TIBETSPACE

CHINA'S MINORITIES: HELPFUL CLARITY FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

If you're looking for a clear explanation of the ethnic minorities in China--who they are, where they live--have a look at Friday's New York Times.  They've included an inter-active graphic that goes a long way toward helping us visualize the geographical locations of the various populations.

CHINA OPENS UP TO THE MEDIA?

A brief update on the situation in Urumqi:

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting today that China has staged something of a media coup by adopting modern PR tactics that have long been a staple of Western journalism.  "Officials are certainly studying the media-management techniques that are practiced elsewhere in the world," says Rebecca Mackinnon, an expert on the Chinese media at Hong Kong University. "And they actually don't work too badly."

The unmitigated media disaster that followed China's clampdown in Tibet during the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics might seem, on the face of it, to have taught the Chinese a valuable lesson about free and open societies.  Or at least that's what this current article in CSM is claiming. 

"The approach appeared to mark a further step in Beijing's efforts to manage the news more subtly," Peter Ford writes, "taking a page from the Western public relations playbook and getting ahead of the news so as to spin it, rather than impose a total blackout."  Maybe.  But before we begin to lay laurels at China's door for their adoption of Western spin techniques, I think we need to make a few very obvious points about the differences between Tibetans and Uighurs.  They both fall under the category of China's ethnic minorities, but that category is large enough to be essentially useless in making meaningful discriminations between the two groups, particularly when what is at stake here is a judgment of China's evolving media control. 

First of all, there seems little debate about the fact that at least 156 are dead and over 1000 wounded, numbers that automatically elevate the unrest in Xinjiang to unprecedented levels.  The Uighurs have a long tradition of separatism within China, and their willingness to embrace force and aggression when they deem it necessary distinguishes them from the Tibetans who have traditionally articulated a coherent non-violent stance.  Tibetans, of course, do not speak with one voice, and non-violence has recently come under question among the Tibetan community.  Nonetheless, as long as we are talking about media spin, it must be said that the Western understanding of the Tibetan community has been set largely by His Holiness and the monastic community--a distinct minority among the Tibetan community--and so Westerners, whether accurately or not, identify the Tibetan community with non-violent resistance. 

Reports are now coming out of Urumqi that there are dead Han Chinese on the street, victims, presumably, of Uighur violence, and if this is so, it makes perfect sense that the Chinese would encourage the media to report this.  Eighteen months ago, with monks and nuns being imprisoned in Lhasa, and with summary executions occurring in the more remote provinces, it also made perfect sense as well that the Chinese would ban foreign journalists from traveling anywhere in Tibet and covering the Chinese repsonse to the Tibetan protests.  Executing monks and nuns doesn't make good copy.

So what the Chinese have learned is fairly rudimentary:  let the media cover acts of violence committed against the government, but don't let the media cover acts of violence undertaken by the government against its own people.  The American government has perfected this technique; that's what China has learned from Western media control, and it's unflattering to all of us.

Yet, we cannot miss the take-home message here.  The wholesale slaughter of populations who have publicly articulated and privately embraced fundamental principles of non-violence will most often receive widespread condemnation from the world community.  It is clear that this kind of slaughter must be hidden from public view, which is to say that, for one reason or another, non-violence still occupies the moral high road in the Western ethical sensibility. 

Certainly, there may come a time when the Tibetan people will decide that this particular high road is leading them nowhere fast, and at this time perhaps they will decide to embrace more aggressive resistance strategies.  The Tibetan people will make that decision, and they will, like the Uighurs, live with the consequences of that decision, whatever they may be. 

I wouldn't presume to counsel the Tibetan people on their decision; I'm an American, and violence in every corner of my culture, both at home and abroad, is part of my birthright. Understanding just how saturated I am with violence is a full-time job, and until I've gotten a handle on it, I'll leave off giving advice to the Tibetan people. 

