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My Enemies, My Teachers by Liao Yiwu

From the Paris Review


Writer Liao Yiwu traveled to Beijing in December 2007 to receive the Freedom to Write Award given by the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) for his nonfiction works, which document the lives of some of the forgotten or ignored members of Chinese society. On the day before the award ceremony, members of the Public Security Bureau in Beijing took Liao away from his friend's house and interrogated him for over four hours before handing him over to the police, who escorted him back to his home in Sichuan province. After the event organizer and another award recipient were placed under house arrest, the ICPC was forced to cancel the ceremony. What follows is the acceptance speech Liao had planned to deliver there.


My birthday falls on June 16, which on the Chinese lunar calendar is an auspicious date. It was the date when Guan Yin, the bodhisattva who possessed the power to relieve the masses of their sufferings, became enlightened. Things didn’t quite turn out to be auspicious for me. I entered the world in the middle of a terrible famine, which was to claim the lives of millions nationwide between 1959 and 1962. My father would tell me how, at the age of one, my little body became swollen from lack of nutrition. I didn’t even have enough strength to cry. An herbal doctor in Niushikou, near the city of Chengdu, recommended that my parents hold me over a wok filled with boiling herbal water every morning and every evening. The steam eventually drained yellow liquid, drop by drop, from my body. Thanks to the doctor, I survived.
Hunger was my first teacher in life, following me during my entire childhood. Hunger stunted my growth, hampering my cognitive development. I was a slow kid. At the age of five, I still had problems walking. Many years later, the influence of hunger could still be felt all over in Testimonial, my memoir of life in prison. In this pigsty of a country, one has to have an iron stomach to be a prison eyewitness, who savors the body odor from his fellow inmates and chews on the rotten fermented memories through teeth, blood, and broken bones.
The Cultural Revolution started when I was attending elementary school. My father, a high-school teacher, was branded a counterrevolutionary scholar. Following his criminal conviction, my family fell apart. My mother took custody of me and my sister. We left our hometown, Yanting, and moved from place to place, undergoing countless random searches and interrogations for what the authorities called “migrating to the city without a residential permit.” When I was nine, my mother was accused of being an escaped landowner and living in the city without a permit. Members of the public security bureau took her away one night for detention and interrogation. Since then, this special Chinese terminology, “Hei-ren-hei-hu” or “Person and a family without a residential permit” has been engraved forever on my mind, becoming my second teacher in life. Perhaps in order to cleanse my inward shame at this status, I have allowed myself to sink deeper into this muddy hole of disgrace and have become acquainted with other “persons without permits.” Nowadays, scholars refer to us as “the silent majority.”
I wrote a book called Interviews with People from the Bottom Rung of Society, which scraped the raw nerves of Chinese authorities and some in the press. In the book’s introduction I wrote, “This book is private and scarred. At the same time, it is self-mockery and self-abuse. In a certain sense, Interviews is a book of shame and disgrace. Thanks to shame and disgrace, I’m able to live a healthy busy life like a cockroach. Shame is an appropriate key to understanding this book . . . it will make us feel ashamed and let the future generation feel ashamed for us.”
My third teacher is homelessness. I used to drift intermittently between the cities of Chengdu and Yanting. I would snatch free rides by chasing and climbing running trains, eating at others’ expense, working as a child laborer, fabricating travel documents, trekking for days on circuitous mountain paths, and lodging in the huts of my poor relatives in the rural areas. Fortunately, I never begged or stole, but I never had the opportunity to receive a solid education. Upon recommendation from the local writers’ association, the authorities waived my miserable test scores and admitted me to a writers’ class at Wuhan University. However, bad habits and the unruly nomadic lifestyle to which I had grown accustomed in my earlier years didn’t serve me well, and I ended up getting expelled.
In my youthful days, in the 1980s, I wandered around the country, from north to south. I followed the steps of modern literary figures in the West, composing poems, performing poetry readings, fighting in gangs, running underground literary magazines, and engaging in promiscuous sexual relations with women. My experiences left dense and chaotic marks on my future works and life.
In 1989, when the killing took place in Tiananmen Square, I composed the epic poem “Massacre.” I screamed in protest against my permanent homeless status, and was arrested and tortured by the police.
When I hunched over beside a toilet bowl in my prison cell, trying to catch fleas in my undershirt; when I was handcuffed, with hands behind my back for twenty-three days; when I twice attempted suicide, only to be derided by fellow inmates; when I was locked up with generations of counterrevolutionaries and saw how they were buried alive in the dark cells of prison; when I was convicted for the crime of composing poems without the opportunity to defend myself, my deep love for this land did, in the words of the patriotic poet Ai Qing, “make my soul cry.” I guess I loved this land to the point of dizziness.
Thanks to prison, I have completed the initial two of five volumes of Continue to Live, my autobiographical novel. Thanks to prison, I have learned to play the flute, employing its music to call on the spirits of the ancient masters and console myself with philosophy. Thanks to prison, I had the opportunity to live in close quarters with murderers, counterrevolutionaries, human traffickers, peasant emperors, robbers, and swindlers.
Prison is my final teacher. Despite the fact that I was let out many years ago, I’m still stuck in an invisible prison. Escaping from prison is a constant theme in my dreams. When I wake up, my legs spasm terribly. In my dream I scream, “I don’t want to be Chinese.” I have no alternative but to sleep on this bed called China. I’m good at offering advice and helping others design ways to defect. As for myself, since I harbor strange ideas, engage in wild behavior, and move in and out of police detentions, I have been denied passport applications nine times. If this country loves me so much, does she have to worry that wild dogs like me would never return if I were to be let off my leash? The police officer that arrested me years ago has now become chief of the customs and immigration office in my Sichuan province. Maybe his refusal to grant me a passport shows that he still has feelings for me. My only option is to write and continue to write. Life without writing is a life of emptiness, boredom, floating, amnesia, and chronic suicide; at the same time, writing requires me to endure endless disasters and sufferings.
Another several years have gone by. I have churned out volume after volume of stories of injustice in China. I keep telling myself: Your efforts are in vain. Don’t do it anymore. Why don’t you want to live a healthy, normal life? Don’t you want a home of your own? Even a wild dog has its own cave. But writing is my destiny. Some invisible force from above pushes me forward. I cannot quit it.
At this moment, when I’m about to receive this special honor, I can feel the warmth, like sunshine on a cold winter day, come over my shoulder. The warmth comes from my enemies and friends who have accompanied me throughout my life. I’m grateful to hunger, my first teacher. Today, I no longer face the threat of starvation. But my sense of starving for freedom is stronger than my physical craving for food.
I want to thank my second teacher, “a person without a residential permit,” because I have been such a person for more than twenty years. My temporary residential card has been checked and my apartment has been searched countless times. I have turned the sense of helplessness and humiliation into fodder for my writing. I have learned to identify with those living in the bottom of society.
My third teacher is homelessness. Thanks to you, I have not been able to live under a permanent roof for many years. I wear the same clothes for months; my socks and shoes stink. I still hang out with younger street people and the situation is hopeless. But this is my life, much better than the lives of those landlords whom I trekked hundreds of miles of mountainous paths to visit and interview. Those landlords had never left their villages, but they still couldn’t escape the fate of being tortured and then slaughtered like pigs.
I want to thank my fourth teacher, prison. After spending half of my life reforming myself, I have met the authority’s requirements. I have become what the Party calls “a new person with high morals, well-developed mental capability, and healthy physique.” To repay this kindness to our government, I have interviewed more than three hundred victims of persecution under this system. I have written millions of words in the past decade in order to record their stories. Because of my works, I have been given the 2007 Freedom to Write Award.
I can’t help crying because I feel very satisfied.

