Dalai Lama in ethical dilemma

One of the century's greatest authorities on ethics is facing a moral challenge of his own. The Dalai Lama, whose teachings have guided mill...

One of the century’s greatest authorities on ethics is facing a moral challenge of his own. The Dalai Lama, whose teachings have guided millions, is about to receive a lesson in the letter of the law.

The exiled Tibetan leader is to be sued by his British publishers for alleged breach of contract. Publishers Little, Brown, who are bringing out a book of the Dalai Lama’s ethics next year, have learned that he has collaborated on a rival project which duplicates much of the same material.

Alarmed that the rival book, acquired by Hodder & Stoughton for UK publication in October, threatens to spoil its own book’s impact, Little, Brown is taking legal action.

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“We have just learned how similar the rival project is,” said Richard Beswick, editor at Little, Brown. “In fact the author used an identical source. We had a standard contract with the Office of Tibet which provides for an original manuscript, and this other book will infringe our copyright.”

The Dalai Lama’s spoke-sman in London declined tocomment until they heard directly from Little, Brown. Little, Brown’s book, Ethics for the New Millennium, is an exposition of the Dalai Lama’s philosophy and calls for a spiritual revolution.

The rival, co-authored by Howard Cutler, is entitled A Handbook for Living and billed as a self-help guide. The publisher’s blurb calls it “the Dalai Lama’s first book for a general audience”.

Both books draw in part on the text of the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Arizona on the subject of tolerance. Ever since Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was driven into exile by the Chinese army in 1959, the world has clamoured for his particular brand of Buddhism.

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A vast number of volumes have been printed by small, specialist publishing houses, loosely adapted from the Dalai Lama’s words. But now that the big guns are getting in on the action, what used to be spiritual guidance is called intellectual property.

What distinguishes these books is that they are commissioned by mainstream publishers on agrander scale, with bigger budgets. “A lot depends on the scale of the publication,” said Beswick. “These two books are different in that they will be substantial in terms of publicity.” The Dalai Lama is big business: his autobiography, Freedom in Exile, also published by Hodder, sold more than half a million copies, and his story has inspired several Hollywood films, most recently Martin Scorsese’s Kundun.