But I will suggest that the next decade--and the next year, particularly, leading up to the election of a new Prime Minister--will find the Tibetan people having a conversation amongst themselves about the future of non-violence, national identity, political process, and life in exile that stands to have international implication.

I believe that Americans can a learn a lot from listening to that conversation. The Tibetans have a rich and diverse set of perspectives on issues that concern all of us, and they run the gamut from the sacred to the secular.  Over the upcoming months, I hope to highlight some of these issues here. 

EXILED UIGHUR LEADER SPEAKS OUT AGAINST HAN CHINESE

As tensions in Xinjiang escalate, Uighur leader, Rabiya Kadeer, speaks out from Washington, D.C.

TEN WAYS TO FREE TIBET (8-10)

Below, I've listed the last three of my Ten Ways to Free Tibet.  For the other seven, see the previous two postings.

8.  Avoid double-barreled, dualistic thinking.  Often, the way we conceive of a problem directly shapes the kinds of solutions we envision for that problem.  Clearly, in the Tibetan struggle, we view the Tibetans as the good guys and the Chinese as the bad guys.  There’s good reason for doing that, particularly when one well-armed culture has already slaughtered 1.2 million citizens of another culture and destroyed thousands of its temples and sacred artifacts in the process.  But to conceive of this struggle as essentially Sino-Tibetan, as pitting the Tibetans against the Chinese, will never allow a successful resolution from the Tibetan perspective.  And so for the last half-century, the Dalai Lama and his people have been slowly gaining allies in many countries, developing a multi-faceted response to Chinese aggression.  There is, of course, disagreement within the Tibetan community about what should be done, and viewing Tibetans as having a monolithic voice, most often a voice in agreement with His Holiness’s voice, is yet another problem of dualistic thinking.  Tibetans good and always in agreement about their goodness, Chinese evil and always committed to their evil—of course, it’s not that simple.

The interface between Chinese and Tibetan culture is changing.  Young Tibetans arriving in Dharamsala often speak Chinese and are conversant with Chinese culture, for better or worse.  I met a young Tibetan last summer in Dharamsala who’d arrived in India in 2005, who spoke Chinese, and claimed to have many young Chinese friends in eastern Tibet who are as unhappy with the PRC as the Tibetans are.  He argued forcefully that the future of the Tibetan struggle within Tibet lay partly with the Tibetans’ ability to make alliances with the younger Chinese generation.  In this country, for example, at the University of Virginia and at Harvard, conferences have been recently held between young Tibetans and young Chinese aimed simply at historical understanding and dialogue.  Totalitarian governments, of course, depend upon human oppression, but human oppression is the common denominator for successful political liberation. 

So if we familiarize ourselves with the Chinese dissidents who are living heroic lives in China; if we learn a little more about the reform movements in China that are constantly facing debilitating opposition from the PRC; if we begin to see the human rights struggle as a global initiative with national concentrations, and to see human rights as the common denominator that runs across national boundaries, then perhaps we will begin to find realistic solutions that reflect more accurately the nature of our involvement with the Tibetans and their current struggle with the Chinese.

9.  Understand the technology and get creative with it.  The revolution will be tweeted.  As many of you know,  in Moldova a mass demonstration was organized instantly through Facebook and Twitter, and much of what happened in Tibet before the Olympics was exposed through video and camera phones.  (Read an insightful piece here on Twitter.)  A cell phone is now more dangerous to totalitarian governments than an AK-47.  One of the many things we learned from the Obama election is that viral technology empowers large groups of people who previously had no access to power.  And once empowered, they vote.  If you spend any time on Facebook or Twitter, you also have learned something else:  that the new technology reflects the strengths and foibles of the cultures that adopt it.  The point is that the same mind-numbing technology that allows people to tweet about what their dogs are doing or what sort of coffee they just ordered or what the sunset looks like from a condo on a beach is also the very same technology that strikes fault lines through the Moldovan government.   These “social networks,” as they are called, have enormous organizational and information-spreading potential.  They’re waiting to be developed, applied, and targeted.  We’re at a pivotal moment, I believe, as we’re learning just how influential these networks can become . . . they’re clearly on the radar of most oppressive regimes, and they’re clearly one of the most significant threats these regimes have seen in a long time.

