The Dalai Lama ended his prayers at Norbulingka Palace, put on his saffron robe and covered himself with a black army coat. The top leader of Tibetan Buddhism put a rifle on his shoulder and went out into the street. It was ten o'clock on the night of March 17, 1959, and the Chinese occupation of Tibet was complete. Thousands of monks executed, temples looted, bombs destroyed the holy city of Lhasa. Dressed as a soldier, it took him two weeks to cross the Himalayas and find refuge in India.

He was twenty-five years old and told his followers that the oracle of Nechung had pointed out the escape route to him. More than a hundred thousand Tibetans would follow on foot in the following months. When it was discovered that the secret map of that leak operated the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, the Dalai Lama had become one of the most influential people on the planet.

The Tibetan government-in-exile was installed in late 1959 in the city of Dharamsala, a mountainous spot in northern India. From there the Dalai Lama led the peaceful uprising against the Chinese occupation of Tibet. His preaching against violence dazzled the West. He traveled the world teaching – in stadiums of fifteen thousand people – how the renunciation of desire and meditation were the way to avoid suffering.

In 1989 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He became a habitué of the White House and was revered by Hollywood stars. He opened the dialogue with the Catholic Church and with science. His metal-framed glasses, thin lips, and abrupt smile became modern symbols of Buddhism. His figure drew a parable so fantastic that it hid the fissures. Until it broke out a few weeks ago.

The life of the Dalai Lama,
from holiness to scandal

The holy child. Photograph dated to the early '40s. The Dalai Lama (from the Mongolian word Dalai, "ocean", and from the Tibetan lama, "reincarnated teacher" or "guru") is the title obtained by the leader of the Central Tibetan Administration and the spiritual leader of Lamaism or Tibetan Buddhism. It defines the teacher who has achieved partial or total control at death over the form of his reincarnation and knowledge of the place of his new birth. The current Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso, born on July 6, 1935, 87 years ago.

Photo: AFP

The Dalai Lama rests with warriors who protected him in his incredible flight from the red backs. Sixth from left, dressed in a special suit, the Dalai Lama fled the holy capital of Lhasa on the night of March 17, 1959, when the Chinese opened fire. First, his personal guards protected him, but they were soon joined by his squad of loyal members of the Khamba tribe. Some carried machine guns and others flint rifles with bayonets. The Dalai Lama arrived in India's free zone on March 31 of that year.

Photo: AFP

Image taken on April 11, 1959. A Chinese military officer addresses Tibetans, in front of the Potala Palace (former home of the Dalai Lama) in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet after a failed armed uprising against the Chinese. Tibetans rebelled against Chinese rule on March 10, 1959, in a bloody uprising that led to the exile of the Dalai Lama.

Photo: AFP

Throughout the twentieth century it moved from political conflicts to global show business. Hollywood embraced him like a celebrity. It made him a global emperor of serenity and peace. But without laurels or titles. Just as in the photo he appears next to Richard Gere, heartthrob of the '80s, there are an infinity of situations of this type in which the Dalai Lama is shown surrounded by celebrities and in circles of power.

PHOTO: AFP/Henny Ray ABRAMS

The Dalai Lama in Argentina. He visited referents of politics and entertainment. In the photo, next to the diva Susana Giménez. Throughout his life, the highest authority of Buddhism knew how to lend himself to the media show without brakes. Susana interviewed the Dalai in 2011. She defined him as "my favorite Buddha."

PHOTO: CLARÍN ARCHIVE

Another of the Dalai Lama's visits to Argentina. In April 1999, the spiritual and political leader met with what was then a rising politician, fully launched to get the presidency of the country: the mayor of the City of Buenos Aires, Fernando De La Rua. They walked hand in hand through official halls.

PHOTO: CLARÍN ARCHIVE

Tensions with China. The Dalai Lama and the former president of the United States maintained a historic cordial relationship. Several times the former president asked the Chinese government to allow the Tibetan leader to re-enter the country from which he had to flee in 1959. He was awarded in 2007 with the highest distinction granted by the American Government, the Gold Medal of the Capitol. They have birthdays on the same day.

