TIBETSPACE

JON STEWART AND THE DALAI LAMA

Maybe, just maybe, there's one other person on the planet, aside from myself, who missed Stewart's take on Obama deciding not to meet with His Holiness.  

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WELCOME TO TIBETSPACE

Welcome to TIBETSPACE, a blog in the process of changing. Begun as a site for all things Tibetan, all things Tibetan has dramatically expanded as His Holiness has created conversations that continually transcend traditional cultural boundaries.  So I will try to chart some of those conversations here, always keeping His Holiness's views in mind, but also trying to show how long those views are.

OBAMA & THE LAMA: FIVE MORE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

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:

1. First, we need to be clear about the different job descriptions of a Tibetan monk and an American president. Bureaucratic institutions designed to reflect and encourage a set of well-defined ethical practices among its members are called monasteries or convents. Bureaucratic institutions that are designed to let its members have a say in charting their own course through the future, paying less attention to ethical practices, are called democracies.  Leaders of each institution will operate from a radically different set of principles when it comes to engaging whatever political reality confronts them.  So, in one corner, we have Barack Obama, the leader of the free and purportedly secular world (America isn't secular, but that's the advertisement), and in the other corner, we have the leader of the monastic world, the most famous monk in modern times, Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.  That's a substantial difference in orientation, and it's a difference that can't help but characterize their responses to the world around them.
2. Sometimes, we need to look at what's very plain and obvious:  monasteries and democracies have different takes on how you behave in the world at large because, for one thing, they have different relationships to the world.  The citizens of a monastery and the citizens of a democracy define their missions a little differently.  Democracies--I'm thinking of ours--tend to look after themselves before they look after others; that's why domestic issues win elections and international concerns, including human rights, lose them (unless we're under attack). Monasteries, on the other hand, at least Tibetan Buddhist ones, while fighting hard for their own survival in India, are following their own tradition and trying to relieve the suffering of others because that's the way their particular platform is put into motion.  If it's civil defense you're looking for, or better roads, or indoor plumbing, or a military-industrial complex, then you're more likely to find these things in a developed democracy; if it's the alleviation of spiritual suffering you've got in mind, you might try a monastery before you make a pilgrimage to D.C.  The discourse coming out of the Capitol will often be defensive in nature; that coming out of Dharamsala will often be altruistic in nature.  We need both, and at different times in our history, we need one more than the other.  Just now, those who wished the President would have met with His Holiness most likely felt the need for a little more altruism in the national conversation.
3. So, people get anxious about how the Dalai Lama is treated when his area of expertise--human suffering and how to remedy it--seems to be one of the areas of expertise we most need to consult.  As you've noticed, there's a great deal of human suffering going on at the present moment, and since 9/11, Americans have become more cognizant of how quickly this suffering can arrive.  But in an environment where apocalyptic facts are the daily headlines, one fact has gone unnoticed.  In his monumentally important book, Planet of Slums, Mike Davis writes that "for the first time the urban population of the world will outnumber the rural.  Indeed, given the imprecision of Third World censuses, this epochal transition has probably already occurred."  Americans, particularly our students, are registering the effects of this fact subliminally.  They are rightly concerned about their futures. To cite a few more facts from Davis's book:  the present urban population of the world--3.2 billion--is larger than the total population of the world when John Kennedy was inaugurated. China added more citizens to its cities in the 1980's than did all of Europe, including Russia, during the entire nineteenth century. And with these urban populations come slums:  there are now hundreds of full-fledged slums on earth, and they range in size from a few hundred to a million people.  The inequities inherent in living conditions of this sort breed the host of problems that we see confronting us every day:  poverty, disease, war, famine, terrorism, and oppressively entrenched class structures. In short, human suffering.  And there's little on the horizon that seems capable of reversing this trend in the developing nations whose populations are growing-- which means, in turn, that their slums are growing.  It is no longer a problem of the developing world; it has become the world's problem.  And altruism of the kind His Holiness describes has intriguing advantages for all of us.  No wonder many Americans want our leaders to listen to him.
4. Because the world is becoming smaller as its population inexorably grows, and because our media make us instantly aware of the suffering and inequity that accompany this growth, we expect our leaders to address this suffering.  For the first time, Americans are being exposed to the kind of inestimable human suffering that has been readily visible to anyone traveling, for example, in India for centuries. Walk through one of the slums of Delhi, and you realize that no democracy in the world can solve this problem because there are two problems here:  one of them is economic and systemic--Will somebody please send food and shelter?--and the other one is, for lack of a better word, philosophical--Will someone please explain why suffering of this magnitude occurs in the first place?  And when it becomes obvious that the food isn't coming and the system isn't being repaired quickly enough to supply it, and that Obama, and leaders like him, can't solve even these kinds of food-supply problems, Americans want to hear from someone like His Holiness who has some insightful things to say about the questions that perennially plague us all: Why, we want to know, does suffering exist, why is it inevitable, why does it never go away, and what can each of us, in our small, insignificant way, do about it?  
5. Because this second kind of suffering, this philosophical suffering (which doesn't have a shred of philosophy about it to those who are currently doing the suffering), is becoming more and more a part of Americans' daily diet on television and the internet, Americans are interested in what people like His Holiness have to say about it. That's only natural.  As I've indicated, this kind of suffering is part of his area of expertise--he isn't a policy-wonk, but he is a spirit-wonk. And so we're confused when Obama doesn't meet with His Holiness, who gives good advice on this problem, because the Chinese, who have been recently in the business of creating this problem, tell him not to do so.  But we shouldn't be confused at all.  Only rarely do we find leaders of democracies who embody the kind of spiritual values that can address the particular pressures that most Americans are feeling now. Obama can't do it, but then few political leaders could straddle both of these worlds. (And remember:  Hillary Clinton told the Chinese in February, 2009, that human rights, from the American perspective, would be secondary to economic concerns.  This has been announced policy from the beginning.)  Obama's refusal to meet with His Holiness shows that he is, perhaps, more political, in the cynical sense of that term, than many had thought or hoped he would be.   That the story won't go away shows that Americans, along with the rest of the world who questioned Obama's decision, are finding themselves in need of the kind of counseling that only His Holiness and others like him can give us. Suffering, of the philosophical sort, is now squarely on the American radar, and frankly we're stifled by it. We need help in understanding it, and we're a bit undone when a leading authority on it is rebuffed by our President.

FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ABOUT OBAMA, HIS HOLINESS & THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

The recent decision by the White House not to receive His Holiness the Dalai Lama--exacerbated by the fact that it now involves one Nobel Peace Prize winner turning his back on another one because of pressure from China, a country on intimate terms with oppression--presents an opportune moment to have a look at the two men, side by side, in five areas, and to see that they don't really have a lot in common.  And that both men's work continues apace, on decidedly different tracks.

1. Human Rights--Over the past fifty years, the Dalai Lama's role has expanded from serving as a political representative of the Tibetan people--both in Tibet and in exile--to being a spokesperson for human rights in general and standing as an advocate for the relief of human suffering wherever it might exist. Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have agreed with His Holiness. King's own career, broadening from a focus on African-Americans to include, finally, the American poor, whatever their race, bears ample testimony to this. Now in 2009, fifty years after Mark Charles Parker was taken from his jail cell in Poplarville, Mississippi and lynched, the American political scene does not have a national figure whose ideas are marching logically and inexorably toward the cause of human rights. Remember, you can't get elected to national office in America by running on a platform of human rights.  And remember this too: the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King, Jr. did not run for public office.
2. Chicago Olympics--If Obama wants to be re-elected, he has to campaign; and, by some accounts, his re-election bid for 2012 has already started.  The Chicago Olympics would have been a real boost to his campaign and a fine send-off in 2016, when the Olympics arrived and his term, if he is re-elected, would end. In the twentieth century, however, either the Summer or the Winter Olympics visited our shores eight times.  That's enough.  Sure, there are those who thought that Obama's failure to get the Games for Chicago signaled dire and ominous things about America's reputation abroad (of course, Obama hadn't won the Nobel Prize for Peace at that time--more on that later), but they were wrong. Rio simply needed it more than we did.  And they purportedly made a much better case.  But King didn't care, and His Holiness doesn't care, about these things because they don't have to care about these things.  They don't have to win votes. Obama's attention to the Olympics wasn't a distraction from the health-care issue; it was an attempt to get re-elected.  
3. Non-Violence--Now that the civil-rights workers who rose to prominence in the 50's and 60's are aging, non-violence as a cogent and indispensable tool for social reform has vanished from the national stage.  The Dalai Lama's recent pilgrimage to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis should remind us of what unites Reverend King and His Holiness.  I am thinking, of course, of Mahatma Gandhi. Both King and the Dalai Lama drew a great deal from Gandhi's fundamental notions of non-violence. His Holiness, Mahatma Gandhi, and Reverend King realized a central truth that extends from a subtle understanding of non-violence:  that the acquisition of material wealth carries with it ethical obligations that extend beyond personal gratification and security.  And this is a truth that doesn't fare well in America. Greed, in fact, is a form of internal violence that has far-reaching implications.  But you can't get elected in America by running on a platform of human rights and by pointing to the essential violence associated with gaining great wealth.  After all, Obama is a very wealthy man.  King wasn't; His Holiness isn't.
4. The Global Village--The global village is a sexy idea.  As a phrase, it's become ubiquitous.  But it's not complicated.  The global village comes into being when we begin to perceive that our neighbor's suffering has a direct impact on our own suffering; and that the best way to alleviate our own suffering is first to alleviate our neighbor's suffering.  Of course, if you translate this into political action, nationalism, domestic economies, defense systems, all of these things come under scrutiny, and elected officials cannot, if they wish to be elected, indulge such a powerful idea and scrutinize such sacred cows.  The American electorate will not return to office someone who becomes overly concerned with what is happening in Rwanda, Sudan, Darfur, Tibet, Cambodia, Burma, or Bosnia--even if that person believes that these humanitarian actions will have a direct impact on the quality of American life.   This, however, was precisely Gandhi's platform, it is His Holiness's platform, and Reverend King was moving gradually toward such an idea as well.
