TIBETSPACE

WELCOME TO TIBETSPACE

Over four years old now, TIBETSPACE examines an array of topics that bubble up and grab my attention during the course of a networked day: democratic revolution, human rights, guns and gun violence, gender politics, international relations, freedom of expression, social media, eco-criticism, sustainability, spirituality, religion, meditation, even neurology—these are some of the issues that now underpin a responsible life played out within the emerging global community, and they are all issues that the Dalai Lama repeatedly encourages us to examine and connect.  And so that's what I'll try to do here:  examine and connect!

When it comes to the daily matters of a spiritual practice, you'll find me over at our partner blog, MINDSPACE.  

Please visit both blogs' sponsoring site, The Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas, and let us know how we might help in our mission to preserve Tibetan culture and increase awareness regarding the power of nonviolence.

Sidney Burris

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: ARKANSANS AGAINST GUNS ON CAMPUS—OUR STUDENTS SPEAK OUT

Arkansans Against Guns on Campus are rallying to OPPOSE concealed carry legislation

 

For Immediate Release

February 19, 2013

Under the banner “Arkansans Against Guns on Campus,” Arkansas residents are opposed to efforts by Rep. Charlie Collins (R-84) to pass a HB1243, a bill “To Allow Trained and Licensed Staff and Faculty To Carry A Concealed Handgun On A University, College, Or Community College Campus Under Certain Circumstance.” The bill would allow any campus member of the faculty or staff of that school to carry a concealed weapon. With supporters at universities across the state, Arkansans Against Guns on Campus are rallying for support against allowing concealed carry for teachers and staff.

 

They argue that:

1.)   Gun violence is not a looming threat on Arkansas campuses. Only three people have been killed in 10 years in the state. Statistically, residents are safer on a college campus (in large part because of the prohibition of firearms) than anywhere in the rest of the state.

2.)   If public safety is a priority, allowing permit holders would never be a first step in securing a campus. State funding for more police would be the best practice moving forward since they have training in crowd control, lethal force, and emergency scenarios.

3.)   The bill ignores federal laws that sanction whole swaths of campus as gun-free zones. When the federal and state law conflict, the permit holder is left vulnerable to liability.

4.)   The bill is poorly written and provides no mechanism for university systems to opt out.

5.)   There is no measurable positive impact of concealed carry on actual security across college campuses.

 

Students at the U of A weighed in on the Collins bill last night:

 

"This bill makes a university campus into a confusing patchwork of places that are off-limits to concealed carriers. Whereas it will be legal to have a concealed weapon in a classroom, it will still be illegal to have one in campus churches, transit facilities and police stations, as well as within 1000 feet of any K-12 facility. These 'carve-outs' will make it more difficult for law enforcement to do their job, and ultimately will leave universities vulnerable to lawsuits." – Alex Marino (Student and ASG Senator at U of A, Fayetteville)

 

“If this bill was to become law, I would push that students be notified which of the professors on campus was concealed carry licensed and require that for every class taught by an armed teacher there would be the same class taught by a non-concealed carry professor. If these simple requests could not be met, I would imagine that many others would be with me in moving to a different area with a more logical program to safeguard their citizenry.” – Ezra Smith (Student at U of A, Fayetteville)

 

“Campuses are a place for the free exchange of ideas, not the place for free possession of guns. Allowing guns on college campuses is a horrid solution to a problem that does not exist.” – Aaron Gibson (Student at U of A, Fayetteville)

 

"After reviewing the legislation proposed by Representative Collins, I have found fundamental flaws in the writing of the bill. If I were not opposed to the idea of the bill in general, I would find myself opposed to it for that reason." – Autumn Lewis (Student and ASG Senator at U of A, Fayetteville)

 

CONTACT THE SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE TO STOP GUNS ON AR CAMPUSES

As you know, your support of our petition against HB 1243 forced Representative Collins into an amendment that allows the Board of Trustees of public institutions of higher education in Arkansas to “opt out” of concealed carry every year.  The amended bill passed the House of Representatives last week, and will come up for a vote in the Senate this week.

While we are happy that we forced a modification of the bill, we would be much happier if it were to fail in the Senate. 

If the bill passes through the Senate, then our long-term focus shifts to the Board—the Governor appoints our Board members, and with a gubernatorial election on the horizon in 2014, a Governor who supported concealed carry would have an opportunity to empanel gradually a Board that could ultimately vote to arm our campuses. 

