TIBETSPACE

'CHINA-WATCH' ADDED TO TIBETSPACE

An article of faith:  I believe that mindlessly opposing China and Tibet damages the Tibetan cause in the long run, while at the same time hindering movements within China for an open society.

Another article of faith:  I also believe that awareness of human rights violations and our capacity to do something constructive about these violations begins with information.  Clear information, divorced from political motivation, broadens our consciousness concerning human suffering.  Period.  And this, in turn, increases our fundamental stores of compassion.  Luckily, there's a one-stop website that will help us with our task of increasing awareness:  Human Rights Watch.  Stop by often, subscribe to its feed, read its stories, imagine that the characters of those stories are your family members. 

The fact that they happen to be other people's family members, after all, is simply an accident of birth.

To add my own small effort to the global project of raising awareness, I have added a new feature to TIBETSPACE that I have named China-Watch.  Here I will post links that highlight China's increasing use of preemptive anger, the kind of anger that gives rise to those ominous pronouncements promising China's stern disapproval if a certain course of action is undertaken by a member of the international community.  Particularly actions regarding Tibet or human rights.

These threats, of course, reveal many things about China's aging leadership:  their paranoia, their bullying mentality, their neurotic obsession with Tibet and His Holiness--particularly with his universal popularity--and their fear of other countries deciding to support many of the concerns that are central to his platform:  human rights, non-violence, egalitarianism, and compassion. 

And of course these domineering qualities are part and parcel of all totalitarian regimes. 

But in this case, one of the victims of Chinese oppression--the Tibetan people--have something that many such victims do not have.  They have an international voice, and it is in the spirit of deepening the context for that voice that I offer China-Watch.

SURF LIKE THE CHINESE

Ever wanted to feel the frustration of the China firewall?  Ever wanted to surf like a Chinese national?  How about trying to find out information about Tibetan history using the Chinese internet?  Now you can do it with an ingenious little device powered by Firefox (click here to learn more).  By using the special Firefox Chinese browser, your IP is rerouted through China, allowing you to look like any other digital Chinese citizen from anywhere in the world.  The browser installs a button on your toolbar, allowing you to fire up your Chinese connection whenever you wish; when you restart your browser, the button remains--until you choose to remove it--and to re-access the Great Chinese Firewall, you simply press the button again.  I tested it, and the application ran smoothly, and Firefox, of course, is a trustworthy company.

DALAI LAMA 'LOSING FAITH' IN CHINA-TALKS

In a rare admission of frustration, the Dalai Lama told a gathering in Dharamsala that he was losing faith in any progress coming out of talks with China concerning the future of Tibet (click here for story).  This is significant for several reasons.  First, a delegation is scheduled to arrive in Beijing at the end of October, and this is a sobering prelude to that trip.  Second, His Holiness recently called on the speaker and deputy speaker of the Tibetan Parliament, and the Kashag, to convene a special general meeting to discuss the fundamental issues of Tibet.  The first of these meetings will occur in November and will be important because many prominent Tibetans have recently expressed frustration with China's unwillingness to make even the slightest concessions regarding Tibet's future.  More pointedly, many of these commentators have accused the Dalai Lama and Samdhong Rinpoche of appeasement.  In his talk today, His Holiness reminded everyone that the Tibetan people will ultimately decide their own future, and the meeting in November might well represent a significant step in that process.  For more coverage, click here.

CHINA TO GEORGE W.: STOP CALLING THE DALAI LAMA!

I somehow missed this little story, but apparently our President placed a call to His Holiness near the end of September to inquire after the Dalai Lama's health (click here).  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, claimed that "this act shows that the U.S. is seriously interfering with China's internal affairs and supports Tibet independence." 

It's all about money, right?  I mean, our economy's dependence on China's economy, and theirs on ours?  We'd walk away from--or bomb--any other country with this attitude, right?

READING THE TEA LEAVES: TIBET & THE WORLD

I was talking with my students the other day about Tibet.  They’re hip to Tibet—which on this campus means they actually know a few Tibetans and hang out regularly with Tibetan monks—but they’re also informed enough about their own country’s history to have developed the kind of cynicism I normally associate with my colleagues who’ve spent their lives laboring in the trenches of American higher education and trying to teach these students something about that history.

“Why do Americans,” one of them wondered, “get so bent out of shape about China’s invasion of Tibet?  We did the same thing to the Native Americans, and we made a mess out of Iraq and Afghanistan, right?  I mean, isn’t that hypocritical?”

The recognition of hypocrisy is one of the first signs of an awakening and critical intelligence.  It's a fundamental motion of the mind:  you compare announced intention with action, find a note of disparity between them, and finally generate the anger—righteous or not—that calls attention to the disparity.  When you’re young, being a Watchdog for Hypocrisy is one of the tried and true ways of earning your radical stripes. 

