Tibet’s Rising Son

The rituals of Tibetan Buddhism approximate those of a medieval court, with hushed attendants, servants lighting incense and fetching tea, and hundreds of petitioners waiting for a word with the "glorious teacher of the karma people." Still, the Karmapa observes the probities of monastic life, fasting and sitting for long hours of meditation. His own interest in comfort seems no greater than massaging his toes at the end of a long day. "A little tired," he explained in his tentative English to a NEWSWEEK reporter who interviewed him twice during five days spent following him around. Visitors normally present white scarves to high Tibetan lamas, but the Karmapa seemed to make little of the offerings, and playfully drew an extra scarf from a pile of luxurious silks to toss at the reporter. Most questions from journalists were "too easy," he warned through a translator.

After that flash of pride, the Karmapa directed attention away from himself—as befits one who has renounced the ego. Asked directly if he can replace the Dalai Lama as a leader, he replied that he was only one of many possible heirs. "The Dalai Lama is like the sun. No matter how many stars there are, they don't look too bright in comparison." A broader leadership could form, he suggested, "if many stars come together [with] the same strength and power and brilliance of that sun."

The Karmapa shares the Dalai Lama's ability to navigate modern questions of geopolitics with a delicate balance of aphorism, riddle and ancient verities about compassion, nonviolence and generosity—along with modern nostrums on global warming and overconsumption. He has condemned violence, including the Tibetan riots against Chinese rule in Lhasa last April that killed dozens of ethnic Chinese. But he says he understands the "sheer frustration, the sheer sense of suffocation" of Tibetans scattered in exile or forced to live under Chinese rule. "For any living being," he said, "when you feel the force of being cornered time and again, more and more, the time comes when you have nothing else left except to explode."

The risks of explosion were increasing, he said, and every day that the Chinese stalled in accommodating legitimate Tibetan demands merely increased the chance of chaos. "The Chinese Communist Party needs to understand that for right now, there is His Holiness the Dalai Lama. [He] is the main force that is controlling the emotions, keeping the wave of anger from spilling out. When there isn't somebody like him, then there is a great danger." But isn't there someone like him waiting in the wings—the Karmapa Lama, perhaps? "I have no goals, nor any ambitions to be of great influence," the Karmapa said during the interview at his monastery in Bihar. "But if circumstances make me a force for change, then I am a force for change."

In some obvious ways, the Karmapa Lama is a wrong choice to replace the Dalai Lama. Already a tulku, or reincarnation, he cannot be chosen as the reborn Dalai Lama. The Karmapa is also from a rival school of Buddhism, the Kagyu, a small order known colloquially as the Black Hats. Naming the Karmapa as regent would effectively place an outsider at the head of the Dalai Lama's own Gelug, or Yellow Hat, sect. That's like sending an Episcopalian to oversee the Vatican for 20 years.

But the choice of the Karmapa is so wrong, it may be right. If the Dalai Lama acts decisively now to name the Karmapa as regent, or appoints him to lead in a purely temporal capacity, the choice could unite Tibetans more than divide them. "Theological issues are becoming secondary," Lobsang of Harvard notes. Choosing the Karmapa Lama fits "the political reality of the Tibetan movement."