Photo: REUTERS/LARRY DOWNING

The Dalai Lama with the Pope, John Paul II. They last saw each other in 2003 at the Holy See. A courtesy visit, brief and "for peace," as defined by the spokesmen. On December 10, 1989, the Dalai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his constant resistance to the use of violence in the struggle of his people to regain freedom", making known his point of view regarding the Tibet Conflict and the situation in his country.

Photo: AFP

The gesture of scandal. Last week the Dalai Lama entered the plane of global scandal. Some associate it with a theme of senility. Apologies are not enough. He asked a child to "suck his tongue" and shocked the entire planet. "His Holiness wishes to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends around the world, for any pain his words may have caused," according to a statement posted on his official Twitter account. The Holy Man in the Eye of the Storm

Photo: CAPTURE

The images that disturb the world happened on February 28 this year: the Dalai Lama takes a child and kisses him on the mouth. Then he sticks out his tongue and asks the child to suck it. He is 87 years old and around him the monks and the audience laugh. He leans the child against his chest and remains silent, as if he wants to transfer a part of his knowledge to him. The international community accuses him of child abuse and on the Dalai Lama's Twitter account – with more than 19 million followers – they respond with a brief message of apology that minimizes the facts. Silence is the symptom of the unknown: who really is the Dalai Lama?

Lhamo Dhondup was born on July 6, 1935 in Taktser, a village in northern Tibet: the highest and largest plateau in the world. A frozen territory at 4,900 meters above sea level, which grows behind the Himalayas and since the fifteenth century is ruled by political and spiritual leaders known as Dalai Lama: "the ocean of wisdom". They are considered the reincarnation of Buddha, the man who showed the way to enlightenment. Lhamo Dhondup was wanted through the dreams of a monk, who saw him in a small house with blue roofs. When a Lama dies, it is the monks who assist him who must find in dreams the route to the next one. When they found him, Lhamo was two years old. From that moment he was called Tenzin Gyatso: the 14th Dalai Lama.

"I was tested. They showed me objects and I had to choose. We were three children but one of them died. The objects they showed us were from the last Dalai Lama. There were books and mugs. And you can see that I chose well," Gyatso said with a laugh in one of the multiple interviews he gave to the BBC. If there is any record of that search – photos, films – it has never been known.

Gyatso was taken to a thousand-room palace and trained to lead Tibet. Instructed in logic, Buddhist philosophy, medicine, poetry and astrology. He made retreats in steaming rooms where rats drank from the bowls containing the water offered to the gods. His mission was to find compassion and teach it to his people.

When he was fifteen, he assumed political power as Head of State of Tibet and spiritual leader of Lamaism, the Buddhist stream growing from the Himalayas. It was 1950 and China was beginning its military occupation of Tibet: controlling that gateway to the East was another silent detonation of the Cold War.

The Dalai Lama held peace negotiations with Mao Zedong for nearly a decade. Until in 1959 the largest Tibetan uprising was massacred by the Chinese army and the Dalai Lama escaped to India. "Our strength, our power, is based on truth. China's power is based on weapons," the Lama would say much later, when he claimed that a million Tibetans were killed by the Chinese government. "In the short term weapons are decisive, but in the long term the truth is more important."

In Dharamsala, where he found refuge, the history of Tibetan Buddhism was to be twisted. For the first time a Dalai Lama was to rule outside the city of Lhasa, the "Land of the Gods", which with the years of Chinese occupation became known as "the largest brothel in Asia".

From there, the Lama set his eyes on the West. He traveled to Italy, Russia, Japan, Switzerland, Holland, Norway, Germany, United Kingdom, United States, among dozens of other countries. He met with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican, then with John Paul II in New Delhi. "Everyone knows my principles: I am non-violent, I believe that violence is like suicide"; "All religions have the same message of love, of self-discipline. My commitment is to achieve harmony between religions"; "Whatever you do with us, never speak ill of the Chinese," he said in his lectures. On December 10, 1989, he arrived in Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize "for his constant resistance to the use of violence in the struggle of his people to regain freedom."