On writing by Orhan Pamuk - Part I

Excerpted selection from a Paris Review interview of Pamuk on writing:


Why do you write?
I have always thought that the place where you sleep or the place you share with your partner should be separate from theplace where you write. The domestic rituals and details somehow kill the imagination. They kill the demon in me. The domestic, tame daily routine makes the longing for the other world, which the imagination needs to operate, fade away. So for years I always had an office or a little place outside the house to work in. I always had different flats.


Orhan, your namesake and the narrator of Snow, describes himself as a clerk who sits down at the same time every day. Do you have the same discipline for writing?
I was underlining the clerical nature of the novelist as opposed to that of the poet, who has an immensely prestigious tradition in Turkey. To be a poet is a popular and respected thing. Most of the Ottoman sultans and statesmen were poets. But not in the way we understand poets now. For hundreds of years it was a way of establishing yourself as an intellectual. Most of these people used to collect their poems in manuscripts called divans. In fact, Ottoman court poetry is called divan poetry. Half of the Ottoman statesmen produced divans. It was a sophisticated and educated way of writing things, with many rules and rituals. Very conventional and very repetitive. After Western ideas came to Turkey, this legacy was combined with the romantic and modern idea of the poet as a person who burns for truth. It added extra weight to the prestige of the poet. On the other hand, a novelist is essentially a person who covers distance through his patience, slowly, like an ant. A novelist impresses us not by his demonic and romantic vision, but by his patience.


