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Surviving the Dragon: An Interview with Tibetan Lama and Author, Arjia Rinpoche
Mar 30, 2010 – By Barry Zellen
Since Burmese monks heroically rose up during the
Saffron Revolution over almost three years ago, people-powered uprisings have
rippled along the southwestern periphery of China. Two of these have internal
rebellions against Beijing’s rule: one in largely Buddhist Tibet in
March 2008, and the next this past July in Xinjiang as predominantly Muslim
Uighurs similarly followed suit with a rebellion of their own. And two have
been external, on China’s southwestern flank: Burma’s Saffron
Revolution in August 2007, and the populist movement by Thailand’s Red
Shirts, culminating in the recently April 2010 battle of Bangkok where Red
Shirts, Thai soldiers, and a mysterious third force, the so-called ‘men
in black’ who many believe catalyzed the armed clash, came to
blows. This volatile, and recurrent, eruption of people-power, presents
Beijing with perhaps its gravest existential threat: a Soviet-styled collapse
of governing authority both within and without. So far most of these
rebellions have erupted one at a time; and each has been contained, to a
large degree, either by Burma’s crackdown against its protesting monks,
or Beijing’s re-assertion of authority in its restive frontier
provinces, though the situation in Thailand remains unsettled as of press
time.
Once the War on Terror begins to wind down, and
America’s strategic attention looks to new horizons of conflict, it is
plausible that Southeast Asia and Southwest China will emerge as the next
great battleground for freedom. In this article, we will turn our eyes to
Tibet. We recently had the opportunity to read a new book by exiled Tibetan
Lama, Arjia Rinpoche: Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama's Account of 40
Years Under Chinese Rule, published by Rodale Press in March 2010. We had the
great privilege of interviewing the author after the Tibetan protests erupted
two years ago, and present below our analysis of those events as well as
excerpt from Arjia Rinpoche’s most fascinating memoir of Tibetan life
under Chinese rule, through the tumult of the Cultural Revolution up to the
present.
The Tibetan uprising in March 2008 mesmerized millions of
freedom-loving peoples around the world, as thousands of Tibetans rose up in
a cascading series of mass-protests that spread throughout their traditional
homeland in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), Yunnan, Sichuan and Qinghai
provinces of southwestern China, protesting Beijing’s 49-year rule of
their nation. Protestors took to the streets, and in rural villages horsemen
bravely rose into town in improvised cavalry raids, seizing schools and other
government buildings in outlying areas, and even raising the Tibetan national
flag on China’s very own flag poles where communist China’s glad
had long waved.
In Lhasa, where a wave of Han Chinese immigrants had
increasingly marginalized the once sovereign Tibetans, there was violent
rioting as a half century of subjugation hit a breaking point and the
traditionally nonviolent Tibetan Buddhists exploded in communal rage at their
oppressors, striking out at all symbols of Chinese occupation, including mob
attacks and brutal stoning assaults of Chinese civilians and looting,
vandalism and arson attacks against Chinese-owned stores. All protestors
called for truer religious freedom, and some boldly reasserted their claim to
independence from Beijing. China responded
vituperatively—the Communist Party boss in Lhasa condemned the Dalai
Lama, the world renown Nobel Peace Prize winner and advocate of nonviolence
who serves as both the spiritual leader of the estimated six million
Tibetans, and as the head of its government in exile in Dharamsala, India as
a “wolf in monk’s robes, a devil with a human face, but the heart
of a beast”—and deployed thousands of police, military and
special forces across the region in an effort to contain this unexpected, and
unexpectedly widespread, rebellion after a surprising hesitation in the days
immediately following the initial protests.
Beijing appeared to have been caught off-guard by the scale
of the rebellion, coming only a few months before the world would descend
upon Beijing for the 2008 summer Olympics. In a bid to restore order, Beijing
felt compelled to demonstrate a show of force to remind not only Tibetans but
China's many other restive minorities that it remained willing to unleash its
armed forces against its own citizenry to restore the Han-dominated,
communist political order if its authority was ever again challenged.