The current bill is riddled with problems, and we would like to see it defeated or tabled for the current session. As the bill is written, the following issues remain dangerously unresolved:

1. Exclusionary Zones—There is no language in this bill that stipulates places on campus where guns, even if concealed carry were allowed, would be prohibited:  dorms, K-12 programs like Upward Bound, infant development centers, medical clinics, and psychological services offices, to name a few.  Policies of this sort must be clarified, or we risk potentially deadly confusion.
2. Students' Rights—If students wished to take a section of a class taught by a non-carrying faculty member, they should have that right.  Our student government has voted against concealed carry on our campus, and this would surely be one of their concerns. The current bill mentions nothing along these lines, and in fact there is sentiment in the legislature for making the concealed-carry licenses private information, even though they are awarded by the state. 
3. Faculty and Staff Classification—A full-time staff member—who could carry a concealed weapon if the Board failed to opt out of the current law as described by this bill—can also be a part-time student—who can't carry under this legislation.  The bill does not address this issue as well, and will only lead to the kind of confusion that potentially ends in tragedy.
4. Concealed Carry Training—While the training required of those that our society has entrusted with the protecting of our lives—firefighters, police, doctors, nurses, EMT personnel—is measured in years, the time required to obtain a concealed-carry license is measured in hours. And the solution offered by several legislators—to engage our universities in remedying this shortfall by teaching classes in marksmanship and security training—points to another weakness of the bill.  Why pass legislation that requires, upon passing, additional expenses to strengthen it?  Besides—does anyone honestly feel that universities and colleges ought to go into the security business?

Conservative Republicans, of course, made historic gains in the General Assembly during the last election, and they will focus their resources on the Governorship  in 2014 as well.

So we are asking that you email the Republicans on the Senate Education Committee that will consider the bill before it goes to the Senate for a final vote.  Follow this action link—it takes only a moment—and make your voice heard.

Thank you for your support.

CONCEALED CARRY ON ARKANSAS CAMPUSES: AN ONGOING DISCUSSION

Now that we've had two legislative forums that were dominated by concerns over concealed carry on college campuses in Arkansas, I have a better sense of the community's goals and the methods suggested to accomplish them.

Having attended both of the forums in Fayetteville and at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, and having spoken at both of them, I am more convinced than ever that allowing properly licensed faculty and staff to carry concealed weapons on campus will not accomplish our goal of providing a safe campus for all of us.  

Public safety is our main concern, and currently there is no statistical evidence that suggests concealed carry will increase our public safety.  

In fact, it suggests exactly the opposite.  Here's why.

1) The most recent research shows that those who carry concealed weapons, whether legally or not, are far more likely to suffer catastrophic injury or death during an armed assault than those who are not carrying. You can read the results of this study here. 

These are extraordinary results, and they have not been addressed by the supporters of the current version of HB 1243.  

The unavoidable conclusion is that allowing concealed carry on our campuses will increase the likelihood of gun-violence.

2) I also learned at these forums that some of those who support this Bill believe it is simply a matter of choice.  Allow those faculty and staff, the argument goes, who feel threatened, or who want to protect themselves and their students from attack, to carry concealed weapons. If you don't want to carry, then you certainly are not required to do so.  

Simple and fair, right?  

No.  I strongly support the Second Amendment, but I also recognize that all of our Constitutional rights articulated in the Bill of Rights traditionally have had limitations placed on them.  This is a matter of constitutional history.

In the case of concealed carry, the study mentioned above shows that allowing individuals to carry concealed weapons would actually threaten the public safety of those on our campuses.

And our right to public safety trumps our right to carry a concealed weapon, when carrying that weapon can be shown to decrease that public safety.

So, the prohibition of weapons on our campuses is not an infringement of our rights—it is an affirmation of our public safety.

3)  Every law enforcement official that I have asked, as well as the military personnel I've consulted, and who have sought me out, have agreed that the one-day training session (less than a full day, actually) required of those who would apply for a concealed carry license is sadly and tragically insufficient, to say the least.  Time on the target range amounts to a few hours, at most, and the target range is a closed environment with a stationary target positioned a few feet in front of the applicant's face. After completing this session, and passing a background check, applicants will have the ability to carry a deadly weapon and respond to a perceived threat on our campuses by discharging a weapon they have only a minimal proficiency with.  And remember, these are the very campuses that are full of our students, our children, our parents, our faculty, and our staff.  