10.  Conceptualize, organize, and contact.  Finally, after all is said and done, nothing replaces political organization, if you live in a country where political organization is viable, and nothing leads to political organization like an old-fashioned petition.  Check out the Care2petition site; there, you can find examples of successful petitions and by clicking on “create petition,” you can design and create your own.  If you want a handbook for political organization, one that lists both strategies and online resources, have a look at Naomi Wolf’s Give Me Liberty.  It’s a good place to begin.

In my next posting, I’ll offer an overview of the logic behind these “Ten Ways to Free Tibet.”

TEN WAYS TO FREE TIBET (4-7)

Before I list the next four ways you can free Tibet, let me say something about the first three that I included in my last posting. 

1. Jill Bolte Taylor’s video, if it does nothing else, should alert us to the accuracy of what Tibetan meditators—and their Indian avatars—have been saying for several millennia.  We’re hard-wired to look at ourselves and the world around us in two ways:  one way engages the left hemisphere of the brain, which plans, orders, graphs, plots, isolates, analyzes, and sequesters everything we do, think, figure, calculate, and say; and the other side, the right hemisphere, removes those boundaries, undoes those calculations, dissolves our sense of an isolating self, and fuzzes the boundaries of our forms, placing us in larger, inter-connected energy fields (read:  quantum field).  The news here is that these two modes of perception can be united for each other’s benefit and that this state of unity has traditionally been called Nirvana, or the removal of ignorance, but that this now turns out to be as much a neurological birthright as it does an abstract and blessed state accessible only to the super-humans of sacred literature.  For Americans, literal-minded and empirical as we are, it’s helpful to have an outline of the neurochemistry of enlightenment. 
2. Over 9 million Native Americans died because our ancestors, with whom we share a culture and a way of looking at the world, arrived on these shores.  We are implicated.  I’m not suggesting undue penance and sackcloth.  I am suggesting accuracy in our self-perceptions because the way in which we view ourselves will impact how we view those we wish to help. 
3. If Gandhi is correct—and I believe he is—then our “inward freedom” should be greatly impacted by Taylor’s video because we can now begin to think of the inner liberation that Gandhi spoke of as neurological component of our species.  Like any other adaptive mechanism in the evolutionary process, inward freedom must be evolved by each of us if we are ever going to be able to help anyone in a substantial and permanent fashion.  There are tried and true ways to do this; avail yourself of them.

And now, the next four ways that you can save Tibet.

4.  Come to terms with Jamyang Norbu.   One of Tibet’s leading intellectuals and writers, Norbu has stood defiantly for Tibetan independence in ways that are learned, well conceived, and passionate.  He is, as T.S. Eliot once said of Samuel Johnson, a dangerous person to disagree with.  Read him—start with his blog, perhaps, look at the archives for interesting topics, and pay close attention to the comments.  But most importantly, you need to read the following excerpt from the Introduction to his collection of essays, Shadow Tibet (the book I’d most recommend):

Like alternate worlds in science fiction, two distinct Tibets appear to co-exist these days.  One flourishes in the light of celebrity patronage, museum openings, career ad academic opportunities, pop spirituality and New Age Fashions.  This is the Tibet that has captured the romantic fantasy of the West and which has drawn much of the attention that Tibet receives at the moment.  Here, Tibet is far more than the issue of Tibetan freedom and represents the unrealized aspirations of the affluent and the established for spiritual solace, ecological harmony and world peace. 

