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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Two Sand Mandala Pictures Sets

Two sets of photos of Sand Mandalas by MettaMomma (Louise Ritchie)

Tibetan Monks Creating Peace Mandala in Tallahassee, 2007

Taken during the January, 2007, visit of Tibetan monks in Tallahassee. The monks laboriously created the sand mandala by memory over about 5 days, and then ritually destroyed it. Doing this illustrates everything’s impermanence.

Tibetan Monks Creating Peace Mandala, 2009

Tibetan Buddhist monks visited the Mary Brogan Museum in Tallahassee and over seven days meticulously made a peace sand mandala. The next day, they ritually destroyed it, sweeping it up to signifying everything’s impermanence. This is a way of exposing people to the way of relieving suffering: accepting that everything changes and ends; choosing to let go of attachments.

The monk poured sand into the lower tool, and then gently rubbed the upper tool against it, allowing the sand to slowly flow out.

To illustrate the impermanence of all things, a Tibetan monk begins ritually destroying the sand mandala of peace that a group of monks had meticulously made over seven days.

MettaMomma about herself:

Once when I was taking a picture, my friend John said, “The artist appears and the butterfly spreads its wings.” While he was talking about the literal butterfly that I was photographing, his words were a metaphor for how I have experienced the world since I fell in love with photography after taking a Miksang workshop in Tallahassee in spring, 2007 with Miriam Hall, who’s herspiral on flickr. Prior to that, I thought that I lacked any type of artistic talent, and I almost didn’t dare to take the Miksang workshop.

However, through the weekend that I spent learning Miksang, a contemplative art, I learned to trust my instincts and to see the world with such fresh eyes that literally I now feel as if the whole world is new and beautiful. It’s as if during the rest of my life, I wasn’t truly seeing. I now feel that I am an artist and the whole world is art.

This perspective has encouraged me to also become deeply involved in the arts. The inside cover of the summer, 2008 “Yes” magazine features a full page color picture from my “Wings of Peace” set. I’m now taking acting classes, have been in two local theatrical shows, and am taking ballroom dancing. I also have been trained as a Miksang photography teacher and plan to offer my first workshop in September, 2008.

If you’d like to find out more about Miksang, check out the Miksang group here as well as this link: miksang.org/m/index.html

Warmest appreciation to everyone who has taken the time to comment on and favorite my pictures. You have done a lot to help me improve my skills. Appreciation, too, to the many flickr members including my contacts whose work has inspired me to try new things and to see even more of the world’s beauty. From you, I’ve learned about the wonder of macros, waterdrops, lighting, and the evocative beauty of rain.

If you like my site, view it as inspiration to open yourself to the possibilities in your own life.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

P.S. I am an Obama Momma. Yes we can be the change that we dream of!

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The Dragon’s Gift Tour: Now in San Francisco

A rare opportunity to view the Buddhist arts of the mystical kingdom of Bhutan – “The Last Shangri-La”.
At the Asian Art Museum through May 10th.

Located in the Himalayas to the east of Mount Everest and Nepal, Bhutan is unique as a sovereign nation that has maintained its culture, arts, and religious and political traditions intact. Bhutan is one of the few countries in Asia that was never colonized by its neighbors or Western powers. The exhibition provides an exceptionally rare opportunity to view some of the most sacred and beloved Buddhist arts of Bhutan. Many of the objects remain in ritual use in temples and monasteries and have never before been accessible to a Western audience. In an unprecedented effort, the exhibition also documents ritual Buddhist dance forms through video footage that will be shown on monitors situated in the galleries. The exhibition comprises more than 100 works of art dating from the eighth to the twentieth centuries, including thangkas (paintings on cloth), gilt bronze sculptures, and ritual objects. Bhutanese monks will remain in residence at the Asian Art Museum for the duration of the exhibition, performing daily ritual observances for the sacred artworks.

“The recent coronation of Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck, Bhutan’s first democratic king, introduced many to this remote Himalayan nation steeped in tradition,” says Jay Xu, director of the Asian Art Museum. “The Asian Art Museum is pleased to bring to San Francisco the remarkable exhibition under royal patronage The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan, which provides an unprecedented view of Bhutan’s spiritual and artistic traditions that are so inextricably woven into its culture. The unprecedented access granted to the organizers and the resulting exhibition are a gift from Bhutan to the world.”

“In the eyes of the Bhutanese, these objects are not ‘art’ in the conventional sense, but are sacred images, supporting Buddhist practices,” says Terese Tse Bartholomew, curator emeritus of Himalayan art at the Asian Art Museum and guest curator of The Dragon’s Gift. “The daily veneration of the objects by the monks who will remain in residence at the Asian Art Museum throughout the exhibition testifies to their spiritual significance. Even in the temples in Bhutan, these sacred works are rarely seen. Perhaps one object at a time might be brought out for ritual use. I cannot stress enough what a remarkable opportunity it is for Western audiences to see these works. The phrase ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ is overused, but in this case it most certainly applies.”

Buddhist Thanka from Bhutan

Bhutan has a population of roughly 700,000, comparable to San Francisco, yet its geographic range is similar to that of Switzerland. Located in the Himalayas to the east of Mount Everest and Nepal, Bhutan is known as “Drukyul, the land of the Thunder Dragon,” by speakers of Dzongkha, its official language. Bhutan has the distinction of being one of the few countries in Asia that was never colonized. It also has the distinction of adopting an uncommon official policy of defining the quality of life through Gross National Happiness, emphasizing mental and spiritual well being over material prosperity. Bhutan is the only existing Vajrayana (“Tantric” or “Esoteric”) Buddhist kingdom in the world, and the Drukpa lineage is the dominant school and state religion. The country is well known for its vigorous efforts to preserve its Buddhist heritage and traditional culture, which remain vibrant and active today. Since the 1960s the country has embarked on deliberately slow-paced reforms with the intention to preserve its own identity. Foreign dignitaries and the media were allowed into Bhutan for the first time during the coronation of the last king in 1974. Foreigners to this day are still restricted with only 20,000 tourists allowed access each year on heavily supervised trips. Read more »

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