Conclusion?  Concealed carry licenses, in fact, can be seen to be a direct deterrent to our public safety, and that is our common goal—to achieve public safety.

Some of the Bill's supporters, while recognizing the inadequacy of this training, have suggested that our universities offer further training in weapons and self-defense.   Two questions put this to rest: Who will pay for this? And should universities properly be in the firearms-training business?  The answer to both is no.  

Furthermore:  Why would we support legislation that is admittedly flawed and look to our public institutions to address its problems after it has passed?  It doesn't make sense.

4)  The simple solution to securing our public safety is to hire professionals to do this, and not to trust this job to amatuers:  our very own UAPD has presided over one of the safest campuses in the country, and I would suggest that as our concern grows, so too should our budget for their services. When you look at the numbers regarding college and university violence in Arkansas and the country, it is little short of amazing. Briefly—the observed Arkansas college and university murder and non-negligent manslaughter rate is 56,700 times LOWER than that for the public-at-large and 72 times LOWER than that at other U.S. colleges and universities.



Colleges and universities in the United States are among the SAFEST refuges from murder and non-negligent manslaughter in America, and Arkansas colleges and universities are among the SAFEST in our country! 

 To learn more about these important statistics, click here.

Introducing weapons to this environment stands only to imperil the safety and security that our police and security forces have been so successful in establishing—we now have evidence that show this (see point 1).

If we are concerned about the public safety of our campuses, and I believe that we all are, then it only makes sense to do the research necessary to make a wise decision. The numbers here are, in my opinion, very convincing.  

I believe that HB 1243 will not secure our campus, and will, in fact, ultimately weaken its security.  I have come to this conclusion by listening to those who have worked with firearms for years or who have studied the complicated subject of societal violence in depth, and these are their conclusions.  I fully support them.

For more information and studies related to this subject, please consult our Facebook page, Arkansans against Guns on Campus.

It is still not too late to sign our petition and tell others about it.  I have a Twitter acount now that is dedicated to this and other matters like this.  Follow me here @SidBurris.

The petition is here.

ARKANSANS AGAINST GUNS ON CAMPUS RALLY TO OPPOSE CONCEAL & CARRY LEGISLATION

Arkansans Against Guns on Campus are rallying to OPPOSE conceal and carry legislation

 

For Immediate Release:                               February 7, 2013

Under the banner “Arkansans Against Guns on Campus,” Arkansas residents are working against efforts by Representative Charlie Collins (R-84) to pass HB1243, a bill “To Allow Trained and Licensed Staff and Faculty To Carry A Concealed Handgun On A University, College, Or Community College Campus Under Certain Circumstance.” The bill would allow any campus member of the faculty of staff of that school to carry a concealed weapon. With supporters at the University of Arkansas, Northwest Arkansas Community College, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, Hendrix College, the University of Central Arkansas, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and other state universities, Arkansans Against Guns on Campus are rallying for support against allowing teachers and staff to conceal and carry. They cite recent support for gun-free campuses from over 300 college and university presidents and chancellors as evidence that conceal and carry is the wrong policy for Arkansas. More information here.

Arkansans Against Guns on Campus issued a SignOn petition calling for community support against conceal/carry legislation that to date has reached over 1400 signatures, many of whom express outrage over the Collins bill. That petition can be found here.

Their Facebook page can be found here.

Bentonville resident Lisa Turner Duncan, parent of a University of Arkansas student, supports Arkansans Against Guns on Campus because she worries that: “legislators may hastily pass a law that allows inexperienced and only minimally trained individuals to possess firearms on campuses. The presence of firearms has been proven to promote more aggressive behavior and in the hands of an untrained individual allegedly posed to “defend” others in an explosive situation, would possibly create a “false sense of security” promoting risky behavior.” She adds, “I strongly do NOT believe that this law will be any deterrent to those violent and psychotic assailants determined to carry out carnage. In a large percentage of cases involving mass shootings, the majority of the bloodshed has occurred within minutes and sometimes seconds due to the use of automatic assault weapons. In most of these cases, the assailants had no fear of consequences including death.”