The tanks rolled in, government officials ejected all
foreigners from Tibetan areas as the region went into a year-long lockdown
and tightly clamped down on foreign media coverage of the uprising, and
rounded-up and incarcerated participants in the at-times violent riots, which
had targeted not only government buildings, but private businesses owned by
the ethnically dominant Han as well as the minority Uighurs, whose influx had
left Tibetans a shrinking minority in their homeland.
In contrast to the last wave of violent protests in Lhasa in
1989, this time around much had changed—both inside China and around
the world. First, much of the world had been closely monitoring each move
made by Beijing in anticipation of the start of the 2008 Olympics, with Free
Tibet activists hoping to draw attention to their cause as the world’s
spotlight illuminates China for all the world to see. And second, technology
had accelerated beyond the point where the state can as effectively control
the flow of information: no longer is there a complete monopoly on news, as
cell phones, digital camcorders and camera-phones capture China’s
response to the uprising, beaming those sounds and images around the world
via the ubiquitous Internet. As seen in Burma the
summer before, one of the least connected and most repressive societies on
earth, a stream of information freely flowed onto the Internet as its monks
rose up in a nationwide, nonviolent rebellion against the unpopular military
dictatorship, calling for religious freedom and democracy until the
government turned loose its armed forces to suppress the revolt. Burma, in an
effort to contain the viral spread of truth and graphic imagery of its
violent crackdown against its brave but unarmed monks, unplugged the nation
from the Internet, shut down cell phone service, and in addition to deploying
its armed forces, it scrutinized each and every frame photographed and posted
on the Web, looking to identify protest organizers to arrest, interrogate and
imprison (and sometimes execute.) The very tool that brought the Saffron
revolution to the world was used to douse its flames by targeting
participants and organizers for punishment, preventing a second act to the
surprise summer drama that was unfolding across Burma.
China, in contrast to Burma, has a much more advanced
economy, a thriving and innovative high-tech sector, and world-class
technology infrastructure, making it harder for to simply pull the plug as
Burma did, since China’s economic wellbeing depends upon its continued
connectivity and integration with the world economy. However, it has
developed a modern highway and railway system connecting the once-isolated
Himalayan mountain kingdom to the rest of the country, allowing for a
full-scale military incursion to restore order after decades of its
accelerating demographic invasion of Tibet. Beijing has also deployed a
sophisticated, albeit imperfect, firewall to censor the Internet’s most
irritating content, dubbed the “Great Firewall of China.” So it
has been able to apply its full military and technological might to contain
the restive Himalayan region, rather than simply disconnecting it as the
Burmese did when putting down during their people-powered rebellion earlier
in the year. But just as the American military learned in Iraq, ease of
conquest does not translate into ease of rule. Political order requires a
level of buy-in from the populace, the so-called “hearts and
minds” or as described by Machiavelli, that balanced blend of fear and
love – and this requires an approach to counterinsurgency that wins
over the support conquered, never an easy task.
Just as the Burmese junta did six months earlier, China
tried its best to use the very same contemporary tools that beamed images of
that rebellion around the world as a tool of information operations to
suppress further outbreaks of violence, reviewing each and every frame
recorded, looking for organizers, activists and participants in acts of
violence against Chinese authorities, innocent civilians, and both public and
private property. It incarcerated over 1,000, and it surrounded restive
monasteries, locking its monks inside and demanding they renounce their
spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, whose popularity remains high, even if his
message of nonviolence is no longer universally shared by a young population
that has seen the world respond so favorably to the use of force and violence
in the quest for independence – such as that wielded by Kosovars
against their Serbian oppressors, winning widespread recognition for their
February 17, 2008 declaration of independence, even though they are but a
small minority province that has long been a constituent part of the Serbian
state.
Young people in Tibet have come to recognize that violent
rebellion has proven efficacious in the struggle by smaller peoples to win
independence against a superior opponent time and again, and this seems to
have diluted the tactical and strategic influence of the Dalai Lama during
the 2008 rebellion. And yet, the embrace of violence by so many Tibetan youth
only reinforces the utility of the Dalai Lama’s leadership for Beijing,
since his “Middle Way” – a path of nonviolence that aims to
win autonomy from China while remaining a friend of the Han Chinese and a
constituent part of the People’s Republic – becomes all the more
attractive to Beijing, which logic suggests would prefer a peaceful
partnership to a violent secessionist struggle with the potential unravel the
sovereign fabric of the Chinese state. And strangely,
Beijing continues to denounce the Dalai Lama, calling him a terrorist, among
other things. As reported in the People’s Daily at the time of
the March 2008 uprising, “The Dalai Lama is scheming to take the
Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese Government to make concessions
to Tibetan independence,” and the “Dalai clique has also
strengthened collusion with East Turkistan terror organizations and planned
terror activities in Tibet.”