And this from the first essay in the collection, “Opening of the Political Eye:”

I am on no account putting the entire blame for Tibetan political regression on our Western friends, but they did substantially contribute to it.  Usually the presence of such tourists and visitors have only a marginal effect on the society they are passing through, especially in such large countries as India.  But Tibetan society in exile was very small, poor, and because of the tremendous dislocation it had experienced, extremely impressionable.  Through their constant disdain of Western rationalism, democracy, and science, Western travelers effectively discouraged Tibetan curiosity about the West, and encouraged Tibetans to revert to their old and fatal way of dealing with reality by burying their heads in the sands of magic, ritual, and superstition.

5.  Set aside eight minutes and watch this video, although at 3 ½ minutes you’ll get the point.  What you’ll see is a film, taken 12 years ago at Harvard, of a young Tibetan attempting to tell a young Chinese what has happened in Tibet.  Standing behind and to the left of the Tibetan is an American, concerned, wanting to help, but plainly irrelevant to the important dialogue that is occurring between the two principals, the Tibetan and the Chinese.  Remember this image of the Tibetan, the Chinese, and the sidelined American.

6.  Learn to micro-meditate.  A Tibetan friend of mine who spent six years in retreat told me that Americans could benefit greatly from learning to meditate for 2-3 minutes at a time, several times a day, or as many times a day as they feel comfortable doing it.  This means stopping for a moment at your desk, or while walking to the car, and breathing in and out ten times or more, doing whatever is required to take the left hemisphere of the brain offline and encourage the right hemisphere to boot up.  It’s not hard; it’s part of our natural evolution; and it works.  Our political positions will sharpen their focus if we can calm down for a couple of minutes a day.

7.  Memorize this fact:  At least 80% of the human population lives on less than $10 a day.   My guess is that many of you who are reading this blog live on more than $10 a day.  I do.  Materialism in America seems to have hit epidemic proportions, which is one of the reasons the gap between the rich and the poor is widening and devastating the culture.  But it is important that we remember this fact for two reasons:

a.    We begin by acknowledging our privilege and, like anyone who has great stores of resources that others need, we become more likely over the long run to part with some of those resources in creative, effective ways.  So acknowledge your privilege on a daily basis.
b.    Realize that, as Americans, your first-hand knowledge of materialism and its effects, both desirable and undesirable, is unequaled by any other culture in the world.  Tibetans, for example, know nothing about the dangers of materialism, and if you survive it, like any survivor, you can talk with authority about its devastating effects and its potential remedies.  That many Americans have felt that Tibetan culture holds just such a remedy is perhaps understandable in this context.  And whether or not Tibetans will be able to resist the Westernization that is occurring in India remains to be seen.  My prayers are with them.

In my next posting, I'll finish the 10 ways you can free Tibet, and follow that with a general discussion of the list.

TEN WAYS TO FREE TIBET (1-3)

I continually meet people who want to “do something” about Tibet and the Tibetans.  And who wouldn’t?  An entire people committed, particularly over the last 700 years, to the principles of non-violence, whose homeland has been occupied with varying degrees of brutality over the last half century, and whose leader has become not only an adroit ambassador for his country, but one of the most revered spiritual figures in the world . . . What’s not to like?  And don’t forget:  George Lucas, in Return of the Jedi (1983) had those cute little Ewoks speaking Tibetan. 

So if you google the phrase, “help Tibet,” you’ll get over 8.5 million hits.

Take your pick.  Many of these organizations have made substantial contributions to the Tibetan cause, and there’s a lot you can do that will make a difference.

But having been involved over several decades now, and with dramatically varying degrees of commitment, to understanding what Tibetan culture might reasonably offer Americans, I wanted to offer my own Ten Ways to Free Tibet, and then be done with it.  It’s not a manifesto; it’s not a declaration.  It’s just a list of suggestions that are offered here as tentative answers to persistent questions. 

