AUSTRALIA-TIBET: ‘The Dalai Lama Show’ Goes Down Under

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY, Sep 9 1996 (IPS) - The Dalai Lama’s 15-day tour of Australia this week is being brought to you by: Thai International, Nike and Ford Motor Company.

The Tibetan spiritual leader and his 20-monk entourage will fly in on Thai International, be driven from the airport in Ford cars and will stay at the five-star Rockmans Regency Hotel in Melbourne and the Regent Hotel in Sydney.

All this Dalai Lama-selling is a bit too commercial for some Asian Buddhists here. And, inevitably, it has raised hackles with the Chinese government.

The logos of the sponsoring companies appear on all the promotional material printed by the Organising Committee for his visit. The committee has also produced merchandise: Dalai Lama T- shirts at 20 dollars apiece, posters for 10 dollars, prayer flags for 17 dollars for a set of five, and books, tapes and videos.

There’s even a benefit album called ‘Mantra Mix CD’ featuring leading Australian singers. The Dalai Lama has contributed a special chant for world peace for this CD.

During the visit, the Tibetan Buddhist leader will give a talk on Buddhism at the National Tennis Centre in Melbourne (the venue of the Australian Open Tennis championships), as well as at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney (the home of the National Basketball League) and at the Canberra National Convention Centre.

He will also talk about “the bottom line” to business leaders in Melbourne. The centrepiece of the visit however is a nine-day spiritual retreat called ‘Kalachakra Initiation’, which will be held at the Sydney Showground’s Horden Pavillion — where big pop stars usually perform.

This pop-star style organisation and promotion of the tour has made some traditional Asian Buddhists here uncomfortable about supporting the visit. It has nevertheless attracted wide media attention, who have dubbed the tour ‘The Dalai Lama Show’.

When the Dalai Lama last came here in 1982 it was a low- profile visit. He mainly gave talks at University venues. There were only about 35,000 Buddhists in Australia then. The number has now grown to more than 140,000.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics says that Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in the country, due mainly to an increase in Asian migration to the continent in the last decade. But an increasing number of White Australians have begun to embrace this ancient religion.

Many of them have been particularly attracted to the Tibetan ‘Mahayana’ sect followed by the Dalai Lama.

Thus, most of the members of the organising committee are white Australian converts who come from upper middle class backgrounds or work in showbusiness and the corporate world.

Graham Lyall, the chairman of the Buddhist Council of New South Wales, told IPS that whatever Buddhist tradition one follows, the Dalai Lama’s visit is an important landmark in the history of Buddhism in this country.

“He’s held in very high esteem here” he said. “It will increase awareness in the public about the Dhamma (Buddhist teachings) and will stir them to find out more.”

Lyall, who has been a Buddhist for over 30 years, attributes Buddhism’s attraction for the better educated to the fact that it takes “a little bit of intellectual ability” to understand the teachings.

“Those who would adopt this analytical view are especially those with university training,” he added.

One of the sore points of the visit for Asian Buddhists here is that the organisers have set an entrance fee of 160 dollars to attend the nine-day ‘Kalachakra Initiation’. It is 25 dollars if you want to just drop in.

Since Buddhist teachings have been offered for free in traditional Buddhist societies for over 25 centuries, many traditionalists are worried that the new interest in Buddhism in the West may lead to another case of Asia’s traditional knowledge exploited for commercial gain by Westerners.

It is not so, says Paul Bourke, director of media and fundraising for the Dalai Lama’s Australian visit. “What we are asking people to contribute to is the cost of this event. We are not charging them for the teaching,” he said. “What we’re doing is asking them to contribute to the cost of making the teachings available … the teachings are priceless”.

One of the innovative fundraising schemes devised by the organising committee for the tour is an invitation to become a ‘Kalachakra Benefactor’ for 1,000 dollars, or you could even become a ‘Friend of the Visit’ for 40 dollars.

This is not another pretext to charge a special entrance fee for the events, says Bourke. Instead they have taken a leaf out of the Asian Buddhist tradition, he argues.

“This follows the Buddhist tradition where people sponsor an event so that other people can go free to them,” explained Bourke, pointing out that all of the Dalai Lama’s public talks in Australia are for free — no one will be asked to pay an entrance fee. The venue hire for these events have been costed at 600,000 dollars.

Inevitably, the Dalai Lama’s tour is embroiled in political controversy even before he arrives. The Chinese government has warned Australian Prime Minister John Howard that if he meets with the Tibetan leader during his visit to Canberra, it could strain the bilateral relationship.

There is also the question of whether Thai International, Nike and Ford have understood the implications for their business in China of sponsoring the Tibetan leader.

While Howard has yet to say whether he will meet the Dalai Lama, his Trade Minister Tim Fisher was in China last week drumming up Australian business there. During the visit, he was quoted in the media as saying that Chinese rule in Tibet has done a lot of good for the Tibetan people.

Local Tibetan Buddhists, the opposition Labour Party and human rights activists here have branded Fisher an apologist for the Chinese government.

Bourke says that the Dalai Lama may attend some political meetings and speak to politicians here about the situation in Tibet, because he is both the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and their government-in-exile.