A Special Meeting, for some very special people

I watched the DVD of the Special Meeting held in Dharamsala in November 2008. The DVD was of the sixth day, the last day of the meeting (I suppose the seventh was fittingly the day of rest).

Several things struck me:
A. The Resolutions of the Meeting are really very weird. One was that China must admit policy mistakes and another was that China is to be blamed for lack of progress on dialogue. Umm yes. A hundred and ten people got together for this?

B. Samdhong Rinpoche's speech was basically a state of the union address, which got me thinking, do we even have a state of the union address? His Holiness's March 10 speech is obviously the important speech of the year; is there even a Kalon Tripa equivalent? Sure the Kashag always issues a March 10 statement too but that always seemed like an underwhelming speech to me; I can't remember ever listening to a Kashag March 10 statement. Samdhong Rinpoche's speech was actually very good. He addressed a lot of the suggestions made throughout the Special Meeting in his usual way, that is, sarcastic and skewering if you are at the wrong end. (I mean he addressed some suggestions and criticism by saying, you are wrong, and also, don't know enough!) And he talked about what the government had been up to- no debt, yay! So, I am actually a huge fan. Samdhong Rinpoche is obviously one of the brightest intellects in the Tibetan world, and I really like the no-nonsense, no-frills straightforwardness, and also even his slightly-awkward smile. So overall I am awed and admiring of him, and of course also slightly scared to death.

Samdhong Rinpoche made a distinction between the Middle Way policy and the Dialogue process; he said the dialogue process had produced no results but this did not mean that the Middle Way policy had produced no result. It is an important distinction to make, but I wished that he had elaborated on whatever result had been produced by the policy.

C. I think His Holiness was disappointed with the Special Meeting. His Holiness said, at the very beginning of His speech, that He had nothing to say about the meeting. Later during the Q&A, when a reporter asked how policy was going to change because of the meeting, His Holiness answered, "The meeting...I have nothing to say." I did think this might be a strong statement, because the people didn't have much to say at the Meeting, after all.

High Peaks Pure Earth reported a Beijing student's account of racism and discrimination against Tibetans in the Chinese capital. Qiaga Tashi Tsering and his girlfriend went to seven or eight different hotels only to be turned away from all of them because "Tibetans can't stay here."

They were turned away because they were Tibetan, because of their race. Are these isolated cases that happen because of personal prejudice (never mind that Tashi Tsering went to at least seven different hotels)? Or is this something more insidious and political and therefore much more hideous? The ugly truth is that the entire Chinese policy seems rooted in a belief that Tibetans are second-class citizens; that Tibetans are to be suspected and distrusted so long as they practice their religion, read and write their language, and hold on to their culture and identity.

Han chauvinism is plain racism. I am reminded of an earlier era in American and Indian history when a black man could not sit in the front of a bus and an Indian could not travel first class on a train alongside Englishmen.

Because people in the west take it for granted that social and political liberalization must follow social liberalization -because we see only the skycrapers of Shanghai and the skyline of Beijing and not the prisons and detention centers of Lhasa and Shigatse- we often fail to realize that in China's occupied territories, the political and social situation is in fact worse and more oppressive now than before.

We suffer from, to use Samantha Power's words, a failure of imagination. We live in a society where a parent can go to jail for slapping a child, where a policeman reads you your Miranda rights before handcuffing you and hauling you off to jail. How to realistically imagine then a society -with skyscrapers and cellphones- where a student can be expelled from school and their future ruined for simply writing "Free Tibet" on a piece of paper and a person can spend years in jail for joining a peaceful demonstration and shouting slogans?

I am reminded very much of Verbal's quote in The Usual Suspects: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." The Chinese government with its billion-strong market and reserves of American dollars, is well on its way to convincing the world that it is not a colonial power that is forcefully occupying Tibet, East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia.

In Memoriam

Return to Snow

Snowflakes pull their punches landing
On my face much as cats do, with
Stockinged feet and kind concern.

I keep close watch on my dreams
Allowing only two to grow in free-flow.
When circumstances threaten I

Self-abort the first dream-
Safely keeping just the second-
The second dream of return.

Must I accept my sentence,
This slow sentience, this
Awful partial awakening?

Must I always say grace
Before drinking from
The cup of sorrow?

The Death of Tashi Sangpo

Last weekend I heard and then learned about the death of Tashi Sangpo, a monk from Ragya Monastery in Amdo who drowned himself in the Machu river after escaping from his police captors who were interrogating him about his role in hoisting up the Tibetan national flag on the rooftop of Ragya Monastery. I differentiate between hearing and learning because when I first heard about it, it was the standard tragic story that you hear coming out of Tibet every so often. Someone's given 14 years in jail or beaten and tortured to death and you think akha and azi and then you get over it and think about something else. I thought akha and azi and then I got over it and thought about something else.

