The Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who hasn’t been seen since he disappeared into Chinese custody 17 years ago, turns 23 today. We found out today that he is “safe” in mainland China. This is a change from two years ago, when it was reported in China Daily that “he and his family are now living a good life as ordinary citizens in Tibet”.
Here’s a song to his health, or at least to his continued existence (via High Peaks Pure Earth). The song is by a Tibetan singer from Kham called Sonam Tashi. Also on High Peaks Pure Earth, posted some time ago, are two poems by Woeser about the Panchen Lama.
So what can we do about the Panchen Lama?
We could sign the online petition, which doesn’t feel like much. We could call the Chinese embassy and ask where he is. But we know that such actions will have no effect whatsoever. Such actions are excuses for actions, “actions” that we take when we don’t know what to do but we have to do something. With the Panchen Lama, we are utterly helpless. In this tragic situation, all we can do is pray that he will be all right.
Apparently the Dalai Lama, not content with having destroyed our hopes for independence, has set his sights on destroying the Uighurs’ too. Last Saturday, as part of a Buddhist teaching in Long Beach, California, he met with an Uighur leader, Ms Rebiya Kadeer, and talked with her about the Middle Way Approach. The press release on his website declares that the Uighurs now “[understand] the significance of the Middle Way and support it”. This press conference further states that:
He said that the Chinese United Front authorities accuse His Holiness with conspiring with people like Ms. Kadeer, but in reality he said that their contact had the Uyghur adopt such a position [emphasis added].
I have difficulty understanding this. The Middle Way Approach no longer has any practical significance. The Dalai Lama has said as much, in this video clip (jump to 2:02), and elsewhere:
He ”publicly [accepts] the failure of our approach”; the Middle Way Approach “is considered failed”. There is no way these words might be misunderstood.
So even though the Dalai Lama has accepted the failure of the Middle Way Approach, he just cannot seem to stop promoting it. This behaviour seems to arise out of an underlying confusion between the religious meaning of the Middle Way Approach and the political meaning of it.
His Holiness is now no longer acting as the political leader of the Tibetan people. He is no longer even nominally accountable for these policy decisions he is making (although he never has been, so perhaps this is not such a great change). He is supposedly acting purely as a religious and spiritual leader.
The statement to the Uighurs makes slightly more sense when viewed in a religious light. A religious subtext undercuts the whole of the press release. It is, after all, a press release about a religious ceremony – the Yamantaka initiation – and His Holiness’ views on ethics and peace. The reference to the Middle Way is the anomaly, a political sore thumb that sticks out from all the dharma peace-love mumbo-jumbo. Here, surrounded by all of this Buddhism, it is implicitly framed in religious terms (and naturally so: its inspiration, as we all know, came from the Buddhist concept of the Middle Path).
The Dalai Lama, merely by his status as Buddhist guru, propagates the Middle Way Approach as an ethical-religious code as well as a means of achieving a political goal. As a political means, it is clear that it has outlived its usefulness (if ever it was useful). However, as an ethical code, it will always remain pertinent. Herein lies the problem: the Middle Way as an ethical doctrine has been confused with the Middle Way as a political policy, when in reality they must be considered distinctly.
I suspect that His Holiness – and most of the rest of us who follow him so blindly – has been guilty of this kind of confused thinking. He is invested in the Middle Way politically, but more importantly, he is invested in it spiritually, and he cannot possibly overcome this (and we wouldn’t want him to). This is why he must continue to promote the Middle Way Approach despite having admitted its failure.
But when he attempts to foist our failed policy on the Uighurs, it is a political policy that he is urging. He is aware of this. He did not think he was advocating an ethical position rather than a political one. On the surface, at least, he was aware of this; perhaps deeper down, not so much.
None of this speculation yields a satisfying reason for the Dalai Lama’s self-contradictory behaviour. The most frustrating part of the whole affair is that the Dalai Lama continues to make such statements after having given up political power. He is responsible for his actions, but unfortunately, he is not accountable for them. Until we can create a truly democratic government in exile that actually controls policy matters, we will be subject to the increasingly irrational whims of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
I have been to this lake, lake Kokonor, the subject of this poem by Adong Paldothar. Reading his poetry affects me deeply, for it shows us how important the Tibetan land is, and our unfortunate ignorance of it.
