The Dalai Lama was one of 16 children, nine of whom survived childhood.
An interesting look into the life of Tenzin Choegyal, the Dalai Lama's Brother through a group interview in Dharamsala
I was with a sangha staying in Dharamsala, India, a Tibetan exile community where the Dalai Lama lives. Our group was split into two guesthouses; the one I stayed at belonged to the local maharaja, and the other belonged to the Dalai Lama’s sister-in-law, Rinchin Kunin, who runs the Tibetan Nuns Project (
www.tnp.org), a program that helps exiled Tibetan nuns gain an education equal to that of monks.
One evening, we gathered into the guesthouse’s living room to have a talk with the Dalai Lama’s brother, Tenzin Choegyal. Like the Dalai Lama, he was identified as a reincarnate lama at an early age, but he ditched the post because it didn’t suit him. I was one of the first people in the room, and I plopped down on the floor. Shantum, our teacher and travel guide, walked up to the dais in the bay window and pulled up a seat for our Tibetan visitor, but Tenzin Choegyal mischievously plopped down in the center of the couch next to David and grinned.
I looked up at Tenzin Choegyal from about three feet away and couldn’t help but stare: the Dalai Lama was in disguise! I thought he looked remarkably like the Dalai Lama, except he had short hair instead of a shaved head, and instead of red robes he wore Western pants, an oxford shirt, and a brown jacket with the message “SF San Francisco” on the upper left side. He wore squarish glasses like the Dalai Lama’s. Shantum had said something to the effect that Tenzin Choegyal isn’t very sociable and spends a lot of time in retreat, so I had visualized a crazy, stern, cave-dwelling yogi with long braided hair and traditional Tibetan clothing. In the course of the discussion, we learned that he’s sixty-one years old. He looks a lot younger than his seventy-three-year-old brother and still has totally black hair.
Shantum introduced Tenzin by saying, “This is my teacher. Well, a friend.”
Tenzin said, “A friend who led him astray!” He even sounds a lot like the Dalai Lama! Well, his voice isn’t quite that deep, and his English is more fluent. Members of the sangha asked him questions, and he happily, eagerly, answered.
“Some people think Buddhism is pessimistic, because it talks about suffering. All spiritual traditions talk about suffering. If you mention spiritual traditions, people automatically think of fighting,” he said. He mentioned that religions become political parties, for there is tremendous division instead of uniting, and this is a big challenge we have at this age. It’s a great time to make amends, to transform. He condemned political parties as being about selfishness and imposing one’s view on others, including through money. It’s no wonder I now refuse to even try associating myself to a political party; actually, I think it is very limiting and narrow-minded to do so.
Shantum introduced Paula as the rabbi who took the Three Refuges, and Tenzin said, “Should we throw a party?”
Tenzin Choegyal is so not a fan of blind faith, which is something people have if they don’t examine or analyze things; I think that is connected to fundamentalism.
“May I ask a question?” Richard asked.
“No, you may not,” Tenzin joked.
“Is the empowerment ceremony appropriate for householders, or just monastics?” (The Dalai Lama did the empowerment ceremony for at least a couple days, in addition to teachings.)
“The empowerment ceremony is OK for householders.”
“I’d like to ask you a personal question,” Etiel said.
“No personal questions!” Tenzin joked with a grin.
“Why didn’t you remain a monk?”
“I wasn’t up to the task. It was like wearing the skin of a tiger.”
Tenzin Choegyal told us a lot about himself, about his life, and about how different his views are from his brother’s. While he’s a big fan of nonviolence and dialogue, he’s not so serious a fan of the monastic system, which has a lot of power. While he does believe in reincarnation, he doesn’t have faith in the Rinpoche system of identifying little kids who are supposedly reincarnations of specific lamas. As he pointed out, everyone’s reincarnated, not just lamas.
“Our community still suffers from following rituals and not looking at the creed. It’s not about religion but psychology.” He mentioned that meditation is about attempting to lose negative thoughts. What a challenge, given the conditioning we grow up with!
“I have no authority except my big ego.”
