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Buddhist Lamaism

Dalai Lama
I	Gedun Drupa	1391	1474
II	Gedum Gyatso	1476	1542
III	Sonam Gyatso	1543	1588
IV	Yonten Gyatso	1589	1616
V	Lobsang Gyatso	1617	1682
VI	Samyang Gyatso	1683	1706
VII	Keisang Gyatso	1708	1757
VIII	Jampei Gyatso	1758	1804
IX	Longto Gyatso	1805	1805
X	Tshutrim Gyatso	1816	1837
XI	Khedru Gyatso	1838	1855
XII	Chinlei Gyatso	1856	1875
XIII	Thutan Gyatso	1876	1933
XIV	Tenzin Gyatso	1935	..

The religion of Tibet is interesting not only in itself, on account of its quaint belief and its still quainter ceremonies. The chief features of the creed and cult known as Lamaism (from the word Lama, the name for a priest). Lamaism is partly religious, partly political. Religiously it is the form of Buddhism prevalent in Tibet and Mongolia. It stands in a relationship to primitive Buddhism similar to that in which Roman Catholicism, so long as the temporal power of the pope was still in existence, stood to primitive Christianity. The ethical and metaphysical ideas most conspicuous in the doctrines of Lamaism were not confined to the highlands of Central Asia, they are accepted in great measure also in Japan and China. It was the union of these ideas with a hierarchical system, and with the temporal sovereignty of the head of that system in Tibet, which constituted what is distinctively understood by the term Lamaism.

"Buddha" is a word meaning "enlightened" and the real name of the founder of the religion which goes by the name of Buddhism was Siddhartha. Gautama was the family name. The Buddha entirely ignored the questions of the existence of God and of an individual immortal soul in every human being. The Buddha only believed in the material world ; he thought that it was fruitless to discuss the two points — whether there is a God, or whether human beings have immortal souls. He was therefore in plain language an agnostic.

A great deal of all the knowledge that a non-Buddhist has about Siddhartha Gautama's teaching is associated with the term Nirvana or annihilation. This is the great goal which was to be aimed at by his disciples. It meant simply extinction of passions, of all those feelings of anger, vanity, impurity and pride which make men unhappy. Once these were extinguished, bliss, repose, content would be the lot of every individual in whom that consummation had taken place. Gautama pointed out that the only path to Nirvana was by "right views, right thought right speech, right actions, right living, right exertion, right recollection and right meditations." He called this the Noble Eightfold Way by which people might hope to attain eternal rest.

Existence is bound up with evil ; those passions which bring life into existence and tend to maintain it, also bring evil and decay. It was neccessary to strike at existence itself. All those who were eager to find the solution of the problem of life were to lead ascetic lives, removed from temptations and passions. But all lay people might hope to attain Nirvana, by practicing self-culture not in their life however, but in another life. By a gradual process of purification, one existence would become more holier than another, and enlightenment be made easier of attainment. There was thus a twofold standard of human conduct, one for those who trusted to attain "Nirvana" in their present existence; another for those who were content to attain it after many new births. Now as the best authorities deny that Buddha believed in or taught the existence of an individual soul, it would seem that Buddha meant by transmigration, simply the progress of humanity, that the term simply expressed the continuation of one life in that of children, so that if it be true, gnostics and rationalists have great reason for glorifying as they do.

Buddha, as we are told, lived in B. C. 500. Soon alter his death a great number of legends and supernatural events bp^an to be associated with his life and teachings, and his simple teaching of the system of self-culture became tangled in a mass of observances. In the sixth century when 'yoga''cult of the Brahmans was assimilated by the degenerating Buddhism of northern India. Rites and incantations and charms were the new growths. Tantrism, devil worship, magic and witchcraft came in to destroy every trace of Buddha's grand teaching. The special feature of this Tantrism was that it gave the Buddhist wives, and introduced fiends and fiendesses who were to be worshipped. This was the religion introduced into Tibet in the seventh century of the Christian era.

In one respect, the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet differed from its introduction into other countries, which received it earlier. Buddhism, like other religions, grew and developed itself; unlike others, it grew entirely by addition, not by transformation. The simple rules of discipline which sufficed for begging monks, the simple rules of conduct which sufficed for their lay disciples, were never abrogated, and are as much in force to-day as ever they were.

