Will Tibetans' 'middle way' China approach preserve peace in Himalayan region?

About 100,000 ethnic Tibetans gathered at the Buddhist holy site of Bodhgaya in India's Bihar state at the end of 2022 to listen to the teachings of the Dalai Lama.

The 87-year-old Buddhist leader needed help to ascend the stage, but his mind was sharp and he spoke without hesitancy during his hour-long sessions.

Uppermost in the minds of many Tibetans is the legacy he will leave behind and how that could preserve peace in Asia.

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In a 2019 book published just before the border flare-up between Indian and Chinese troops in the Himalayas, former Indian diplomat Phunchok Stobdan warned that the mountainous region - which includes India, China, Nepal and Bhutan - could become a new geopolitical hotspot.

He called it the "Buddhist Himalayas" and pointed out that the Hemis monastery in Ladakh was an essential node of Himalayan Buddhism, as was the Drepung monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, a fact overlooked in India.

"When Tibetans had to seek refuge in India because of China, His Holiness took the opportunity to spread the teachings of the Buddha with his own brand of compassionate Buddhism," said Gonpo Dhundup, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress.

Tibet has been a decades-long headache for Beijing since the Dalai Lama broke with the Chinese leadership and fled to India in 1959. The Tibetan spiritual leader is regarded as a separatist by Beijing, which strongly opposes international engagement with him.

While many rights activists in the West often campaign for a free Tibet, the Dalai Lama has been promoting a "middle way"- not going to extremes - in line with Buddhism's core teachings.

The "middle way" does not demand independence for Tibet from Chinese rule, but encourages a high degree of autonomy for the three provinces of Tibet within the framework of China.

The Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) shares the same view and said that for Tibetans, it would mean the protection and preservation of their culture, religion and identity. For China, it would mean security and territorial integrity of the nation. For neighbouring countries and other third parties, it would mean peaceful borders and good international relations.

Professor Geshe Ngawang Samten, vice-chancellor of the Central Tibetan University in Sarnath in India, said that the Dalai Lama's teachings had worldwide appeal "because he is very rational, his mind is very scientific".

Samten said the Dalai Lama promotes Buddhism by advocating understanding and the providing of solutions such as changing one's line of thought, a social system or the education system.

"That is what people appreciate. He is not in favour of propaganda and propagation of Buddhism," said Professor Samten.

The Dalai Lama's non-propagandist approach has attracted admirers globally and converted millions to Buddhism in the last few decades. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition has also spread widely across India as well as in the West and Southeast Asia.

Today, Dharamsala in northwestern India, where the Dalai Lama has lived for more than 50 years, is the nerve centre of Tibetan Buddhism, where the CTA was established to oversee the well-being and rehabilitation of Tibetan refugees.

Under its supervision, Tibetan settlements, monasteries, schools and healthcare facilities have been set up across India and overseas in the last 60 years.

A Tibetan cultural union has developed, spanning Ladakh in the northwest to Sikkim in India's northeast, as well as parts of Nepal and Bhutan, and in Tibet.

"[The] culture is vibrant, and cannot necessarily restrict to specific regions and territories," said CTA spokesman Tenzin Lekshay.

"Most importantly, the language and Buddhism are the main components of Tibetan identity, which are not only being preserved by the Tibetans but also being promoted in Himalayan regions, who have had cultural ties with Tibet for millennia."

Yeshi Chomby, a monk in training at the Sera Jey Tibetan monastery in South India, was born to Indian parents and identifies as an Indian of Tibetan descent.

"Himalayan people like me from Arunachal, Sikkim, Ladakh, Bhutan, Nepal, have a very important responsibility to protect and spread the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and spread the message of non-violence to the world," he said.

Chomby is confident that Buddhist monks of the Tibetan tradition, protected by the Indian constitution, "have a bright future in India".

Dhundup of the Tibetan Youth Congress is also confident that the network of Tibetan institutions established across India in recent decades "will give security" to people like him beyond the life of the current Dalai Lama.

But some young Tibetans are unsure if the Dalai Lama's middle way can succeed. "We at the Tibetan Youth Congress feel we have a moral right to ask for Tibetan independence from China," Dhundup said. "[Either] complete independence or the middle way, it has to be for the betterment of the Tibetan people."

Tibetan writer and activist, Tenzin Tsundue, who has lived in Dharamsala for four decades, said "the demand for autonomy is a clever projection of an aspiration which doesn't seem extreme, which seems doable. But for me, as a Tibetan, I want independence of Tibet". He noted that while the Dalai Lama talks about autonomy, the "Chinese want to talk about his reincarnation".

In December 2020, the US Congress introduced a bill calling on China not to interfere in the religious determination of the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama after his death.

CTA welcomed this bill, and last year it also ran workshops for young Tibetans to enlighten them about the middle-way approach, as there are fears they may ditch the Dalai Lama's non-violent stance after he dies.

Samten said Tibetan Buddhism became "a global kind of entity" after Tibet lost its independence. "We have the knowledge system and culture which we can share with the rest of the world", he said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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