Window on Eurasia

Dalai Lama Sees Russia’s Buddhists Helping Tibetan Faith Survive

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 5, 2006 – The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the world’s Buddhists, says that because of conditions in his homeland, “Mongolia and Buddhist Russia will play the predominant role” in the preservation and growth of Tibetan Buddhism in the future.

But both Russian officials and some in the official hierarchies created
for Buddhists in the Russian Federation in Soviet times have a more
restricted view not only of the international role that Russia’s
Buddhist nations might play but also of their proper functions in that
country’s three Buddhist republics, Buryatia, Kalmykia and Tuva.

The current issue of the Russian-language journal, “We Will Preserve
Tibet,” features two interviews that call attention to these
differences: one with the Dalai Lama’s personal representative to
Buddhists in Mongolia and the CIS, and a second with the head of the
Central Spiritual Administration of the Buddhists of the Russian
Federation.

Both are available online at [http://savetibet.ru/]
as are other articles from this and earlier issues of this journal
about a Russian religious community which seldom gets much attention except
when there are discussions about whether Moscow will permit the Dalai
Lama to visit or will defer to Beijing and deny him a visa.

In his interview, Choi-Dorzhi Budayev, who was ousted from his position
as khamba-lama of Buryatia a decade ago for his campaign to invite the
Dalai Lama to Russia but who now serves as head of the Central
Spiritual Administration, discussed this conflict in detail.

On the one hand, he said, the Dalai Lama both during his relatively
infrequent visits to Russia and more often in conversations with
Russian Buddhists who have met with him in Mongolia or India has been very
clear about the need for Buddhists in Mongolia and the Russian Federation to
assume a greater role in the faith.

But on the other hand, Budayev noted, all too many Buddhists among the
Buryats, Tuvans, and Kalmyks are “Buddhists by birth,” the
functional equivalent of “ethnic Orthodox” or “ethnic Muslims.”
That is, they view themselves as Buddhists because their families and
nations have been but know very little about what Buddhism in fact
entails.

That is a legacy of the anti-religious policies of the Soviet state,
Budayev continued, but even though “times have changed,” many
Buddhists have not – and both Russian officials and at least some who
claim to be leaders of the Buddhist communities there appear to be
satisfied with the status quo.

Moreover, Budayev said, there is a definite trend to try to promote the
idea of a uniquely “Buryat Buddhism” or “Tuvan Buddhism” or
“Kalmyk Buddhism,” whose adepts are to focus only on their own
communities and ignore both their Tibetan heritage and links to the
exiled Dalai Lama.

Some of this reflects only the ambitions of individual leaders, the
former khamba-lama said, but at least in part, it is the product of
efforts by the state to cut these communities off from the broader
Buddhist world and thus reduce the chances that they will affect and be
affected by developments within it.

For his part, Tashi, the presentative of the Dalai Lama to Russia,
Mongolia and the CIS, stressed that whatever some in the Russian
Federation may think, Buddhists there remain closely tied to their
Tibetan roots. “They do not speak Tibetan perhaps, but they read and
pray precisely in that language.”

He said that he, like the Dalai Lama, continue to expect great things
from the Buddhists in Russia now that communism has passed from the
scene. And he suggested that tehre has been some growth but that its
speed “has not been as great as we would like.”

He also took the opportunity to press the Russian government to
consider the interests of the Buddhists among its population and to be more
forthcoming in issuing a visa to the Dalai Lama, who last visited
Buryatia and Tuva a dozen years ago but who was briefly in Kalmykia
several years back.

Mongolia has done so, despite Beijing’s protests, and its behaviour
is “a beautiful example” for Moscow. Given Russia’s status as “a
super power,” Tashi said, Moscow “ought to define its own fate and
make its own independent decisions. If someone else decides for you,
then to a certain degree that is evidence of your weakness.”

Latest Window on Eurasia stories | Religion Archive | Islam in Russia and CIS Archive | Orthodox Church in Russia and CIS Archive | All Window on Eurasia Stories Archive |