But over and above them a formidable body of doctrine was superadded ;and the accretions of dogma betray the same law. The first school of dogmatists laid down curt and conceivable propositions, like those in the creeds,—that the Buddha pre-existed in heaven, that he was incarnate to save mankind, that he entered into Nirvana. Nobody doubted these positions; disputes there were in abundance aa to the meaning of terms, such as whether Nirvana was absolute or only relative, but the terms themselves were accepted by all. Gradually the sphere of dogma enlarged till it embraced things past conception—long streams of former Buddhas; Bodhisattvas or Buddhas designate, who. even now concern themselves with the care of mankind ; heavenly Buddhas or Buddhas of the world of contemplation, of whom the earthly Buddhas are the pattern aud reflex; Bodhisattvas of contemplation regarded as the spiritual sous of the Buddhas, aud so forth.

Yet another, aud a final development took place, which we cannot but regard as a backward step, as an adaptation of Buddhism to the coarse notions of the primitive Asiatic, peoples of non-Aryan blood, who seem to have indulged themselves in the belief of frightful and malignant deities, personifications of the terrible in nature, the whirlwind and the rushing tempest, and the devouring flame. These personifications, occurring in all the Turanian religions, seem to have gathered a definite form in some region of India subjected more or less to Aryan influences, and to have received Aryan designations, such as Rudra, Siva, Kali and Bhavani. They were propitiated with bloody offerings and with magical and unmeaning formulas, and the whole system, magic and all, all but the bloody sacrifices, was adopted by Buddhism, when it came to deal with uneducated multitudes, whom philosophical abstractions and subtle metaphysical speculations could not satisfy, and who craved for a more sensational and blood-curdling creed.

Buddhism was from the very first a missionary religion, and the missionaries of course carried with them the system as it had been developed in India up to the time of their departure. Tibet, the youngest convert, alone received the whole body of Buddhistic doctrine, so to speak, at one blow. The rules of discipline and morals, the simple history of Sakyamuni Buddha, came to Tibet together with all the vast superstructure of creeds, abstractions, and Tantric rites, including the Prajua Paramita, or doctrine of the essential nothingness of all things, on which, as it never greatly influenced popular belief.

Tibetan Buddhism began, in fact, where other nations left off, and carried dogma a step or two further. Out of so vast a body of truth, particular nations naturally laid stress on particular points and developed them their own way. The worship of the Bodhisattvas—especially of selected ones— was one of these points; Manjusri aud Avalokitesvara, already deities among the Chinese, became in Tibet popular and, so to, speak, national Gods; the Tantric system was too much akin to the feelings of the descendants of the Spirit of the Storm, the inhabitants of vast plateaux haunted by spectre-like dust whirlwinds and "airy tongues that syllable men's names" - the clients of uncultured priests whose stock-in-trade consisted of exorcisms and wonder-working formulae, not to be at once adopted into the popular faith, and Buddhist Tibet became, what preBuddhist Tibet had in all probability been, the special home of magic and wonders.

The famous formula of six syllables, om mani padme hum, or "hail to the jewel in the Lotus!" an invocation to Avalokitesvara, the Lotus-born, which, as we have seen, accompanied, in popular belief at least, the very first acquaintance of the Tibetans with Buddhist symbolism, is everywhere.—engraved upon stone, floating in the wind on streamers of cloth, revolving in prayer-wheels, or uttered countless times by countless numbers of the religious,—the distinguishing sign and badge of the Tibetan form of faith.

The most important addition made by Tibet to the body of Buddhist doctrine — the feature which has given the country its historical importance — is the belief in successive incarnations of the Bodhisattvas, successive transmigrations from one human frame to another. Of course the transmigration of souls, an Indian doctrine based upon ethical grounds, greatly influenced Indian Buddhism from the first, and the great mass of Buddhist legend in all countries is based upon it. In its general form it is always a rise or fall in consequence of works done in a former state. Tha good man is born again as a prince, a Brahman, a deity; the bad man as a Sudra, a beggar, an evil spirit, a beast, or a reptile. But in Tibet alone, and the countries which received their religion from Tibet, we find the equable and continuous series of human incarnations assumed by those saints who have devoted themselves to the care of mankind in this world. It required centuries to develope this belief in its existing form.

Days after the Dalai Lama canceled all appearances for the month of October, in laeDEptembe 2015 the 80-year-old Tibetan Buddhist leader checked into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "The doctors have advised His Holiness to rest for the next several weeks," the statement said. "We deeply regret the inconvenience caused by this decision and apologize to all the people who have worked so hard in organizing the visit as well as to the public."