The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan Album

This album accompanies The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan art tour, one of the most highly anticipated exhibitions of Buddhist art to be held in recent times.

For over five years, the Honolulu Academy of Arts has conducted ambitious fieldwork and research in Bhutan. Enjoying a close working relationship with the Royal Government of Bhutan, the Honolulu Academy of Arts research teams have been given unprecedented access to the nation’s treasuries of sacred art and dance.

The Dragon’s Gift offers a rare opportunity to introduce some of the most sacred Buddhist images of Bhutan to the wider international audience. From the wealth of material surveyed, the organizers of the exhibition have selected over one hundred objects of superior aesthetic achievement and deep religious significance, the vast majority of which have never before been seen in the West. Nearly all of the works of art presented in this book are from active temples and monasteries and remain in ritual use. Most of the items are either painted or textile thangkas, or gilt bronze sculptures, which date primarily from the 17th to 19th centuries–a golden age in the Buddhist arts of Bhutan.

Ranging from depictions of Tantric deities to individual portraits of Buddhist masters, the exhibition and catalogue represent outstanding works of art with a wide iconographic scope. Local Bhutanese experts and accomplished monks were consulted throughout the research process, representing the important indigenous perspective on these sacred works. For the Buddhist people of Bhutan, these sacred items are conceived as supports along the journey to enlightenment, and are of vital spiritual significance.

Complementing the sacred works of art is the documentation of the ancient Cham dances of Bhutan, which the dance preservation team had the privilege of observing. Having documented over three hundred hours of sacred and secular dances, they have compiled a first collection of the few surviving treasures of the trans-Himalayan movement tradition. These different approaches to the visual and moving arts provide further insight into the unique experience of Buddhism in Bhutan. A brief sampling of the variety of dance lineages, some many centuries old, is included on the DVD included with this book.

Beautifully illustrated, this catalog also includes curatorial notes and photos, close-up details, photos of gatherings and monasteries, as well as 12 essays contributed by leading Bhutanese and Western scholars.

Beautifully illustrated, with high quality full color reproductions on gloss paper. Very helpful is the mapping of surrounding deities in many of the thangkas.

Text: www.snowlionpub.com

The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan
by Honolulu Academy of Arts
Edited by Terese Tse Bartholomew and John Johnston
Cloth, 9.5″ x 12″, 390 pp. Includes DVD.

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Dalai Lama said he admires forgoing Losar celebrations

Phayul, February 24, 2009
By Phurbu Thinley

Exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama Tuesday said he admired the resolute decision made by Tibetans both in and outside Tibet to forgo “celebratory activities” during the Tibetan New Year or, Losar, which begins tomorrow.

“I admire the determined move by Tibetans, inside and outside of Tibet, not to indulge in celebratory activities during this New Year,” the Tibetan leader said in his New Year message to the Tibetan people.

In the text message posted on the Dalai Lama’s official website, the supreme spiritual and temporal leader of Tibetan people extended his New Year greetings to them.

“On the occasion of the Earth-Ox New Year of the 17th Rabjung cycle in the Tibetan Royal Year 2136, I would like to greet all Tibetans, both inside and outside of Tibet. I pray that there be peace and prosperity, and that our just cause may see gradual resolution,” he said.

“However, last year in Tibet we witnessed hundreds of Tibetans losing their lives, and several thousands facing detention and torture, in response to the widespread display by Tibetans all over Tibet of their discontentment with the Chinese authorities’ policies,” the Dalai Lama said.

Losar is traditionally the biggest holiday for Tibetans, but Tibetans in Tibet and around the world vowed not to celebrate it this year as they want to remember those who died in last year’s protests against Chinese rule.

Tibetan exile groups say at least 200 Tibetans were killed and more than a 1000 went missing in the subsequent Chinese military crackdown.

“Therefore, since they faced immense difficulties and sufferings, the occasion of this New Year is certainly not a period when we can have the usual celebrations and gaiety,” His Holiness added.

The Dalai Lama said: “Instead, everyone should utilize this period in abandoning non-virtuous acts and engaging in positive actions …”

“The dedication should also go to those currently undergoing suffering so that they may immediately be able to enjoy the happiness of freedom. Through such an accumulation of collective merits we should all strive for an early solution to the just cause of Tibet.”

The boycott of Losar celebration, which actually comes just two weeks before the 50th anniversary of the abortive Tibetan uprising, has been a cause of concern for Chinese authorities in Tibet.China’s military last month began a crackdown in Tibetan capital Lhasa, with raids on residential areas, Internet cafes, bars and rented rooms, Chinese state-run media reported. Security forces rounded up nearly 6000 “suspects” for questioning and detained up to 81 during the operation “Strike Hard” by Jan. 24. Read more »

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Kalachakra Cosmology Diagram

Wallpainting in Punakha Dzong, Bhutan. The cosmology according to the Kalachakra-Tantra, on which the Kagyu-Astrology is based since the 3rd Karmapa, is depicted here.

Photos: Detlev Göbel

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What we don’t hear about Tibet - A sight from another side

Sorrel Neuss, Guardian.co.uk

Sexual abuse in monasteries and oppressive feudalism in traditional Tibetan society has been factored out of the argument against China’s occupation, oversimplifying it.

