Violencia y budismo fuera del tibet
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In Sri Lanka
there is a legendary and almost sacred recorded history about the triumphant
battles waged by Buddhist kings of yore
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During the
twentieth century, Buddhists clashed violently with each other and with non-Buddhists
in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, India, and elsewhere
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In South
Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the
Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and
clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control
of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2
million, its millions of dollars worth of property, and the privilege of
appointing 1,700 monks to various offices. The brawls damaged the main Buddhist
sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public
appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took
control, “it would use worshippers’ donations for luxurious houses and
expensive cars” (Kyong-Hwa Seok, "Korean Monk Gangs Battle for Temple
Turf," San Francisco Examiner, 3 December 1998)
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For example,
in Nagano, Japan, at Zenkoji,
the prestigious complex of temples that has hosted Buddhist sects for more than
1,400 years, “a nasty battle” arose between Komatsu the chief priest and the
Tacchu, a group of temples nominally under the chief priest's sway. The Tacchu
monks accused Komatsu of selling writings and drawings under the temple's name
for his own gain. They also were appalled by the frequency with which he was seen
in the company of women. Komatsu in turn sought to isolate and punish monks who
were critical of his leadership. The conflict lasted some five years and made
it into the courts. 8Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2006)
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In 1998 the
U.S. State Department listed thirty of the world’s most violent and dangerous
extremist groups. Over half of them were religious, specifically Muslim,
Jewish, and Buddhist
Tibetan Buddism (historia)
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In the
thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was
to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several
centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the
Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of
Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet.
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His two
previous lama “incarnations” were then retroactively recognized as his
predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama into the 3rd Dalai Lama.
This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his
sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with
his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic
life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways
deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For these transgressions he was
murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized divine
status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high priests or other courtiers
(Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New
Tibet (Monthly Review Press, 1964), 119, 123; and Melvyn C.
Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai
Lama (University of California Press, 1995), 6-16)
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In 1660, the
5th Dalai Lama was faced with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of
the rival Kagyu sect with its high lama known as the Karmapa. The 5th Dalai
Lama called for harsh retribution against the rebels, directing the Mongol army
to obliterate the male and female lines, and the offspring too “like eggs
smashed against rocks…. In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their
names (Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 50)
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In 1792,
many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks were forcibly converted
to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lama’s denomination). The Gelug school, known also
as the “Yellow Hats,” showed little tolerance or willingness to mix their
teachings with other Buddhist sects. In the words of one of their traditional
prayers: “Praise to you, violent god of the Yellow Hat teachings/who reduces to
particles of dust/ great beings, high officials and ordinary people/ who
pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine (Stephen Bachelor, "Letting
Daylight into Magic: The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden," Tricycle:
The Buddhist Review, 7, Spring 1998. Bachelor discusses the sectarian
fanaticism and doctrinal clashes that ill fit the Western portrait of Buddhism
as a non-dogmatic and tolerant tradition)
Mito de Tibet Shangri La
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Many
Buddhists maintain that, before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a
spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty
materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society.
Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed
the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated
that “the pervasive influence of Buddhism” in Tibet, “amid the wide open spaces
of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and
harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment
Estructura social
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the rich
secular landlords
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rich
theocratic lamas
i)
a great deal
of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great
riches
ii)
Much of the
wealth was accumulated “through active participation in trade, commerce, and
money lending
iii)
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.” (See Gary Wilson's report in Worker's World, 6
February 1997)
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Fuerza
armada
i)
commander-in-chief
of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000
square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. 12 Old
Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that
required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of
karma.” 13 In
fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a
gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt
down runaway serfs
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small
numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry
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10,000
people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and
small traders
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Thousands of
others were beggars
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There also
were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were
born into slavery
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The majority
of the rural population were serfs.:
i)
without
schooling or medical care
ii)
lifetime
bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair
the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood
iii)
They were
also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their
masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise.
iv)
They could
not get married without the consent of their lord or lama
v)
And they
might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them
out to work in a distant location
vi)
the
overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct
interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs
had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their
masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce
vii)
One 22-year
old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually
taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just
slaves without rights.
a)
Tashì-Tsering,
a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually
mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape,
beginning at age nine
b)
The monastic
estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance
performers, and soldiers.
viii)
Serfs needed
permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who
tried to flee.
ix)
The serfs
were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for
every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard
and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public
dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those
who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled
to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax.
x)
When people
could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest.
Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could
not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery
Ideología religiosa
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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
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Tibetan
serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own
oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes
suffering dire consequences
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One is
reminded of the idealized image of feudal Europe presented by latter-day
conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them,
medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in the secure
embrace of their Church, under the more or less benign protection of their
lords.55 Again
we are invited to accept a particular culture in its idealized form divorced
from its murky material history. This means accepting it as presented by its
favored class, by those who profited most from it. The Shangri-La image of
Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic actuality than does the pastoral
image of medieval Europe
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Tibetan
feudalism was cloaked in Buddhism, but the two are not to be equated. In
reality, old Tibet was not a Paradise Lost. It was a retrograde repressive
theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La.
Castigos
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In feudal
Tibet, torture and mutilation--including eye gouging, the pulling out of
tongues, hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon
thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs.
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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
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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
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torture
equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of
all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off
noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs.
There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling
El Viejo Tibet y el abuso sexual a las mujeres por
parte de los monjes
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have to
marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time
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deal with
sexually transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband
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The women
interviewed by Lewis recounted stories of their grandmothers’ ordeals with
monks who used them as “wisdom consorts.” By sleeping with the monks, the
grandmothers were told, they gained “the means to enlightenment
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The women
also mentioned the “rampant” sex that the supposedly spiritual and abstemious
monks practiced with each other in the Gelugpa sect. The women who were mothers
spoke bitterly about the monastery’s confiscation of their young boys in Tibet.
They claimed that when a boy cried for his mother, he would be told “Why do you
cry for her, she gave you up--she's just a woman.”
Testimonios de tiranía
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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
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In 1904
Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.
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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,” (1904)
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Tibetan
rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition”
(O’Connor, 1904)
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In 1937,
another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his
time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside
the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative
of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.”
Revolución china
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Ostensible
self-governance under the Dalai Lama’s rule but gave China military control and
exclusive right to conduct foreign relations.
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The Chinese
were also granted a direct role in internal administration “to promote social
reforms.” Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce usurious interest
rates, and build a few hospitals and roads
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At first,
they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect
reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and
feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants
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When the
current 14th Dalai Lama was first installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed
escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with
centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas in the early
1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be
only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing
their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.
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Chinese
after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid
labor
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They
eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced
unemployment and beggary
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They
established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the
monasteries
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And they
constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa
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By 1961,
Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed estates owned by lords
and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres to tenant farmers and
landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds of communes
Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and
go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his
reactionary Kuomintang rule in China
One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a
“liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant
toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten
by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then
poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed
Los yanquis, la CIA y el budismo tibetano desde 1950
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The issue
was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese
Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance from the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support
camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts
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Meanwhile in
the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front,
energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s
eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that organization
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The Dalai
Lama's second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence
operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a
CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.
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Most of them
fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by
the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a
living. Many, however, escaped that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan
exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA,
according to documents released by the State Department in 1998
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Once this
fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself issued a statement
admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the
1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist
revolution
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The Dalai
Lama's annual payment from the CIA was $186,000.
