"You’ve nothing to fear from us, China’s army says"

By Ben Blanchard

PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY UNIT 196, China (Reuters) – China let in a crack of light on its military modernisation on Monday, opening a camp to foreign reporters to put out the message: we have nothing to hide and you have nothing to fear.

The People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest armed force, guards its secrets jealously. Foreigners are almost never allowed on to their bases, let alone foreign journalists.

But China is keen to dispel jitters in Washington that its growing arms budget is far from transparent and that Beijing’s rising military spending may destabilize East Asia.

“What outsiders hype up the most is the military budget,” said Wu Yuzhang, a senior colonel and official at the Defense Ministry’s Foreign Affairs Department, after watching a drill involving martial arts, marksmanship and artillery fire.

“We’ve already given a very clear explanation about that in our defense white paper,” he told reporters at Unit 196’s base just over Beijing’s border in the neighboring city of Tianjin.

In March, China said it would boost defense spending by 17.8 percent to about $45 billion this year, but a Pentagon report in May said Beijing’s total military-related spending could more than double that.

China and the United States have long sparred over the nature of China’s military development, with Washington saying it is trying to project its growing power and Beijing maintaining that its armed forces are geared towards self-defense only.

“I don’t know what anyone has to worry about,” said Unit 196’s senior colonel, Zhang Qingjiang. “I think we’re very transparent. I can tell you all the numbers for this base, including how much I earn.”

Still, while other Chinese ministries have made real efforts in recent years to set up a system of spokesmen and hold regular news conferences, the Ministry of Defense is virtually uncontactable and its officials rarely talk to the media.

But ahead of next year’s Beijing Olympics and because this year is the 80th anniversary of the army’s founding, the ministry had decided to open up a little, Wu said.

“The main aim is so everyone can have a clearer, more accurate understanding of China’s military, so that people don’t get inaccurate information from some other media outlets,” he said, without elaborating.

Part of the rare charm offensive included lunch in the mess hall with startled looking Chinese troops, who smiled nervously while politely answering questions on salary and housing, adding they had only been told about the visit on Saturday.

Barely mentioned were the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square — no, the unit was not involved — and Taiwan, the self-ruled, democratic island China claims as its own.

Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.

“Just because you are getting stronger does not mean you are going to become a bully,” Zhang said, when asked if China’s increased military spending may destabilize the region.

“I just want to make the military the best it can be, so it can complete its mission,” he added.

Source: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/international_china_defence_army_dc

Posted by: D.B.

North American Tibetan University Students’ Conference

The Office of Tibet is organizing a North American Tibetan University Students’
Conference in New York from October 13 – 15 this year to coincide with the visit of
His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the city. The conference is also opened to those who
recently (May/June this year)graduated from the college/university.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama will address the gathering on the concluding day of the
Conference i.e. October 15, 2007.

Conference Objectives and themes:

The Conference seeks to bring together Tibetan university students in North America
(the United States and Canada) with the goal of providing a forum which aims to
fulfill the following purposes:

1) Lay the foundation to develop a Tibetan student
support system
through a strong and community-minded network;
2) Stimulate, in light of educational opportunities
available in North
America, reflection on career planning with long-term
consideration of
the individual and community interests; and
3) Emphasize the importance of an in-depth
understanding of current
realities in Tibet and one’s own responsibility.

The two-and-half-day conference will address four key
issues:
1)Developing a meaningful career
2) Becoming a mindful Tibetan
3) Connecting oneself with Tibet
4) Networking amongst theTibetan university students.

The conference will be addressed by prominent Western and Tibetan personalities.
A detail agenda of the conference is attached herewith for more information.

As per our recent studies, currently there are 463 Tibetan students undergoing
undergraduate studies in various colleges and universities in 37 States in the
United States and 5 Provinces in Canada. Apart from these there are over 50 Tibetan
students undergoing graduate studies in the United States and Canada. Of course, the
actual number of undergraduate and graduate students may be certainly more than this.

Conference Venue:
In order to have a productive meeting, the conference will be held at the Garrison
Institute http://www.garrisoninstitute.org/home.php which provides a serene
atmosphere conducive for such gathering.

Travel Information:
The participants are required to make their own travel
arrangements to and from Garrison, New York.

