European Parliament Urges China to Negotiate with Dalai Lama

On Thursday, March 12, the European Parliament (EP) held a debate and resolution to mark the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against China, calling on Beijing to resume dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

On 10 March 1959 the people of Tibet rose up against the Chinese occupation of their country. The anniversary of that failed enterprise was marked this week by MEPs who passed a resolution 338 votes in favour with 131 against calling for China and the Dalai Lama to pursue dialogue based on the “Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People”.

Speaking in the debate German Christian Democrat Thomas Mann said, “the Memorandum must be the basis for further discussion with China.” He regretted that the non-violent appeal of the Dalai Lama for dialogue found no echo in Beijing.

British Labour MEP Glyn Ford said the resolution was “counter-productive” to Chinese-EU dialogue. In his view the way forward is “through dialogue and engagement not through rehash resolutions.”

EP’s official press release

In a resolution adopted by MEPs on Thursday to mark the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, the Chinese Government is urged to resume talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives with a view to “positive, meaningful change in Tibet”, not ruling out autonomy for the region, a solution that MEPs believe need not compromise China’s territorial integrity.

The EP’s call for talks to resume came as Tibetans in many countries commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1959 revolt against China, which led to the flight of the Dalai Lama and the beginning of his exile in India.  Eight rounds of dialogue in recent years between the Dalai Lama’s envoys and Chinese Government representatives have produced no breakthrough and no further talks are planned.  In recent days the Chinese authorities have tightened security in Tibet, banning journalists and foreigners from visiting the region. Read more »

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Tibetan Buddhist Art

Early Tibetan Buddhist art was used to depict the life of Gautama Buddha in the Indian subcontinent in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. Throughout Asia, Buddhism spread widely and with it its influence over Tibetan art and culture in Asia. The first traditions of Tibetan Buddhist art followed the practices of aniconic artwork, meaning that the use of Buddhist symbols and emblems to represent the Buddha and his travels and teachings without actually using a human form to represent the Buddha himself. This was the typical way that Tibetan Buddhist art was made until the first century CE, when the Buddha was finally represented in human appearance, which is still followed to this day. In every new country or region in Asia, where Buddhism went, Buddhist art followed its worshipers and artists as the faith developed in many different ways.

Tibetan Buddhist art is considered sacred and religious in nature, or was always thought of as religious in Asiatic cultures throughout the continent and in ancient Himalayan kingdoms such as Ladakh, Bhutan, and Nepal.

The Tibetan Buddhist art that was created previous to the middle of the twentieth century was steeped in traditional techniques and devoted to the vision of sacred iconography. Not only are the works of these early Tibetan Buddhist artists festooned with the central topics of philosophy and spirituality, they were also dedicated in showing the energy of the aesthetics that Tibetan Buddhist art was known for as it came into eminence during the growth of the various schools of Buddhism all over Asia and the regions it influenced with its presence over the years.

The main influence of Buddhism in the fourth century was the Mahayana influence, which was known for its emphasis on the denial of Nirvana in order to better help others in need. Chenrezig is the chief deity depicted in the Tibetan Buddhist art of this time period of Mahayana influence. He is most often as a god with a thousand arms and in each hand is an eye.

Another great influence in Tibetan Buddhist art is the Tantric influence, its main symbol being the diamond thunderbolt. Tantric influence art is most often depicted as having many gods with angry faces that actually represent guardians of those who are dedicated to the practice and teaching of Tantric Buddhism and the purging of negative thoughts.

In the Himalayas, a shamanistic tradition known as Bon is considered another great influence of Buddhism and Buddhist art. In this shamanistic practice, many local deities are depicted in Buddhist temples as being with the Buddha as their conqueror and are considered to serve him by keeping mischief and evil away from the people.

A great variety of techniques are used in Buddhist meditation in order to achieve mindfulness, concentration and the promotion of well being. Ancient texts were set down by priests and other practitioners of Buddhism to preserve the core techniques that are passed between teachers and pupils.

Tibetan Buddhist art also greatly influenced Hindu art, but in the tenth century, Buddhism was all but gone from the Indian subcontinent by the rise of popularity in Islam along with Hinduism.

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Dalai Lama Title’s Background by Eyes of Chinese

2009-03-01, xinhuanet.com

The title of “Dalai Lama“, was not granted by the Dalai Lama himself, or created by Tibetan Buddhism, or conferred by the old Tibetan ruling class and still less by any foreigners. The title was actually granted by the central government of China’s dynasties and has multi-ethnic language features.

In the late Ming dynasty, Tibetan Buddhism proliferated into a number of sects, among which Sagya, Gagya and Gadang were most popular. However, many monks failed to follow Buddhist tenets; instead, they always served the devil by seeking fame and personal interests, disrespecting senior monks, indulging in entertainment, abducting, cheating or raping women. This resulted in grievances among the public in Tibet. At that time, Tsongkapa, a monk born in Qinghai Province, was learning Buddha Dharma in Tibet. Seeing all this, he felt that what these monks did was a long way from the actual requirements of Buddhism. Then he proposed a religious reform of all sects in Tibet, and vowed to create a new sect.

