“Friendly Fuedalism”
This is a good article, and I thought I’d comment, so our friends won’t think we are being biased.
I’ve said before that we shouldn’t condemn a society for it’s feudal past because just about every country or every part of the world has a feudal past, and they usually are not very nice. I’m not making any justifications for any of it, though the bigger issue in the 21st century is about cultural genocide and self determination. I have known about serfs [slaves] in Tibet, so it’s not like I’m blind to it. However, this seems to be the excuse for the justification for invasion of Tibet. No matter what a countries social issues are doesn’t give another country the right to invade. I keep hearing that China invaded because of Tibet’s old feudal system, that’s not up to China to invade it, and change it. It’s up to the people to be educated enough to change it and that comes with time and influence.
Currently, the Tibetan government in exile is modernized, and democratic. The people in Tibet are calling for the Dalai Lamas return, and he has already said that it will be up to the people if they want the system of the Lama after he is gone. It should be left up to the people, it doesn’t have to be the old feudal system, but he can still be a “spiritual” teacher. Other countries have emperors, kings and queens who have modernized as well, why not Tibet. I’m not suggesting that he is a king, only that the system can be fixed.
China keeps pointing out the old system of slaves, yet forgetting about the cultural genocide of Tibet, all while China’s own history consisted of slaves, eunuchs and outcasts. Some eunuchs where made by parents wanting their child to work for the emperor, and some where forced castration for slaves, and some volunteered to be eunuchs. As for the torture, we can only go by interviewed people who have gone through those ordeals. I know Buddhist teaching forbids harming any sentient, however I know humans have human behavior susceptible for doing harm, for some this is a struggle, and other’s it comes easy. I personally find harming anything deplorable and against Buddhist teaching, and I’m not in some Shangri-la dilemma, this is my truth.
I’m an obvious pro-Tibet supporter, but that doesn’t mean I am anti-Chinese, nor does it mean I wish for the old feudal system of Tibet to return, which was wrong. I’ve already mentioned that the government in exile has modernized their political system. As Michael Parenti mentioned the Dalai Lama was young and shouldn’t be blamed for what was done in the old feudal system.
Self-determination should be left up to the Tibetan people, who are very different than Chinese culture. Tibet’s future shouldn’t be up to China in this 21st century, and as this article say’s China has created problems in Tibet.
They say that westerners are blind by this Hollywood “Shangri-La.” I’ve never seen the movie, and I’m not sure what Shangri-La means. I still see what’s left of the beauty of Tibet, that doesn’t mean the old feudal system, but I have seen images of old pictures of Tibetan people with big happy smiles before China had invaded, and today I only see a lot of sad faces. The countryside is being slowly destroyed by the CCG, not the Tibetan people, Laogai camps are dotted around Tibet, and I think a lot of what is happening is a lot of built up anger.
Friendly Fuedalism – The Tibet Myth [read more]
To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is seldom understood by today’s Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is also true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. “To idealize them,” notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), “is to deny them their humanity.”Read the rebuttal to Michael Parenti: A Lie Repeated: The Far Left’s Flawed History of Tibet
“A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.”
-Chairman Mao
Free Tibet in Chinese. 自由西藏 Show solidarity for the Tibet an cause of freedom from oppression, forced abortions, lose of religion and cultural practices. tibet t-shirts
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Don’t forget that Buddhism is different from country to country. When Buddhism came to other parts of the world Buddhism was absorbed into various cultures, so there are many different sects. As I understand Buddhism teaches us to do no harm, and those are the basic practices. When you put humans and politics into this it can become crazy. Many Buddhists don’t get involved in politics, and those that do end up having problems within their countries politics. Personally, and unfortunately in this day and age, I feel Buddhists should get involved in politics because other religious institutions do, and it creates an imbalance in the political system of America.
