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Why does the West love the Dalai Lama?

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on February 18, 2010

in Leaders

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From BBC News Magazine:

A US president is again choosing to meet the Dalai Lama despite Chinese opposition. But why is this Tibetan spiritual and political leader such a popular figure in the West?

To the Chinese government and to many of its people he is an inciter of violence and a defender of a brutal, backward, feudalistic, theocratic society.

But to many politicians and people in the West, the Dalai Lama is a kind of smiling, spiritual and political superhero.

His monastic robes, beaming countenance and squarish, unfashionable glasses are the stuff of a thousand photo opportunities. To some he is in a league of international personalities that contains only one other person – Nelson Mandela.

He is well-known for his contact with Hollywood supporters like Richard Gere and Steven Segal. More:

China intensifies tug of war with India on Nepal

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on February 18, 2010

in China, India, Nepal and Tibet

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Jim Yardley from Kathmandu in The New York Times:

For years, Nepal never bothered too much with policing its northern border with China. The Himalayas seemed a formidable-enough barrier, and Nepal’s political and economic attention was oriented south toward India. If Nepal was a mouse trapped between elephants, as the local saying went, the elephant that mattered most was India.

But last week a Nepalese government delegation visited Beijing on a trip that underscored, once again, how China’s newfound weight in the world is altering old geopolitical equations.

As Nepal’s home minister, Bhim Rawal, met with China’s top security officials, Chinese state media reported that the two countries had agreed to cooperate on border security, while Nepal restated its commitment to preventing any “anti-China” events on its side of the border. More:

Tibet is no Shangri-La

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on February 17, 2010

in Tibet

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Christina Larson in Foreign Policy:

That is to say, there was no real place named Shangri-la until recently, when the city of Zhongdian (Gyalthang in Tibetan) changed its name to recall Hilton’s paradise. In truth, the modern city is not quite a dreamscape. Situated on an alpine plateau, in a location resembling that of Lost Horizon, the modern city of 130,000 is divided into an “old” and “new” town. The new town came first. It resembles many midsize Chinese cities that have arisen in recent decades, with hastily erected concrete apartment blocks and glass storefronts. The old town, however, was built entirely in the last decade years; it has “quaint” cobbled streets and wooden storefronts, and when I visited last fall, I stayed in a rustic lodge, with a wood-burning stove and a sloppy dog who slept on the steps. All this is pleasant fabrication for visitors like myself, catering to what we expect to find.

Shangri-la isn’t even in Tibet proper; it’s situated in the far north of China’s Yunnan province. (The region where Tibetans live actually spans parts of five Chinese provinces, and is known as “greater Tibet .”) Han Chinese tourists from the country’s wealthy eastern cities, who now are becoming more curious about Tibetan lands and culture, also come here to take in the view. They roll in on large tour buses and stay in luxury hotels in the new town, with banquet halls and karaoke bars. Chinese tourists generally spend little time in Shangri-la and instead book guided day trips to take in the dramatic scenery. Western tourists stay in old-town lodges, and stock their backpacks and suitcases with hand-sewn Tibetan coats, jade jewelry, prayer wheels and other trinkets, and profess more interest in the Tibetan people. More:

Inside Tibet

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on February 9, 2010

in Tibet and human rights

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The Economist correspondent travels to Tibet on a “rare authorised trip by a foreign journalist”:

Day four

On the plane out of Lhasa, I sit next to a Nepali businessman who frequently visits Lhasa to buy shoes. He puts them in containers to be taken by lorry to Nepal, where most of them are re-exported to India. He has his complaints: about the duties he has to pay at the border, and the snow that sometimes blocks traffic. But of the road from Lhasa to Nepal, he is full of praise. It once took three days by lorry, he says. Now it is a day and a half. “China is so developed,” he says wistfully, looking out of the window at the ribbons of light marking highways and city streets below. He has little positive to say about Nepal and its roads.

China has been pouring money into its infrastructure in the past few years, and—from a business perspective at any rate—Tibet has been a big beneficiary. On my last visit to Lhasa, in 2008, I went by train. The railway line, Tibet’s first such link with the Chinese interior, had been opened just two years earlier and is one of the country’s most spectacular engineering accomplishments. Critics of Chinese rule in Tibet condemn its impact on the environment and the encouragement it gives to a flood of immigrants from the rest of China. But as a feat, it amazes: the $4.2 billion line crosses higher terrain than any other in the world, including permafrost—which requires elaborate ground-cooling measures to protect the rails from changes in temperature. More:

Richard Gere serves up a haven for vegetarians

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on January 10, 2010

in Faith, Food, Heritage, India and Religion

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Actor and Buddhist activist backs campaign to make the Indian town of Bodhgaya a meat-free zone. Andrew Buncombe in The Independent:

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Richard Gere, the Hollywood actor who has spurned red meat for the past 30 years, has thrown his support behind a plan to transform the site of Buddha’s enlightenment into a vegetarian zone to spread the message of peace.

