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Who will identify the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama?
The 10th Panchen Lama
The title of ‘Panchen Lama’ or ‘Panchen Rinpoche,’ meaning ‘Great Scholarly Lama,’ has been given to successive abbots of the Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse. Regarded as the embodiment of the Buddha Amitabha (Opame), he is ranked second in the order of Tibetan religious leaders, after the Dalai Lama. Although he is a high-ranking religious leader, the Panchen Lama originally carried no political authority; however, successive Panchen Lamas were used by both Britain and China in their efforts to subjugate the Dalai Lama’s government in Lhasa.
The first Panchen Lama was given the title by the Great Fifth, who wished to honor his tutor. Subsequent Panchen Lamas did not have such amiable relationships with the Dalai Lamas and the occupying Chinese have attempted to use this rivalry to their advantage. The Ninth Panchen Lama (1883-1937) fled to Mongolia after a dispute with the Thirteenth Dalai Lama over taxes.
The Tenth Panchen Lama (1938-89) was enthroned in 1951. In 1959, after the escape of the Dalia Lama to India, he was appointed acting chairman of the ‘Prepartory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region,’ which would be established in 1965. This post had previously been held by the Dalai Lama. The Chinese appointed him vice-chairman of the Chinese Political Consultative Conference in 1960, hoping that he would be a willing spokesman for their policies in Tibet.
In May 1962, the Panchen Lama presented his 70,000 Character Petition to the Chinese government in which he presented compelling reasons for a change in the Tibetan policy of Chairman Mao. Mao is said to have called the Petition “a poisoned arrow shot at the party” and its author a “reactionary feudal overlord.” Believed to be the most extensive internal criticism of Chinese Communist policies ever submitted to the leadership, it documented the mass arrests, excessive punishment and executions of Tibetans that followed the 1959 uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule, and the starvation in Eastern Tibet that resulted from policies implemented as part of Mao’s Great Leap Forward at the end of the 1950s. The 70,000 Character Petition remained secret, seen only by those in inner Party circles in China.
The Panchen Lama was arrested after a 1964 speech supporting the exiled Dalai Lama and subjected to a 7-week-long struggle session in Lhasa. Condemned without trial as an enemy of the people, he spent most of the next 14 years in prison or under house arrest in Beijing. He was released in 1978, two years after Mao’s death. In the following years, he was an outspoken advocate of liberalization laws and policies to ensure the survival of Tibetan culture and religion. He was finally allowed to return to his homeland in 1982.
In 1983 the 10th Panchen Lama married a Chinese woman and a girl was born to them. Though this was a violation of the ethical codes governing the life of a monk, this has never affected Tibetans’ belief in him. It is probably the case that most Tibetans feel that he was in Beijing to support the Tibetan cause.
Upon his return, the 10th Panchen Lama devoted all of his energies to the revival of Tibetan religion and culture, which had almost been totally annihilated during the Cultural Revolution. He pushed for a law making Tibetan the official language of the Tibetan Autonomous Region; it was passed in 1987.
In January 1989, he returned to Shigatse after his long absence and was welcomed home by 30,000 Tibetans jubilant at his return. He made a statement to the crowd that could be interpreted as a criticism of the Chinese government, saying: ‘Tibet has paid a price that could never be met by the development achieved over the last 30 years.’
The 10th Panchen Lama died five days later on January 20, 1989 under mysterious circumstances, three days after consecrating a stupa containing the remains of many of his predecessors, which had been desecrated by the Red Guards. The official version was that he suffered a massive heart attack. He was only 50 years old. The Tenth Panchen Lama was also interred in the tomb, which was completed in 1992.
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