The Garrison Institute is located in the outskirts of
New York City in Garrison town, at a distance of one-hour-fifteen-minutes by metro
north from Grand Central terminal of New York City. There is a train every hour from
Grand Central to Garrison and back. http://as0.mta.info/mnr/schedules/sched_form.cfm

The nearest air-ports to Garrison are La Guardia Airport and JFKAirport – both
located in New York City. From there, one should go to the Grand Central Terminal
to get the metro north train connection to the Garrison.

Those coming by train will arrive in New York Penn Station, as all the Amtrak trains
from other cities in the United States and Canada end
here. There is sub-way connection between New York Penn Station and Grand Central
Terminal.

Those planning to come by bus will arrive at the Port Authority of NY and NJ. There
is also sub-way connection between the Port Authority and Grant Central Terminal
from where one can take metronorth train to Garrison.

Registration for the Conference:
Since the Garrison Institute can only accommodate around 150 participants, a total
number of conference participants will be restricted to 150. The enrollment for the
conference will be onfirst-come, first-serve basis.

For the 150 participants, the Office of Tibet will arrange free accommodation and
meals at the Garrison Institute from the evening of Friday Oct. 12th through Monday
lunch Oct.15th.

Those who are interested to participate in the conference should fill the attached
Registration Form and submit to the Office of Tibet by September 30, 2007

Tibetan University Students’ Conference
Office of Tibet
241 East 32nd Street
New York, NY 10016
Fax: (212) 779 9245
Email: phuntso@igc.org

Since the Office of Tibet recognizes this conference as an important step to develop
a network of Tibetans in higher education, we would like to request the parents to
encourage their children to participate in the conference. The success of the
conference will depend partially on the participation and active support of parents
and students.

We look forward for a favorable response to this
Conference call.

Tsewang Phuntso

--------------------------------------------------------Tsewang PhuntsoLiaison Officer - Latin AmericaOFFICE OF TIBET241 East 32nd StreetNew York, NY 10016Tel: (212) 213 5010 extn. 11

To learn more about Tibet and the Tibetan culture in Spanish language, subscribe ourquarterly newsletter, "Noticias del Tibet" or visit our website,www.tibetoffice.org/sp

How to Register:-Contact Tsewang Phuntso (phuntso@igc.org) and ask for information regardingregistering.

2007 Tibetan Parliamentary Internship Program

Parliamentary Friends of Tibet Canada completes its first Parliamentary Internship Program

In an initiative to help familiarize young Tibetan-Canadians with the workings of Parliament, the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet* coordinated an internship placement for Canadian students of Tibetan origin with various Parliamentarians. The six-week internship lasted from May 7^th to June 15^th, 2007.

Four Tibetan students from different parts of Canada were chosen for the program. Three interned on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, while one worked at a constituency office in Calgary. Hosting the interns were PFT members the Hon. Senator Consiglio Di Nino, the Hon. Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, Colleen Beaumier, MP, Brampton West, and Rob Anders, MP, Calgary West.

The interns not only helped their offices with their responsibilities, but were exposed to the Canadian Parliamentary/Government structure, giving them a better understanding of how government and parliament function. They learned from interaction between Members and their Constituents, and work done by Parliamentarians in their respective Chambers as well as in Committees. They also learned about the legislative process through research in the Library of Parliament and attendance at Committee meetings.

During the internship, the interns participated in special seminars and meetings to enhance their understanding of Canadian politics and the Tibetan situation. They met with a representative from Nunavut Tungavik Inc. to learn about the Nunavut Land Claims agreement as well as the economic, social and cultural aspects of the northern Nunavut territory which the interns found to be similar, in some ways, to that of the Tibet. They also met with the small Tibetan community in Ottawa, and took an informative guided tour of Parliament Hill.

The interns also attended sessions in the House of Commons and the Senate and listened to a presentation by former MP and long-time Tibet-supporter David Kilgour about human organ-harvesting in China. Several other highlights included a private lunch meeting with Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deepak Obhrai, and media workshop by a journalist from the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. They also met with Canada Tibet Committee founder Thupten Samdup, and attended a Parliamentary Friends of Tibet meeting.

Overall, the interns had an enriching six weeks and learned much about how Canada is governed. The Parliamentary Friends of Tibet hope to continue this program as a means of enhancing theses students’ skills, knowledge of Canada’s democratic institutions, and exposing them to a unique work environment.

A big thank you goes out to the Canadian Tibetan Association of Ontario (CTAO) and the Tibet Canada Women’s Foundation for generously helping to fund housing and travelling expenses for the interns during their stay in Ottawa.