My working plan:  In this posting I’ll list three suggestions; in the next posting, four; and in the third posting, three, making for a total of ten.  I’ll eventually offer a bit of commentary, a very little commentary, on each item, hoping to provide a picture of the overall conceptual structure that stands behind the entire set of ten.  But for now, here are the first three ways to free Tibet.

1. Set aside 20 minutes and watch the following video. It's a recording of a talk given by Jill Bolte Taylor at a TED Conference on February 27, 2008.  (If you're unfamiliar with TED, correct that problem asap.  Their website contains a library of TED talks, and they're routinely amazing, jaw-dropping, and inspiring.)  Dr. Taylor, a neuroanatomist, suffered a massive brain hemorrhage in the left hemisphere, and her description of this experience lays the scientific groundwork for Americans to approach and potentially understand one of the most important legacies the Tibetan philosophers have left us.  Warning:  Don't even think about starting this video if you don't have twenty minutes to give to it because you'll completely ignore whatever you were supposesd to be doing.
2. Memorize this fact:  Before Western explorers arrived in America and began its colonization, noted anthropologist Henry Dobyns estimated the population of Native Americans to be approximately 10 million.  By the end of the 19th century, the number had dwindled to 250,000.  Over 9 million Native Americans perished as a result of our arrival on these shores.
3. Memorize this quotation by Mahatma Gandhi:  "The outward freedom . . . that we shall attain, will be only in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment" (from The Essential Gandhi, ed. by Louis Fischer with a Preface by Eknath Easwaran,  p. 165.)

So, the first three ways to save Tibet.  Four more in the next posting.  Stay tuned.

THE DEATH PENALTY, TIBET & AMERICA

When the Chinese courts sentenced two Tibetans to the death penalty recently (check out the BBC report here), an outcry arose immediately among the Tibetan community and has now gradually spread around the world.  Both the Tibetan Youth Congress and Amnesty International have registered their protests against this unfair, inhuman, and brutal practice. 

Amnesty International continues to be one of the agencies that makes public the grim statistics of judicial killing; many countries have their own branch of AI, such as Amnesty International USA.    These are all carefully maintained websites that have devoted themselves to humanitarian causes around the globe, and if you haven't bookmarked them yet, you might think about doing so.  Reading them on a regular basis will have a direct impact on your humanitarian practice, however you wish to define it. 

Have a look at the following video that chronicles the Get on the Bus movement, sponsored by Amnesty International and supporting, among other issues, free speech in Tibet.

Grass-roots movements like Get on the Bus allow, for example, Irene Kahn, Secretary General of Amnesty International, to do her work (see a brief video statement by Kahn here) on a global scale.  With these local initiatives in place, the balance between barbarism and humanitarianism (the two sides are always at war because they are two forces warring within the individual human psyche) can begin to shift ever so slightly toward human dignity and a respect for human life.  In this campaign, the ongoing fate of capital punishment is a kind of yardstick on how we're faring as a compassionate and caring global village.

Several facts and figures regarding the death penalty that you might want to know (all taken from Amnesty International's report on the death penalty in 2008) are listed below.  Call it a kind of statistical autobiography of the world's spirit:

1. Fifty-nine countries have retained the death penalty for ordinary crimes.  Here they are:  Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Botswana, Burundi, Chad, China, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad And Tobago, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States Of America, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zimbabwe.
2. Only 25 countries of those 59 listed above actually carried out an execution in 2008.  This is seen as a sign that these countries are drifting away from this practice.
3. A disproportionate number of sentences were handed down to the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities in countries such as Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and USA.
4. Regarding the United States:  The current total number of defendants on state and federal death rows is 3,307, of whom 45% are white, 41.6% are black, and 11% are Latino/Latina.  Over 98% of those on death row are male. The states with the largest death rows are California (662), Florida (399), Texas (367), and Pennsylvania (226).
5. The big killers continue to be China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.
6. Paradoxically, Asia, the font of non-violent philosophy, leads the world in state-sponsored executions.  More people were executed in Asia than in any other part of the world in 2008.
7. China carried out more executions than the rest of the world put together.

