The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama (ISBN 080214327X)

Western history meets Eastern commentary:
Subtitled if boldly "Conversations with the Dalai Lama," this combines interviews and commentary about Tenzin Gyatso's homeland with Laird, who offers a popular history of the embattled nation. I stress "nation": this collaborative work stresses the claims that Tibet's entitled to its own independence, as it was taken over somewhat as a client state by the Mongols and then the Manchu rulers in tandem with China, not as a vassal of China itself, but around the same time, if in different contexts, from the larger subservient entity around present-day (if greater) Mongolia. This may smack of nitpicking, but in fact it distinguishes Tibetan rights to be recognized as its own sovereign state, rather than the dubious PRC (following the Kuomintang Nationalist government) argument that China should incorporate Tibet "back" into its empire. If you have little interest in such a treatment, you'd best go elsewhere for more romantic or more propagandistic fare. This book, written for a wide audience, nonetheless devotes considerable space to debunking not only the illusion (held by some New Age admirers today) that a strife-free, non-martial Shambhala materialized in medieval times, but the common leftist riposte that it was a corrupt realm of cruel monks, feudal savagery, or serf-perpetuated ignorance. It's not always a grippingly narrated tale, especially in long stretches of tedious medieval and early modern sections, but the novelty of hearing Tibetan history echoed and elaborated by the Dalai Lama via Laird's own knowledge, interpretations, and comparisons to Western models makes this an inherently valuable document. Laird's careful to assert his own Western understanding of how politics can infiltrate into the purportedly religious condition into which the Dalai Lamas have been born. He serves often as a skeptical foil for the Fourteenth Dalai Lama's hesitant disclaimers and introverted aversions to his leadership role when-- as a youth of sixteen-- he found himself set up by Mao to be manipulated, perhaps, into the Communist's potential dupe as their prize convert to collectivist purity and Marxist fervor. This poignant story of the current Dalai Lama's predicament's terribly deepened. You learn what's far too little taught: about 20-40 million whom Mao and his regime killed of their own people, and the 500,000-1.2 million Tibetans murdered since the triumph of Marxism. We in the West prefer often to ignore these facts, but such data have been compiled. From Tibet, as Laird notes, we can predict how China may treat other minorities and neighbors, and how determinedly the PRC manipulates spokespeople from East and West whom it favors or monitors to tell its sanitized story in our media. This spin-doctoring proves relevant. It tells us if we care to hear beyond the commercials and the glitz many serious lessons amidst our global post-Olympic awe at China's supposed human rights "progress." The Dalai Lama's eloquent at times and then bitter when he summarizes the idealism of the early cadres, his own admiration for what he was promised would accompany Marxist reforms, and his own disillusionment at the spiritual and physical distortions that befall those Chinese who warped after young optimism for a cause curdled into deceit, invasion, and thuggery. The brief accounts of torture, slaughter, and destruction inflicted on Tibet by China here humble you, and one must ask if China's advances economically and socially rest indeed on a legacy of rapine and plunder no less savage than that done by imperialists elsewhere. The Tibetans-- facing capitulation or extermination-- have been left with little choice. Despite the claims that many modern nations admire non-violent resistance more than revolution against tyranny, which countries stand by Tibet today? Out of all the United Nations in 1950, only El Salvador sponsored, as Laird shows years ago, a resolution in the UN condemning China's invasion, and such protests mattered in the long run about as much as may a few banner-waving activists in the Olympic Stadium a few days ago, I suppose, vs. the clout that 1.3 billion people hold over the silence of 6 million natives of Tibet. I hope I am disproved in the future. One intriguing aspect of this story of overwhelming force vs. principled resistance emerges in how the Dalai Lama had to survive with next to nothing of worldliness or a knowledge of realpolitik let alone the outside world when he had to deal with being a prize captive-- or hostage so to speak-- of Mao and his minions in the early 1950s. Laird prods the Dalai Lama to reveal more of his own reactions to this dangerous diplomatic situation in which he suddenly found himself. Eager manipulations and nimble retellings of history by the PRC belie their frequent mendacity regarding the status of Tibet today and historically. What the Dalai Lama articulates historically-- in talks with Laird-- as a patron-priest relationship of Tibetan rulers with their Chinese contacts and Mongol emissaries, akin to popes and emperors in medieval Europe, becomes more the predecessor for the Mongol-Tibetan and then Chinese-Tibetan power-sharing rather than the hegemony willed by China, past and present. Regarding critiques by other reviewers, I found that Laird never strikes a worshipful tone or a credulous stance towards what the Dalai Lama explains or what Tibet's defenders counter. Laird gives as good as he gets, and he holds his own ground against what he regards now and then as the naivete or intransigence of his formidable interlocutor, one of the very few people alive who, as Laird comments, has dealt with every president from FDR on. The Dalai Lama and Laird talked at length over a period of years, but they never become over-familiar. It's a meeting of two smart people, rather than inspirational claptrap, conversational blather, or pat platitudes. It's a study in how the world works, vs. how some of us less wordly would like it to work. The appeal of Buddhism also permeates parts of the Dalai Lama's exchanges with Laird, a skeptic at best. Even he is moved by the compassion the Dalai Lama embodies. He sees what we cannot: a double vision of the common and the uncommon. This fits not only with Buddhism acceptance of transience and impermanence, but with, as Laird cleverly shows, many Westerners in their acceptance of the Resurrection despite its clashing with "facts." If billions can believe in the rising of one from the dead despite our everyday knowledge that what's dead stays dead, then, looking at Tibet through the Dalai Lama's eyes, we can better perceive the multiple perspective appreciated by him and other Buddhist adepts. Such similarities and contrasts with our own culture and mindsets make this one of the book's strongest appeals for readers curious, unfamiliar, or mystified by the continuing appeal of Tibet in the judgment and dreams of so much of the world today. Tibet's not a mystical playground, but it has amassed a cultural patrimony and spiritual legacy worth preserving, and its defense should -- in an idealistic world again-- remain our priority even in our debased condition! You don't have to be Buddhist to learn many lessons here.

