I never tire of reading history. I’m not sure what most single men of my age spend their time doing, but I spend it reading, meditating, and writing.
Did you know that the CIA sponsored a Tibetan guerilla movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s? I didn’t. They took Tibetans and trained them in Saipan and Colorado, then reinserted them.
Get this, the operation code names were Circus, Barnum and Bailey.
One fact, long lost to history, is that in 1952 the Communists kidnapped 200 Tibetan kids–kidnapping and brainwashing occur as reliable concomitants of Communism the world over–and beheaded one of them, presumably in front of the others, as “a warning to the others not to cry and complain”.
Nehru comes across badly in all this, as quite willing to appease the Chinese.
I honestly don’t think anyone who reads enough history of the modern era can ever feel they have comprehended what went on behind the scenes, in unpublished meetings, and unknown intrigues.
But personally, I have little respect for the 14th Dalai Lama. The 13th was a ballsy, solid guy. Not Tenzin Gyatso, in my view.
And going back centuries before that, the INSTITUTION of “Dalai Lama” comes from an internal political conflict. A specific Tibetan, whose name I won’t bother to recollect or look up, approached the Mongolians and asked in effect for their help in getting his own kingship. This was granted, at the cost of a not inconsiderable number of lives. He specifically asked that a particular Bon village be destroyed. It was, and its leader decapitated.
He was actually anointed the THIRD Dalai Lama. The first two were as it were grandfathered in posthumously.
And it is supposed, upon it appears a reasonable basis, that not only was the 13th Dalai Lama poisoned, but so too were several of his immediate predecessors. The 14th of course had nothing to do with this, but it is perhaps telling that no one saw fit to get rid of him. He was smuggled out by, at least in part, and as I understand it, American trained guerrillas, who benefited little by their sacrifice. Perhaps the Tibetan diaspora has. I won’t and can’t speak to that.
“Dalai”, by the way, is not a Tibetan word. It is a Mongolian word, meaning “ocean”. In Tibet the Dalai Lama is called Kundun.
In nearly all realms of modern life, if you dig deep enough, you find the bullshit upon which almost all we think we know is built.