In 1908, the 13th Dalai Lama met with the Qing court to negotiate for increased Tibetan independence. Instead of his desired freedoms, Empress Dowager Cixi quashed his aspirations by granting him a new imperial title, “Loyal and Submissive Vice-Regent” of the Qing empire (Goldstein 1989, 50). When returning from this defeat, he stopped at Kumbum monastery and wrote a guiding document—or chayik (‘bca yig)—instructing monks to carry out a multi-month dance ritual for subduing local, hostile spirits. He stated that once the steps were followed perfectly for 538 years, the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī would come to earth, lead an army to destroy the enemies of Buddhism, politically unite the world, and usher in a golden age of Dharma (Tā laʼi bla ma 13 1981). For the rest of his life, the 13th sought to build an independent Tibet. Scholarship on his political career largely focuses the ways he adopted techniques of nation building from Russia, Britain, and Japan, attempting to transform Tibet into a modern nation-state (Klieger 1992; Smith 1996; Tuttle 2005; Rigzin 2021). However as the above example makes clear, the 13th could draw from other reservoirs to demarcate space, assert sovereignty, and unify a community, even if the technologies he activated were not legible in the realm of international relations. By analyzing the Dalai Lama’s regulations for Kumbum monastery’s Kalachakra college, I reveal how he engaged monastic institutions, large-scale ritual practices, and relationships with non-human actors in an attempt to forge a Tibetan community that could survive the tumult of the 20th century.
While the Dalai Lama’s Kumbum Kalachakra chayik discusses various monastic activities, it delivers an overarching message. It contends that Kumbum is under threat, and promises to provide order and protection for its residents. The introduction obliquely references the fact that Kumbum was besieged in the Dungan Revolts of 1862-1877 and 1895-1896, claiming the Dalai Lama must write this chayik because invaders burned the college’s previous one. This martial anxiety is then resolved right before the colophon, where the Dalai Lama invokes the Shambhala prophecy. He explains that in 538 years, Mañjuśrī will appear on the earth to destroy the enemies of Buddhism politically unite the world, and “at that time, through connection to the Kalachakra, specifically through staying in and practicing at this college—even through a mere connection to a handful of dirt or one cup of water in this college—one will certainly attain unsurpassed awakening” (Tā laʼi bla ma 13 1981, 17-18). In this context, the regulations of the chayik are instructions for running a functional monastery that can survive contemporary political turmoil until a prophetic age.
In order to reach this age, the Dalai Lama provides the Kumbum Kalachakra college monks with a number of practices that will strengthen their organization. Central to this strengthening is the concept of dülwa (‘dul ba)—a polysemic term carrying meanings of both subjugation and cultivation, conquering and civilizing, killing and converting (Jäschke 1968, 278). The Dalai Lama explicitly invokes dülwa in two registers. His first use of dülwa harnesses Buddhist bodily and contemplative practices to create competent monk-bureaucrats. For example, the text contains a practice that encourages monks to destroy harmful desires, such as the desire to use alcohol or use divisive speech against their teachers. As the text continues, the harmful desires take on a notably bureaucratic tone. By the end, the monk is destroying any desire to be a finance official who is biased, hides institutional assets, or embezzles offerings (Tā laʼi bla ma 13 1981, 14).
Producing honest and competent officials is important in part because they serve as the foundation for the second dülwa—the taming of hostile spirits through the ritual dances of sagar (sa gar) and chögar (mchod gar). This is the largest section of the chayik, as the Dalai Lama provides precise instructions on how to carry out these dances. A successful ritual entails strict adherence to a daily calendar, the coordination of numerous performers, the organization of various substances and costumes, and intimate knowledge of the Kalachakra Tantra (Tā laʼi bla ma 13 1981, 9-11). Using the monastic institution to orchestrate these components, the ritual binds and stakes obstructive spirits to purify a specific site in preparation for the construction of the Kalachakra mandala (Schrempf 1994). This practice draws on a long lineage of Tibetan understandings of imperial expansion and the civilizing effects of wrathful ritual. One popular narrative contends that the 7th century Tibetan King Songsten Gampo used practices of subjugating local spirits to allow for the building of Buddhist temples, the pacification of restive human populations, and the flourishing of his kingdom (Gyatso 1987; Miller 1998). The ritual dances contained in this chayik are not only aimed at subduing spirits, they also seek to bring political stability to the area of patchwork sovereignty in which Kumbum existed.
In the face of absorption into the Qing imperial system, the Dalai Lama set out to right the cosmos by training monks to tame themselves, local spirits, and their enemies. The Kalachakra college chayik allowed the Dalai Lama to step out of the role of a “Loyal and Submissive Vice Regent” to the Qing, and present himself as a benevolent ritual specialist bestowing tools to help Kumbum survive until a foretold golden age of Buddhist unity. From this text, one can see that the 13th did not only adopt nationalist rhetoric or industrial and military technologies to fight for Tibetan independence, but rather quickly turned to the technique of dülwa as a means of strengthening institutions in the face of threats to Tibetan and Buddhist sovereignty. As the Dalai Lama saw it, the threats to Tibet were too large to solely be addressed with Russian treaties, British education, or Japanese military training. The rectification of the political order on the plateau would require the taming of monks and the taming of spirits, the taming of institutions and the taming of the cosmos.
The 13th Dalai Lama wrote forty-two guiding documents (bca’ yig) for monasteries throughout Tibet and Mongolia—more than double any known author before him. Scholars have speculated that this prolific output was an attempt to bring distant powers in Amdo and Kham under the control of the Ganden Phodrang. Through an analysis of the Dalai Lama’s guidelines for Kumbum Monastery’s Kalachakra college, I demonstrate how he sought to employ Buddhist practices of subjugation (‘dul ba) as bureaucratic tools of statecraft. By granting the college trainings and ritual dances aimed at subduing local spirits, the Dalai Lama gave the monks techniques to efficiently run their institution and defend themselves from threats, while simultaneously subsuming them into a larger state-sanctioned cosmology. This complicates the narrative of the 13th Dalai Lama as a modernist reformer, demonstrating his desire to use monastic technologies to forge a polity outside the mold of the nation-state.