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Created page with "{{Provisional Entry}} Geshe Sherab Gyatso (rDo-sbis dGe-bshes Shes-rab rGya-mtsho, 1884–1968) was an Amdo-born Gelugpa monk-scholar, the Drepung teacher of Gendün Chömpel, who moved from senior Kuomintang cultural-diplomatic service in the 1930s and 1940s to a senior role in the People's Republic's state Buddhist establishment after 1949, serving as vice-governor of Qinghai Province and as head of the Chinese Buddhist Association. As early as 1934 he privately expres..."

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{{Provisional Entry}}
Geshe Sherab Gyatso (rDo-sbis dGe-bshes Shes-rab rGya-mtsho, 1884–1968) was an Amdo-born Gelugpa monk-scholar, the Drepung teacher of Gendün Chömpel, who moved from senior Kuomintang cultural-diplomatic service in the 1930s and 1940s to a senior role in the People's Republic's state Buddhist establishment after 1949, serving as vice-governor of Qinghai Province and as head of the Chinese Buddhist Association. As early as 1934 he privately expressed sympathy for Mao Zedong, years before any institutional incentive to do so. At the 1st National People's Congress in June 1956 he delivered the clearest personal theological case for the compatibility of Buddhist monastic life with agricultural collectivization, proposing concrete safeguards for monastic income and religious freedom. He was killed by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution in 1968.

== Biography ==

Sherab Gyatso was born in Amdo in 1884 and came to Lhasa from Labrang monastery in 1905, becoming a monk of Klu 'bum House at Drepung's Gomang College, where he later taught the young [[Gendun Chompel|Gendün Chömpel]]; their famous public shouting matches there became the origin of GC's "madman" epithet.<ref>Lopez, Donald S., Jr. (2006). ''The Madman's Middle Way: Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel''. University of Chicago Press, pp. 297, 318.</ref> The 13th Dalai Lama personally entrusted him with a twelve-year project (1921–1933) editing a new edition of the ''bka' 'gyur'', the canonical Buddhist scriptures.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', p. 297.</ref> In 1934, in a conversation recorded in Rahul Sankrityayan's own diary, Sherab Gyatso became the first among the Gelugpa hierarchy to welcome Mao Zedong's early successes and to express a wish for a program of reform in Tibet, a sympathy Sankrityayan links to the Chinese Communist Party's own declarations on national-minority rights, including the 1931 Jiangxi Soviet constitution's guarantee of self-determination for Mongolians, Tibetans, and other minority peoples.<ref>Stoddard, Heather (1986). "Tibet from Buddhism to Communism". ''Government and Opposition'' 21, no. 1, pp. 84–85.</ref>

He left Lhasa permanently around 1936–1937 and accepted a Kuomintang invitation to reside in China, where he served as president of the Association for the Promotion of Tibetan Culture in Chungking, as an executive director of the China Association for the Promotion of Border Culture, and, in 1942, as one of three Tibetan delegates from Chinese-controlled ethnic-Tibetan areas at the Kuomintang's Third People's Political Council.<ref>Goldstein, Melvyn C. (1989). ''A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State''. University of California Press, p. 523.</ref> He is also reported, though the attribution is shared uncertainly with the lay political figure Rapga Pandatsang in some sources, to have translated Sun Yat-sen's ''Three Principles of the People'' into Tibetan.<ref>Stoddard (1986), "Tibet from Buddhism to Communism", p. 86; cf. Goldstein (1989), ''Demise of the Lamaist State'', pp. 450–451.</ref> In April 1944 the Kuomintang sent him to Lhasa with an entourage of about fifty people and substantial money and goods intended for distribution to monasteries, as part of a Nationalist strategy of cultivating pro-Chinese sympathy among the monastic establishment; the Kashag, suspicious of Chinese propaganda, tried to admit him without his entourage or goods, and he refused to enter on those terms, so the visit fell through.<ref>Goldstein (1989), ''Demise of the Lamaist State'', pp. 523–524.</ref> He served as Kuomintang vice-chairman of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission from 1947 to 1949.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', pp. 297–298.</ref>