This year’s participants:

· Dawa Bhuti Ghoso was born in Tibet, attended Upper TCV (Tibetan Children’s Village) in Dharamsala, and continued her education in England and Canada, where she graduated from Glendon College, at York University, with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. Furthermore, she graduated with a Masters in Asia Pacific Policy Studies at the University of British Columbia. Dawa has been an executive member of the Canada Tibet Committee and was also on the Board of Directors for Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) Canada. Dawa Bhuti worked in the Parliament office of Ontario Senator Consiglio Di Nino for the duration of her internship.

· Tenzin Kunsang Kabar was born in India and grew up in Nepal. She attended 2 years out of 3-year Honour’s Degree program in Bachelor of Commerce at St. Joseph’s College in Darjeeling, India, and then moved to Calgary, Alberta – Canada in 1999 where she completed her Bachelor of Arts in Law & Society and Communication & Culture at the University of Calgary. Tenzin has experience and an interest in immigration settlement and multiculturalism. She also takes great interest in human rights issues and in dispute resolution studies. Tenzin Kunsang interned in the office of Brampton West MP Colleen Beaumier on the Hill.

· Tenzin Khangsar was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. He has just graduated from George Brown College where he earned an Advanced Diploma in Marketing, and was an active member of Students for a Free Tibet. Furthermore, Tenzin was the president of the Alberta Tibetan Youth Congress for two years and hopes to use his business background to work for a non-profit organization, as well as continue his work with Students for a Free Tibet and the Tibetan Community of Alberta. Tenzin Khangsar interned in the constituency office of Calgary West MP Rob Anders.

· Jigme Duntak was born and raised in Belleville, Ontario. He has just completed his second year of studies in the Bachelor of Arts program with Honours in History at the University of Ottawa, where he is actively involved with Students for a Free Tibet. Jigme was involved with the Belleville Tibetan dance group for most of his life, and enjoys playing basketball representing the Belleville Tibetan Youth Congress. He currently runs a blog called “Tibet Talk” where he posts discussions on various issues related to Tibet at http://tibettalk.blogspot.com. Jigme worked for the Honourable Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity.

*Parliamentary Friends of Tibet (PFT) is a group of Parliamentarians whose mission is to represent the views of Canadians on the issue of Tibet within the Parliament of Canada and conduct research by various means (including through, but not limited to, fact-finding missions) and to publish reports on policy issues of relevance to the Tibetan people. PFT also encourages the Chinese government to respect the fundamental human rights in Tibet and China, encourages the Canadian government to broker negotiations on Tibet between representatives of the Dalai Lama and China, promotes His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s non-violent strategies for conflict resolution and peace building, and networks with Tibet-specific parliamentary associations in other countries, including the World Parliamentary Convention on Tibet.

 

Based on report by Tenzin Lobsang Wangkhang, Canadian Parliamentary Friends of Tibet (Parlementaires amis du Tibet du Canada). Tenzin Lobsang can be contacted at pft-pat@sen.parl.gc.ca

Posted by: T.L.

"Tibetan Women – Where do they stand?"

Title: Tibetan Women – Where do they stand?
By: Tenpa Dugdak
Published: August 17th, 2005
Link: http://www.tibet.ca/en/wtnarchive/2005/8/17_5.html

“Women are not supported or encouraged by our society as much as men.”
-Tenpa Dugdak

I got an email request to put this article up for discussion so here it is. The article talks about the unequal treatment of Tibetan women in current Tibetan society, and the hypocrisy it presents.

Excerpts:
-“Tibetan women are merely seen as the ones who wash dishes or do the laundry and cooking. Don’t you think it’s right time to move from this sort of stereotype? It is a shame that we are losing the abilities of Tibetan women not because they are not competent but because they are not given a chance. This sort of thing is happening in Tibetan families all over the world, not just in Tibet. Recently I visited a Tibetan family and lucky me, momos were being prepared. Of course I was asked to stay. The husband was sitting on the sofa, sipping his tea while his wife prepared the momos. I gave her a hand and later she thanked me for helping her. The husband never got up to help.”

-“Just look around your community and I bet everyone would talk about a woman’s goodness in terms of how quiet she is or how shy she is, not because she is strong and confident. So, whose fault it that? If our society suffers from not having enough women principals, doctors, and Kalons then it is our society’s fault, not the fault of individual women.”