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In 1995,
the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a
frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary
Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline “Buddhist Captivates Hero of
Religious Right
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Into the
twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for Democracy and other
conduits that are more respectable sounding than the CIA, the U.S. Congress
continued to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with
additional millions for “democracy activities” within the Tibetan exile
community
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In addition
to these funds, the Dalai Lama received money from financier George Soros
Resistencia tibetana y
participación popular
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Many lamas
and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising,
but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure,” writes Hugh Deane
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In their
book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: “As far as can
be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the
adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both
when it first began and as it progressed
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Both the
Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that
“more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese
occupation.”36 The
official 1953 census--six years before the Chinese crackdown--recorded the
entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.37 Other
census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million. If the
Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would
have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps
and mass graves--of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese
force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and exterminated that
many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else
Los Nazis y el mito de la Resistencia
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Heinrich
Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s SS) wrote a
bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular
Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese “were
predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made
to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were
further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists
arrived.” They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and
vagrants
Dalai Lama y liberación de Pinochet de GB
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In April
1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George
Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto
Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who
was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to
Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
Dalai Lama y la occidentalización
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In a 1994
interview, he went on record as favoring the building of schools and roads in
his country. He said the corvée (forced unpaid serf labor) and certain taxes
imposed on the peasants were “extremely bad.” And he disliked the way people
were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation
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During the
half century of living in the western world, he had embraced concepts such as
human rights and religious freedom, ideas largely unknown in old Tibet. He even
proposed democracy for Tibet, featuring a written constitution and a
representative assembly
Dalai Lama y
los ricos
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“It is a
good thing to be rich... Those are the fruits for deserving actions, the proof
that they have been generous in the past
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There is no
good reason to become bitter and rebel against those who have property and
fortune... It is better to develop a positive attitude.”
Dalai Lama, la guerra y la violencia
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Violent
actions that are committed in order to reduce future suffering are not to be
condemned, he said, citing World War II as an example of a worthy effort to
protect democracy
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What of the
four years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of
the world—even by a conservative pope--as a blatant violation of international
law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: “The Iraq
war—it’s too early to say, right or wrong
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he had
voiced support for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later
on, the U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan
Testimonios de no querer volver al Tibet del pasado
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A 1999 story
in the Washington Post notes that the Dalai Lama continues to be revered in
Tibet, but “. . . few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt
aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his
advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering
the land they gained during China’s land reform to the clans. Tibet’s former
slaves say they, too, don’t want their former masters to return to power. “I’ve
already lived that life once before,” said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave
who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of
the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama,
but added, “I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than
when I was a slave.”
The very first tulku was a lama known as the Karmapa who
appeared nearly three centuries before the first Dalai Lama. The search for a tulku, Erik Curren reminds us, has
not always been conducted in that purely spiritual mode portrayed in certain
Hollywood films. Sobre la elección de
los monjes superiores
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Sometimes
monastic officials wanted a child from a powerful local noble family to give
the cloister more political clout
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Other times
they wanted a child from a lower-class family who would have little leverage to
influence the child’s upbringing.”
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other
occasions “a local warlord, the Chinese emperor or even the Dalai Lama’s
government in Lhasa might [have tried] to impose its choice of tulku on a
monastery for political reasons.”
Monjes budistas y su crudo materialismo en eeuu
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The monks
who were granted political asylum in California applied for public assistance.
Lewis, herself a devotee for a time, assisted with the paperwork. She observes
that they continue to receive government checks amounting to $550 to $700 per
month along with Medicare. In addition, the monks reside rent free in nicely
furnished apartments. “They pay no utilities, have free access to the Internet
on computers provided for them, along with fax machines, free cell and home
phones and cable TV.”
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They also
receive a monthly payment from their order, along with contributions and dues
from their American followers. Some devotees eagerly carry out chores for the
monks, including grocery shopping and cleaning their apartments and toilets.
These same holy men, Lewis remarks, “have no problem criticizing Americans for
their ‘obsession with material things
Divisiones internas y violencias entre budistas
exiliados
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In 1993 the
monks of the Karma Kagyu tradition had a candidate of their own choice. The
Dalai Lama, along with several dissenting Karma Kagyu leaders (and with the
support of the Chinese government!) backed a different boy. The Kagyu monks
charged that the Dalai Lama had overstepped his authority in attempting to
select a leader for their section
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What
followed was a dozen years of conflict in the Tibetan exile community,
punctuated by intermittent riots, intimidation, physical attacks, blacklisting,
police harassment, litigation, official corruption, and the looting and
undermining of the Karmapa’s monastery in Rumtek by supporters of the Gelugpa
faction
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