This naturalistic bond has been in the core of my existence as long as I can remember. As a little boy studying at TCV, we were shown images of beautiful Tibet and told “there, that is your fatherland”. We come from an utterly unique landscape. There is nowhere else in the world that looks like it. For me, this is one of our greatest claims to an independent identity. This is one of the few things that sets Tibetans apart from everyone else: our high mountainous homeland.
Woeser quotes a young man in exile seeing Tibetan soil for the first time (via Tenzing Rigdol’s installation last year, “Our Land, Our People”): “The karmaless me who was born in exile and who had never seen the soil of his homeland, finally got to see it today”. Here the connection to the land is expressed in religious terms.
In Adong Paldothar’s poem, the land, and Tso Ngon in particular, becomes a character. She is “an orphaned girl”, “the queen who destroys 10,000”. Except now she is being destroyed. And we must all beg her forgiveness.
The poem ends thus:
I still feel a burst of searing pain caused by
The spilling of your diluted salty water
over the wound of myself and history
The salty water of the lake brings back the pain of our collective Tibetan wound. The land brings us back to ourselves. In Tibet and in exile, where we are all in danger of losing our sense of Tibetan-ness, of our unique identity, the land will remind us of who we are. As long as we have the glorious Tibetan land to anchor us, we will know who we are.
Except today, Tso Ngon looks like this:
and this:
In these pictures, “who we are” has been reduced to a mere display for Chinese tourists. Tibetan-ness has become a mere commodity to be bought and sold with no respect for the fact that Tibetans are people. And Tso Ngon is no more than a picturesque backdrop.
In a world where money is everything, this is understandable, but no less outrageous. The beautiful dancing ladies in chupas must dance to stay alive. Out here, whether in exile or in some faceless Chinese metropolis, we have to make do with looking on forlornly and begging forgiveness.
Adong Paldothar is lamenting the fact that he has given himself over to “selfishness and distractions in the noisy city’s sounds”. Almost all of us are guilty of this kind of escapism. And we crave forgiveness for having turned our backs on our land, for having turned our backs on ourselves.
1. The chief power of self-immolation does not lie in the international outpouring of empathy and support aroused by this painful spectacle. International response to these self-immolations has been dishearteningly timid.
2. But we should not be disheartened, for Tibet’s independence depends not on the world’s reactions but on Tibetan action.
3. The act of self-immolation is a direct challenge to China’s colonial and totalitarian presence in Tibet. Self-immolation reclaims Tibetan agency in a way that protests, hunger strikes, and “mass incidents” cannot. It is the permanent reclamation of life from the control of the Chinese government.
4. After self-immolation, everything will be different in Tibet.
1. The Chinese government is guilty of terrorism, and it knows it; but it tries to hide this fact from the world. Hence its allegations that self-immolation is “terrorism in disguise”.
2. Self-immolation is not “terrorism in disguise”; it is an outgrowth of terrorism - the terrorism of the Chinese state.
3. The terrorism of the Chinese state: systematic violence that deprives Tibetans of their rights, both as individuals and as a nation.
4. The terrifying sight of men and women engulfed in flames really exposes Chinese terrorism, for the fire that consumes these martyrs is a fire kindled in Beijing.
5. The acrid smell of burnt flesh on the plateau will not dissipate. The Chinese regime has been branded as the gang of criminals it actually is.
This is the mandatory first post on bulletprooflama, my blog about Tibet.
At this tender stage, I only have a vague idea of what direction this endeavour will take. A few pointers, as much for my own benefit as for my potential reader’s:
1. I will write about Tibet, but also occasionally about other subjects that interest me.
2. As much as possible, my writing will be scathing, irreverent, and fresh. Stating this at the outset might seem overly optimistic and more than a little pompous. Yet over and over again, I find myself frustrated by the staid conventionalism of Tibet writing. The few writers we have are almost all content to mindlessly repeat Orientalistic platitudes about Tibet. In this situation, I have come to the conclusion that it is my duty to try to offer a fresh perspective.
3. All thinking, critical Tibetans follow in the footsteps of Jamyang Norbu. His blog (jamyangbnorbu.com) is one of the few places we can find genuinely interesting and thought-provoking writing. His work is scathing, irreverent, and fresh. In this, he has laid the ground for a blog like mine.
4. I believe that independence for Tibet is the goal we must strive for. It is the only honest option we are faced with, and it is the only hopeful one too.
5. Ultimately, this is my voice. My writing and opinions are my own.