Zachary Pharr, an NWACC staff member and supporter of Arkansans against Guns on Campus explains his opposition to conceal and carry, arguing, “Liability insurance for schools would skyrocket. Education is already expensive. That increase in cost has to go somewhere, and it would be passed on in the form of tuition increases most likely (or budget cuts, staff cuts, etc.).”

Likewise, Jared LaReau, a UCA student and supporter of Arkansans Against Guns on Campus explains, “I know that I would not be comfortable in the classroom knowing that the person next to me probably has a gun. Look at the John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy findings that expanding our conceal carry laws results in more aggravated assault. They also found that the South was the most violent region in the country. With these facts, I could not feel comfortable if UCA allowed guns on campus." LaReau cited a 2009 study published in the American Journal of Public Health, which demonstrated that gun possession alone increased the likelihood of being shot by almost 4.5 times.

The link is here.

Stephen K. Boss, University of Arkansas Professor of Geosciences opposes conceal and carry on campuses in Arkansas, as well, saying: “Since opening its doors to students and citizens of Arkansas on January 22, 1872, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville has been a place of enlightened thought, tranquil study, and advanced learning. The peace and tranquility pervading our institution is proved by the fact that a classroom has NEVER been disrupted by gunfire in our 141-year history. Today, I join with thousands of Arkansans in absolute opposition to proposed legislation introducing concealed weapons in our classrooms, our campus offices, administrative buildings, and at our other scholarly activities. Permitting weapons of any kind on any state campus for any reason whatsoever does not create a safer community of learners but instead invites tragedy. It is reckless, it is irresponsible, and I oppose it.”

Finally, University of Arkansas English Professor Sidney Burris, organizer of the SignOn petition adds that the Collins bill itself has several problems: “First, the prohibition of civilian guns from our campuses doesn’t tamper with the Second Amendment—Justice Scalia settled that issue in Columbia v. Heller (2008) when he wrote that the Supreme Court’s majority decision should not cast doubt “on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings. . . .” Second, it’s illogical that a novice handgun owner could spend a single day in a training session spent mostly behind a desk, and become licensed to discharge a weapon in a crowded student union or classroom, endangering those present. And finally, guns and the free exchange of challenging ideas—the very lifeblood of our community—simply do not mix. Introduce the one, and the other inevitably cowers, while honest inquiry gradually disappears in an atmosphere of retaliation and intimidation. Coercive legislation of this sort arises from a politics of fear, and Arkansans deserve more from their elected officials.”

Boss and Burris also cite a report from the Violence Policy Center demonstrating that handguns are a horrible choice for self-defense, particularly on a college campus.

Arkansans Against Guns on Campus sees the Collins bill as a reckless intervention into campus safety and supports the decisions of university and college administrations to monitor safety of their campuses as they see fit. They will be attending the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce legislative forum on Friday, February 8 at 4:00 at 123 W Mountain St in  Fayetteville, AR to voice their concerns about the bill to Collins and other legislators.

 

Contact: Sidney Burris, Professor of English at: sjburris@gmail.com/(c) : 479-283-4601

 

*Disclaimer: The views expressed above represent the individuals’ opinions and not those of the institutions at which they are employed. 

WHY I AM AGAINST CONCEALED CARRY ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE

I am opposed to the current bill—House Bill 1243—that would allow licensed faculty and staff to carry a concealed weapon on college and university campuses in Arkansas.

 Here’s why.

I speak from the perspective of a university professor.  I am neither a criminologist nor a police officer; nor do I have special expertise in the statistical analysis of violence.

 So I will avoid dealing in numbers and statistics. 

 I will simply tell you my story, the story of an American professor who has spent over 25 years of his life reading, writing, and teaching at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.  My experience here has been wonderful, and I would like to tell you why.

College campuses are unique environments in many ways, and that is part of their special appeal and their essential value.  Students arrive here in pursuit of their lives, in effect, at an age when many of them have only the haziest notions of where those lives will lead them.  Our faculty thrives on introducing these students to their own talents and potential, an odd job that requires, by turns, skepticism, patience, tolerance, exploration, backward steps, and new beginnings—over and over again.  

American campuses have traditionally provided the last safe haven where our students can undertake this kind of self-exploration and discovery without penalty or embarrassment—and it’s an educational process that thrives, like an orchid, in a very specific climate. 

For our students and our faculty this climate has always been one of trust and tranquility. 

If we introduce guns to this environment, then our educational system, like the orchid, withers and dies. 

