The indefatigable Robert Thurman on Tibet, China, and the simple question, 'Why the Dalai Lama matters.' And atheism, and the political right, and anything else that crosses his mind and fall within the wide arena of Tibet and His Holiness.
The indefatigable Robert Thurman on Tibet, China, and the simple question, 'Why the Dalai Lama matters.' And atheism, and the political right, and anything else that crosses his mind and fall within the wide arena of Tibet and His Holiness.
Posted at 09:55 AM in Buddhism, China, Current Affairs, Dalai Lama, Dissidents, Ethics, Genocide, Human Rights, Hunger Strikes, India, Mahatma Gandhi, Non-Violence, Robert Thurman, Tibet, Tibetan Youth Congress | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 09:46 AM in Buddhism, Capital punishment, China, Current Affairs, Dalai Lama, Dissidents, Ethics, Genocide, Human Rights, Hunger Strikes, India, Mahatma Gandhi, Meditation / Neurology, Monks, Non-Violence, Nuns, Religion, Students for a Free Tibet, Tibet, Tibet-China Relations, Tibetan Youth Congress | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
In light of the story I posted here yesterday concerning the melting of the glaciers around Mt. Everest--including stark photographic evidence--I was surprised to find that a new poll released by the Pew Research Center reveals that fewer and fewer Americans see solid evidence of global warming. In April 2008, 44% of Americans saw climate change as an important issue; that number dropped to 35% by October 1, 2009. This is an alarming development for three reasons.
Awareness is the first step toward speaking truth to power . . . it's a cliche, I know, but one that has truth behind it.
Posted at 10:46 AM in China, Current Affairs, Genocide, Human Rights, India, Non-Violence, Religion, Science, Tibet, Tibet-China Relations | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Obama's decision not to meet with the Dalai Lama hasn't gone away. In fact, it's invited more voices into the discussion: Vaclav Havel has weighed in, and organizations like Human Rights Watch have had their say as well. A couple of days ago, Maureen Dowd at the New York Times spoke out, and even Frank Calzon, executive Director of Center for a Free Cuba, has compared Obama's emerging political vision as reminiscent of the realpolitik that characterized Henry Kissinger's tenure as Secretary of State. And The People's Daily in China lost no time reporting the snub, an unambiguous victory for them. Clearly, Obama and the Lama have hit an international nerve. When something like this happens, when Americans become over-wrought about the way a Tibetan monk is treated, I think it points to other issues lying deep within the hearts and minds of those same Americans. Perhaps many of us feel that His Holiness is addressing issues, important issues, that receive scant attention in our daily political discourse. Five things to keep in mind as you make your way through this complex piece of international hand-wringing:
Posted at 09:00 AM in Buddhism, China, Current Affairs, Dalai Lama, Human Rights, India, Monks, Non-Violence, Tibet, Tibet-China Relations | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
To accomplish this, Professor Burris and Geshe Dorjee have traveled to India over the past two summers with fifteen students from the University of Arkansas. Before leaving, their students have studied Tibetan history, culture, and philosophy; have familiarized themselves with the fundamentals of oral history; and have become comfortable with the new technology that supports digital HD video recording and editing.
It is a further assumption of the TEXT Project that by allowing qualified undergraduate students to work on the front lines of Tibetan cultural preservation, they will come face-to-face with one of the few genuinely non-violent cultures left in the modern world. As a result, two interests are well served by the TEXT Project: the past history of the Tibetan people, as told by the Tibetans themselves, and the future of the global community, as defined by the younger generation that will shape it.
Over the past two summers, the TEXT Project has gathered some thirty interviews in Dharamsala, Majnu-Ka-Tilla in New Delhi, and Drepung Loseling Monastery in south India. Students have spoken with monks, nuns, members of the Tibetan parliament, the President of the Tibetan Youth Congress, teachers at the Tibetan Children's Village, elderly Tibetans, the Nechung oracle, Tibetan merchants, and others, including members of the younger generation as well.
The Project has generated enormous student interest on the campus, and Professor Burris and Geshe Dorjee are currently investigating potential funding sources to begin the long, arduous--and costly--process of archiving the videos that they collected.
Until funding has been located to build properly the website that will house the complete interviews, Professor Burris and Geshe Dorjee--assisted by their students, of course--will excerpt the interviews and post them on a temporary site.
