TIBETSPACE

AMERICANS & GLOBAL WARMING: WE DON'T BELIEVE IT!

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.

1. First of all, we've become such a media-driven society that if the story isn't on our corporate-controlled news sources, we lose focus, and the topic fades from view.  Media-generated ADD.  Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, was released in January, 2006, at the Sundance Film Festival, and later picked up 2 Oscars.  In October, 2007, Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won a Nobel Peace Prize, partly due to the success of the film. That's called buzz, and because we're buzz-addicted, Americans were still concerned in 2008 about those belching smokestacks that kept showing up in their nightmares--and they had a film that dramatized their concern, and the Pew figures reflected the fact that global warming was on our radar.  But that's yesterday's news.  And the Pew figures now reflect that as well.
2. Second, it means the bad guys are currently winning, or manipulating the media more effectively than the good guys. Accepting the facts of global warming involves accepting a methodology--empiricism--that if applied to other hot-button topics like, say, the age of the earth or the beginning of the universe, would embarrass a large segment of the conservative power base in this country. As long as conservatives can divert attention from the results of honest scientific research, they gain ground.
3. That climate change is causing the glaciers in Tibet to dry up will directly impact human rights both in Tibet and in India.  When water supplies are endangered, particularly in population centers like India, administrative policies regarding the distribution of water become politically charged and water becomes a bargaining tool.  The UN currently does not recognize in its definition of refugees an "environmental refugee," but it will eventually have to address this issue, particularly in the light of this latest poll finding.  (China is already deeply aware of hydro-politics, as I pointed out in an earlier post.  One of my Tibetan friends whose family lives in eastern Tibet has been told that within several years the village where he grew up and where his family still lives will be under water due to the dams that are currently being built by the Chinese.  No provisions are being made to relocate these Tibetans; they will be, in effect, environmental refugees.)

Awareness is the first step toward speaking truth to power . . . it's a cliche, I know, but one that has truth behind it.

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.