5. The Nobel Peace Prize--Even Obama, in his honest and eloquent remarks upon learning that he had received this prestigious award, admitted that he didn't deserve it.  When the committee, citing his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," stated that Obama had committed himself and his country "to a world without nuclear weapons" (read the full text here), it became clear that this was an award granted more to an imagined future than an accomplished past.  And it was granted, I believe, in deep gratitude by a European community happy to be rid of the Bush family. But the Nobel Peace Prize won by Reverend King, Mother Theresa, Sakharov, Walesa, Tutu, Wiesel, the Dalai Lama, and Suu Kyi is not the Prize won by Al Gore and Barack Obama.  They were granted for different reasons and serve different purposes.  As Jody Williams--who won the Prize in 1997--remarked, "he [Obama] is going to be sending 40,000 new American troops into Afghanistan just as he received the Nobel Peace Prize?  I think that is a contradiction that needs to be seriously looked at."  And Obama's fierce, conservative critics will do just that.  The point is that the Nobel Committee might have inadvertently given our very young and very inexperienced President an award that, in reality, points to his youth and emphasizes his lack of experience in dealing with the kinds of problems that have often occupied the prize winners that I mentioned above.  And they might have unintentionally given ammunition to his critics.  (For a brief round-up of the various angles to this story, start with The Daily Beast.)

So, President Obama decides not to welcome His Holiness to D.C..  It's a political decision made by a savvy politician, and it's one that I suspect His Holiness wouldn't have made if the tables were turned and our President showed up in Dharamsala.  He wouldn't have made such a decision because it would have never been necessary for His Holiness to make such a decision.  The two men are driven by different necessities. You can take your pick.  

Or you can hope and pray that somehow they are complimentary.

VIDEO INTERVIEWS OF TIBETANS IN INDIA

The TEXT Project (Tibetans in Exile Today) is an oral history project based at the University of Arkansas and directed by Professor Sidney Burris and Geshe Thupten Dorjee.  The goal of the Project is to gather video interviews with the elderly Tibetans currently living in exile in India, and eventually to house them in an online archive that will be available both to scholarly and general audiences alike.  It is the assumption of the Project that traditional Tibetan culture is vanishing in Tibet, and that the elderly Tibetans who remember their lives before the Chinese arrived in 1959 hold valuable memories that need to be preserved.

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.

VIDEO: DESMOND TUTU ACCEPTS AWARD, PRAISES HIS HOLINESS

 We are occasionally--very occasionally--treated in the media to commanding displays of authentic spirituality, and clearly when Desmond Tutu recently accepted the Spiritual Leadership Award from Humanity's Team, he provided us with one of these moments.  While the Dalai Lama was unable to attend the presentation, he sent his representative, Sonam Tenzin from the Office of Tibet , who presented Tutu with a kata.  Tutu's remarks concerning the Dalai Lama are reminiscent of the kinds of things that, well, His Holiness would say about Tutu in such a situation.  These two gentlemen, coming from very different religious traditions, share a common spirituality that seems to grow in importance every day as our national borders begin to blur.  The introduction in the video--heartfelt, sincere--goes for approximately five minutes, and then Tutu arrives, followed by His Holiness's representative.  What Tutu has to say about the Dalai Lama is pure spiritual poetry.

