Sovereign Bodhisattvas: Tibetan Buddhist Political Theories of Authority, Power, and Critique

Influenced by European Christian conceptions of divine power, the 20th century German legal theorist and Nazi apologist Carl Schmitt famously wrote that “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Schmitt, 5). This paper approaches the problem of authoritarianism that Schmitt raises by focusing on a paradigmatic figure of power and exceptionality in Tibetan Buddhist political and religious thought, that of the bodhisattva. Examining how Tibetan Buddhist thinkers in three different time periods and political environments theorize bodhisattva power, intentionality, and action, this paper asks how these framings illuminate Tibetan debates regarding the moral dimensions of charisma and leadership, and the possibilities for freedom with respect to the state.