So what can you do?  Read the Amnesty International website.  That's the first thing.  If you're interested in Tibet, then you want to concentrate, for the time being, on human rights violations in China, and AI has a site for that.  And if you're an American reading this blog, you need to be aware of the international perspective on America's own reputation in the human rights arena.  Click here for more details.

It's a global issue.

THANKS FROM ARCHBISHOP TUTU TO ALL TIBET SUPPORTERS

To all of you who responded to my posting of 24 March, and signed the letter protesting the South African action against the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Tutu has thanked you:

Keep it up. You are the people who make freedom happen.
It warms my heart to see so many of my fellow Nobel Laureates, stars, leaders, and people from around the world put their signature on paper, so to speak, to stand behind our friend the Dalai Lama.

We have just seen a shameful example of South African leaders becoming timid in the face of Chinese 'might' and their own economic interests, and refusing this incredible, peaceful being entry to our county --for a peace conference!

It's an embarrassment that this could happen in a country that has known how dark life can be when your human rights are being smashed. And we, of all people, know what it means when someone in another part of the world stands up for your rights and freedom.

So it's a joyful thing, to turn around and see you -- people from all countries, from all walks of life, who are willing to step forward, put their name down, and say 'wait a minute, I object to this mistreatment!'

It lets me know, once again, that good will ultimately prevail in this world.

Keep it up. You are the people who make freedom happen.

Mary Wald writes further about these issues on The Huffington Post.  She includes comments from Archbishop Tutu as well that she recently received in an email correspondence with him.

The letter is still open for signatures at www.thecommunity.com.  If you haven't signed yet, and you feel inclined to add your voice to the mix, stop by and do so; also send the link to your friends who might be interested.

As I mentioned in my last posting, these kinds of off-the-radar actions are extremely important, and even, in my opinion, the driving forces behind political change in the new technological era (witness the Obama campaign).  Here's what I said (and pardon the egocentricity of self-quotation): 

But we can do something off the radar, something in fact, more powerful, more fundamental, and more effective than many of those who are on the radar, under constant scrutiny, can do.  We can transform the fundamental ground of consciousness that in the long run will make the change we envision inevitable.

I mean, we recently signed a letter of protest regarding South Africa's treatment of the Dalai Lama, and within several days, we've got a response in our inboxes from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, thanking us for our commitment. 

You're probably thinking what I'm thinking . . . we're having an effect, anonymously, off-the-radar, working the ground of consciousness.

Thanks for your help.

A TOUGH WEEK FOR TIBETANS, WOESER'S NEW PREFACE & A WONDERFUL VIDEO

A tough week indeed for Tibet and the Tibetans.  China claims to have reopened parts of Tibet to tourists, which means that parts of Tibet have now come once again under control of the Chinese police forces.  France and China on Wednesday signed a diplomatic communique in which France restated its resolution that Tibet should never achieve independence and that the Himalayan region is unalterably part of China.  (You can read the The New York Times account here.) Sarkozy's feeble recounting of France's history of recognizing China's sovereignty over Tibet was sad . . . a kind of 11th hour recantation of his recognition last year of His Holiness and the Tibetan struggle.  China has also asked New Zealand to withdraw its invitation to the Dalai Lama who is scheduled to visit that country in the near future, but in an act of increasingly uncommon civility and bravery, Prime Minister John Keys pre-emptively approved the visa in spite of China's threats.  And remember the Tibetan farmers of Kardze County, Sichuan Province, the ones who refused to plant their crops, risking their own security, in protest of oppressive Chinese policies?  The Chinese have begun an "arrest and beating drive" that has left many Tibetan farmers injured and imprisoned.  And the monk who was beaten so severely has finally died of his injuries.