After the Chinese Communist victory, Sherab Gyatso transferred his allegiance to the new government: the Chinese Communist Party's early Tibetan-language "liberation" broadcasts of 1949–1950 were delivered in part by him, promising that Communist rule would not alter Tibet's existing social and religious system, and he was grouped by the Party alongside other religious figures, including Geda Trulku and the Panchen Lama's circle, in a deliberate strategy of separating popular support for Buddhism from popular support for the Lhasa government.<ref>Goldstein (1989), ''Demise of the Lamaist State'', pp. 640–641, 683.</ref> Goldstein's own analytical judgment on this group of religious collaborators applies directly to him: their motivations blended political expediency, genuine belief in the Communists' stated minority policy, and disenchantment with the traditional Lhasa system, and none of them appears to have anticipated the Party's eventual dismantling of the monastic system itself after 1959.<ref>Goldstein (1989), ''Demise of the Lamaist State'', pp. 686–687.</ref> He subsequently became vice-governor of the newly formed Qinghai Province and head of the Chinese Buddhist Association, touring Sweden, Burma, Ceylon, Nepal, and Cambodia in that capacity while continuing to broadcast appeals for Tibetan acceptance of Communist rule.<ref>Stoddard (1986), "Tibet from Buddhism to Communism", p. 86.</ref> In the mid-1950s, Mao Zedong himself referred to him as "Representative Sherab Gyatso" in remarks on monastery finances, relaying his observation that peasants in Qinghai's new agricultural cooperatives had become too busy to bring alms to the monasteries.<ref>Goldstein, Melvyn C. (2014). ''A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 3: The Storm Clouds Descend, 1955–1957''. University of California Press, p. 130.</ref>

At the 1st National People's Congress session on 30 June 1956, Sherab Gyatso delivered his most substantial personal statement on record, stating plainly that reform was inevitable and that socialism could not be achieved without the collectivization of agriculture and animal husbandry, while proposing a four-point program to prevent collectivization from destroying Buddhist institutional life: continued income or stipends for monks and monasteries after collectivization; continued funding mechanisms for religious ceremonies; a practical, not merely nominal, guarantee of freedom of religion, including alms-giving; and non-discrimination against those who chose not to join collectives in order to continue religious observance.<ref>Shakya, Tsering (1999). ''The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947''. Pimlico, p. 176.</ref> He was killed by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution in 1968.<ref>Shakya (1999), ''Dragon in the Land of Snows'', p. 176 n.; cf. Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', p. 298.</ref> Near the end of his life, in his late seventies, he also wrote one of the two major contemporary polemical refutations of his former student Gendün Chömpel's final and most controversial philosophical work, a 246-page response longer than GC's own text, which Donald Lopez characterizes as patronizing in tone but markedly less harsh than the other main refutation.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', pp. 297–299.</ref>

== Ideas ==

Sherab Gyatso's 1934 private sympathy for Mao Zedong is the earliest known personal political statement attributed to him, and it is notable precisely because it predates by more than a decade any career incentive to profess such sympathy; it appears to have been grounded specifically in the Chinese Communist Party's own promises regarding national-minority self-determination, rather than in Marxist theory as such.<ref>Stoddard (1986), "Tibet from Buddhism to Communism", pp. 84–85.</ref> His subsequent three-decade career, spanning senior cultural-political service first to the Kuomintang and then to the Chinese Communist Party, reads for most of its length as that of a political-cultural operative and propaganda broadcaster rather than an independent theorist; Goldstein's own judgment that the motivations of monks in his cohort are difficult to assess, blending expediency, genuine conviction, and institutional disenchantment, applies as much to him as to any other figure in that group.