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.

CHINA, CHINA EVERYWHERE . . . AND A VIDEO ON THE KARMAPA

 The global tech community was shocked recently to learn of Ghostnet, a cyber-snooping operation that orginated in the PRC and whose virus had turned up in over 1200 computers in over 100 countries, not an out-sized number at all, but discretely targeted, and thus harder to detect.  You can find a link to the full 53-page report on Scribd (which you'll need to join to download, but it's worth the email address and password you have to give to get it). To summarize, the capabilities of Ghostnet are extensive, and the main computers of the Dalai Lama's office were clearly compromised.  David Gelernter, a national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently wrote, concerning the likelihood that China was the culprit in engineering and spreading the virus:

After the Dalai Lama's office sent an e-mail invitation to a foreign diplomat, Beijing diplomats happened to phone the same diplomat and discourage the visit. A China-bound traveler who had used the Internet to help put Tibetan exiles in contact with Chinese dissidents was stopped at the Chinese border, shown transcripts of the online exchanges, and warned to cut it out.

And so it goes.  Gelerntner argues, persuasively, that what we're seeing here is the Second Cold War:  "China is our new Cold War enemy, and her favorite weapons will also be novel: financial weapons, trade weapons, cyberweapons. Welcome to Cold War II."

It's not news to anybody that technology changes lives, and that it is currently changing our lives here in America, sometimes in ways that seem insufferable.  It still isn't clear to me why anyone would want a Twitter update on my choice of an espresso over a latte as I'm standing in line to teach a class that my caffeine addiction will cause me to start a bit late.  The problem is, however, that the technology in question reflects the gravitas of the culture that embraces it.  So six students in Chisinau, Moldova--the only post-Soviet Union country that elected a communist government--started an anti-government rally recently using Twitter and instantly had summoned 10,000 students to the protest. (Read the NYT account here.) Our own election of Obama marshaled the text-technology in similar ways, and the cell-phone videos from Tibet have left a lasting record of the atrocities inflicted by the Chinese in Tibet throughout 2008. 

So the new technology, like all new technologies, mirrors the intention and morality of those who use it.  Twitter then, the very same Twitter, can be an agent of narcissism or an advocate for civil liberty.  Twitter doesn't come with a user manual, a code of ethics, or even the vaguest guidelines for how the human animal might represent itself through its one-line updates.  But all we have to do is read the updates and draw our conclusions: we are both magnanimous and narcissistic.

Recently, the Dalai Lama and his special envoy Lodi Gyari have called on all Tibetans everywhere to record their suffering over the past fifty years, a project that will clearly profit from the video and web technologies available today even to amatuers.  (Our very own TEXT Project at Arkansas is an example.)  Central to this effort is Harry Wu, the founder and director of the Laogai Research Foundation.  If you don't know Mr. Wu's work, you need to become familiar with it.  "Laogai" means "reform through labor," and the term generally refers to Chinese labor camps--where Mr. Wu spent 19 years of his life.  He is now an American citizen and has taken up the Tibetan cause.  He has curated an exhibit in Washington, D.C. on the Tibetan struggle, and he is a significant force in encouraging Sino-Tibetan dialogue.  His ideas are in line with Martin Luther King Jr.'s who encouraged the poor whites in the South to understand that they had more in common with the poor blacks than they did with the middle-class white Southerners who were behind racism's corporate and cultural structure.  Wu is making a similar argument about the Tibetans and the Chinese, and how they should be looking at what they hold in common.  And he might well be right.

The economic problems in both Tibet and China--read about the struggles of one of China's billionaire women in the March 30 issue of The New Yorker--are fertile ground for unification across lines of race and ethnicity, the kind of unification that, if it occurred in China, would have an immediate and long-range global impact.  As the Dalai Lama ages, and finally retires to his spiritual practice, and ultimately dies, the transitional period would benefit from this kind of economic revolution.  In the meantime, the 17th Karmapa is waiting in line, but that in and of itself is enough for another posting . . . in the meantime, watch the following video for a good introduction to this extraordinary young man, and the problems that he currently confronts.

Follow this link to watch the video.

<a href="http://technorati.com/claim/aprtazbccu" rel="me">Technorati Profile</a>

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.

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