Pacifism can also become a path to fame. In 1997, director Jean-Jacques Annaud released his film Seven Years in Tibet, in which Brad Pitt plays Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, one of the men closest to the Dalai Lama. That same year, Martin Scorsese shows him as a selfless Tibetan fighter in his film Kundun. The Dalai Lama's preaching on forgiveness is disseminated by Richard Gere and he takes pictures with Michael Jackson, visits Nelson Mandela and is received by George H. W.

Bush and then Bill Clinton in the White House. But that conversion to rockstar of spirituality imploded among declassified documents.

In the late nineties, the U.S. government revealed that in the fifties it had covertly supported the Tibetan resistance through the CIA. They allocated a million and a half dollars per year with the aim of weakening the Chinese army and studying its strategies.

They had planned the Dalai Lama's escape to India and paid him a salary of $180,2 ever since. In an interview with The New York Times on October 1998, <>, the Dalai Lama's administration acknowledged that it received this money and clarified that "the grant to the Dalai Lama was dedicated to establishing offices in Geneva and New York and to international lobbying." But there were no such offices in Geneva and New York. In the eyes of the world, the Lama appeared as a cog in the CIA.

A few years later, the German weekly Stern published a report detailing that the mountaineer Heinrich Harrer – the Lama's loyal friend and later disseminator of Buddhism in the West – had been a member of the Nazi army and collaborated with the S.S. in the search for the origin of the Aryan race, which they believed could be found in Tibet. "At that time there was not the slightest indication that the Nazis would become the greatest criminal organization of all time," Harrer said when he acknowledged the facts and walked away from social life. "However, I think what happened to the SS was one of the mistakes of my life, perhaps the biggest mistake of my life."

The Dalai Lama never spoke about Heinrich Harrer.

On November 12, 2005, battered by criticism but supported by the White House, the Dalai Lama appeared at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. He said in his speech: "Buddhism and modern science share the same deep distrust of any absolute notion, conceived as a transcendental being, or an eternal and immutable principle such as the soul. They prefer to explain evolution and the emergence of the cosmos and life as a consequence of the complex interaction between the natural laws of cause and effect." Science became a new ally to spread his ideas, but his people were increasingly distant.

With the arrival in Beijing of the Olympic Games in 2008, Tibet rose against China and in Lhasa the resistance set fire to cars and supermarkets. The Chinese army responded with machine guns and there were at least fifteen dead. "The protests are a sign of the deep resentment that the Tibetan people have against the current government," said the Dalai Lama, accused by the Chinese government of being the "mastermind" of the revolt. But then the Lama pointed in the opposite direction: "I support those games. I am not against China. If the violence gets out of control, my only option is to resign." That stance would push him, in March 2011, to delegate Tibet's political power to a leader elected by the people. For the first time in history, the Dalai Lama held only a religious office.

"We are suffering from exile a cultural genocide. But I do not seek independence or separation from China, but total autonomy to preserve Tibetan culture and Buddhist spirituality," he said at the time, accusing a growing group of Tibetans of abandoning the struggle for Tibetan independence. The Lama attended to other problems. "India should not accept pressure from developed nations who want it to get rid of its nuclear weapons," he said. "India is no longer an underdeveloped country and should have the same access to nuclear weapons as developed countries." Peace seemed to be relegated to other times.

In September 2018, on one of his visits to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, a group of women handed him a letter alleging sexual abuse against five Buddhist teachers. Among them was Sogyal Rinpoche, author of the famous Tibetan Book of Life and Death. "It's not new to me; I already knew all these things," the Lama replied and confessed that since 1992 he had received letters with these denunciations. He added, "They should make the identity of their aggressor public, so that teachers are worried about being humiliated."

He had recently declared, in one of his classic interviews with the BBC, that "Europe belongs to Europeans" and that refugees should return "to rebuild their own country".

In one of his last global appearances, the Dalai Lama agreed to star in a documentary alongside cleric and pacifist Desmond Tutu, a key figure in the anti-apartheid struggle, released on Netflix in 2021. Mission: Joy: Finding happiness in difficult times, is a space where he redeploys the phrases with which he captivated the world. Near the end, the Dalai Lama says to his fellow traveler, "I feel lucky to be alive, I have a precious human life, I'm not going to waste it." Today on his official website he is shown exercising on a treadmill, clinging to the arms of the machine. A second escape by the Dalai Lama, this time, does not seem possible.

GS