The activist, who is taking part in a five-day training session with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader, in the Indian town of Bodhgaya, took part in a candlelit march this week highlighting the campaign. “Bodhgaya is a pious place and I want to come here again,” the star of movies such as An Officer and a Gentleman and Pretty Woman told reporters, after joining around 500 monks and activists who took part in the march. “I am with the people who have launched this campaign.”

According to Buddhist tradition, Bodhgaya, in the state of Bihar, is where Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment around 500BC. Starting in the 19th century, the area gradually become a site of pilgrimage and is now visited by Buddhists from all over the world, whose presence gives it a very different character from the rest of north India’s impoverished “cow belt”. More:

India vs China in the Maldives

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on November 12, 2009

in India, Politics, Sri Lanka and The Maldives

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Jeremy Page from Delhi in The Times, London:

You have to go to a tropical paradise to find the latest front in the brewing cold war between China and India.

On the southernmost tip of the Maldives lies the island of Gan, a tiny patch of coconut palms and powdery white beaches. It was here that Britain set up a secret naval base in 1941, building airstrips and vast fuel tanks to support its fleet in the Indian Ocean during the Second World War.

The RAF then used it as a Cold War outpost until 1976, when the British withdrew and the officers’ quarters were converted into a resort called Equator Village.

Now, 33 years later, India is preparing to reopen the base to station surveillance aircraft, helicopters, and possibly ships, to monitor Chinese vessels in the Indian Ocean. Under a deal signed in August, India is also installing radar across the Maldives, linked to its coastal command. More:

Also read: Opportunity, Made in China by Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express

Shoot for the legs

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on September 16, 2009

in Faith

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In Guernica, Robert Thurman, the West’s first Tibetan Buddhist monk on his friend the Dalai Lama, the nuance of forceful resistance, and how Hitler could have been defeated without violence:

Robert Thurman’s journey toward his own inner peace-which he admits he hasn’t “fully mastered, of course” -began in 1961 when he lost his left eye in an accident. His becoming one of Time’s Twenty-Five Most Influential Americans also likely followed from this accident-as a result of which, Thurman dropped out of Harvard, divorced his wife-an heiress unsupportive of his new zeal-and wandered, quite literally, through India, Iran, and Turkey. While wandering in 1964, Thurman met the Dalai Lama (a.k.a. His Holiness), and thus began the remarkable friendship that thrives today. The Dalai Lama invited Thurman, who had become fluent in Tibetan in ten weeks, to Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan exile community, and arranged for him to study Buddhism with his own senior tutor. The following year, Thurman was ordained by His Holiness himself-taking 252 vows that focused on a philosophy of nonviolence, compassion, and selflessness-making him the first Tibetan Buddhist monk born in the West.

Eventually, Thurman became homesick and returned to the States. An outsider now with his shaved head and maroon robes, his desire to help others was thwarted by his skepticism over “the usefulness in American society of trying to help others as a monk (as opposed to a layperson in a university).”

Convinced he would be of more benefit as a teacher, he resigned his vows, returned to Harvard, earned three degrees, and embarked upon academic life, all without giving up his rigorous daily Buddhist practices. He married Nena von Schlebrugge, a model and Timothy Leary’s former wife; they had four children, one of whom starred in the ultra violent films Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Uma. More:

Waiting for reincarnation at a spiritual birthplace

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on August 26, 2009

in Faith, India and Religion

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Some speculate that the birthplace of an especially immortalized Dalai Lama of centuries past may be where the next Dalai Lama comes from. Edward Wong in the New York Times:

Urgelling Monastery, Arunachal Pradesh, India, the birthplace of the Sixth Dalai Lama

Urgelling, India – He drank wine, cavorted with women and wrote poetry that spoke of life’s earthly pleasures.

He was the Sixth Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans and reincarnation of Chenrezig, a deity embodying compassion.

He would sneak out of the Potala Palace in the heart of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, for midnight trysts. He renounced his monastic vows in the middle of his stewardship of Tibet. He was later kidnapped by Mongolian warriors allied to the Manchu Chinese court and died in captivity about three centuries ago at the age of 33 – or so one story goes. Another tells of his winning his freedom and wandering the Tibetan lands as an ascetic.