“Identifying with religion gives you pressure to identify yourself,” said a sangha member.
“Labels are very misleading. If you identify with the label, attachment comes,” Tenzin Choegyal said. He talked quite a bit about labels, including money, which is just paper, but we’ve labeled it and given it the meaning of currency, so we accept it. “How do you remove the label? If you skillfully handle it, it’s OK. All names are labels. Even a label is subjective. All depends on how we handle it.” He said, “I think I’m talking like a wise person, but I’m not.” But he wasn’t done with labels yet, saying that “I” and “myself” are just labels; “it’s functional, but it lacks all substantiality.”
“We tend to return to events that are pleasant and block out unpleasant events. It goes to things not being the way we want.” I guess that’s how people are nostalgic; they remember a vacation or even childhood and focus on the good parts.
He said, “I don’t like rituals…I don’t like temples.” At some point in the conversation, he said, “I’m kind of a nut, you know.”
John said, “All of us are in some continuity of mental balance.”
Richard asked about depression and meditation, and Tenzin said to embrace it. “Probably it’s grounded in self-centeredness.” Tenzin experienced depression during the winter (seasonal affective disorder). Depression is physical and mental, interdependently between the physical and spiritual. He went to doctors, was diagnosed as bipolar, which is both depression and mania. A doctor treated him with lithium. “Incidentally, the greatest deposit of lithium is in Tibet.” It helped and people were encouraging. Depression is what drove him to a regular meditation practice, and he’s feeling so much better because of it. Now he’s focused on studying the dharma.
“When people are desperate, thoughts are going everywhere. Then I became interested in Buddhism and it helped. People who become depressed are undisciplined. We are meditating all the time, but not properly.”
“What if you were in that role [Rinpoche], and it was discovered you were bipolar?” someone asked.
“They’d know they made a mistake,” Tenzin replied. “We are all reincarnates from previous lives—identifying reincarnation, it only exists in Tibet, and I don’t know why—this continuity of the practice and to a particular lineage. In history, it became a problem. I personally don’t feel it’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Look at me…. There are many loopholes—it is not handled properly, a tulku [one who is identified as a reincarnate lama] becomes a symbol of earthly existence. When I talk like this, people think I’m a traitor.”
“Do you discuss this with your brother?”
“He accepts.”
“There’ve been a lot of books written on mindfulness,” Richard said.
“And they made a lot of money,” Tenzin said with a grin. He encouraged us to read root text. As a Theravada practitioner, I translate that as, in particular, the Pali Canon, which is more or less the words of the Buddha, passed down for centuries. He added, “We should read more deeply and study more deeply.”
Marsha said, “Your wife is a delight. How did you meet her?”
“I don’t think she’s a delight,” Tenzin said. They met in Darjeeling when she was in college, in 1964.
“Are there arranged marriages in Tibet?”
“It was self-arranged.” He added that they first met in a movie theater; the film was George Scott Flimflam Man.
Someone asked him about nonviolence, and Tenzin said, “Nonviolence—most people think it’s passive, but it’s active. You’ve got to have the right understanding.”
He went on to talk about attachment and emptiness, and dependent origination, not to mention impermanence and our failure to recognize things as impermanent, which leads to suffering. “If you have tremendous anger, impermanence means it’ll go away.” Rather relevant to his comments about political parties, Tenzin talked about how attachment means that “lots of arguments take place.”
“What are your views on vegetarianism?” Natalie asked.
“I’m strictly nonvegetarian.” He added, “I think it’s very desirable to be vegetarian. But you must get requirements for your body. Among Tibetans—Younger ones are becoming vegetarian, it’s becoming more common. Tibetans subsist on carbohydrates in monasteries, some have overweight, have diabetes, not enough exercise.” Tenzin said. “Three cheers for vegetarianism!”
“In attachment to the Tibetan land, is there a difference between generations?” Paula asked.
“I have walked on the soil of so-called Tibet. Yes, there is a difference. Sons and daughters have not been there, and it’s all a mind thing.”
“I think human beings are going through an evolution. I don’t think one hundred years ago people talked about this,” someone said.