*I don’t think its fair for him to say that it is always completely a society’s fault if it suffers from not having enough successful women. A society or community has a part to play in supporting and allowing an individual to succeed but the individual still has his or her own responsibility and part to play in his or her own success. Of course I know that there are cases where a society is at complete fault for not having any successful or women with equal social standing as men.

-“When I was in school I loved ‘Shating‘ because there are to me back then there were lots and lots of negative things about women. But now it just disgusts me having been taught such things in school. Having said that, one Tibetan here told me that Shating is actually intended for monks and I thought that does make sense but then why teach this in school where the system is co-educational? It is psychological and emotional abuse for Tibetan women.“

*This is something I didn’t understand because I’m not familiar with what ‘Shating‘ is. If someone reading this knows what this is please explain.

-”I heard this incidence where one nunnery had invited a ‘Rinpoche‘ to their nunnery to give them a blessing and teachings. Upon his arrival he said to them, ‘ Pray hard in this life in order to be re-born as a male’. What a hypocrite!”

-“The word ‘kaimein‘ means inferior of birth. One of my friends told me that this word was used in one part of Tibet and now it has spread across the Tibetan Community in India. So, it might be a good idea next time to think twice before using this word to describe a woman, as this is not a Tibetan Buddhist word. The word ‘nigger’ is no longer used in western society unless purposely used to discriminate against black people so ‘kaimein‘ has to go as it too is clearly discriminatory against women and it is abusive”.

*I wrote in an earlier post that the word ‘Kaimein‘ or ‘Kye-men’ means inferior birth, just as it does in this excerpt, but someone commented that this isn’t the case and that it actually is an old word for the the stomach area of a woman. I’m still not 100% sure on which etymology(true meaning) is correct. Also the word ‘nigger’ is still in use in western society since we hear it in music and the media and still it is used in a non-discriminatory way, so I would say his statement is false.

Discussion:
Comment on what you think of this article by Tenpa Dugdak, do you agree with his article? Is he overgeneralizing the situation? Is Tibetan society less equal then Western society like the author states? (ex:”I really do think we can learn something about the equal treatment of woman from the west.”) Does religion create a sexist attitude towards women, like the belief of only being able to achieve enlightenment as a male? Should the word ‘kaimein‘ be completely banned or discouraged from use in the Tibetan language?

The Tibetan Stupa

The most common monument of any Tibetan scene is the Buddhist stupa, introduced to Tibet during the seventh century. The stupa originally represented represented the funeral mounds under which the shared relics of Sakyamuni’s incinerated corpse once rested, and it soon became the chief symbolic representation of Buddhism, just as the cross become the symbol of Christianity.

At first the stupa was said to symbolize the person of the departed lord, and in very early Buddhist times it became an object of faith and devotion. With the loss of historical perspective, overtime, the stupa became the symbol of Buddhahood itself, and in a later period this symbolism was made even more noticeable by the Buddhas of the four directions which were set into the stupa’s four sides. Thus it was no longer associated specifically to Shakyamuni, but rather to the very essence of Buddhahood.

The stupa’s various parts became endowed with symbolic significance over time, and despite variations in local styles and designs, it generally retained certain essential features: The dome had always remained the fundamental part since it contained the sacred objects, its essential character as a coffer or shrine for relics was also never lost. As time went on instead of relics from holy men the later stupas often contained sacred images or books, or even a few inscribed prayers instead. It also continued to be used as a tomb, since even now some contain the ashes of deceased lamas, or of the friends and relations of anyone who chose to have the monument erected. They may also sometimes contain whole bodies, presumably embalmed.

Physical symbolism:
The dome normally rests upon a five-tier platform which is said to represent the five elements of existence (earth, water, fire, air, space). The dome rests on a decorated base, usually referred to as the ‘throne’. Above the dome is a spire consisting of thirteen rings, this design was derived from the ceremonial umbrellas which used to be present on top of the earliest Indian structures. The thirteen ring are said to symbolize the thirteen stages of a would-be Buddha’s advance towards Buddhahood. The spire is topped by a small circular device known as the ‘drop’ (Tibetan: ‘thig-le‘) resting on a sun which rests on a lunar crescent. The drop is said to represent a jewel which is symbolic of enlightenment, the sun representing wisdom and the moon representing compassion or ‘heart of awakening’.