Han Chinese guards deliberately obstruct the pilgrim route through Lhasa to the holy Jokhang temple by sipping tea at strategically placed tables in the middle of the road. In front of the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s former seat of power, an imposing guarded concrete square glorifies China’s occupation.

Tibet seems like as a celestial paradise held in chains, but the west’s tendency to romanticise the country’s Buddhist culture has distorted our view. Popular belief is that under the Dalai Lama, Tibetans lived contentedly in a spiritual non-violent culture, uncorrupted by lust or greed: but in reality society was far more brutal than that vision.

Last December, Ye Xiaowen, head of China’s administration for religious affairs, published a piece in the state-run China Daily newspaper that, although propaganda, rings true. "History clearly reveals that the old Tibet was not the Shangri-La that many imagine", he wrote "but a society under a system of feudal serfdom."

Until 1959, when China cracked down on Tibetan rebels and the Dalai Lama fled to northern India, around 98% of the population was enslaved in serfdom. Drepung monastery, on the outskirts of Lhasa, was one of the world’s largest landowners with 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. High-ranking lamas and secular landowners imposed crippling taxes, forced boys into monastic slavery and pilfered most of the country’s wealth – torturing disobedient serfs by gouging out their eyes or severing their hamstrings.

Tashi Tsering, now an English professor at Lhasa University is representative of Tibetans that do not see China’s occupation as worse tyranny. He was taken from his family near Drepung at 13 and forced into the Dalai Lama’s personal dance troupe. Beaten by his teachers, Tsering put up with rape by a well-connected monk in exchange for protection. In his autobiography, The Struggle for Modern Tibet, Tsering writes that China brought long-awaited hope when is laid claim to Tibet in 1950.

After studying at the University of Washington, Tsering returned to Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1964, convinced that the country could modernise effectively by cooperating with the Chinese. Denounced during the Cultural Revolution, arrested in 1967 to spend six years in prison and labour camps, he still maintains that Mao Tse-Tung liberated his people.

Caught between a system reminiscent of medieval Europe and a colonial force that brought forced collectivisation and similar human rights abuses, Tibet moved from one oppressive regime to another.

During the 1990s, Tibetans suspected of harbouring nationalist tendencies were arrested and imprisoned and in 2006, Romanian climbers witnessed Chinese guards shooting a group of refugees headed for the Nepalese border. China’s abhorrent treatment of "political subversives" has rightly spurned a global Free Tibet movement, diminishing the benefits that it did bring to society.

After 1959, it abolished slavery, serfdom and unfair taxes. Creating thousands of jobs through new infrastructure projects, it built Tibet’s first hospitals and opened schools in every major village, bringing education to the masses. Clean water was pumped into the main towns and villages and the average life expectancy has almost doubled since 1950, to 60.

Even so, in 2001 the Dalai Lama said: "Tibet, materially, is very, very backward. Spiritually it is quite rich. But spirituality can’t fill our stomachs."

Freedom for Tibet is not simply a case of liberation from China and the reinstatement of traditional values. Around 70 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and enhanced spirituality alone will not improve economic conditions. Poverty is not quaint no matter how colourful the culture and the Tibet question is one that should be addressed from a rational, rather than an idealised viewpoint.

Nearby Bhutan, which has a similar Buddhist culture that it tried to preserve by banning television until 1999 and limiting foreign visitors, only held its first democratic elections in 2007. The Dalai Lama now promotes democracy, but Tibet may well have looked worse than it does today if the old order had been left to its own devices.

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Britain asks China to resolve Tibet issue

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on 2nd of February urged China to resolve the ‘underlying issues’ in Tibet.

Addressing a joint press conference with visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Brown also indicated that his country sought improvement on the human rights front in the world’s most populous nation.

"The UK will continue through our regular dialogue to seek rapid progress towards all international human rights standards and I urge further dialogue on the Chinese government to resolve the underlying issues in Tibet," Brown said.

Brown tempered this implied criticism, however, by crediting Wen’s social and economic policies with "lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty".

Prior to Wen’s visit, Brown has been warned not to sacrifice human rights concerns to the prospect of boosting exports.

Wen’s visit has been marked by raucous street protests in London, which saw around 50 pro-Tibetan demonstrators gather outside 10 Downing Street on Monday. Five pro-Tibet demonstrators were arrested in London on Sunday.

Tibet saw massive anti-China protests in March 2008 resulting in a harsh clampdown from Chinese authorities.

Brown insisted that human rights concerns had not been forgotten in the bilateral relationship.

In a written ministerial statement issued in October last year, British government went on to acknowledge that the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama has actually met conditions set by the Chinese government in order to have dialogue for a negotiated settlement on Tibet’s issue.

“Chinese Government has said that it is serious about dialogue and that it hopes for a positive outcome. It has set conditions for dialogue which we believe the Dalai Lama has met,” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband stated in the statement.

“No government which is committed to promoting international respect for human rights can remain silent on the issue of Tibet, or disinterested in a solution to its problems,” the statement further emphasised.

Source: www.phayul.com

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