I have a hard time believing the claims of taking out eyes and torturing some one so bad that they can’t do their work, but it’s plausible. Though, I doubt they are the teachings of Buddha, though I’m not an expert on Buddhist teachings. I do know that there are “god” images in Tibetan Buddhism, but I understand them to represent the spirit within all of us, and other symbols are only symbolic to the practice. Perhaps Shangri-La is “American” Tibetan Buddhist thinking because even in America Buddhism changed to suit the Western culture and that may be the “Shangri-la” they know, and when we visit Tibet we’re given the Chinese view.
Central Government’s Propaganda Department
http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/article.php?id=423
History doesn’t have anything to do with today’s practices. We also have to understand that other cultures may not have viewed slavery as wrong. Some cultures today still practice things that Westerners would think disturbing, but within that culture it’s normal. Some people eat dogs and cats and use their fur on items that come to America, and I find that disturbing, but to those people it’s part of their way.
The 1.2million Tibetan’s and the statistics are taken from the “tar” region of Tibet, so the numbers from what I understand do not include the numbers from the claimed regions of U’sang, Amado and Kham where the Chinese have migrated to. Chinese statistics as I understand only counted the “tar” region There are also claims of forced abortion on the Tibetan’s.
Chinese policy on the Tibetan people is two child, not three.
http://www.freetibet.org/info/facts/fact6.html
He spoke about karma, and I understand karma as he mentioned, however, you can still change karma here and now. Buddhism also has the belief that if you harm others you will create bad karma on yourself, so if those monks and lamas did do harm on other’s they have created bad karma for themselves. They’ll have what’s coming to them. When Indo-Buddhism came to Tibet from India it absorbed into the indigenous belief system of Bonpo, which uses a form of black and white shamanism. The black Bonpo is the darker side, and those “gods” had to submit to Buddhism, so they tried to do away with the darker side of Bonpo. It’s plausible some of the Tibetan people still practice it, as many other cultures still practice their own systems outside of Buddhism. The Dalai Lama has also told the Tibetan people not to riot, and older monks tried to calm down the younger monks, he doesn’t condone the violence, but he’s also said that some times wars are necessary if the situation is extreme. Those are his views, and as a leader of the Tibetan people he has to be strong, otherwise the whole of Tibet, and its people can be exterminated. I don’t blame them for rioting and releasing that long held internal anger.
The citations are all after 1959, and I looked at the names of the authors with only a few having a Tibetan names, so I’m a bit uneasy about taking the torture claims verbatim because I understand that the communist government destroyed much of the Tibet’s library’s and history. They could also be isolated incidences. Stories can be created to suit the needs of the oppressors, especially after 1959, but I suppose a lot of other countries create stories as well in order to support their claims. I can’t help but wonder if some of these claims were created to help support the communist government with it’s own peoples views and to fill in the spaces of information they destroyed, much like Hitler did when he tried to create a story of German supremacy.
I know that there were other’s who have gone and lived in Tibet long before the communists invaded, and I have not heard of any story’s like these from earlier visitors to Tibet or from those who chose to live in Tibet and married Tibetan people.
Monks are human beings and they will fall into traps of egoism and greed, and those are things we all need to watch out for.
The problem is not Buddhism; the humans create these problems. Other faiths have their problems through out history because of the people, not the faith. The difference with Buddhism is that its basic practice tells us to do no harm on any sentient, and this is what I appreciate about Buddhism. Most Buddhists are vegetarian, however many of them seem to be straying from that, and I’ve read that half of Buddhist in eastern countries are not vegetarian, and in American it’s more than half that do not practice vegetarianism. So, I’m saying it’s not the problem with the teachings; it’s the problem with the people going astray from the teachings and that is the same in any other faith when humans are involved. They need to reach a higher consciousness to over come human desires as Buddha did.
What about Bell or Teichmann and other’s who have visited and lived in Tibet before the Chinese invasion in 1949, what have they said about these claims, and if they didn’t say anything, what does that mean?