Have you ever written poetry?
I am often asked that. I did when I was eighteen and I published some poems in Turkey., but then I quit. My explanation is that I realized that a poet is someone through whom God is speaking. You have to be possessed by poetry. I tried my hand at poetry, but I realized after some time that God was not speaking to me. I was sorry about this adn then I tried to imagine - if God were speaking through me, what would he be saying? I begain to write very meticulously, slowly, trying to figure this out. That is prose writing, fiction writing. So I worked like a clerk. Some other writers consider this expression to be a bit of an insult. But I accept it; I work like a clerk.

The Calf-Path - A poem

One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.

Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead..
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale..

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell–wether sheep
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell–wethers always do.

And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made.

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed – do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf,
And though this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare.

And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed this zigzag calf about
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way.
And lost one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in,
and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf.

Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach

(Cant recall the author yet)

'Writing undoes me' by Pico Iyer - Part I

"To give oneself over to the objective business of writing," says Pico Iyer, "is to see how subjective the whole business of the self and writing is."

To write is to step away from the clamor of the world, to take a deep breath and then, slowly and often with a shaking heart, to try to make sense of the bombardment of feelings, impressions, and experiences that every day and lifetime brings. The very act of putting them down - getting them out of the beehive of the head and onto the objective reality of paper - is a form of clarification. And as the words begin to take shape and make pairings across the page, gradually you can see what you thought, or discern a pattern in the random responses, so that finally, if all goes well, you're convinced you've got something out of your system and into a domain where it creates a kind of order. Random experience becomes teaching, cautionary tale, or even blessing.

To write is to make a clearing in the wilderness in which, almost literally, you can see the wood from the trees. In the thick of anything, you hardly know who you are or where you'r going (which is the redeeming power of experience); at your desk, recollecting emotion in tranquility, helped by memory's editing devices and imagination's hunger for possibility, you take something that might only have been heartache and turn it into something more provocative, enriching and even instructive.

That's the theory. And it works. I know what I think of many things because I have wrestled them into clarity through long, long hours at my desk. I've told myself that I've made a shape, an argument, out of a barrage of sensations, and now I can tell you where I stand on Thailand, on the late romances of Shakespearre, or Susan, and her infuriating habit of talking about herself.

But there is a fatal catch in the process that any Buddhist might mournfully savor. The very process of sitting at the desk, day after day after day, alone, somewhat removed from the world, one's eyes literally or metaphorically shut, makes one able to see through (in every sense) the whole process of thinking and concluding, the very construction denoted by "I". The very fact of trying to explore the mind and its responses, intensely and inwardly, without stepping back, moves one after a while to see that the mind, and the self that talks to the mind, feels no more real than that cloud formation over the mountains, where the sun is beginning to set. To give oneself over to the objective business of writing," says Pico Iyer, "is to see how subjective the whole business of the self and writing is.

Excerpts from essay Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes teh outmost, - and our first thought is rendered back to us by teh trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humoured inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without pre-established harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself; every heart beats to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so., and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso should be a man must be a non conformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

The other terror that scares us from self trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of the others have no other data for computing our orbits then our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public space? Suppose you should contradict yourself; then what? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgement into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divine. With consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today. ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ Is it so bad then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try them. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;- read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zig zag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature.

Interiew with Dalai Lama

Exclusive Interview - 'I am a supporter of globalization'
Published: Friday, 10 July, 2009

Dharamsala, HP, India, 5 July 2009 (By Joerg Eigendorf, Die Welt) - Getting to the Dalai Lama is a long and treacherous journey. The religious leader and Tibet’s head of state lives in exile at the foot of the Himalayas, two hours north of New Dehli by airplane. Here in Dharamshala his residence lies on an idyllic hill, right next to a Buddhist temple. Those who want to get to him must go through strict controls performed by both Indian as well as Tibetan security guards. Even bare fingers are patted down.