The book for newcomers to Tibet:
I read this book a week after going to Tibet for the first time in October, 2007. It confirmed everything that I experienced in Tibet with a former monk as the guide for our group of 20 (China Focus Tours), and enriched our experience enormously. I'm glad I read it soon after the trip so the place names, experiences, history and relationship with China were so fresh. We had been warned in China not to ask about or comment on politics or religion while we were in Tibet. I did ask one mild question and got a reply from our guide that clearly told me that he could not respond. The book will probably tell general readers more than they want to know about the intricacies of the changes of rule over the last fourteen hundred years but it helped me understand the richness of Tibetan Buddhism. I found it well written and fascinating throughout. The author clearly has a pro-Dalai Lama bias (how else could he have arranged the many interviews with the Dalai Lama?). We found China to be virulently anti-Dalai Lama and this book helped me understand that. The personal details of the Dalai Lama's life and the lives of his predecessors gave me a full sense of what it has meant to be Tibetan both recently and in the long history. We knew that China had changed Tibet enormously in recent years but we were astounded on our visit to see how they have been moving Han Chinese into Lhasa and changing the face of Tibet. "The Story of Tibet" helped us understand how the incursion of China since the 50's has changed the culture that visitors will see--as long as the Tibetans aren't completely submerged by the Chinese. It seems about 50/50 now. Brief visits to Sera Monastery with our ex-monk guide who had lived there 14 years, to Jokhang Temple when no other tourists were there and to a non-tourist village outside Lhasa during harvest helped me understand the Tibetan culture described well in "The Story of Tibet." I also recommend Tsering Shakya's "The Dragon in the Land of Sorrow" for a very detailed history of Tibet since 1947. "The Story of Tibet" covers in 65 pages and much less detail what Tsering Shakya describes much more fully in 450 pages. We learned while we were in Tibet that the Potala Palace will be closed next year before the Olympics in Beijing, probably permanently. A new museum is being built at the base of the Potala that will show visitors what the Chinese government wants them to know about Tibetan Buddhism and this marvelous building. We were there in early October, 2007. Go now.The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947

The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama:
I love this book. It was an easy book to read, more conversational than like a text or history book. I learned so much about Tibetan history, art, culture and Budhism. I highly recommend reading "The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama". dBahr

The Dalai Lama Speaks to History:
At a very young age, he had to make decisions that his experience and education did not prepare him for. Tibet's history, culture and geography and the disposition of China's rulers assured that none of the options would have a good result. Through the years, the Dalai Lama has acquired wisdom and grace. Laird reports the story of Tibet as seen through its spiritual leader. The circumstances of history have left Tibet standing alone, unable to defend itself from neither battle with nor assimilation from its large and influential neighbor. Laird and the Lama take us through pre-history, the Mongol incursions, the development of monestaries, the flight of the Dalai Lama and the sacking of the monestaries in the Cultural Revolution to the current stage of Chinese settlement. As expected, the book is at its best in the era of the 14th Dalai Lama, since so much detail can be provided. I presume the interviews in this part will part of the canon for future historians of Tibet. The amazing thing about this narrative, as Laird points out, when Tibet is to blame, the Dalai Lama does not cover. He recognizes the abuses of the nobles, the brutal society, the lack of technology, and even the feudal conditions brought on by the church-state which he in name headed. Not many rulers would admit to the role of internecine strife and the betrayal of the people by its aristocracy as a factor in its inability to ward off the influence of a larger nation as the Dalai Lama does. Laird sympathetically explains the Dalai Lama's difficulties in pursuing a non-violent path to autonomy (recognizing the inability to achieve independence). One era not mentioned in this history is the arrival of the Europeans.The High Road to China: George Bogle, the Panchen Lama, and the First British Expedition to Tibet gives a good portrait of Tibet-Chinese relations in this period. While relations were cordial, China had "minders" planted in Tibet, watching and reporting all.

Impressive Work on Tibet:
This book is a fabulous source for any one interested in Tibet, it's history, culture, as well as the situation today. The scope is so broad that it reflects on the history of all of Asia.