So goes the legend of Tsangyang Gyamtso, one of the most popular historical figures among Tibetans and the most colorful of the long line of Dalai Lamas. His poetry is among the most iconic in Tibetan literature. More:

[Image: Map / NYT; Monastery: Brahmaputra Tours]

Monk in waiting

Published

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on June 7, 2009

in Faith, Religion and Tibet

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This year marks 50 years of Tibetans living in exile in India, a period in which the Dalai Lama has been the face of their struggle. The Sunday Express profiles Ogyen Drodul Trinley Dorje, the 24-year-old Karmapa who many say could be the new face of the Tibetan struggle. By Devyani Oniyal:

In a spacious room on the fourth floor of the Gyuto monastery in Sidhbari, a farming village near Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, Ogyen Drodul Trinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa, stands with a grave expression. He is receiving a few people who have sought a private audience with him. Some have come merely to pay their respects and to receive his blessings, others in the hope that he can fix their problems. Two old gentlemen bend to touch his feet, three women have come all the way from Hong Kong-one of them with a “business problem”. There is a reverential hush in the room, broken suddenly by the cry of a little girl accompanying her mother. With an unfortunate sense of timing peculiar to children, she bawls incessantly and is taken out of the room by her crushed mother. The Karmapa finally allows himself a half-amused look before returning to his duties with practised ease.

It’s an ease that has grown in the nine years that he has been living in India and will come in handy if he were to eventually become, as many say he will, the new face of the old Tibetan struggle. In the Tibetan hierarchy, the Karmapa, who is the head of the Kagyu sect and whose role is purely spiritual, is the third most important leader after the Dalai Lama (who heads the Gelugpa sect, the biggest sect), and the Panchen Lama, who went missing in China in 1995, a few days after he was chosen by the Dalai Lama. More:

[Image: The Buddhist Channel]

China creates spectre of dueling Dalai Lamas

A battle is looming as the current Dalai Lama and his followers in exile compete with the Chinese government for control of how the 15th Dalai Lama will be chosen. Edward Wong from Dharamsala in the New York Times:

For centuries, the selection of the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama has been steeped in the mysticism of a bygone world.

On the windswept Tibetan plateau, his closest aides look for divinations in a sacred lake. A mountain god transmits oracular messages by possessing a high lama. Monks scour villages for boys precocious in their spiritual attunement.

All that is about to change, as the current Dalai Lama and his followers in exile here in India compete with the Chinese government for control of how the 15th Dalai Lama will be chosen. The issue is urgent for the Tibetans because the current Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of all Tibetans and the charismatic face of the exile movement, has had recent bouts of ill health. He turns 74 in July.

Both the Chinese and the Tibetan exiles are bracing for an almost inevitable outcome: the emergence into the world of dueling Dalai Lamas – one chosen by the exiles, perhaps by the 14th Dalai Lama himself, and the other by Chinese officials. More:

Dalai Lama: Q&A

Published

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on June 1, 2009

in Faith

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From Harvard Magazine:

The Dalai Lama spoke to a capacity crowd at Harvard’s Memorial Church as the guest of the Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The visit had been so eagerly anticipated that members of the University community entered a lottery for tickets to his talk.

Q&A with the Dalai Lama from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Dalai Lama: China Has Turned Tibet Into a ‘Hell on Earth’

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on March 11, 2009

in Politics, Religion and Tibet

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The Dalai Lama has accused China of having brought “hell on earth” to his homeland Tibet. On the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, the exiled spiritual leader delivered a speech in Dharamsala. He said said China’s rule “thrust Tibetans into such depths of suffering and hardship that they literally experienced hell on earth.” Full story and China’s reaction here and here.

The full text of the Dalai Lama’s speech is posted on the official Web site DalaiLama.com:

We Tibetans are looking for a legitimate and meaningful autonomy, an arrangement that would enable Tibetans to live within the framework of the People’s Republic of China. Fulfilling the aspirations of the Tibetan people will enable China to achieve stability and unity. From our side, we are not making any demands based on history. Looking back at history, there is no country in the world today, including China, whose territorial status has remained forever unchanged, nor can it remain unchanged.

China’s official news agency Xinhua called the speech utter distortion of Tibet history. In a report from Beijing, it said:

Unfortunately, the Dalai Lama has not only been on the wrong side of history, but also has got the history upside down. Miseries of “hell on earth” and “untold suffering” occurred nowhere but in the slavery Tibet symbolized by the Dalai Lama.