Fears over His Holiness are great. On one hand, the over 50-year-old non-violent fight for the autonomy of the Tibetan state has made the Nobel Peace Prize winner an international superstar. On the other hand, the Chinese have seen him as their archenemy since 1959.
But for years now the monk has shifted his focus from solely the Tibetan question and the fight against violence and has engaged himself in matters of the global economy and the challenge of how wealth can be distributed more fairly. Shortly before his trip to Germany at the end of July the Dalai Lama warns not only against greed, but also against having too much faith in the state.

WELT ONLINE: Your Holiness, for the Tibetans you are a divine king and you have many followers in the western world who idolize you. Do you have any weaknesses?
Dalai Lama: (laughs) Yes, I am lazy. Of course I wake up every morning at 3:30am and do some excercises, mediate, eat breakfast and meditate again. This goes on for four or five hours. In the spiritual regard I am not lazy. But when I sit in an airplane I always see people reading, writing or working on their computers, preparing presentations. I never do that – no homework, no preparations. These are signs of my laziness.

Does it bother you?
No, because when I prepare for something to intensely I always feel like it is too fake. I feel much better when I am spontaneous, because it comes from the heart.

Can you imagine how long I spent preparing for this interview?
(laughs again): You are German, so everything has to be precise. Besides, your questions have to be interesting. If I had to be the one asking questions, I would prepare for it too. But I just need to answer your questions, and if I don’t know an answer, I will just tell you.

Ok, how will we solve the financial crisis in the short-term?
See, this is one of those questions – I don’t know. The politicians must decide this. I am no expert in regards to solving a severe crisis. The same goes for violence and terrorism. In the short-term governments will have to act to prevent from endangering its citizens, which is the right thing to do. But with all the short-term actions we are taking, we shouldn’t forget the root cause of the problem.

What, in your opinion, is the root cause of the financial crisis?
Greed and gambling. Many people and companies only have one goal: money, money, and more money. Greed is ok when you let others profit from it, but greed for oneself is bad, it makes you ill. The egotistical ambition to always want to earn more money harms both the company and the individual himself. That is the biggest weakness of many managers – the financial crisis has proven this.

So it’s ok for someone to earn a lot as long as they share?
Wealth is not necessarily a bad thing when it has been earned in an honest manner and neither other individuals nor the environment suffered for it. As Buddhists we recognize that wealth is a basic prerequisite for a happy life. But a billionaire also only has ten fingers. He can fit three or four rings on each finger, but that would look weird. The satisfaction many millionaires who don’t share their wealth have in their heads is fictitious and not real. Rich people should help reduce poverty.

Some managers earn 10, 20 or even 30 million euros per year. You really don’t have a problem with this?
Just like in the music industry or sports there are exceptions. They can earn as much as they want, as long as it remains transparent and traceable why they earn so much money. Unfortunately there are only few such people. It is, however, unacceptable if a chief executive continues to increase his wealth while the company is sliding into bankruptcy, the shareholders lose their savings and the employees lose their jobs or don’t earn enough to afford a decent standard of living.

Let’s assume a chief executive discovers that he can develop a software in India for a tenth of the price it would cost in Germany. In order to do so, he must cut 1,000 jobs in Germany and create new ones in India. The owners of the company are pushing him to do this. What should the manager do?
The manager should consider the situation from all possible angles – the shareholders, the employees, the clients and society. Yes, even global society. A good manager must have a clear image of the problem. This sounds self-evident, but it doesn’t happen that often. Most of the time it is about maximizing profits.

Companies can’t survive without profits.
Yes, but companies are living, complex organisms and not profit machines. The profit should therefore not be the object of a company, but rather a result of good work. Just like a person can’t survive for long without food and water, a company can’t survive without profits. Not that I would ever reduce the purpose of a human to that, as eating and drinking are the only prerequisites for a meaningful life.

How do you feel about western companies investing in low-cost countries? Is that exploitation or does it help the national economy of these countries to close the gap with industrialized nations?
It depends on the investor’s incentive. I don’t think that many of the companies to invest in Indian or Chinese businesses are really interested in the Indian and Chinese people’s well-being. Quite often the interest lies in exploiting cheap labor, which I disapprove of. Yet if a company has a moral responsibility to improve the quality of life and to help China as a whole, then it is fine to profit from cheap labor. Global businesses can help China to become more democratic, help it to achieve an independent legal system and help to ensure a freedom of the press.