In this case, my students had hit on a standard line of inquiry that led to a good question.  Why do we, in fact, get so bent out of shape about the Tibetans?  If you think about the displaced peoples of Africa, the refugees streaming out of Cambodia, the dissidents in Chinese prisons, the faceless millions starving in India, you’re circling the same question, again and again:  Why the Tibetans?

It’s an important and difficult question to answer.   Important, because it speaks to our deepest motivations regarding the selective recognition of human suffering; difficult, because it involves a bit of thorough-going and authentic self-scrutiny, and that’s not something Americans take to with any degree of enthusiasm.  We never have, which is why we make such a big deal over those of us who did—Thoreau, Emerson, Dickinson, etc.

I have noticed recently several things on the international radar that are worth looking at as we try to wrestle with this question of Tibet’s priority in America.  I don’t understand the connections between these things yet.  They're like iron filings on a sheet of paper, and I’m looking for the magnet that will reveal the connective patterns.  So I list them here simply as observations . . . 

Observation 1:  The Nobel Peace Prize goes to Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland.  With the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, many observers thought the Nobel would go to one of the more well known Chinese dissidents.  China, of course, struck hard with its pre-emptive rage, promising dire consequences for such an award.  Some thought the decision was influenced by Chinese pressure, and that the current choice was the safe choice.

Observation 2:  China plans dams across Tibet.  Among others, Tibet is the source of the Yangtze, the Indus, and the Brahmaputra rivers. Almost half the world's population lives in the irrigation basins of rivers that originate in Tibet.  China is developing the capacity to choke to death half the world’s population.

Observation 3:  US approves legislation urging China to begin earnest negotiations with the Dalai Lama.  We also gave him the Congressional Gold Medal.

Observation 4:  His Holiness calls for a special general meeting on Tibet to be held in November and December.  Some of my Tibetan friends have told me that this meeting is designed to force China into serious deliberations about Tibet's future and to voice serious objections to the Kashag regarding what is increasingly seen as Samdhong Rinpoche's appeasement policy toward the Chinese, a policy also articulated by the Dalai Lama himself.  If this is the case, the watchwords, of course, will be autonomy vs. independence.

Observation 5:  Special envoys (Tibetan) to China are fearful that if the next scheduled talks fail, violence will erupt. 

Here are five simple facts with far-reaching consequences and implications.  Think about them.  Sadly, they raise far more questions than they answer, and still we're no closer to answering my students' original question:  Why Tibet?

The financial crisis that is currently gripping the planet is surely symptomatic of a larger, deeper malaise that afflicts us all, and each of these five facts, I believe, radiates either from this malaise or from our, at times, desparate attempts to ameliorate it. 

But one thing is sure:  the world seems suddenly much smaller than it did when I was a child, and its distant corners, where my forefathers relegated most all of human suffering, seem now the four corners of my room.

AND NOW, ISN'T SHE LOVELY? MISS TIBET CROWNED

Chosen from a field of two, the new Miss Tibet, Sonam Choedon, assumed her title last week.  Sonam enjoys dancing, reading, and studying languages; and she hopes to become a dance teacher someday.  Sonam was chosen by a panel of two judges:  a Brazilian belly-dancing teacher and a lecturer at the Government College for Teachers' Education.  The pageant organizer hopes for a larger field of contestants next year.

The Westernization of the world is apparently moving right along.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: CHINA STILL DOESN'T LIKE RICHARD GERE (NOR FIAT EITHER)

I missed the little brouhaha this summer that erupted over a television ad that Richard Gere did for Fiat, the Italian automobile company.  (It was lost in the pre-Oympics brouhaha, I suppose.)  I bring it up here simply to enter the evidence on the blogsite:  another form of China's use of "pre-emptive anger" regarding all things Tibetan.  Here's the video:

Of course, China voiced its objection over the commercial--don't Superpowers have better things to do than police commercial television?--and of course Fiat apologized!  (See stories here, here, and here.)  Apologized, but didn't pull the ad.  Fiat wants to expand its operations into China, as does anybody who has ever sold anything to anyone, but they've probably gotten enough positive response to the ad to make their refusal to pull it a safe gamble.

I mention this now because it's relevant to the Nobel Peace Prize selection for 2008.  More on that in my next post.

MIRACLE IN MONDGOD?

As you're anxiously awaiting the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, you might want to consider what's been happening at the Drepung Loseling Monastery in Mondgod, South India.  (Drepung Loseling is currently the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the world, named for its famous predecessor in Tibet.) 

The first thing you need to know is that the Gaden Tripa (holder of the Ganden throne) is the title of the spiritual leader of the Gelugpa order of Tibetan Buddhism (the Dalai Lama is the temporal leader of the Gelugpas, and hence is of a higher order politically,  and hence, more visible in the public eye, but a notch below the Gaden Tripa in spiritual terms.)  Because the position is not an incarnation, but an office awarded both by reputation and examination, and because they serve for set terms, there have been many more of Gaden Tripas than Dalai Lamas.  The current holder is the 101st in the line.