But of course his story didn't go away. Later Tendor showed me his photo. He's a 28 year old monk and he looks like a nice young man, the kind of shy, easily-embarrassed monk you have seen everywhere. What happened was this: The Tibetan national flag had been hoisted atop the monastery and the police (the PSB of course) was there to piss and shit on all the Tibetans. Tashi Sangpo claimed that he put up the flag all by himself, no one else was involved, and then he ran from the police and jumped into the Machu. We call it suicide, but is that right? He was driven to this final desperate act -by his own courage and heroism in taking all the blame and by fear and terror of the Chinese government and its scumbag agents. Tashi Sangpo drowned himself, but his death is yet another Tibetan murder committed by the Chinese Communist Colonial Government.

Earth Ox: Another Year of the Iron Fist

Another Year of the Iron Fist. That's the title of a Leader on Tibet in the Economist.
The Subtitle: If this is success, maybe China should look for an alternative.

"As Tibetans around the world this week marked the advent of the new year of the Earth Ox, many did so in a spirit of mourning rather than jubilation. The festival fell just before a bloodstained anniversary season: 50 years since the Chinese suppression of an uprising that saw the Dalai Lama, their spiritual leader, flee into exile in India with some 100,000 followers; 20 years since protests that led to the imposition of martial law in the capital, Lhasa; one year since ugly and murderous anti-Chinese riots in Lhasa that brought a sharp and lasting security backlash. The fact that so many troops are still needed, merely to prevent commemorative protests, suggests that China's Tibet policy is in need of an overhaul."*

I am thankful to the Economist for covering this, and I basically have a media crush on the Economist anyway. But I have a question. This paragraph begins so well, so strongly and knowledgeably and sympathetically, but, but, but, why is the last line of this para so ridiculously wimpy?

"China's Tibet policy is in need of an overhaul"?
Isn't that a little bit like saying the American economy needs a teeny tiny injection of cash?

*Economist, Feb28-March6, 09 (page15).

Where I finally read Paradise Lost

I have had the book forever and it's pretty famous and I was an English Lit major and so, I thought I should probably read it.

So I have read Book One so far and it's actually pretty cool. Ok so Book One is basically just a catalogue of demons, ok? And everyone in the world has already pointed out that perhaps when Milton went out to humanize Satan and to make him the adversary worthy of God, perhaps, just perhaps he went overfar and as a result Satan is now way Cooler Than God.

Part of it is that God hasn't entered the picture yet. Now Milton is probably working the scenes a little bit, laying the groundwork and making us anticipate and salivate, so when God draws up in his limo, his entrance will be all the more brilliant, but meanwhile Satan is working the room like no other and giving us his version of the events so that God comes off a bit Machiavellian and you actually start to feel a bit sorry for Satan.

You see, Satan charges God with instigating the rebellion:
"But He who reigns Monarch in Heav'n...His Regal State Put forth at full but still His strength concealed, Which tempted our attempt and wrought our fall." Book One, Ln 637-642.

Sort of begs the question:
Did God create Hell as a sort of boundary maintenance mechanism?
After all, what is Heaven without Hell?

Book One is thus Satan as underdog, as victimised victim, all proud and offended dignity in defeat, and at this point I am all for him and "his dark designs." Also he has some great lines: "The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!"

Milton's proposed reason for writing the epic is to "justify the ways of God to men." So the question is, did Satan run away from under his hands? But possibly I should read more before answering this.

After Book One, I now think of Satan and his rebels, the denizens of hell, as a sort of diaspora community. Hell is nothing more than exile from Heaven, an exile from which they cannot return. So how do you not feel bad for Satan? At least, for us from Dharamsala, return is still possible.

Little Golden Statues

The Oscars yesterday were...not very funny. In fact, flat almost.

When I found Hugh Jackman of the blisteringly hot Wolverine was the host, I did feel considerable trepidation. Hugh Jackman is seriously goodlooking and not British - how could he be funny? Perhaps Oscar was thinking of Grant or Laurie?

Here are my morning-after thoughts. Basically, Oscar, if you want to be a musical and still entertain, you have to be Made In Bollywood. And if you want to be goodlooking and funny, you can't just be a Hugh, you also have to be funny.

At least Slumdog and Kate Winslet won. Small mercies.