Among the six million Tibetans in the world, most still
reside on the volatile Tibetan plateau. According to a 1998 census some
111,170 live in exile, with 85,000 in India; 14,000 in Nepal; 7,000 in North
America; 1,600 in neighboring Bhutan; another 1,600 in Switzerland; some 750
in the rest of Europe; 1,000 in Taiwan; 220 in Australia and New Zealand; and
60 in Japan. This diaspora, while small in number, has asserted a powerful
moral and diplomatic presence, with international celebrities dedicated to
the cause of a Free Tibet. Indeed, just a week before protests began in Tibet
in March 2008, world famous Icelandic singer Björk shouted “Tibet!
Tibet!” at the end of her song “Declare Independence”
during a concert in Shanghai, a song that includes the lyrics:
“Don’t let them do that to you. Raise your flag!”
The global music industry’s embrace of a Free Tibet
goes back over a decade. First came the 1994 release of the Beastie Boys
album, “Ill Communication,” and with it the launch of the
Milarepa Fund, an organization named after Milarepa, the 11th-century Tibetan
saint who used music to enlighten the people, to disburse royalties from the
album to benefit Tibetan monks. The fund organizers joined the Beastie Boys
as they headlined the 1994 Lollapalooza Tour, when the idea of holding a
“Live Aid”-styled concert for Tibetan independence was born. The
first took place in 1996, headlined by Björk and including performances
by Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, and Rage Against the Machine. Over 100,000
people attended, raising over $800,000 for the Free Tibet movement. These
concerts continued for three more years, helping fuel the growth of Students
for a Free Tibet.
Surviving the Dragon
While the Tibetan community in the United States is small
compared to the Tibetan exile community in South Asia, numbering just 7,000
in the 1998 census and estimated to now be over 10,000, there are numerous
Tibetan temples, monasteries and cultural centers scattered across the
American heartland, including the Bloomington, Indiana-based Tibetan
Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center. In 2005, the
Dalai Lama appointed Arjia Thubten Lobsang Rinpoche as the director of the
center, one of the highest Tibetan lamas ever to escape China, having fled in
1998. Arjia Rinpoche is the author of a newly published memoir chronicling
his remarkable life story, Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama's Account
of 40 Years Under Chinese Rule, published by Rodale Press in March
2010.
I had the privilege of interviewing Arjia Rinpoche during
the 2008 Tibetan uprising, and he shared some insights from his memoir, which
recounted not only his own fascinating life journey, but the broader
socio-political history of Chinese rule in Tibet. It is a story that he
describes as an “inside story of lots of kind of very interesting
events.” As he explained, “I want to be an eye-witness,”
and “I would like to share the story with the world, that is my main
goal.”
His memoir covers “very sensitive issues in
Tibet,” including Beijing’s officially recognized Panchen Lama,
and the traumatic events of the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward,
and the more recent Great Western Development Program, and their impact on
Tibetan culture. Arjia Rinpoche was an actual participant in the selection
process that identified Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the eleventh Panchen Lama in
1995, and witnessed first-hand China’s effort to manipulate the
selection process when it rejected the Dalai Lama’s pick with its own
“Golden Urn” lottery method, through which the government
selected Gyaltsen Norbu as the Panchen Lama, after which the Gedhun Choekyi
Nyima disappeared into “protective custody” from which he has
never returned.