The fact is that guns and their constant companion, violence, have an impact on the free expression of ideas, and wherever guns are accepted as the normal accompaniment to books, laptops, backpacks, and iPhones, the strength of our ideas will wane, and higher education will respond in the only way that it can—by condoning those ideas that are the least likely to excite controversy or to spawn disagreement and free inquiry. 

In this environment, we will begin to mistake frightened agreement for vigorous examination, acceptance for investigation.  This will happen by degrees, unnoticeably at first, but it will happen.  And slowly our ideas—and the values that accompany them—will conform to the environment that has nourished them: an environment of hostility, aggression, threat, and retaliation.

This is not the kind of education that has distinguished this country for the last 250 years.  This is not the American educational system that encouraged me to devote my life to it.

Good teaching, of course, like any profession, is an activity that requires an array of techniques and strategies.  Therefore, much of our teaching occurs by example, by the policies that we enact and support, and by the lives that we lead—policies and lives that our students watch unfolding day by day.

We also teach our students, then, by putting our lives on display, by showing our students that the most powerful ideas of our culture, the ones that we meet in our books and discuss in our classrooms, can also structure our lives and our society.

To allow faculty, staff, and eventually students to carry concealed handguns only strengthens the feelings of degradation, fear, and paranoia that give rise to the very culture of violence that we all work to dismantle in our classrooms every day. And it quietly sanctions the notion that we are now authorized by the laws of the land, no less, to respond to violence with violence—a notion that, on a college campus, can only lead us to an unspeakable tragedy.

We do not create a peaceful campus, one that encourages the very specific pursuits that distinguish higher education, by allowing those who live, work, and learn together to carry into the classroom the weapons that can destroy that peace in a few seconds. 

The most powerful weapons in our book-bags, the real tools we use to dismantle hatred and violence, have always been our books and the education they bring.  If this were to change, our mission would be irretrievably compromised.

The Presidents and Chancellors of the colleges and universities of Arkansas have voted unanimously against this bill. 

If you would like to sign a petition against HB 1243, it is a very simple and quick process, and it requires only a moment to do so.

Click here to help us stop this legislation.

 

 

 

 

SISTER HELEN'S TIPPING POINT & OTHER OBSERVATIONS

I've had the pleasure of spending a little time with Sister Helen Prejean over the past several years whenever she visited Fayetteville or the University of Arkansas. She shared the stage with Vincent Harding and the Dalai Lama here at the University in May of 2011, and that was a memorable visit.

But every encounter with Sister Helen is memorable, and while most of us associate her exclusively with the tireless work that she does to raise awareness about the death penalty, I began to suspect that this work alone did not entirely account for the impact that she has on her audience. What I discovered, as I looked back over my time with her, and as I reread portions of her books, was something else entirely.

What I found, simply, was joy—joy in her work, in her commitments, in her engagments, in her vision, and in her love of the human condition, with all of its glories and its foibles.

And joy, I also learned, is a potent fuel for social change. 

But where does this joy live? And how do we find it?

She wrote recently on her blog about reaching the "tipping point" concerning the death penalty:

While I’ve been traveling the country I’ve been sensing the changing shifts in the Catholic community, a tide rising against the death penalty. At the same time, I’ve seen Christians in general and, indeed, people of all faiths doing important, determined work to create a country-wide shift towards abolition. I believe we are moving much closer to that national shift. The signs are good, our movement is growing, the once-strong fervor for the death penalty is on the wane. Still, there’s much work to be done to make this the tipping point. 

Long before I met her, I'd read her two books, Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents, and what I discovered in them, after I'd confronted the incomprehensible reality that is America's capital punishment, was Sister Helen's passion to serve. Period. (And tell stories, too, but that's another story, another talent.)

It's a quality we talk about all the time, this quality of service, but it's also one we seem not to understand fully because we're always limiting it with modifiers like "community" or "weekend" or "volunteer." But Sister Helen, and the life that she has constructed, give us another way of thinking about service. She mentions in Dead Man Walking that when she heard Sister Marie Augusta Neal speak in 1980 of Jesus's commitment to the poor, something changed within her. She'd reached her own tipping point:

Something in me must have been building toward this moment because there was a flash and I realized that my spiritual life had been too ethereal, too disconnected. I left the meeting and began seeking out the poor. This brought me one year later to the St. Thomas housing development.