Peter Jackson: The day I saw the Dalai Lama flee into exile

From The Independent:

On 18 March, an Indian journalist, Shri Krishna, who had contacts with senior members of the Indian government, called us urgently to his house. He told us there had been riots in Lhasa and the Dalai Lama was heading for the Indian frontier. We broke the news in a Reuters report. The Dalai Lama and his party reached the frontier after nearly two weeks of trekking.

As it happened, my wife Adrienne and I had been to Gangtok, capital of Sikkim, on the border with Tibet, the previous year. We had lunch with the Chogyal [king] and his sister, Princess Kukula, who was married to the high-level Phuenkhang family of Tibet. We knew the princess was in Delhi. More:

China, Tibetans spar over Buddhist reincarnation

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on March 10, 2009

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On the eve of the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against China that forced him to flee to India, Beijing’s rules on whom to recognize are a source of conflict with the Dalai Lama. Gordon Fairclough reports from Kangpu, China, in the Wall Street Journal:

China’s government and its officially atheist Communist Party are working to boost control over Tibetan religious and political life by taking on a mystical phenomenon at the heart of both: reincarnation.

Beijing’s moves are part of an intensifying effort to build a Tibetan Buddhist establishment more in step with its desires as it seeks to prevent unrest among Tibetans — which is flaring again ahead of the 50th anniversary Tuesday of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.

The government’s new approach to reincarnation was on display in an unusual recent ceremony at a hilltop monastery here in southwestern China. A senior provincial official, standing before the three-tiered prayer hall, proclaimed that a local monk was the reincarnation of a respected Tibetan lama.

Reuters has an overview of some of the key issues affecting the succession and some potential scenarios.

After the Dalai Lama

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on February 5, 2009

in Faith, India, Religion and Tibet

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Saransh Sehgal in Asia Sentinel. Sehgal is based in Dharamsala, India:

But what happens after the Tibetan Diaspora’s most iconic figure departs the scene? In Tibetan Buddhism, reincarnation is not a life force that passes from body to body. It may lie dormant for an indeterminate period – perhaps years – before a complicated series of omens points to a reborn Dalai Lama. In the meantime, a remay reign. According to the faith, Tibetan religious leaders have been reborn again and again, for at least 750 years, when Kublai Khan, the Mongol warrior, recorded a visit to the isolated Buddhist kingdom. Certainly none of them has been a woman.

The Dalai Lama leads one of several sects, each considered to be a living Buddha, reincarnated in an endless series of new religious leaders. The Chinese have sought to end the practice, somewhat incongruously believing they can select their own reincarnated figures, an interesting belief for a nation that is officially atheist. In 1995, for example, after Tibetan leaders announced that the then-six year old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima had been named the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet’s second-highest ranking religious figure, Chinese authorities spirited him out of Tibet and named their own, Gyancain Norbu, in his place.

Why Gandhi still matters

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on January 30, 2009

in Leaders

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On Mahatma Gandhi’s 61st death anniversary, Ramchandra Guha writes for Mint Lounge

This photograph was taken by Ram Rahman in 2002, during an India Day parade in New York. A man dressed as Gandhi walks down Madison Avenue as others follow him, holding the tricolour in their hands. At Saffronart Gallery, Mumbai, till 15 February

Since independence and Partition, no event has so divided the Indian people as the demolition of a mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya in December 1992. Hindu radicals claimed that the mosque, known as the Babri Masjid, was built on the ruins of a temple, and that the site itself was the birthplace of god Ram. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, bands of volunteers tried to storm the mosque, in the process provoking a series of bloody riots across northern India.

The other Lhasa

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on January 25, 2009

in Society, Tibet and Travel

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The old Lhasa is gone. In its place is rapid development, new pubs and the latest mobile technology. Yet, Tibetans see themselves distinctly as Tibetans, not a part of a larger Chinese culture. Vijay Jung Thapa takes a trip [in the Hindustan Times].

In 1976 the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, tripping on a strong dose of yajé, wrote about the ‘Tibet of his imagination’ — a psychedelic account of a secret, shadowy, white paradise up in the Himalayas. Like Ginsberg, the Tibet of my own imagination, spurred by writers from Hedin to Harrer to Hopkirk, had always conjured up a powerful image of Eastern mysticism set against the great brooding mass of the Potala — a place of pure spirit, unsullied by greed or personal ambition.

Five minutes into Lhasa, that illusion lay shattered.