The second thing you need to know is that the 100th Gaden Tripa, Lobsang Nyima, died on September 14 of this year.  Except that he didn't.  Not exactly.  He entered on that day a state of advanced meditation known as thukdam in the Tibetan tradition.  It is during this state that advanced meditators, accomplished practitioners who have, in effect, practiced dying for years, are able to meditate on the "clear light stage," and oversee the dissolution of mind and body as they prepare for their next incarnation. 

And here's where things get interesting from the Western perspective.  In South India, with its substantial humidity and, at best, temperate climate, Lobsang Nyima's body remained pliable and undecayed for 18 days as he practiced his meditative exercises.  Of course, from the Western perspective, he died on September 14--no observable heart beat, no observable respiration, no ocular activity.  But no decay, no odor, no slumping, no rigor mortis.  For 18 days.  There's the rub.

Personally, I have little trouble accepting thukdam as a spiritual fact, a phenomenon that's still in the cue of Facts To Be Proven Within the Narrow Spectrum of Western Empiricism.  Also, I met Lobsang Nyima in May, 2007, when he was very old and somewhat ill; he was an extraordinary person, and that was apparent even to me, with my set of dull Western receptors. 

Lobsang Nyima's thukdam has caused quite a stir within the monastic community at Drepung Loseling Monastery, and Geshe Dorjee, here in Fayetteville has kept me informed of its progress over the past three weeks.  (Nyima was one of Geshe Dorjee's teachers, and always spoke of him with that deepest fondness that Tibetans reserve solely for their most influential teachers.) 

Various doctors, of course, have congregated around Lobsang Nyima recently, briefs are being written, and you can read a fuller report here.  For more on this particular holder of the throne, click here.

Finally--while Tibetans are deeply impressed by this accomplishment, they don't view it as a miracle, by any stretch of the imagination.  It's closer to how we view Gebreselassie's latest world record in the marathon--a feat reserved for the few, one that demands enormous discipline and ability, but one that is clearly within the realm of our fundamental potential.  Inspiring, in a word.

There's a big difference between the unreachable miraculous and the achievable inspiring.  Let's concentrate on the latter, as we anticipate the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE IN FOUR DAYS; CHINA ON THE OFFENSIVE

For those of us disappointed at the lack of attention the mainstream media showed to the Beijing Olympics and its connection to the human rights abuses of its host country, we might be given a silver lining in the Nobel Peace Prize this year.  Stein Tonneson, the Director of PRIO (Peace Research Institute, Oslo), speculates that two jailed Chinese dissidents are leading contenders for this year's prize, which will be announced on October 10. Tonneson, who resides in Oslo, the home of the Nobel Prize, typically has authoritative information regarding the Prize, and you can view his speculations here.  Aside from the two Chinese candidates, Hu Jia and Gao Zhisheng, the Prize could also go to Human Rights Watch, if an institution is chosen, or possibly to Thich Quang Do, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who is currently being held in detention at the Thanh Minh Zen Monastery in Saigon. 

Of course, the nominations for the Prize are made public, and of course, China has reacted with its typical array of threat and indignation (click here for more; or if you'd like to feel the rage of Chinese bloggers at the mere possibility of a Chinese dissident winning the prize, click here). 

The point is this:  if the Peace Prize goes to a human rights activist or a human rights organization, China suffers. The Nobel Committee will not be intoxicated--or such is my hope--by the electronically enhanced, telegenic display of under-aged, performance-enhanced athletes, an intoxication that had the mainstream media dancing giddily through the streets of Beijing. Awarding the Prize to a person or agency from the human rights quarter would send a strong signal from from an institution that, while not without its own political issues (Gandhi's absence from the list, for example), has on its masthead the right word:  PEACE. 

Let's hope for the best on October 10.

TIBET HITS THE FASHION RUNWAY

Just so you'll know:  Tibet has now become a fashion accessory (picture to the left, article here).  Vivienne Westwood, apparently a well known fashion designer, chose to accessorize with the Tibet bag that most of us know and love, and with which, I guess, many of us have also accessorized.  Tibet has long been pop-culture friendly (rock concerts, college events, movie stars), but this is the first I've heard of Tibet on the fashion runways.  I've got mixed feelings about it, after confessing that in the overall scheme of things, I don't see a fashion runway as much competition for a millennia-old mahayana practice.  But the fashion industry has a way of devouring its offspring and all things connected with it every time a new line is unveiled   To see a Tibet bag hanging off the bony shoulder of a bony model, well, that's a bit frightening . . . the shock and awe of contemporary couture sometimes unsettles the steadiest of us.

You might also be interested in knowing that on October 12, two young Tibetan women will be competing for the title of Miss Tibet.  You can read more about it here.  It hasn't been overly popular with the Tibetan people, and has even raised a bit of controversy.  At any rate, the confrontation of traditional Tibetan and contemporary Western culture proceeds apace and will be very interesting to watch in the coming days.