And it was, of course, during her work at the housing project in St. Thomas that she accepted the invitation in January, 1982 to become a pen-pal with Patrick Sonnier, who was on death row at Angola State Prison in Louisiana.  

And so the Sister Helen that we all know was born on that winter day in 1982.

That's one way of looking at it. But it's not the way I look at it.

Sister Helen's life tells us clearly and loudly that we all have our tipping points, our internal, sacred scales that are balanced and tipped toward goodness through the hard work of introspection and contemplation. We learn from her that this work leads us back out of those silent sessions to the even harder, louder work of service that our own newly discovered inclinations, our own deepest natures, have been shaped to undertake and follow.

This is a genuine discovery, it is joyful, and it is deeply human. 

And we also learn this from her life:  however hard this journey becomes after we've made this discovery, after our scales have been tipped, we will know that we're on the correct path partly because of the joy that manifests within us, sometimes clearly, even brazenly, but most of the time, quietly and even unnoticeably. I have seen this joy in the Tibetan monks that I know, in many of the teachers I have had, and I have always found it in Sister Helen as well. Always in her stories, and in her presence, there are bucket-loads of joy.

And when there is joy in the work, an authentic, deep-drilling joy that sends us back into our communities, then we simply want more of that joy because it feels right, and it doesn't matter how many people are watching us work, or how many people are telling us how well we are doing, or how badly, because the joy we feel is the joy of serving those who need what we can offer. This is a joyful transaction between two people: someone needs something that another can offer, and so the one gives freely to the other. This transaction is always enough. It always sustains. Sister Helen's life teaches us that.

No one is immune to this joy. Sister Helen embodies it. Everyone can lay claim to it, and when it rises, our communities are strengthened, and our compassion grows. And compassion is what finally tips those tipping points.

Spend a moment around Sister Helen, or read her books, or watch her anywhere on YouTube and because something within you has been "building toward this moment," as she wrote of herself listening to Sister Marie, there will be a flash within you.

And you will have been tipped. Remember that feeling. Understand its power. And then act on it.

TIBET, TENZIN TSUNDUE & MLK JR—THE FIVE THINGS I LEARNED WATCHING THE OBAMA INAUGURATION

As I sat in my home, safe and secure, and watched President Barack Obama's second inauguration, which also occured on the day set aside to recognize Martin Luther King Jr, I learned five things:  

1. King's decision to expand his civil rights struggle to encompass the disenfranchised poor, whatever their race, creed, or color, was perhaps his most significant contribution to the health and welfare of America and the world. The President's inauguration, certainly the most ethnically and racially diversified inauguration in American history, bore clear and eloquent testimony to King's original vision.
2. It is difficult and dangerous to speak of religious authority in this country, but Jesus's social gospel, which King rejuvenated and restored to its original purpose, continues to provide the backbone for much social change in America. Those teachings have provided many of our citizens with the foresight and endurance to arrive at this moment:  the second inauguration of Barack Obama.
3. The very cornerstone of that social gospel, and the core of King's teaching, nonviolence, was not once uttered on the day given to celebrate both our President and the man, Martin Luther King, Jr., whose work cleared the way for our President to do his work. But this is because elected officials in this country cannot utter or make reference to that dangerous idea if they hope to run a successful campaign. (It also occurred to me that currently there is no one in this country, elected or not, who occupies the national spotlight as King did and continually reminds us of the deep and essential civility of nonviolence.)
4. Kelly Clarkson's slightly melancholy interpretation of "America the Beautiful," in the face of the enormous human sacrifice that led to Obama standing in front of the Capitol for the second time, seemed preternaturally correct.
5. And as the great freedom-fighter for Tibet, Tenzin Tsundue, reminds us in the interview conducted by The TEXT Program at the University of Arkansas, and excerpted below, many Tibetans currently base their struggle on nonviolence, the major component of King's social and political strategy.  All of these forces converged today on Washington, DC, and our country is the better for having hosted, however briefly, those vital energies.

 

SELF-IMMOLATION NUMBER 57 IN OCCUPIED TIBET

A couple of days ago, the 57th Tibetan took his own life.  By fire.  That number 57?  The count started on February 27, 2009.  That's more than one a month.  