As our van rolled onto a smooth-as-silk eight-lane-wide boulevard, my Chinese interpreter excitedly gushed: “This is our Lhasa.” Outside, glistening glass-and-chrome buildings, plush hotels and supermarkets with bright neon signage floated by. Bulky Prados purred down the uniform grid of roads that go off in all directions and chic women and strutting businessmen dotted the sidewalks and street corners. It was a new landscape where Lhasa meets Las Vegas — minus the buzz and with an unmistakable touch of Chinese kitsch.

On Newsweek’s Power List

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on December 21, 2008

in Lists

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Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who controls the the country’s nuclear weapons,have been ranked among the 50 most powerful people in the world by Newsweek.

From the magazine’s cover story by Jon Meacham headlined “The Story of Power”:

In the popular imagination, power tends to be viewed in one of two ways, both extreme. The first is totemic and tactical (how to get ahead at the office, to win friends and influence people). The other is epic and amorphous (the fate of markets, of vast global events and forces that seem beyond anyone’s control, but especially yours).

Power is both these things, and more. At heart, it is best understood in terms of command and control. It is either the capacity to make others do as you wish (the command function) or to reorder the environment around you (the control function).

No. 1 on the power list is Barack Obama, followed by Chinese President Hu Jintao, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Markel and powerful Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Sonia Gandhi is at No. 17. “In the world’s largest democracy, she is the queen,” says Newsweek. Gen. Kayani is at No. 20 and ‘King of Bollywood’ Shah Rukh Khan at No.41.

Click here for Newsweek’s full and list and for their profiles.

Dalai Lama: sex=trouble

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on November 30, 2008

in Faith and Sexuality

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The Dalai Lama pitches celibacy as a better way of life. AFP has a story [via Breitbart]

It's all in the mind

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader, on Friday said sex spelt fleeting satisfaction and trouble later, while chastity offered a better life and “more freedom.”

“Sexual pressure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication,” the Dalai Lama told reporters in a Lagos hotel, speaking in English without a translator.

He said conjugal life caused “too much ups and downs.

“Naturally as a human being … some kind of desire for sex comes, but then you use human intelligence to make comprehension that those couples always full of trouble. And in some cases there is suicide, murder cases,” the Dalai Lama said.

He said the “consolation” in celibacy is that although “we miss something, but at the same time, compare whole life, it’s better, more independence, more freedom.”

The drama of Miss Tibet

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on November 26, 2008

in Tibet

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In the long-standing conflict between China and Buddhists seeking a return to their homeland, the Miss Tibet pageant is a symbol of defiance. Emily Wax from Dharamsala, India, in the Washington Post:

Choekyapy, a monk, teaches English and Web-surfing skills to Sonam Choedon, 18, who won the crown this year.

The Miss Tibet pageants, seen by many as a showcase of feminine beauty, have been fraught with controversy and drama. Even though the contests take place in a drowsy Himalayan town in India — home to the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan exiles — the Chinese government and some Tibetan elders have pressured contestants to withdraw. It is probably one of the few things that the political rivals can agree on. “Heavy is the head that wears the tiara,” one Tibetan TV station reported.

Unsurprisingly, there are few runners-up in the Miss Tibet pageants. This year, only two entered the contest, which is in its seventh edition.

And the winner was Sonam Choedon, a shy 18-year-old with shiny waist-length black hair and high cheekbones. At 16, she fled her homeland on the Tibetan plateau to Dharmsala, headquarters of the Tibetan Government in Exile.

Tibetan exiles back Dalai Lama

Published

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on November 23, 2008

in Tibet

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From BBC:

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Tibetan exiles meeting in India have agreed to back the Dalai Lama’s policy of seeking autonomy, rather than full independence from China.The Tibetan spiritual leader’s approach to continue talks with Beijing received the majority vote at the meeting in Dharamsala, but delegates concluded that if China makes no effort to meet the demands, other options would be put forward.

Click here for another report.

A generation gap in Tibet’s royal family

Jyoti Thottam in TIME:

Khedroob Thondup nephew of the Dalai Lama. AP

“I was seven years old in 1959, and I was studying in Darjeeling,” recalls Khedroop Thondop. “One day my teachers told me that I was to go and receive someone at the train station. That’s when I realized that I was related to His Holiness and that I was Tibetan.”

As the Dalai Lama’s nephew, the eldest son of the Tibetan spiritual leader’s eldest brother, Thondop, now 56, has already led an extraordinary life. He was born in Calcutta, where his father, a political leader in the Tibetan government, had been posted. He went to the elite St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, got an MBA in the United States, ran a family business for several years in New York City, and then returned to India in 1977 to serve as his uncle’s special assistant. Two years later, he went to Beijing for Tibet’s first negotiations with China, taking notes on the meetings between his father and Chinese supreme authority at the time, Deng Xiaoping. For the last 21 years, he has run a center for Tibetan refugees in Darjeeling and has served three terms in the Tibetan parliament-in-exile.