It is Sherab Gyatso's 1956 address to the National People's Congress, however, that constitutes the clearest documented instance of a senior Tibetan Buddhist monastic authority personally reconciling Buddhist institutional life with socialist collectivization on his own explicit terms, rather than merely accepting or broadcasting it. His four-point program does not merely tolerate collectivization; it accepts the reform's basic premise while insisting that continued monastic income, ritual funding, religious freedom, and protection for religious non-participants are legitimate constraints that any genuine socialist transformation of Tibet must respect. This should be read as a genuine, if narrowly institutional rather than broadly doctrinal, synthesis of Buddhist and socialist commitments — a markedly different register from Gendün Chömpel's anti-colonial and modernist radicalism, or the [[Tenzin Gyatso|14th Dalai Lama]]'s more sustained personal identification with Marxist economic theory as such. His late-life defense of Gelugpa scholastic orthodoxy against his own former student's philosophical innovations further suggests that his openness to political and institutional reform did not extend to a parallel openness within Buddhist philosophy itself.

== Writings ==

* Tibetan translation of Sun Yat-sen's ''Three Principles of the People''. {{annotation|Completed during his Kuomintang-era residence in China in the 1930s–40s; the attribution is shared uncertainly with the lay political figure Rapga Pandatsang in some sources.}}
* Address to the 1st National People's Congress, 30 June 1956. {{annotation|His four-point program reconciling agricultural collectivization with continued Buddhist monastic income, ritual funding, religious freedom, and protection for religious non-participants; the clearest personal statement of his own Buddhist-socialist synthesis on record.}}
* Refutation of [[Gendun Chompel|Gendün Chömpel]]'s ''Adornment for Nāgārjuna's Thought''. {{annotation|A 246-page polemical response, written in his late seventies, defending orthodox Gelugpa Madhyamaka scholasticism against his former student's final and most controversial philosophical work.}}

== Secondary Literature in English ==

* Lopez, Donald S., Jr. (2006). ''The Madman's Middle Way: Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel''. University of Chicago Press. {{annotation|Contains a substantial account of Sherab Gyatso's institutional career and of his refutation of Gendün Chömpel's final work.}}
* Shakya, Tsering (1999). ''The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947''. Pimlico. {{annotation|The source for his 1956 National People's Congress speech, the clearest personal Buddhist-socialist synthesis statement attributed to him.}}
* Barnett, Robert, & Shirin Akiner (Eds.) (1994). ''Resistance and Reform in Tibet''. Indiana University Press. {{annotation|Includes chapters confirming his Chinese Buddhist Association leadership and Cultural Revolution-era death, and his role in early Chinese Communist propaganda broadcasts.}}
* Goldstein, Melvyn C. (1989). ''A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State''. University of California Press. {{annotation|Documents his Kuomintang-era career and his enlistment, alongside other religious figures, in the Chinese Communist Party's pre-1951 "peaceful liberation" propaganda strategy.}}
* Stoddard, Heather (1985/1988). "The Long Life of rDo-sbis dGe-bshes Shes-rab rGya-mtsho (1884–1968)". In: Uebach, Helga, & Jampa L. Panglung (Eds.), ''Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 4th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Schloss Hohenkammer–Munich 1985'': 465–471. Munich: Kommission für Zentralasiatische Studien, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. {{annotation|The only dedicated biographical study of Sherab Gyatso's full life identified thus far. Presently known only via citation in Shakya (1999) and Lopez (2006) and not yet directly consulted. Sources disagree on whether the underlying conference or the proceedings' publication should be dated 1985 or 1988.}}
* Stoddard, Heather (1986). "Tibet from Buddhism to Communism". ''Government and Opposition'' 21, no. 1, pp. 76–95. {{annotation|Contains the earliest-dated personal political statement attributed to him, a 1934 expression of sympathy for Mao Zedong, along with further detail on his Kuomintang- and Communist-era careers.}}

== Secondary Literature in Other Languages ==

(''To be added.'')

== How to Cite This Article ==

Brons, Lajos ({{REVISIONYEAR}}). "Geshe Sherab Gyatso". ''The Radical Buddhism Project''. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. <nowiki>http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Geshe_Sherab_Gyatso.</nowiki>

== Notes ==
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[[category:Tibet]]
[[category:Biographies]]

Geshe Sherab Gyatso - Revision history