(*See above picture on the right for more Buddhist symbolism within the Stupa’s construction)

Sources: Smellgrove, David & Hugh Richardson. A Cultural History of Tibet. Boulder, Colorado: Prajna Press, 1980. p. 80-89

Medieval Tibet: A Tang Dynasty Chinese Description

Here is a very interesting description of medieval Tibetan life and manners from the records of the Tang Dynasty of China, most probably written before 640 AD:

• The country has a very cold climate, oats, barley, wheat and buckwheat grow there, there are yaks, excellent horses and dogs, sheep, and pigs.
• The capital is known as Lhasa, where there are city-walls and houses with flat roofs.
• The king and his nobles live in felt tents which are joined together as one large one.
• They sleep in unclean places and never wash or comb their hair.
• For the most part people lead a pastoral life with their flocks and herds without fixed habitation.
• They dress in felt and leather.
• They like to paint themselves with red ochre(an earthy mineral oxide, a face paint).
• The women plait(braid) their hair.
• They worship the heavens and believe in sorcerers and soothsayers.
• They do not know the seasons, and their year begins when the barley is ripe.
• Their games are chess and dice, for music they have conch-shells(spiral shell horn) and drums.
• They have no writing for official purposes, and they fix arrangements by means of knotted cords and notched tally-sticks.
• They make [water] vessels by bending round a piece of wood and fitting in a leather bottom, or they make basins of felt.
• They drink beer in their cupped hands.
• There are hundreds of thousands of men ready to bear arms, and in order to levy troops they use a golden arrow(as a symbol of authority).
• In order to give warning of enemy attacks they use fire and smoke signal.
• There is a watch-post every hundred li(a Chinese unit of distance, equivalent to about half a kilometer or one third of a mile).
• Their armor and helmets are excellent. When they put them on their whole body is covered, with holes just for the eyes.
• Their bow and their sword never leave them.
• They prize physical strength and despise old age.
• A mother salutes her son, and a son has precedence over his father. When they go out and in, it is always the young men who go first and the older men afterwards.
• Military discipline is strict. In battle it is not until the troops in front have been completely wiped out that the troops behind come up into line.
• They prize death in battle and hate to end their lives by sickness.
• Those families of whom several generations have died in battle are considered of highest rank.
• But when someone is defeated in battle or runs away, they fix a fox-tail to his head to show that is cowardly like the fox. A great crowd will assemble and he is certain to be put to death.
• According to their custom they feel great shame in this matter, and they consider that it is far better to be dead.
• As punishment, even for a small fault, they take out the eyes, or cut off the feet or the nose.
• They give floggings with leather whips just as they see fit and without and regulated number of lashes. For prisoners they dig down in the earth several dozens of feet, and they keep their prisoners there for two or three year.
• The kings and five or six of his followers are bound in friendship and they are called ‘living in common’. When the king dies, they are all killed sacrificially. His garments, his treasure, the horses he has ridden, are interred, and a large chamber is made which is covered with a mound. Trees are planted there, and it is in this place that the ancestral sacrifices are performed.

Its interesting to see the differences and similarities of Tibetans from this time period from the Tibetans of later periods, after Buddhism, or even presently. I found the custom of the son having precedence over the father very interesting since I’ve never heard of this custom before and also because it something you never hear about in East Asian customs since elders are supposed to be revered and even worshiped.

Sources: Smellgrove, David & Hugh Richardson. A Cultural History of Tibet. Boulder, Colorado: Prajna Press, 1980.

Links: http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=18197

Michael Parenti: Friendly Feudalism

About the Author:

Michael Parenti: received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. Michael Parenti has won awards from Project Censored, the Caucus for a New Political Science, the city of Santa Cruz, New Jersey Peace Action, the Social Science Research Council, the Society for Religion in Higher Education, and other organizations.

http://www.michaelparenti.org/biography.html

Essay:
I’m sure a few of you have already read this essay before since its quite popular but here is a link to the full copy:http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

Overview:
The basic message of this essay is that Buddhism is no less violent than all of the other religions of the world: Christianity, Islam, etc… Since historically Buddhism has blood on its hands just as most other religions do. Thus the notion of Buddhism being a religion that “stands out in marked contrast to the violence of other religions” is a false perception. Parenti’s essay states that Tibet was not the Shangri-la movies and western people perceive it to be before China’s invasion. He explains how it was only a “Shangri-la” for Lords and Lamas and how torture and mutilation as present in Tibetan society as a form of punishment.