Born in exile: the young Tibetans of Dharamsala

In the streets of Dharamsala, Sébastien Daguerressar, special correspondent of France 24 channel, got firsthand testimonies from these young Indian-born Tibetans, who dream of winning back a country they have never seen.

Khendrab Palden

He sits on the pavement, facing the temple on Dharamsala’s main road. Teacup in hand and MP3 player in his ears, he takes in the sun. “I’m considering exile,’ he says, anticipating my question. His name is Khenrab Palden, 26, and exile for him is not just a personal goal – it’s a professional one. He is a filmmaker. His parents left Tibet before he was born, he explains. But thanks to the Tibetan community, his parents set up a business and managed to send their son to study in the US.

In Massachusetts, Khernrab studies anthropology, the history of religion, and film. “I feel 60% Tibetan, 20% Indian, and 20% American. My country will be where I make my living. Tibetans are like the Jews chased out of their countries by Hitler.”

Previously in AW: At exile meeting, Tibetans debate independence

At exile meeting, Tibetans debate independence

Published

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on November 22, 2008

in Tibet

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Long associated with the Dalai Lama and his “middle way,” the exile movement has reached a crossroads. Edward Wong from Dharamsala, India, in the New York Times:

In Dharamsala, India, Tibetans in exile waited last Saturday to welcome the Dalai Lama. Tibetans are discussing whether to advocate separatism from China. AP/NYT

In Dharamsala, India, Tibetans in exile waited last Saturday to welcome the Dalai Lama. AP/NYT

In this Himalayan hill town, where Tibetan prayer flags flutter and red-robed monks study Buddha’s call for forbearance, talk is brewing of kicking off the world’s next separatist movement.

Posters around town advertise the word “rangzen” – Tibetan for “independence.” Not in years has it been heard so much in the streets here, falling from the lips of members of the Tibetan diaspora whose frustration runs as deep as the mountain ravines of their homeland. Decades of dialogue with the Chinese government, they say, have failed.

“Support for independence will definitely increase,” Dhondup Dorjee, 30, said, as he took a break from a heated discussion with fellow exiles to grab lunch in the cafeteria of the Tibetan hospital. “What are the pressures we can put on the Chinese? The pressures will come in any form.”

Murder in the snow

Published

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on November 10, 2008

in China and human rights

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In September 2006 two groups of people crossed paths in the snow-capped Himalayas, one seeking freedom and the other adventure. A brutal shooting threw them together, changing their lives forever. BBC will be broadcasting a documentary on the shooting and its aftermath on Monday, November 10 at 1900 GMT. Sally Ingleton tells the story

Each year an estimated 2,500 Tibetans make the dangerous and illegal crossing through the Himalayas into India.

Many are young teenagers seeking freedom both in religious practice and in their education. A big incentive is the prospect of meeting their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India.

In 2006 the plight of these refugees came to international attention when a group of mountain climbers witnessed and recorded Chinese border police opening fire on one group of pilgrims as they made their way across the Nangpa pass in the Himalayas, 18,000 feet (5,500m) above sea level.

A video of Chinese army soldiers shooting Tibetan refugees as they tried to escape over the Himalayas in September 2006 can be viewed on YouTube here

Admiring a flawed Gandhi

Published

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on September 18, 2008

in Leaders

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Salil Tripathi in Mint:

I am glad many Indians whose pride trumps their sense of humour don’t read advertisements for Danish newspapers. Otherwise they’d be out protesting an ad of the daily Morgenavisen Jyllands Posten. That newspaper became famous for publishing controversial cartoons of Mohammed in September 2005. Its recent campaign reminds us of what makes it unique.

The ad says: Life is easier, if you don’t speak up. The ads show the Dalai Lama admiring the Himalayas while preparing to ski down a slope; Nelson Mandela relaxing on a beach, carrying a surf board; and Mohandas Gandhi, smiling with a beer bottle in one hand, with the other, he is barbecuing sausages, empty beer bottles at his feet.
This is admirable chutzpah, for these ads are meant to make us think. They challenge the self-righteous among us – South Africans (and others who opposed apartheid), Tibetans (and their global supporters), and Indians (and Gandhi fans worldwide), telling them not to rush to judgement, but to reflect on the message. Far from ridiculing these exceptional men, the ads show how Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Gandhi could have led cushy, comfortable lives if they had not stood up for what they believed in.