Each excerpt will be accompanied by a brief introduction that sets the scene and discusses the significance of the interview's content. Two have been posted already, and notice of further postings will appear here on TIBETSPACE.
Stop by the new site and have a look. And leave a comment; the TEXT Project values your opinion.
Posted at 09:52 PM in Buddhism, Current Affairs, Dalai Lama, Human Rights, India, Monastic, Monks, Non-Violence, Nuns, Students for a Free Tibet, Tibet-China Relations, Tibetan Youth Congress | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
In an earlier posting,I discussed China's well thought out campaign to control the flow of water into India; it's a devastatingly powerful move to gain the upper hand in the political discussions that clearly lie in the Sino-Indian future. Of course, Tibet is at the center of this discussion, and it's not too much of a stretch to assume that, were Tibet a free country, its leaders might well take a different view of how these mighty waters might be managed. A new piece has just appeared in The Daily Times (Pakistan), and it provides more information on this important issue. With globalization having moved from idea to reality, and with the climate heating up, as it certainly is, this is a problem that ultimately confronts us all.
Posted at 11:17 AM in China, Current Affairs, Human Rights, India, Tibet-China Relations | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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.
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.
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:
In my next posting, I'll finish the 10 ways you can free Tibet, and follow that with a general discussion of the list.
Posted at 09:24 PM in China, Current Affairs, Dalai Lama, Human Rights, India, Mahatma Gandhi, Meditation / Neurology, Non-Violence, Tibet, Tibet-China Relations | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: china, current affairs, international relatios, tibet
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.
So, the first three ways to save Tibet. Four more in the next posting. Stay tuned.
Posted at 11:57 AM in Buddhism, Dalai Lama, Ethics, Genocide, Human Rights, India, Mahatma Gandhi, Meditation / Neurology, Monks, Non-Violence, Nuns, Religion, Tibet, Tibet-China Relations | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: buddhism, china, current affairs, international relations, non-violence, the dalai lama, tibet, tibet china relations
You can do a lot of things with water, and recently China and the Bush administration have become the connoisseurs of the pain and suffering that water, or the lack of it, can bring. China is moving along with its plans to build a hydro-electric dam across the Brahmaputra River in Tibet, potentially wreaking havoc on the Indian province of Arunachal Pradesh , and since the Justice Department was forced today to release its Top Secret CIA documents on water-boarding and other forms of torture, the Bush administration seemed equally fascinated with the destructive capacity of water. (China's plan has been in the works for several years. Read a fuller account here.)
Two modern imperial powers, equally intent on maintaining their empires through coercive means. And with Obama's decision today not to prosecute CIA officials who were responsible for this brutality, the United States gives up much of its credibility in negotiating with nations like China whom we accuse not only of tolerating, but actively indulging, conduct that violates our fundamental human rights.
I wrote earlier about China and America belonging to the small group of barbarous nations who still practice capital punishment and carry it out in some places with a kind of righteous gusto. Now I write about China and America belonging to that same group of barbarous nations who have been caught red-handed in violation of fundamental human rights and who decide to do little about it.
Whether we prosecute or not, though, the fact remains that our country is guilty of human rights violations; and that our administration's disapproval of the Chinese torture of Tibetans is hypocritical, at best, and feigned, at worst.
As a country, we argue now against human rights violations from a weakened position.
But there is another side to this issue that indicates some real progress in our country's support of human rights. It is important that President Obama allowed the release of these sensitive documents; he did not extend Bush's rampant abuses of executive privilege. He decided, in fact, not to fight the ACLU in their FOIA filing, and in doing so, he allowed the working manual for our little shop of horrors to become part of the public domain. Surely, he felt that a simple revelation of these documents was enough, that if the goal is to stop such abuses in the future, and not to punish those who formulated and implemented these horrors, then such a public revelation will make it much more difficult for this to occur in the future. And so we must read these documents, and make them part of our historical knowledge; we must enter them into the record of our national consciousness, making this inhumane practice less likely to rear its ugly head in the coming century.
It's the least we can do.
Posted at 05:23 PM in China, Current Affairs, India, Tibet, Tibet-China Relations | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 03:50 PM in Buddhism, China, Current Affairs, Dalai Lama, Dissidents, Human Rights, India, Monks, Non-Violence, Tibet, Tibet-China Relations | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)