“Jews did—going back to the land,” Paula said.
“Everyone in the world thinks Tibetans are perfect!” Tenzin said with a laugh. “If Tibet becomes peaceful, where spiritual pursuit is encouraged, I’d go for it. Otherwise, I’m happy elsewhere.” Someone asked him why people think Tibetans are perfect, and he said, “I think it’s because of the novel Lost Horizons by James Hilton.”
He mentioned that he thinks a family person has more compassion than a sangha member; if you’re around difficult people rather than secluded, then you have on-hands experience practicing compassion and all. This has certainly occurred to me often enough, but if you’re in such a painful situation that you’re crippled with depression all the time, you’ve got to get out of that unhealthy situation; I don’t think that meditation alone is enough in abusive situations.
Tenzin is highly critical of the Tibetan monastic system and explained that it’s intellectual understanding rather than practice. They do practice meditation and chanting, but that’s not the same thing as experiencing equanimity when mean people are attacking you. It’s much more challenging to practice when you’re not in a monastery. He said some people join the monastery because they get free food. Basically, there are some things he likes about Tibetan Buddhism (otherwise he wouldn’t be so into studying the dharma now), and other things he doesn’t like about Tibetan Buddhism. He would like practice to be more secular.
“Mishandling freedom is a universal problem,” Tenzin said, reminding me how unfathomably hypocritical war-mongering white male Americans are with their talk of freedom, when obviously they don’t even know what it means. “The most difficult thing to do today is how to handle freedom.”
“I can’t resist…” John said.
“Go ahead. Use your freedom,” Tenzin said.
John is critical of the level of monasticism and the Dalai Lama’s support of this. He called it “confinement of thought of the worst kind.” He said, “Isn’t this monasticism a cancer to the Tibetan cause?”
“I share your view,” Tenzin said. “In monasteries we have trouble with discipline. Are these people genuine?” John mentioned that nobody agreed with him about this, but as it turned out the Dalai Lama’s brother agrees with him.
“Shantum, why did you bring him to this kind of teaching?” Tenzin asked with a grin.
“I really know nothing,” Tenzin said. “My ignorance—I’m an exhibitionist. I like to show off. I’m quite sincere in my feeling. I try to call a spade a spade.”
Tenzin said, “The Tibetan issue—it’s a small speck.” This has occurred to me often enough, like when I’ve donated to the International Campaign to Tibet, even though I don’t think that organization is half as important as the Global Fund for Women. “The Tibetan problem comes from carelessness, not caring, so what does it say?”
“Why did the Dalai Lama mostly read from the Dhammapada?” someone asked, referring to the teachings that we were attending that week. Several people expressed dismay that the Dalai Lama did this.
“I think we should go on strike?” Tenzin said. Someone asked if he has discussed this with his brother, but he said, “Since the teachings, I haven’t seen him. I’m a crowd-shy guy.”
He also said, “I think it’s a genuine grievance here.” For those who don’t speak Tibetan, the lack of commentary is not fair.
“He’s teaching primarily for the Tibetan community,” Shantum said. Some Tibetans are illiterate or barely literate, or otherwise have reasons why they won’t ever get a hold of the Dhammapada; Westerners on the other hand can easily get the book in English at a bookstore or library.
“But that doesn’t help these people,” Tenzin said. “I’m listening at home on the FM. I thought it was odd that he didn’t explain for two days…in his commentary, tremendously powerful.”
Tenzin said, “For people who are interested in spiritual tradition, study it, and study it in groups, with no leader.”
After a little more discussion, Tenzin asked, “Any more questions?” He looked around the room, but we were silent. “I think everyone is shocked.”
Our lively and enthusiastic discussion lasted at least two hours.
The discussion went to plans for having dinner at the other guesthouse. “Can someone give me a ride?” Tenzin asked.
“No, you have to walk.”
At left, the Dalai Lama's family in 1950s India: (From left to right) his mother, Tsering Dolma, Takster Rinpoche, Gyalo Thondup, Lobsang Samten, the Dalai Lama, Jetsun Pema and Tenzin Choegyal.