You won’t make many friends among those against globalization with your argument.
I am essentially a supporter of globalization. In the past societies and countries could seal themselves off from the rest of the world, but today this has become impossible. When we search for organizations that have the capacity and ability to improve our world, global companies are at the top of the list. In particular integrated global corporations are in an ideal position to support developing countries to close the gap to leading national economies.

Do you not have sympathy for anti-globalists?
I do when they remind leaders and companies that it is about more than just making profits. At the same time the growing opposition to globalization is dependent on our reluctance to accept the principle that everything is perishable: Meaning, the fact that everything is subject to permanent change. For Buddhists this is one of the basic pieces of wisdom that one must accept.

These liberal attitudes don’t really fit to someone who once called himself a Marxist monk. Do you still see yourself as one?
Yes, I still believe I am a Marxist monk. I don’t see a contradiction here either. In the Marxist theory the focus lies on the just allocation of wealth. From a moral perspective this is a correct claim. Capitalism, on the other hand, values the accruement of wealth – the allocation of it doesn’t matter here initially. In a worst case scenario the rich will keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer.

Why is it then that you are so against communism and socialism?
Communism? What is communism? Is China a communist country? (He laughs out loud). I am confused. The Chinese communists are communists without a communist ideology. But if you mean socialism, like it first existed in the Eastern Block and now in North Korea and Cuba, I believe it goes against human nature; it destroys creativity. It is not enough for people to have just enough to eat, clothes and a roof over their heads. We need to self-actualize ourselves. Buddha encouraged entrepreneurs to become successful through dependability and sales skills. Those who are successful can help others.

Yet you used to be a long-time admirer of Mao Zedong. How could you be so wrong?
I am still convinced that Mao Zedong was a Marxist, who wanted to help workers and farmers, in his early years up until the mid-1950s. In the mid-1950s I spent six months in Beijing and another four months in many other parts of China. The party leaders, to me, seemed really dedicated to their cause.

What impressed you about Mao?
He always looked like a farmer – his clothes were old and ruined. And when he spoke, he did so very slowly, so every word had an importance. He never beat around the bush, never said niceties; he always came straight to the point. All of his party members that I met back then were like that, which impressed me.

How did Mao fail, in your opinion?
Mao once told that the communist party must endure criticism, and that self-criticism was very important. Without criticism every system of power is like a fish without water. But then, in 1957, suddenly all party officials who dared to criticize were eliminated. That was the end of Maoism. The system failed because of its own arrogance and a lack of self-discipline. The abolishment of private property led to many belongings ending up in the hands of a state that devolved into a party elite which exerted an authoritarian reign – much like aristocrats of the past.

What role does the state play for you in the economy?
That is a very hard question. I don’t think that equality can be established on a national level. Nations can cause a lot of damage. This is why I warn against expecting too much from governments when it comes to the redistribution or regulation of the financial markets. People will always find ways around rules and laws – even if they are the best rules or laws. Or do you think it was the lack of regulations that lead to this financial crisis? The rules in the United States were good; but responsible action demands more than law-abidance

In your opinion the free market isn’t performing well, and you also don’t believe in regulation. So what it is that we need?
I call it a "responsible free market economy”. In the end it comes down to every single individual; it is dependent on each individual’s sense of moral responsibility, self-discipline, and values. This financial crisis isn’t purely a crisis of the market economy, but rather a crisis of values.

Alright, so the first thing we must do is send all government leaders and chief executives of large companies to Buddhist convents so that they may learn self-discipline and gain some morals.
(laughs): Three-week seminars in our convents won’t achieve much. It would be like laying a piece of ice on a rock – a little while later the rock would be wet, but nothing more. The rock will still be there. No, it’s unrealistic to expect a rapid systematic change in the global economy. The changes need to happen within each individual person and within the companies. This is dependent on the efforts we make in people’s education; this is about beginning in Kindergarten and not about a few weeks’ worth of discussions.

So what you are saying is that not only mathematics, history and languages need to be focused on in school, but that morality, ethics and religion need to be taught in a much greater scope.
History, math, languages and economics – these are all subjects for the brain. But responsibility – moral responsibilities, responsibilities regarding society – these are things that come from the heart. This, combined with the power of the brain, is what governments and large companies need. I will give you an example: we Tibetans believe that our national issue with China can only be resolved non-violently. This is what we preach from Kindergarten onwards throughout the entire education of an individual. When a Tibetan is confronted with a conflict, his reaction should immediately be: “How can I resolve this in dialogue?” It is important to us that young people in our schools understand that violence is the wrong way, that violence cannot solve problems. This attitude has become a part of many Tibetan’s lives through education and training. The same needs to occur in regards to economy and justice.

