| From: | Giorgio Menon <giorgio.menon(at)pd.infn.it> |
|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:51:24 +0100 |
| Subject: | Re: [Fwd: [WDDM] Tibet and buddhism] |
Hello!
Here I am forwarding below for your consideration a view on Tibet from
an angle that has been so far completely missing from your reporting,
and most probably from reporting of most other media around here.
I myself am not sure where the truth is (i.e., where the majority of
Tibetans really stands), and have no way to verify competing claims.
Chinese government is definitely very stupid when it managed to drive
the people of Tibet to riots. Tibetans definitely deserve any degree
of autonomy or independence they want to have.
However, it would be very interesting to know what is the real
situation of various groups of Tibetans. Is the life of majority of
them (in the light of claims below of a large number of them being
enslaved or in serfdom under the old theocratic rule of Dalai Lama)
really worse than it was then?
Do you have recourses to do a more thorough research? Who is for
example feeding at present the tens of thousand of absolutely
unproductive monks in the monasteries of Tibet, who do not contribute
anything useful to the society. The Chinese communists must surely
consider them mere economic parasites, but they have nevertheless not
closed the monasteries, and allowed them to function. I suspect that
they even feed them and maintain their monasteries (definitely also as
tourist attractions) because these monasteries (hopefully) lost their
slaves and serfs who fed them in old times. Isn't that an indication
that they respect the Tibetan tradition at least a little bit?
Can you ask Dalai Lama or some other officials from his government in
exile during your next interview with them what is their official
position toward the past slavery, and what are their plans for the
future in this respect if they are allowed to return to rule the
Tibet. Will they also renew this old cultural tradition of slavery?
Isn't there some (a lot of) hypocrisy in the North American media? Is
there for example proportionality between the amount of time devoted
to reporting on the hardship of Iraqis, hundreds of thousands of whom
were killed in the past five years for no good reason due to the
actions of our closest ally, and reporting on Tibet? Should we not at
first put order in our own house? For example, we have six fresh
prisoners of conscience in Canada, see
http://understory.ran.org/2008/03/20/indigenous-prisoners-of-conscience/
. At least Globe and Mail wrote about it today, but I have not yet
noticed anything about it from the CBC (for which I have otherwise
high respect).
Sincerely,
Miroslav Kolar
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [WDDM] Tibet and buddhism
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:54:33 +0100
From: Giorgio Menon <giorgio.menon(at)pd.infn.it>
To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Recent riots in Lhasa has made people think that Chinese are far worse
than Tibet's former ruler: buddhist monks and their chief, the Dalai
Lama.
"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.” 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.
Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In
1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was
under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions
they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon
described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about
that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed
that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own
dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the
people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and
priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and
stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people.
As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far
cry from the romanticized Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by
Buddhism’s western proselytes.
The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The
poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles
upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence
they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic
atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their
next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a
reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
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.”
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
http://www.jstor.org/view/03057410/ap020074/02a00080/0
Before liberation Tibet was hell on earth where labouring people
suffered for centuries under the darkest and most reactonary
serfdom...the serfs were treated as chattels and were in conditions of
hereditary servitude.
Physical mutilations did occur, and possibly even the burying of
children. Evidence was found by Sir Charles Bell (Tibet Past and
Present, 1929). He reported that a stupa being used as a boundary
marker between Tibet and Bhutan contained an urn which houses the
blood and bodies of an 8-year-old girl and boy who had been slain for
the purpose (pg 80)
'Slaves were sometimes stolen, when small children, from their
parents. Or the father and mother, being too poor to support their
child, would sell it to a man, who paid them _sho-ring_, "price of
mother's milk," brought up the child and kept it, or sold it, as a
slave. These children come mostly from south-eastern Tibet and the
territories of the wild tribes who dwell between Tibet and Assam.'
[Bell24]
The Dalai Lama and his supporters including groups such as Amnesty
International have yet to make a clean recognition of the fact of
slavery in Tibet. We fear that if he and his followers returned to
power, they would restore slave practices in the guise of Buddhist
mumbo-jumbo.
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/faq/tibet.html
Anna Louise Strong :"When the serfs stood up in Tibet"
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/countries/china/whenserfsstoodupintibet.pdf
You might then think that buddhism in Mongolia is somewhat different
from Tibet. Not so.
strong monastic corporations preserved
the local system of social and economic
redistribution for centuries. In addition
the monasteries held a monopoly
on education. In short, any significant
event in the life of a Mongolian always
involved the presence of a lama.
At the beginning of the twentieth century,
Outer Mongolia was associated
with the head of its Buddhist sangha and
Shabinar, Bogdo-Gegen. The eighth
Bogdo-Gegen, Jebtsundamba Khutagt,
the Living Buddha, was a charismatic
political leader, who was highly popular
with the Mongols. As a result of the
national revolution against the Qing rule
in 1911 he became the first and last theocratic
monarch of Mongolia.
In 1924 he died with syphilis. Too much praying maybe? Wrong Mandala?
http://www.iias.nl/iiasn/31/IIASN31_24.pdf
From the shamans' viewpoint buddhism has been utterly cruel.
I've had the chance to directly speak to one of them (she recently
passed away) and she confirmed all the stories i read and i'm telling
you.
Many people were forced to serve as bondsmen to the monasteries. Bogdo
Gegen had 22,000 monks and 28,000 bondsmen. There were many complaints
of children being abused by monks. The monks themselves spread
syphilis all over the countryside.
_*Shamans were killed, murdered, burnt with dog droppings, and
subjected to many fines paid in livestock. Between the 1860’s and
1904, there were three mass burnings at campfires around Horchin, at
which it was said, “The ones who have real powers will emerge
unscathed, but the remainders shall die.”*_
http://www.tengerism.org/lamaism.html
What concerns me is using recent riots in Lhasa as proof of how evil
the Chinese government is compared to peaceful buddhism that managed
to make Tibetans happy for centuries. Indecent lies! Buddhism is no
better than any other monoteistic religion, and has been used for
centuries to ensure economical advantages to the elites via the
buddhist doctrine and buddhist tortures.
Regards
Giorgio
PS I'm NOT a pro China activist.....