Interview with Dalai Lama’s younger brother

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on September 1, 2008

in Faith

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Lisa Katayama, a freelance magazine writer in San Francisco, interviewed Tendzin Choegyal, the Dalai Lama’s youngest brother. “He’s bipolar and has anger management problems. Nobody’s interviewed him at length before,” she says.

Tendzin Choegyal

“Aside from being related to one of the holiest persons alive, TC is a rebellious soul who dropped out of college, spent a couple of years as a paratrooper in the Tibetan contingency of the Indian army, survived alcoholism,and found peace through a blend of Buddhism, lithium, and reading the news on the Internet. When I met him at his home in Dharamsala, India – the Himalayan town that houses the Tibetan government-in-exile – we talked about reincarnation, war movies, Steven Seagal’s crazy outfits, and the preservation of Tibetan culture.”

The interview, she says, was published in Issue 52 of Giant Robot, a magazine on Asian American pop culture, and a feature-length profile will be in the Fall issue of Buddhadharma. Here’s the text on Lisa Katayama’s blog, Tokyo Mango:

GR: Are you and your brother similar?

TC: His Holiness’ voice and my voice are similar, and we also look alike. I also share his philosophy of life. I share his views wholeheartedly. I mean, the guy cares, you know?

GR: Are you a practicing Buddhist?

TC: How do you define “practicing Buddhist”? Going to the temple every morning is nothing. We ourselves are temples. Even a dog can go to a temple. And as long as you have a little bit of money, you can always make an offering. I do subscribe to basic Buddhist beliefs, and the tenets of the teachings. I believe in taking refuge in the Buddha, in his teachings, and in his spiritual community. But I have to actualize all three within myself and enjoy the fruit of that development.

Monks and Tigers in Sri Lanka

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on June 22, 2008

in Sri Lanka

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Two monks, two conversations. Soon after meeting the Dalai Lama, James Astill interviews a monk MP in Sri Lanka. He comes away feeling distressed about the country’s war and dazed by the breadth of Buddhism. From moreintelligentlife.com

When it comes to being nice, few people would enjoy comparison with the Dalai Lama. So, it is bad luck on the Venerable Athuraliye Rathana, a Sri Lankan politician known as the “war monk”, that he is the second Buddhist monk I have interviewed in recent days.

The first, the DL, seems–no kidding–little less than saintly. I visited him in Dharamsala, his refuge in northern India, with The Economist’s China correspondent, who saw more of last month’s uprising in Tibet than any other foreign journalist. The Dalai Lama wanted to hear precisely what my colleague had seen. And where it contradicted what he thought he knew–generally, where the Chinese response had been less beastly than the Dalai Lama had been told–he listened extra hard, and he tried to understand.

A new torch controversy: the battle for Everest

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on May 2, 2008

in Tibet

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As the Olympic flame makes its way to the top of the world’s highest mountain, China’s repressive tactics have sparked fresh criticism. Andrew Buncombe in The Independent, UK:

William Holland was only thinking of the photograph. When he got to the top of Everest he planned to take the rolled-up flag saying “Free Tibet” from his rucksack, pose for posterity with the banner as a backdrop and then roll it away again before starting back down. He was not looking to make a scene.

But that is exactly what transpired. Someone in the group he was climbing with informed the Nepalese authorities of Mr Holland’s flag. When he reached Everest Base Camp he was ordered from the mountain and told to go straight to Kathmandu. From there he was deported from Nepal with an order not to return for two years.

The 26-year-old US climber’s treatment at the hands of the Nepalese authorities is just one indication of how the world’s highest mountain has in recent days become engulfed by the politics and controversy surrounding China and its relationship with Tibet.

Everest Olympic torch diary – 5

BBC’s Jonah Fisher joins the Olympic torch for the high point of its trip – on Mount Everest. In the fifth of his diary instalments, he takes a tour of Everest base camp.

On Wednesday we had a treat. After lengthy negotiations with the border police our minders secured us permission to visit Everest base camp 5km from our media village.

With strict instructions not to film the numerous military trucks on the way, we were driven to the tented camp that forms the command centre for both the climbing team as well as the official Chinese media.

Click here for more and for his previous instalments:

My life in forbidden Lhasa

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on April 22, 2008

in Tibet

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Austrian soldier Heinrich Harrer escaped from a British POW camp in India in World War II and ended up as the young Dalai Lama’s tutor in Tibet. His story was published in the July 1955 edition of National Geographic. The magazine has republished the story in its May special issue on China.

The rocky trail led into the broad valley of the Kyi River. Exhausted, our shoes in tatters and our feet bleeding and blistered, we rounded a little hill. Before us lay the Potala, winter palace of Tibet’s Dalai Lama, its golden roofs ablaze in the January sun.

