Vision in Moon Brings Jail

The Dalai Lama visits the Mahabodhi Temple after the Kalachakra Buddhist Festival in India's Bodhgaya town, Jan. 11, 2012. 

10th April 2012


A Tibetan man is detained for seeking visions of the Dalai Lama.


The Dalai Lama visits the Mahabodhi Temple after the Kalachakra Buddhist Festival in India's Bodhgaya town, Jan. 11, 2012. 
Chinese police in the Tibetan capital Lhasa have detained a young man for seeking a vision of the Dalai Lama in the moon, the Tibetan exile government said Tuesday.


Phurbu Namgyal, 20 and a resident of Lhasa’s Lhundrub district, was “recently” detained after he and a group of friends gathered at night outside an area club to look at the moon in the hope of seeing the exiled spiritual leader’s reflection, the India-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) said.


“He told them that if someone gazes at the night sky, one can see His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the moon,” the CTA said, adding, “All of them started looking at the sky to see the vision outside the club.”


Public Security Bureau officers later detained Phurbu Namgyal, saying he had committed an “illegal act,” the CTA said.


Namgyal’s present whereabouts and condition, the exact nature of the charges made against him, and the date of his detention are still unknown.


A report from Tibet had said that  Phurbu Namgyal had recently seen a reflection of the Dalai Lama in the moon, the CTA said.


The report added that Namgyal had then confided his experience to his friends while working together at a club house in Lhasa.


The power of faith


The Dalai Lama, who lives in India, is reviled by China’s leaders as a “splittist” seeking Tibet’s independence from China, and his images are widely understood to be banned in Tibetan regions of China.


This ban has never been put into writing in explicit form, though, said Columbia University Tibet scholar Robbie Barnett.


“It has never been clearly expressed as a law, and therefore you can get variations in implementation,” Barnett said.


The act for which Phurbu Namgyal was detained would not have constituted a crime “in the technical sense” in any case, Barnett said, adding that he may have been picked up simply for causing a crowd to assemble.


Bhuchung Tsering, vice president of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet, said that Phurbu Namgyal’s report of a vision and his subsequent detention reflect “the power of the Tibetan people’s faith and how this is seen by the authorities.”


“Although this is not the first time that Tibetans have reported seeing the Dalai Lama’s image in the moon, the authorities’ attempt to strike down this one individual is absurd, to say the least.”