In 1402 and 1406, Tsongkapa finished writing “Treaties of the Staged Enlightenment” and “Tantra in Tibet: The Grand Exposition of Secret Mantra” respectively, laying a theoretical basis for establishing the Gelug Sect. He thought that Buddhism believers ought to first respect Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, be devoted to learning Sutras, Vinaya and Sastra of Tripitaka Sutra, as well as the three trainings of precepts, concentration, and insight. That is, to abide by taboos, to esteem the Buddhas and Patriarchs, to be immersed in studying the original meaning of Buddhist scriptures, to cultivate oneself according to Buddhist doctrine, to free oneself from vulgarity, to study intensively sutras of Mahayana and Hinayana, as well as to practice both Esoteric and Exotoric Buddhism.

Tsongkapa’s reform soon won support from the Tibetan nobles and serf owners. In lunar January 1409, he held and presided over the first Pray for Blessing Dharma Assembly in Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple. Later in the same year, Tsongkapa had the Ganden Monastery built and appointed himself the chief abbot there, marking the establishment of the Gelug Sect.

With an increasingly higher influence, the Gelug sprang up in Tibet and Qinghai. As a result, more monasteries were set up, such as Drepung, Sera and Tashilhunpo, laying a solid foundation for the development of the Yellow Sect.

Tsongkapa’s success in the reformation enabled the Gelug to become the largest sect in Tibetan Buddhism. “Gelug” means that Buddhism believers should do good things and never do evil things. It is also called Huangjiao (the Yellow Sect) by the Han people because its followers always wear yellow hats.

Though it was the last to come into being, the Gelug had grown into the most powerful sect in Tibet with the energetic support of the central dynasty. This indicates that even a small sect would be able to become grand and influential in a region, so long as it gained support of the imperial court, the central government or a secular regime.

The title of “Dalai” first came from the third Dalai Lama Soinam Gyamco. “Gyamco” means the Sea in the Tibetan language, which is contained in the name of Dalai Lama of later generations.

The picture shows a fresco in the Potala Palace depicting that Emperor Shunzhi received the 5th Dalai Lama in Beijing. In 1652, or the 9th year of the reign of Emperor Shunzhi, Ngawang Lobsang Gyamco came to Beijing and was granted to be the 5th Dalai Lama plus a golden certificate of appointment and a gold seal of authority in the following year. (Xinhua file Photo)

In 1577, the 38th year of the reign of Emperor Jiajing of the Ming dynasty, Soinam Gyamco, Tsongkapa’s third-generation disciple, came to Qinghai, by traveling thousands of miles from Tibet, to publicize the doctrine of the Gelug Sect. At that time, Mongolian noble Althan Khan, who ruled Qinghai, was a Buddhist who believed in Tibetan Buddhism the most. Hearing that Soinam Gyamco had arrived, he extended a rousing welcome to the dignitary and conferred him the title of “the Overseer of the Buddhist Faith Vajra-dhara Dalai Lama” to express appreciation of his wisdom and talents. Read more »

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China Banned Oasis Concerts for Liam Gallagher Supporting Tibet

Mark MacKinnon, theglobeandmail.com, March 03

So the powers-that-be here have decided that British rock band Oasis can’t play their first-ever gigs in mainland China because Liam Gallagher (the Gallagher brother with the nicer voice and even less of a grasp on things like politics than his sibling) played at a “Free Tibet” concert on Randalls Island in New York in 1997.

That’s the reason being given by the band, anyway. Oasis were scheduled to play a pair of shows in Shanghai and Beijing in early April and said in a statement that they were “bewildered” by the decision, which came just three weeks after the shows were announced.

“According to the show’s promoters, officials within the Chinese Ministry of Culture only recently discovered that Noel Gallagher appeared at a Free Tibet Benefit Concert on Randall’s Island in New York in 1997, and have now deemed that the band are consequently unsuitable to perform to their fans in the Chinese Republic … during its 60th anniversary year,” the statement reads.

Leaving aside the question of just exactly what or where the “Chinese Republic” is, the government-ordered cancellation is bad news for Chinese music fans, even those who aren’t particularly keen on “Wonderwall” and everything that followed.

Here’s an incomplete list of some of other musicians who played that day at Randalls Island: U2, R.E.M., Eddie Vedder, the Beastie Boys, Alanis Morissette, the Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, a Tribe Called Quest and Ben Harper. So the ban on Oasis might mean no shows by Bono, Pearl Jam or Alanis in the Middle Kingdom either, although Sonic Youth did play Beijing last year without any problems.

The Chinese government is hypersensitive regarding foreign artists performing here, particularly since last March, when Bjork – another singer who was on the stage that day in 1997 – finished a concert in Shanghai with her song “Declare Independence” and shouted “Tibet! Tibet! Raise your flag!” over the final bars. There was some chatter among Chinese music fans about what the notoriously unpredictable Gallagher brothers might do on stage.