The global financial crisis has helped the Chinese in their campaign to oppress the Tibetan people, and they're taking advantage of their leveraged position.  In debt to the once booming Chinese economy, Western nations are now finding themselves being held hostage by Chinese demands to recognize China's rule over Tibet.

And because of our reckless economic policies, many of these states and countries are either softening or silencing their criticism of China's policies or publicly denying Tibet's bid for freedom.  California, South Africa, France . . . who's next? 

So what can we do?  We can push back in the manner that is suited to our current situation, our current ability, and our current goals.  We cannot all be freedom fighters; we cannot all command the audience of a Jamyang Norbu; we cannot all be elected officials in places of power. 

But we can do something off the radar, something in fact, more powerful, more fundamental, and more effective than many of those who are on the radar, under constant scrutiny, can do.  We can transform the fundamental ground of consciousness that in the long run will make the change we envision inevitable. 

In fact, Secretaries of State, Senators, Chancellors, Prime Ministers, none of these exalted and capable people can effect the change we wish to see until we effect these very changes within ourselves.  Remember:  legislative change, or a change in diplomatic relations, or the acceptance of a new international policy, these are the last links in a series of changes that begin anonymously, at the ground level, within our own individual perspectives.  Look at the passage of the Civil Rights Act in America, remember how many unnamed, committed individuals changed their minds, refurbished their perspectives, and did the unrecognized work that only changed minds can do, and so made the life and career of Martin Luther King, Jr. possible.  The Dalai Lama's career has been made possible, not only by the scores of devoted Tibetans, both in Tibet and in exile, who support him, but also by the world community that has gradually become persuaded of the fundamental importance of human rights and non-violence in a world whose population is exploding.

But now the financial crisis has thrown our excessive spending and borrowing, both at the personal and national level, into dramatic relief.  And so as we recover financially, as we find ways to weather the temporary advantage the Chinese have gained over those countries and states that I believe would otherwise happily support the Tibetan bid for fair treatment, we have to effect those gradual changes within ourselves that come through reading and writing and thinking about the abuses that are currently being administered to Tibetans who are living in Tibet. And we have to expand our concern with the Tibetan population to a concern with the fundamental issue of human rights.  

The role model for this gradual change is Tsering Woeser, a writer who lives in Beijing, who is in and out of house arrest, whose blogs are regularly shut down, and whose safety is constantly threatened by the authorities.  Still, she has taken it as her life's work to record the atrocities, to note the heroism, and to chronicle the struggles that her people are undergoing, day by day.  She has taken it as her life's work to provide us with the record we need to effect the changes that we wish to see within ourselves.  She has published a new book too, The Snow Lion Roaring in the Year of the Mouse, a history of 2008 in Tibet.  The Preface has already been translated into English and you can read it here.  It is a monumental work of memory, of cultural memory, and we read it so that we don't forget the enormity of the struggle that many Tibetans underwent in the year leading up to the fiftieth anniversary of their exile.  And reading it, we change our consciousness ever so slightly; we prepare the ground ever so gently for the change that must come; and we render more and more inevitable a tipping of the scales toward human rights and non-violence. 

This we can do.

"Our Buddhist nature is able to forgive every experience," Woeser writes, "but forgiving does not equal forgetting." And so we read not to forget, we write not to forget, and we act not to forget.

Finally, a wonderful video, ten-minutes, narrated by Susan Sarandon, that just might inspire someone who needs inspiration, or empower someone who needs empowering, to undertake this work of personal renovation.  Send it around.  You can see it at the urbanZen Foundation web site.

-

ECONOMIST INTERVIEW W/ PROFESSOR BARNETT RE TIBET & CHINA

The Economist, one of the most reliable and intelligent news outlets in the world, has a 13-minute interview with Professor Barnett of Columbia University on their website.  Among other things, Professor Barnett discusses the current state-of-affairs in China, focusing on the long-terms effects of the current crackdown in Tibet.  As always, a very intelligent and balanced consideration of the problem.