“What I have tried to challenge is the Tibet myth, the Paradise Lost image of a social order that actually was a retrograde theocracy of serfdom and poverty, where a favored few lived high and mighty off the blood, sweat, and tears of the many. It was a long way from Shangri-La.”
-Michael Parenti

Key Points:
-” Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that “a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches.” Much of the wealth was accumulated “through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending.”4 Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace,” and admits to having owned slaves during his reign.”

-”Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine.9 The monastic estates also conscripted impoverished peasant children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers”.

-”In the Dalai Lama’s Tibet, torture and mutilation—including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation—were favored punishments inflicted upon runaway serfs and thieves. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.”16 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet”.

-”Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese in Tibet, after 1959 they did abolish slavery and the serfdom system of unpaid labor, and put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular education, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa”.

-”In theocratic Tibet, ruling interests manipulated the traditional culture to fortify their wealth and power. The theocracy equated rebellious thought and action with satanic influence. It propagated the general presumption of landlord superiority and peasant unworthiness. The rich were represented as deserving their good life, and the poor as deserving their mean lowly existence, all codified in teachings about the karmic residues of virtues and vices accumulated from past lives, all presented as part of God’s will.”

-”Many ordinary Tibetans want the Dalai Lama back in their country, but it appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he represented. A 1999 story in the Washington Post notes that he continues to be revered in Tibet, but:
…few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China’s land reform to the clans. Tibet’s former slaves say they, too, don’t want their former masters to return to power. “I’ve already lived that life once before,” said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, “I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave.”42

-”Kim Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk in Berkeley, California, had occasion to talk at length with more than a dozen Tibetan women who lived in the monk’s building. When she asked how they felt about returning to their homeland, the sentiment was unanimously negative. At first, Lewis thought their reluctance had to do with the Chinese occupation, but they quickly informed her otherwise. They said they were extremely grateful “not to have to marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time,” or deal with sexually transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband. The younger women “were delighted to be getting an education, wanted absolutely nothing to do with any religion, and wondered why Americans were so naive.” They recounted stories of their grandmothers’ ordeals with monks who used them as “wisdom consorts,” telling them “how much merit they were gaining by providing the ‘means to enlightenment’— after all, the Buddha had to be with a woman to reach enlightenment.”

The women interviewed by Lewis spoke bitterly about the monastery’s confiscation of their young boys in Tibet. When a boy cried for his mother, he would be told “Why do you cry for her, she gave you up – she’s just a woman.” Among the other issues was “the rampant homosexuality in the Gelugpa sect. All was not well in Shangri-la,” Lewis opines”.

Conclusion:
-”To support the Chinese overthrow of the old feudal theocracy is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in Tibet. This point is seldom understood by today’s Shangri-La adherents in the West.

The converse is also true. To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. One common complaint among Buddhist followers in the West is that Tibet’s religious culture is being undermined by the occupation. Indeed this seems to be the case. Many of the monasteries are closed, and the theocracy has passed into history. What I am questioning here is the supposedly admirable and pristinely spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. In short, we can advocate religious freedom and independence for Tibet without having to embrace the mythology of a Paradise Lost.

Finally, it should be noted that the criticism posed herein is not intended as a personal attack on the Dalai Lama. Whatever his past associations with the CIA and various reactionaries, he speaks often of peace, love, and nonviolence. And he himself really cannot be blamed for the abuses of the ancien régime, having been but 15 years old when he fled into exile. In 1994, in an interview with Melvyn Goldstein, he went on record as favoring since his youth the building of schools, “machines,” and roads in his country. He claims that he thought the corvée (forced unpaid serf labor for the lord’s benefit) and certain taxes imposed on the peasants were “extremely bad.” And he disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation.45 Furthermore, he now proposes democracy for Tibet, featuring a written constitution, a representative assembly, and other democratic essentials.46

In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an unsettling effect on the exile community. It reads in part as follows:

Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. Marxism is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with the fate of the working classes-that is the majority—as well as with the fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and it seems fair… I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.47

And more recently in 2001, while visiting California, he remarked that “Tibet, materially, is very, very backward. Spiritually it is quite rich. But spirituality can’t fill our stomachs.”48 Here is a message that should be heeded by the well-fed Buddhist proselytes in the West who wax nostalgic for Old Tibet.

What I have tried to challenge is the Tibet myth, the Paradise Lost image of a social order that actually was a retrograde theocracy of serfdom and poverty, where a favored few lived high and mighty off the blood, sweat, and tears of the many. It was a long way from Shangri-La”.