(It’s not just the Tibet issue that gets the censors back in their 1970s frame of mind. All major foreign acts need to submit a setlist to the authorities before performing; the Rolling Stones were famously made to drop several songs with “suggestive” lyrics before they were allowed to make their 2006 debut in China. “Brown Sugar,” “Honky Tonk Woman” or “Beast of Burden” all got excised for fear of what hearing such songs live might do to the locals.)

In my books, if the Chinese authorities were going to ban Oasis for a perceived offence to the people of China, they should have targeted the other Gallagher, Noel (the one with the unibrow who writes most of the better tunes), who made a far bigger error when he referred to Shanghai – maybe you’ve heard of it, population 18.9 million – as “the middle of nowhere” in an interview with That’s Shanghai magazine.

The good news is that an April 7 Oasis show in Hong Kong is apparently still going ahead. “One country, two systems,” the formula under which Hong Kong was absorbed back into China in 1997, apparently means one concert for 1.3 billion people.

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Tibetans Greet Losar New Year in Opposition

By EDWARD WONG, New York Times
Published: February 25, 2009

TONGREN, China — Snow fell across this mountain valley as red-robed monks in a prayer hall beat drums and chanted in tantric harmony, a seemingly auspicious start to Losar, the Tibetan New Year.

But a monk watching the ritual on Wednesday morning made it clear: This was a ceremony of mourning, not celebration.

“There is no Losar,” he said, standing in this monastery town on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. “They killed so many people last year.”

A few weeks ahead of the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, and a year after a crackdown on renewed ethnic unrest in this area, Tibetans are quietly but irrepressibly seething. Monks, nomads and merchants have turned the joyous Losar holiday into a dirge, memorializing Tibetans who died in last year’s conflict and pining for the return of the exiled Dalai Lama.

An informal grass-roots boycott is under way. Tibetans are forsaking dancing and dinner parties for vigils with yak-butter candles and the chanting of prayers. The Losar campaign signifies the discontent that many of China’s six million Tibetans still feel toward domination by the ethnic Han Chinese. They are resisting pressure by Chinese officials to celebrate and forget.

“It’s a conscious awakening of an entire people,” said Woeser, a popular Tibetan blogger.

Tibetans here and in other towns, including in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, say government officials have handed out money to Tibetans to entice them to hold exuberant new year parties. On Wednesday, state-run television showed Tibetans in Lhasa dancing, shooting off fireworks and feasting in their homes.

At the same time, the government has drawn a curtain across Tibet. Officials have shut down access to many Tibetan regions to foreigners and sent armed guards to patrol the streets.

Here in eastern Qinghai Province, near the Dalai Lama’s birthplace, the boycott of festivities began as early as January, during the Chinese Lunar New Year. On Wednesday in Tongren, called Rebkong by Tibetans, one of the few bursts of firecrackers took place outside a Chinese paramilitary compound.

“The government thinks we should celebrate this holiday properly,” said Shartsang, the abbot of Rongwo Monastery. “Certainly this year people haven’t celebrated it in the same way they did in past years.”

Shartsang was one of more than a dozen monks interviewed over three days at Rongwo, called Longwu in Chinese. The 700-year-old monastery is a sprawling complex of golden-eaved temples and labyrinthine alleyways that is home to 400 monks. It draws pilgrims from across the Tibetan plateau.

The government has stepped up security across Tibet. Here, more than 300 security officers with riot shields were seen training in the stadium on Wednesday afternoon. On Monday night, a unit of officers marched in formation along a cordoned-off road.

Chinese officials are wary of the boycott’s mushrooming into larger protests, and of Tibetans taking to the streets next month, which marks the 50th anniversary of the uprising that led to the Dalai Lama’s flight from Lhasa. Most Tibetans revere the Dalai Lama, who advocates autonomy, but not secession, for Tibet.

Last March, China was convulsed by the largest Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in decades. It began when the suppression of protests by monks in Lhasa led to ethnic rioting by Tibetans. Eighteen civilians and one police officer were killed, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. Riots and protests flared up across western China. Tibetan exile groups say hundreds of Tibetans died in the crackdown.

Rongwo Monastery was a locus of resistance. Even before the riots in Lhasa, monks joined Tibetan townspeople to protest the way the police had handled a dispute between Tibetans and ethnic Hui Muslims. More than 200 monks were detained in that incident. During the March uprising, security forces surrounded the monastery, only to be met by stone-hurling monks.

Over the summer, leading monks were detained in a nearby school and forced to undergo patriotic education, which meant studying Chinese law and being told to denounce the Dalai Lama.

Waves of crackdowns have fueled resentment.

“They broke into my room and took away all my photos of the Dalai Lama,” said one monk, 53, as he held up a pile of five empty glass picture frames. “Then they led monks away with their wrists bound by wires.”

… Read the rest of the article here.

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