What was once called Lamaism, was viewed as a separate religion from Buddhism and we now know as Tibetan Buddhism exhibits some of the features of a Buddhist theocracy. Recently the Dalai has been willing to reform this and arrogate to himself a more-or-less mere figurehead role but the development of a form of theocracy in the first place is an interesting pre-modern historical example of a very active and engaged Mahayana Buddhism.
He had already received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 (Aung San Suu Kyi did in 1991). Here she is (from Wikipedia):
The Dalai led around 80,000 Tibetans into a more-or-less forced exile in India when Communist China asserted control of Tibet in the late 1950s. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s later changed the face of religion and culture dramatically in all of China including Tibet, the brutal so-called “Four Olds” campaign being one of the driving anti-religious forces at that time. In addition to the general violence, nearly all of the thousands upon thousands of Tibetan Buddhist Temples were completely destroyed along with many of their invaluable and irreplaceable contents. The Dalai was able to save a lot of this material in India, however.
His philosophy of non-violence was supported by his enunciation of three important principles in the context of his pluralist and ecumenical sensibilities and ideas (similar to the ideas of Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh):
1) Compassion – we all share human values;
2) Equality – of everyone; and
“Universal Responsibility” – Why? Because we are all interdependent. This is an ethical duty in a world of dependent arising.
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