . And sometimes, in addition to (oracle’s) counsel, I also take into consideration certain prophecies.”A little glimpse there, but it shows that Tibetan Buddhism, with all its beautifully unconvincing facets introduced by Brahmin tantrics, makes a fascinating religion nevertheless. And the Dalai Lama with his beatific smile and infectious laughter is a charismatic spiritual guru. Yet the idea of adding one more religious state to the huge list of theocratic or semi-theocratic nations that already exist, as his followers across the world desire, causes worry. The notionally Buddhist state of Sri Lanka has not painted itself with glory despite the inherent attractions of Buddhist sagacity. Its raging ethnic mistrust is too frightening a prospect to be attempted anywhere else, not the least because it was a Buddhist monk who carried out the assassination of Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike.

At a time when political religion has become a menace when Pakistan is being pulled back from the brink of theocratic drift, Israel has bared its fangs as a religion-based oppressor of people under its care, at a time when Saudi Arabia together with its Arab and Persian neighbours are using religious prescriptions to revel in the abuse of human rights and when most Indians are praying ever more worriedly to keep their country from losing its secular trajectory it would be nothing less than dangerous atavism to encourage another religion-based state in the Himalayas. If the motive is to needle the notionally godless communist China with the help of the CIA, as seems to be the case, then the entire quest deserves to be regarded with even greater caution. The timing of the current turmoil in the Tibetan world and their powerful backers is interesting. For the nouveau riche Indian middle class hooked to a vegetarian version of gladiatorial duels known as Twenty20 cricket, the Tibetan protests have offered a welcome escape from the arriving embarrassment of one more disgraceful outing at the Olympics in Beijing.

On the political front, the Chinese assessment of India’s limited interest in winning back lost territory and yet doing everything to annoy Beijing is contained in a captured Chinese Communist document that was released from the CIA archives last year. The CIA report also shows what, and how, the Chinese leadership wanted to achieve in the India-China dispute. This document was issued by the Tibetan Military Region Command Headquarters on November 14, 1960, and was approved by the Central Committee and Chairman Mao. It said that patrols were not permitted within a certain distance of the border. It warned that even if the neighbouring country (India) with bombast and arrogance carried out aggression, the patrols were to wait for the orders from the Central Command and not take any action on their own. However, they were allowed reconnaissance.

The document warned, according to a report on it on rediff.com, against allowing emotions to overtake policy. It said that if they did not retain their cool, then emotions would overwhelm them. In such circumstances, they would lose sight of the larger picture. The document pointed out that the enemy, meaning India, did not want to occupy a large chunk of the territory or start a war; but it wanted to stir up anti-Chinese sentiments and hurt the cause of socialism! The assessment was precise and accurate. Stirring up anti-Chinese sentiments without a clear roadmap for anything more worthwhile remains a regular pastime of many a defence analyst today, as was the case in the 1960s. The CIA document too had taken note of this Indian weakness.

Given the potential mess that India could land itself in if it were to make a political case with Beijing for Tibet’s independence, as some leaders of the BJP, most notably former foreign minister Yashwant Sinha believe Delhi should, we would do well to take into account our own Achilles’ heel in Kashmir and other assorted states in the north-eastern region. Also the Dalai Lama would need to make a compelling case for the Palestinians, the Basque guerrillas among so many other movements fighting to break away from their “occupiers”. In the meantime, it is curious that the apostle of peace has not found it worth his while to share his ideals of humanism at times when his hosts, the Indian people, needed it most, such as in Gujarat or in the latest carnage in Jaipur. Dalai Lama clearly likes peace, but he also likes to choose where he wants it.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com