Tibetan Liberation, Buddhism, and Cultural Humility
Image from Jan Reurink on Flickr
With an average altitude of 16,000 ft, Tibet is known as the "Roof of the World" with striking landscapes, plateaus, and mountains. Explorers and travelers boast of the magic and sacredness there, and the majestic monasteries preserving ancient traditions. But are many aware of the political and violent tragedies happening to the people and cultures of this region?
That is the Tibet I am trying to write about: not the Tibet of the Western imagination — the sunlit highlands of the Himalayas, bathed in Hollywood splendor — but the dark Tibet, where people are suffering; where people are traumatized and confused; where people are struggling to hold on to their ideals; where people go to Chinese prisons; and where 164 Tibetans have burned themselves to death in protest.
- Tibetan writer and activist Jamyang Norbu
Despite minimal US media coverage on the Tibetan independence movement, a recent Guardian and Intercept article reported on the latest of oppressive actions taken by the Chinese government on Tibetans:
Chinese authorities have been gathering DNA samples across Tibet, including from kindergarten children without the apparent consent of their parents, Human Rights Watch has said. In a new report released on Monday, the rights organization claimed new evidence showing a systematic DNA collection drive for entire populations across Tibet as part of a “crime detection” drive. - The Guardian
Technically, this isn't surprising, given China's politics and the long-standing struggle for Tibetan freedom starting when Chinese troops occupied Tibet in the 50s. Here is a excerpt from a 1998 Washington Post article covering the tragedies of cultural genocide inflicted on Tibetans by the Chinese government:
After the flight of the Dalai Lama, Mao crushed Tibet with a vengeance. Institutions of government and education were systematically destroyed; the Buddhist religion was labeled a "disease to be eradicated"; nearly 1.2 million out of about 6 million died through armed conflict and famine; large numbers of Tibetan children were forcibly taken from their families and sent to Chinese orphanages for "reeducation." Research suggests that close to 1 million Tibetans tried to escape to India, Nepal, Bhutan or other regions of their country, but given the vast distances, lack of food in mountainous terrain and military invasion, most either surrendered to the Chinese or died in flight.
According to a New York Times article, China has also used Tibet as a dumping ground for nuclear waste where Tibetans, including children living near research sites and uranium mines, have died from cancer and radioactive poisoning.
A few years ago, I came across a sobering article from The Sun Magazine, one of my favorite independent platforms that has no ads and uses art, photography, poetry and socially conscious writing to explore the depths of the human condition. The article featured an interview with Tibetan writer and activist Jamyang Norbu, who joined the Tibetan guerrillas at age 19 to help fight the Chinese with the short-lived assistance of the CIA, who cared more about destabilizing communist governments than actually fighting for Tibetan independence. In the interview, he talks about current suppression tactics taking place in Tibet.
There are cameras and checkpoints at the temples to monitor who comes to pray, and the monasteries have been turned into reeducation camps where monks must study Communist Party ideology instead of Buddhism. The Tibetan language is being replaced by Chinese in schools, and the brightest Tibetan children are sent to boarding schools in China, where they are immersed in Chinese culture. There’s not much Tibetans can do about this, because if you don’t speak Chinese, you can’t find work or function in Tibetan society. The younger generation there now speak better Chinese than they do Tibetan. Many young Tibetans cannot read or write their native tongue.
There has been a lot in the Western media about the plight of the Uyghurs [a mostly Muslim ethnic minority — Ed.] in Xinjiang, but the situation in Tibet is just as bad. In fact, the Communist Party secretary responsible for the surveillance system that oppresses the Uyghurs was originally the party secretary of Tibet. He developed and tested his surveillance strategies there.
Tibetans have no freedom of movement. There are cameras with facial-recognition software everywhere. People’s phone communications are monitored. In Lhasa there are checkpoints every few hundred yards where Tibetans must show their papers and are subject to searches. But Chinese tourists who visit Lhasa can move around freely, so they think Tibet is a wonderful place. In the last decade many Tibetans trekked across the icy Nangpa La pass into Nepal, but now the border is monitored by satellites and drones, and some caught trying to escape have been shot. If Tibetan refugees do manage to cross, the Nepali government has signed an agreement with China to hand them over to the Chinese authorities.
Genocide in the 20th Century: Massacres in Tibet: 1966-76, Yeshe Choesang, Tibet Post
Source – The Tibet post
Norbu shared that when he lived in Dharamsala, his Western friends would tell him that the destruction in Tibet was very tragic, but the Chinese invasion had also served the wonderful purpose of bringing the dharma to the West. They’d recite this old prophecy: “When the iron bird flies, the dharma will come to the West.”
This Western consumerist/New Age mindset that perceives all things Tibetan as inherently mystical limits us from seeing Tibet in all its human complexity. In my own growing interest in Buddhism and the exploration of my own spirituality over the past 8 years, I began to notice for myself how people would seek spiritual enlightenment through the context of their own needs and self-interests. Yet the more I open up to my own spirituality, the more I feel interested in the larger collective we're all a part of that operate within the influence of geo-political, social, and economic forces.
A few years back, I spent my 25th birthday at the Land of the Medicine Buddha in Soquel, CA, where I met a Tibetan man who talked about how he fled to Dharamshala, India to flee from the Chinese in the 70s, leaving his family behind (at least the ones that survived). With abundant amounts of monasteries and spiritual centers there, he would meet many Westerners who would come into these Tibetan Buddhist centers seeking spiritual resolve, pounding the walls and floors as they screamed of heartbreak, and how this feeling would bring thoughts of suicide. "Something is wrong with your heart? You need to go to the doctor!" he would yell at them. When he found out the word "heartbreak" was more figurative and not literal, he felt shocked that people could have such minor tragedies compared to the traumas of war, genocide, and loss of sovereignty. When he expressed his concern to an American man that people cared more about the idea of Tibetan Buddhism than actual Tibetans, the man told him that it wasn't his problem. The irony is that one of the core aspects of Buddhism is samsara, which refers to the cycle of suffering that all living beings are bound to, not just the cycles of your own individual suffering.