Once a month, then, for the past 44 months, a Tibetan has decided that China's occupation of Tibet warranted an act of martyrdom.  And for each one of those who decided to take this final step, there are thousands, even millions, who stand in solid sympathy with this action.  These martyrs (now saints in the minds of many Tibetans) had their own reasons for undertaking this dire action.  But they all shared one reason:  to call attention to the current plight of the Tibetan people, all 6 million of them, who daily face torture, beating, and deprivation of their civil & religious rights at the hands of the Chinese.

The Tibetans have succeeded in that central aim.  Most of the world who pays attention to human rights, or who follows the Dalai Lama, or China, or India, or Tibet, or human cruelty, will know that, currently, the Tibetan people are suffering.

That's the easy part.  But as the Tibetans burn, and publicize their plight, and call our attention to their plight, each of them hoped, as they died, that those who saw what was happening would do something about what was happening.  Not only for those Tibetans who are currently living under this regime, but for future generations of Tibetans and for all those whose daily lives are diminished by the Chinese Communist Party.  They hoped we might do something.  

That's the hard part.

What can you do?  Realize what you're up against.  After the ordinary political mechanisms are exhausted—blog, Facebook, Twitter, emails, donations, letters, protests—realize that our national economy is dedicated to trading with China, and that while your letters are important, it will take more than letters to stop this profit-making machine and ask it to rethink its strategies in light of the welfare of 6 million Tibetans.  

I'm going to say something I can't verify:  Lloyd Craig Blankfein, the current CEO of Goldman Sachs, doesn't care enough about the human rights violations in China either to resign in helpful and enlightening protest or to counsel against investing in China until the Dalai Lama is allowed to return to Tibet.  You will not change Mr. Blankfein's mind, I suspect, nor will you alter Goldman Sachs' policies.  You already knew this.  And maybe you even knew that stopping Mr. Blankfein, and what he represents, was beyond your capabilities.

But here's something you can do.  You can remake yourself, a little each day.  And you can do that by repeating to yourself three times a day—set your watch—one of the Dalai Lama's teachings that you find moving.  Maybe one on compassion.  Or maybe on nonviolence. And attach this teaching to an image of Tibetan suffering—a nun or monk in chains; a self-immolator engulfed in flames; an elderly Tibetan in Lhasa; a young Tibetan unemployed and increasingly removed from his heritage.

Do this every day for two weeks.  And then three weeks.  And then try it for a month.

You will then begin to make decisions, even say things, that reflect your awareness of how deeply the roots of human cruelty lie within you.  And within all of us.

And here's what typically happens next.  You signed that letter that came from the latest Save-Tibet nonprofit, and it went to your senator, and you got up the next morning and saw that number 58 killed herself in Amdo, and you thought, logically enough, that your letter did no good.  You felt tired.  Maybe numb.  You didn't save the Tibetan people, after all.

But then you recalled the teaching you'd memorized, and you saw that your capacity for disliking the Chinese had maybe gotten a little smaller.  Next, it occurred to you that no single group of people is ever responsible for any single tragedy, and that the responsibility for problems of this complexity sits on many shoulders, and that the source of this tragedy in Tibet has many authors, and you, who for so long said nothing about the violence in your own heart, are no longer surprised that the only reasonable and logical response to international violence, after the letters are written, the protests organized, the tweets tweeted, is to address the violence that runs through your own works and days.

And so for a month you have done that.  And you feel better, better enough to continue for another month.  Slowly, you see the nature of the struggle for peace has goals that the media often misses, but that you don't.  You don't miss these goals because you've relocated the source of the struggle from Tibet, which you've never visited, to your own heart, which you see now you need to visit more regularly.  You see that a deeply peaceful heart that shows up for five minutes in the middle of an argument with your best friend or your spouse is a great victory for the quiet, unpublicized struggle that you've engaged.

Good for you.  Say that.  "Good for you."  And repeat the teachings.  One more time. And visualize the images.  

Walk straight.  

You listened deeply to the instructions that have now been beamed at you 57 times.  And you're doing the only thing that you can do—engaging the fight for peace and nonviolence and tolerance on the only field that matters.  The field of your heart.

Good for you.

HHDL ON CNN WITH PIERS MORGAN

If you missed Piers Morgan's interview on April 24th with the Dalai Lama, you can watch it now. It's a wonderful session, given the format, with Morgan asking His Holiness several questions that you always wondered about. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOUR HOLINESS, WITH REFLECTIONS ON THE MOST IMPORTANT SENTENCE YOU EVER WROTE

"I fled Tibet on 31 March 1959."  