How many decades or centuries will it take until we are really ready for a “responsible free market economy”?
This financial and economic crisis will help it to happen faster, because those people who only think about money – even dream about it – are affected the most by it. The crisis is terrible for many people, but it also shows the value of money is limited and the insecurity is huge. Inner values like friendship, trust, honesty and compassion are much more reliable than money – they always bring happiness and strength.

But only few people are promoted because they value friendship, trust and compassion. Isn’t your approach a little idealistic?
What you are saying is one of the greatest contradictions. Those who assert themselves often have very little morale, and those who have a good sense of morale often don’t know how to assert themselves. This problem, by the way, is much larger in socialism than in economics. Often times the incompetent were leaders and governed and constricted the competent. We saw what happens then. A company that behaves the same way will fail because it wastes so much potential and will never develop its own values.

Every good CEO has prerequisites for a suitable successor, yet finding your successor is much more complicated and extensive. Do you worry about it?
No, it’s not so difficult. As a simple monk I don’t need a successor when I die. And in regards to the role of the Dalai Lama as a government leader: I ceded all of my governmental responsibilities eight years ago – we have an elected government, so this is also not a problem. This leaves the question of a successor of the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader. In 1969 I said the Tibetans need to decide themselves whether there will be a 15th Dalai Lama. I gave suggestions, but I cannot and do not want to get more involved than that.

Can you understand that leaders all over the world would like to meet with you – but don’t – in order to prevent endangering their economic relations with China? I think it is fine when a politician weighs all of the options and comes to the decision that abides by the nation’s interest. However, many politicians make it too easy for themselves – for them it is only about their own companies earning as much money as possible. Is this a terrible problem for me? Not really. My main interest is to promote human values like harmony, responsibility and charity. To do so I need to speak with people, not their leaders. If a government leader wants to meet with me for spiritual reasons, I’d be glad to meet with them. If they don’t, then they don’t, and there is no problem with that. I don’t travel the world only for my people and the question of Tibet’s future – I want to reach as many people as I can.

Will this century be marked by China’s ascent?
China has developed enormous power. It is the evidence for how well an economy can develop better under more freedom on a corporate level. What China is missing, however, are values its society can rely on. The standards that were relevant before the communist revolution are long gone. And what has taken their place? Nothing but money. The communist elite only think about power and money, and this can be very destructive.

Religion, states and economy have grown increasingly apart. Do you really believe that religious leaders such as yourself and the pope can change the world for the better?
I do not travel the world as a religious leader. I am a simple person, a simple monk. Sure I have more opportunities because I am welcomed as the Dalai Lama and because I have gathered a lot of experience in my 50 years of living in exile. These are experiences I can share with people. But the moral principles we are talking about here give me an inner strength, and inner strength gives me inner peace. This is how I hope to reach out to people.

How do you feel about staying in five-star hotels when you travel abroad?
To be honest, I don’t feel comfortable in large hotel rooms. Sometimes I think there could be a ghost in the room (laughs). This is why I always ask to be accommodated humbly and simply. I like places I stay in to be modern, clean and comfortable. But most of the time I cannot influence where I stay.

Don’t you get a guilty conscience when you stay in luxury accommodations?
Why should I? When feel good, I can do more for others. But of course it hurts me when I see poor people. Once when I was going to bed in Vienna I saw a man lying on the street outside, and when I woke up in the morning he was still there. I sent him fruits and bread; even though I know it will only temporarily ease his agony.

When was the last time you were unfair or unjust?
(Thinks): Sometimes I lose my patience, but then I apologize. It happens sometimes.
You have written books about how damaging anger is, and still you get angry sometimes?
Of course. It is not about eliminating anger, but rather finding the cause for it and working against it. If you do not understand where the anger comes from and don’t work against it, the anger will grow. Anger is a destructive emotion which is based on arrogance. This is why one must find the cause and counteract it.

You possess neither a credit card nor a bank account. Are there any objects that you really need, ones that you can’t live without? Like for example your home exercise equipment?
No, there is nothing I can’t live without. I learned this attitude when I was a child.
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Translated by Carolin Wittek