The Dalai Lama's new book, Voice for the Voiceless: Over Seven Decades of Struggle with China for My Land and My People, published today by William Morrow, is a yet another memoir by the Buddhist spiritual leader of Tibet. He wrote his first in 1962, just three years after his perilous escape from China's repressive control of his mountain homeland. The memoir's release is timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of China's invasion, and the 66th anniversary of a failed uprising by the Tibetan people, according to the publisher.
But unlike other memoirs the 89-year-old monk has written over the years, this book is as much about his future hopes as it is a recounting of the past. For one, the 14th Dalai Lama—recognized through an elaborate process by spiritual leaders as a reincarnation of his predecessor—writes that the 15th Dalai Lama will be one day found outside Chinese control.
“Since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama—that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people—will continue.”
His book is packed with references to the history of the unique language, cultural ecology, and religion of the people who, he writes, have inhabited the Tibetan plateau for millennia. More than a quarter of the text is devoted to appendices documenting his every effort year upon year to negotiate with Chinese leaders even as he viewed "with great alarm" that "what was happening inside Tibet was, either willingly or unwillingly, a form of cultural genocide."
But the Dalai Lama is not one given to despair. He also writes: "Today's dark period of Communist Chinese occupation may seem endless, but in our long history, it is but a brief nightmare. As our Buddhist faith teaches us, nothing is immune to the law of impermanence."
His book also draws on the Buddhist concept that, even amid suffering, "the understanding that compassion grounded in the recognition of shared humanity forms the basis of an ethical way of life leading to happiness for all." Therefore, he writes in his final appeal in the book, "[t]he survival of Tibet and the Tibetan people is in the larger interest of humanity itself."
While A Voice for the Voiceless is both a political memoir and spiritual statement, it won't be the last book under his name. In 2027, Avid Reader Press will publish How to Think: A Journey to Unleashing the Power of Your Mind. It draws on the Dalai Lama's Buddhist practice on "cultivating 'mental immunity,' the ability to face adversity and challenging times with equanimity and joy," says Doug Abrams, who will coauthor the book with His Holiness and his translator Thupten Jinpa. Like their 2016 collaboration with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which has sold 1.2 million copies, the book will be "for general readers of any faith or no faith," Abrams told PW.