At this point in my life journey, I feel less righteous and more accepting of these realities. Postmodernism teaches us that we see the world from where we stand. We construct reality from our own lived experiences and unique environmental contexts, which challenges the notion that there is one way of looking at things, or that others should understand how we see the world, no matter how politically correct or moralistic it is to do so. This is why cultural humility seems to be crucial for our times, as so much of reality includes yet transcends our own narratives and stories. How do we stay open to learning and growing? With all the research I've done for this blog, I find myself deeply perplexed by Chinese politics and the complex and multi-layered history of Tibet and China. There's so much more to the picture than what I can paint here in this blog.
Despite my own and Norbu's criticisms of the Western world, I wonder about the attachments we have to the sense of injustice we feel about cultural appropriation from the views of traditional Tibetan Buddhism. I've heard one time that the essence of practicing Buddhism is to "be like a house with nothing to rob." The Buddha emphasized the joy and generosity of giving: Dāna. At its most basic level, dāna means giving freely without expecting anything in return. The act of giving is purely out of compassion or goodwill, or the desire for someone else’s well-being. Tricycle, an independent, nonsectarian Buddhist quarterly, discusses Tibetan views of dāna:
The Buddha taught: “If you knew as I know the benefit of generosity, you would not let an opportunity go by without sharing.” The cultivation of dana offers the possibility of purifying and transforming greed, clinging, and self-centeredness, as well as the fear that is linked to these energies of attachment. Dana practice is the foundation of Buddhist spiritual development. Generosity is the ground of compassion; it is a prerequisite to the realization of liberation.
These core teachings of Buddhism help challenge me to move beyond blaming the Western world for their ignorance. And that these wisdom teachings are meant to be shared with all, but that we should also give appropriate acknowledgement and support to the cultures that brought us these traditions, especially when they're being destroyed.
Yet Norbu also added an interesting perspective. The Western idolization of everything "traditional" has skewed Tibetans' view of themselves.
The Western idealization of the old Tibet has encouraged Tibetans to embrace traditional conservative thinking while rejecting critical thought. The Tibetan community-in-exile should have been developing democratic institutions and a democratic vision, but instead our society has become more conservative and more about the worship of the Dalai Lama. We have become a society without discussion, because whatever the Dalai Lama says is the final word. I have even had some Westerners tell me that Tibetans don’t need democracy because it’s so much better to be governed by a “philosopher king,” like the Dalai Lama.
Norbu regularly criticized the Dalai Lama, the most prominent leader of Tibet, for being complacent in the face of the destruction of Tibetan sovereignty by the Chinese government, and not doing enough to empower the Tibetans to democratically organize. Norbu sees Tibet's future as not a "Buddhist fantasy-land", but a modern democracy. He asserted that if Buddha endorsed any form of government, it would be democracy. He adds:
The Chinese empire is fragile, because it is built upon oppression. In a democracy there are outlets through which people can express their frustrations, and injustice, to some extent, can be addressed. But in China there is no outlet. If the oppression is too great, it may all come apart. If the empire were to break up, I think democracy might be possible in the smaller entities that would remain. In fact, each Chinese province is the size of a European country, and different regions originally had their own languages and cultures. I could envision a democratic Sichuan or a democratic Guangdong. I’m not the only one saying this. There are Chinese dissidents and writers like Liao Yiwu who have called for the empire to be broken up.
Last year, I attended a freedom rally where we occupied the entrance of City Hall in San Francisco and heard from doctors, nurses, and journalists who were all censored and fired for speaking up about COVID vaccines and mandates. I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout; a few hundred people from all ages, races, and political identities joined together on this issue. On the other side of the street, there were about 10 people holding up signs for Tibetan freedom. I tried to get some of the freedom rally organizers to allow them to speak for a few minutes. Yet they were hardly noticed and ended up leaving after a few hours. I felt so sad about this, and it disturbed me for days.
Similar to when I protested the rollout of tens of thousands of satellites at SpaceX Headquarters in Los Angeles, the only positive outcome was that likeminds were able to connect with each other about an important issue. We played music together and felt like we were doing something meaningful despite the fact that we all felt like small ants to these big tech corporations. Did Elon Musk care that we were out there? No. Did we get any media coverage? Hardly at all. Did any sufficient change emerge out of our protest efforts? Maybe.
So I question the use of protest by itself to raise awareness about many global challenges we face, but especially the horrendous occurences of human rights abuses in Tibet. And maybe it's inquiring into how we hold protests, where we do things beyond just standing there shouting with signs. How do we uplevel our activism so we begin to honor the intersectionality of these challenges that all speak to the need for democracy and freedom in an oppressive system?
We're not hearing much of this issue for various reasons. Many people are buying into Chinese propaganda that the Tibetans want to be ruled by China. It doesn't really benefit the US to flood the media systems about it, especially with the tenuous nature of US-China relations.
And much of the liberal party that supposedly stands for democracy and equality has been so focused on white supremacy and woke culture, that this issue doesn't align with the confirmation bias that supremacy and colonialism only exists in "white spaces."
With so much of media attention being on the COVID, Israel-Palestine, and Russia-Ukraine crisis, I wonder who is listening to the suffering of Tibetans and the concerning evolution of oppressive Chinese politics.
Photo from Pexels