Lhasa was only eight miles away!

I felt a sudden compulsion to sink to my knees and offer a prayer of thanksgiving, even as did the Buddhist pilgrims who were our companions. It seemed impossible that we had reached safety, that our agony of cold and hunger and danger lay behind us. We had walked more than 1,500 miles across the most forbidding terrain in the world and had climbed 62 mountain passes, some as high as 20,000 feet.

It is just as well, I have since felt, that no man can foretell the future. What would Peter Aufschnaiter and I have thought, when we left our native Austria in 1939 as members of the German Nanga Parbat Expedition, had we known we faced long imprisonment and a desperate escape into Tibet, where we were to roam fabled Lhasa with a color camera?

China launches ‘education drive’ in Lhasa

Published

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on April 21, 2008

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In a bid to reinforce control in Lhasa, Chinese officials have launched an education drive, reports Chris Buckley for Reuters

China’s Communist Party has launched a political education drive in Tibet’s restive capital, Lhasa, vowing a long campaign to attack pro-independence sentiment and support for the Dalai Lama.

China has blamed recent unrest in Tibetan areas on a “clique” of the Dalai’s followers pressing for independence and seeking to upset Beijing’s preparations for the August Olympics. Over a month has passed since monk-led protests against government control gave way to deadly anti-Chinese rioting in Lhasa on March 14, but security forces have wrestled with continued unrest there and across other Tibetan areas.

In a bid to reinforce control in Lhasa, Party authorities have launched an education drive focused on officials and Party members, the official Tibet Daily reported on Monday.

China’s loyal youth

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on April 14, 2008

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As is clear to anyone who lives in China, most young ethnic Chinese strongly support their government’s suppression of the recent Tibetan uprising. Matthew Forney, a former Beijing bureau chief for Time, in The New York Times:

Many sympathetic Westerners view Chinese society along the lines of what they saw in the waning days of the Soviet Union: a repressive government backed by old hard-liners losing its grip to a new generation of well-educated, liberal-leaning sophisticates. As pleasant as this outlook may be, it’s naïve. Educated young Chinese, far from being embarrassed or upset by their government’s human-rights record, rank among the most patriotic, establishment-supporting people you’ll meet.

As is clear to anyone who lives here, most young ethnic Chinese strongly support their government’s suppression of the recent Tibetan uprising. One Chinese friend who has a degree from a European university described the conflict to me as “a clash between the commercial world and an old aboriginal society.” She even praised her government for treating Tibetans better than New World settlers treated Native Americans.

Undercover in Tibet

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on April 13, 2008

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In the news for his biography of V.S. Naipaul, Patrick French, who is also the author of Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land, writes for The Daily Mail on his personal experience of travelling through Tibet to research his book

The Chinese men in blue tracksuits were horribly familiar. Although they were dressed like athletes, their robotic movements, blank faces, swivel eyes and rough, menacing style reminded me of the secret policemen I had to avoid when I was in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, some years ago.

Last Sunday, they surrounded Konnie Huq as she ran with the Olympic flame through the streets of London, ordering her to hold the torch higher and shoving protesters and British policemen out of the way.

Lord Coe, the London Olympics chief, was overheard describing the so-called “torch attendants” as “thugs”.

He said: “They tried to push me out of the way three times. They are horrible.”

[Pic: Konnie Huq is surrounded by 'thugs' as she carries the Olympic Torch in London last week]

Tibetan Buddhism’s next leader?

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on April 10, 2008

in Tibet

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In the IHT, former New York Times Asia correspondent and author of So Close to Heaven, Barbara Crossette profiles the Karmapa, the man who could succeed the Dalai Lama, on the eve of his first trip to the United States

The recent outburst of Tibetan rage against the Chinese government not only demonstrated once again the fear and anger among Himalayan Buddhists living under the cultural insensitivity of Beijing, it also illuminated the crucial role of the Dalai Lama, navigating skillfully between restive Tibetan exiles and an Indian government under Chinese pressures to stifle their protests. What will happen when he is gone?

The West is about to get its first glimpse of that possible future.

In mid-May, a serious young man of 22 who is revered as the 17th Karmapa – now the second-most-important figure in Tibetan Buddhism – will make his first visit to the United States. The trip comes eight years after his dramatic flight to India from a monastery near Lhasa at the end of 1999, when he was just 14 years old. This is the first time that a skittish India has allowed him permission to travel abroad. His flight from Tibet was a considerable embarrassment to China.