This sentence, which begins His Holiness's autobiography, Freedom in Exile (1990), is the most important sentence the man has written to date. Or at least that's my opinion, and the case I will try to make as a kind of homage to this long and significant life on the occasion of the Dalai Lama's birthday.

First, the sentence itself:  It's simple, clear, forthright, and factual, which is how much of the world views the man today, two decades after he wrote the sentence, and over five decades since he left Tibet.  Or, as he said, more accurately, of course, "fled tibet."  

Because the Chinese were after him, that's clear, and Lhasa was in revolt, and had he not fled, disguised as a soldier, no less—the ultimate and post-modern nod to nonviolence—we wouldn't be reading this sentence now, and we wouldn't be wishing this man a happy birthday and giving him long-life blessings as he turns seventy-seven.  

Many more, Your Holiness, many more.  We need you.

If you start looking into Buddhism's arrival in the West, though, you'll eventually run up on this sentence (as long as we're talking about sentences):  “The coming of Buddhism to the West may well prove to be the most important event of the twentieth century.” Arnold Toynbee, the imminent British historian of the last century, is purported to have said this, and the statement pops up all over the internet, as does the question, "Did Toynbee really say this?"  No one knows; not even Google.  But it points us to a sentiment that His Holiness elicits from many of us in the West:  the Dalai Lama has carried on his back, over the last half-century, to all corners of the earth, his message of nonviolence, peace, compassion, kindness, love and human rights, which also, by the way, is identical to the version of Tibetan Buddhism that he offers up for public consumption everywhere he goes.  No religious tradition that I am aware of—assuming you consider Buddhism a religion, which the Buddha didn't, and which many others, myself included, don't—no other religion, however you define it, has had such an influential spokesperson.  His Holiness is simply the hardest working man in the spirit business.  That our lives have been enormously enriched by His Holiness is an understatement.  So he fled Tibet, and many of us in the West have benefited.

But let's look at the other side of this issue.  Suppose His Holiness had never needed to write that autobiography?  Or at least if he did write one, it began with another sentence altogether. Suppose his autobiography had begun with the sentence, "I have lived in Tibet, in relative peace, for seventy-seven years."  Suppose there had been no Chinese invasion, no forced exile, no cultural genocide, no torture, no slaughter, no deforestation, no shrinking of the Third Pole, and no arrival of Tibetan Buddhism in the West at the hands of the ablest religious diplomat the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen?  What then?

Many of us in the West can't imagine our lives without His Holiness's teachings, without his example.  And he doesn't work alone.  Other great Tibetan teachers have arrived in his wake, and some came before he arrived in 1979,  and many of these have been equally capable and adept at explaining to us the nature of reality in a way that connects immediately with our day-to-day lives—a kind of Spiritual Physics for the Masses.  Maybe Toynbee was right.

As Westerners, though, we must remember that Tibetans rightfully tire of hearing us declaim ad nauseam about the somehow inevitable—maybe even ordained—spread of Tibetan Buddhism beyond its indigenous and original borders.  So we have to ask ourselves:  what is the cost of our happy discovery of a spirituality we had known relatively nothing about before the 1960's and one that has helped us handle the rampant materialism that is popping up everywhere from the reality TV shows that feature the howling housewives to the pyramid schemes that leave thousands defrauded of their retirement funds?  The answer to that question?  Here's a start at figuring the cost:  the lives of 1.2 million Tibetans; 6000 Buddhist temples; countless sacred manuscripts and works of sacred art; the severing apart of families; the continuing torture of thousands upon thousands of Tibetans; the enclosure of the Tibetan nomads; the attempted eradication of the Tibetan language; the re-education of the Tibetan people according to the propaganda spewed forth by the People's Republic of China. 

That is the price that was paid, and is being paid, by the Tibetan people for our own spiritual prosperity.

Let's make sure and keep this in mind as well, as we wish His Holiness a happy birthday.  

The Fourteenth Dalai Lama is indeed a gift to the civilized world, or what's left of it, outside of Tibet, and most of all to the Tibetan people, who are struggling mightily inside of Tibet now, where His Holiness and all Tibetans belong, should they ever be allowed to return there, or should they decide to do so, and should their choice ever be honored by the Chinese government.