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Exiled Tibetan Leader Meets With Older Brother

J M Shenoy

After a highly publicized four day sojourn in New York, the Dalai Lama headed to Bloomington in Indiana late last week, the town made famous by basketball, John Mellencamp and the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research.

But his third visit to Bloomington is, as was the case in the past, also a family reunion event. For his older brother Thubten Norbu, 79, lives here and has taught for nearly 22 years, apart from contributing immensely to the creation of little Tibet, and the Tibetan Cultural Center. While thousands of people are attending the Dalai Lama's spiritual discourses, there are some here hoping to get a good glimpse of Richard Gere and Harrison Ford. And then there are those who are merely curious about the Dalai Lama's prescription for happiness.

The 90-acre Tibetan Cultural Center here has been festooned with Tibetan prayer flags, and has drawn an estimated 10,000 devotees in the past week from a number of Midwest states who have stayed back to listen to 64-year-old Dalai Lama. The Center is among the most impressive Tibetan diasporic institutions.

The Dalai Lama's sister-in-law Kunyang runs an international cafe, and there are two Tibetan restaurants offering bland curry dishes and Tibetan dumpling and varieties of tea.

"You have more of Tibet here, comparatively speaking, than in New York," says Ric Ornellas, an American Buddhist "It is much more intense here."

Norbu, the former abbot of Tibet's largest monastery, arrived in Bloomington with his family in 1965 to teach Buddhism and Tibetan culture at Indiana University's Central Eurasian studies department.

But Norbu, who fled Tibet when the Chinese seized power, was also involved before arriving in Bloomington with CIA-backed clandestine programs against the Communists, documents declassified last year have shown.

"One of the big problems we faced was language training," Kenneth Knaus, CIA field officer in the Tibetan operation and author of Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival told reporters. "We discovered there was no one we knew. Norbu was one of the first."

In 1956, the CIA secretly met with Norbu and several other exiled Tibetans and agreed to train half a dozen Tibetans in guerrilla warfare but the program went nowhere, and, in the mid-1960s, Norbu, his wife, and three sons arrived and quickly became part of Bloomington. Besides teaching, Norbu started public speaking campaign for Tibetan causes. He retired from teaching 13 years ago.

While Norbu and fellow Buddhists began working more than a year to host the Dalai Lama, not everyone seems to be welcoming him.

A few fundamentalist Christians have denounced the visitor. And the Dagom Ganden Tensung Ling Tibetan Monastery, which began about three years ago, is not liked by the Dalai Lama's followers.

Its monks who belong to the Dorje Shugden sect, do not like the Dalai Lama since he denounced it four years ago. They are not welcome at his discourses and public appearances.

The Shugdens are beholden to Dorje Shugden, a fierce three-eyed god, a Buddha, but to the followers of the Dalai Lama, Shugden is a frustrated and angry ghost.

Controversies apart, thousands are taking part in the Kalachakra ceremony intended to clean violence off the earth. The event will go on for another 10 days.

The events cost $ 40 to $ 50 daily but nobody seems to be complaining.

"Look, there are these Hollywood stars who make $ 20 million per film, and yet they make themselves humble enough to come here and be with the Dalai Lama," says Ornellas. "The mere mortals like us can imitate them too -- and perhaps learn a few things about peace of mind, though we may never get to meet the Dalai Lama."

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