Читать книгу The Dalai Lama’s Little Book of Inner Peace - Далай-лама XIV, Литагент HarperCollins USD, Дуглас Абрамс Арава - Страница 18

Like the Dalai Lamas, the Panchen Lamas are high incarnates. The Panchen Lama is a spiritual leader, second only to the Dalai Lama in religious authority. They never held any secular authority.

The Panchen Lama joined us at Sian. He was 16 years old and had grown up in an almost hopelessly complicated situation. There had been a rift between our two immediate predecessors. The previous panchen lama had spent part of his life in a frontier region under Chinese control and had died there. The Chinese had presented a candidate from the territory they ruled, while two candidates had been discovered in Tibet itself. Negotiations took place, but gradually the Chinese candidate came to be accepted as the true incarnation. He was then 11 or 12 years old.

Of course, the whole of his education and training was subject to Chinese influence, first under Chang Kai-shek and then under the Communists. It has certainly been an advantage to them to have a Tibetan religious leader in whose name they can make their proclamations. If he and his followers had been able to support the Tibetan cause, Tibet’s disaster might have been less complete. But the Panchen Lama cannot be personally blamed. No boy who grew up under such concentrated, constant foreign influence could possibly retain his own free will.