The Dalai Lama has long called for a “Middle
Way” approach to change in Tibet, seeking autonomy and co-existence
within China, but not outright independence, and calling for only the use of
nonviolent methods to achieve this end. His strategy is reminiscent of
Gandhi’s successfully applied concept of Satyagraha, or
“truth-force,” designed to induce a moral transformation of the
opponent so that in the end there can be both victory and friendship with the
opponent, rather than defeat and enmity. Arjia
Rinpoche discussed the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way noting there
“maybe some kind of similarities here, but I guess it is
different” as well. For instance, he noted he is “Tibetan from
inside Tibet,” but that “lots of Tibetans grew up in India or the
United States or Canada so not in Tibet,” and “our concept, we
have a patriotism for our country, we love our country—that is all the
same. However, our understanding towards the approach—the solution to
independence or democracy, is different. We’re all different. His
Holiness’ idea is exactly in the middle.” In contrast, in some
“outside countries—you can see, realize, the use of
violence,” and noted that “Tibetan associations or some people
are very positive for that: they say, ‘okay, we’ll just go and
attack Chinese embassies in different countries or something like
that—in India, Nepal, the police come, arrest them and all that. But
the next day, a lot of people come, and do a press conference, protesting
[again].” And “then, still the police arrest them.” And on
and on it continues: protest, and arrest, then press conference; then more
protests; more arrests; more press conferences.
But “in China, while this time, in Tibet, they held a
big protest and the police also arrested them—it was the same kind of
action but with different results. In the U.S., they arrest the one protestor
and in China they arrest the one protestor, but it’s a different
concept—in the West, they may be arrested but then may be back on the
street the next day. In China, the person destroyed their whole life, and
their family’s and their relatives’. Today they arrested a lot of
people, a lot—they say when they arrest them, they ask then to sign a
paper that says you have to say: ‘His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the
[instigator] for the events, you have to recognize this, and promise that in
the future, no matter what kind of political things [take place], you cant be
involved.’ Otherwise they will torture you, put you in jail, eventually
maybe kill you. That’s why the violence, the fight, bears no results in
China. That’s why His Holiness says we still need genuine autonomy, you
know, self-determination—but not independence, that kind of compromise.
In China, the Chinese constitution, if you read it, they say there are a lot
of things—freedom of religion, rights to protest, to talk and like
that, but there is nothing like that [really] there. In Tibet, the Lhasa
area, the heart of Tibet, the Chinese say—in the Tibetan Autonomous
Region—they have a different constitution and law, that it’s more
free—but this is never used. It’s on paper, but never used, His
Holiness said we have to truly use the constitution and let the people have
freedom. His Middle Way is under Chinese rule, to use the rules and
[constitutional] structure to search for freedom and preserve Tibetan culture
and language and everything. We’re searching for real freedom, so that
is a different concept that the Chinese will understand differently. The
Middle Way is the only solution that can solve those problems.”
Background to the 2008 Rebellion
On the 2008 uprising, which rapidly intensified and spread
all across Tibetan China after a first nonviolent protest was held by monks
on March 10 in Lhasa, Arjia Rinpoche shared some observations, noting that
“first of all, for almost fifty years, five decades, under the
communists, all Tibetans have struggled with their genuine autonomy. So in
another words, we’re fighting our own basic human rights, so
that’s the issue. Every March 10th, we have a protesting day that we
consider the Tibetan Uprising day—in Dharamsala, India or some other
free country. But in China it’s been impossible, in Tibet,
impossible,” but “in recent years in Tibet that movement, people
are of course [protesting] but the government, they definitely don’t
allow you to do that—so the people began using different
forms—such as to smoke puja, we do that some times on the mountains, to
smoke, say prayers, shout up slogans such as 'Long life for His
Holiness!’ And this year, they exactly started that way. Fifty monks
come up from monastery and went to downtown Lhasa for a peaceful
demonstration with the Tibet flag [calling for a] Free Tibet and a long life
for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, it was a ten to fifteen minute protest
before the police came and squashed them down—that was the
beginning.”
Arjia Rinpoche noted that they’ve been “annually
doing that one” so it was not of itself an unusual protest on the tenth
of March. “Because His Holiness is a peacemaker, the whole world is
recognizing that—because of that kind of reason, inside Tibet, Tibetans
are very excited, and always remember that March 10th, or His Holiness’
birthday, are always celebrated.” While the
Chinese authorities view the Tibetans as different, Arjia Rinpoche noted that
the “Chinese people and Tibetan people or Mongolian people or Western
people are all the same, all equal, and have no conflicts—the only
difference is the Chinese communists, the government, they’ve
controlled Tibet for many years,” and dating “back twenty years,
they’ve had a new policy to the Develop the West—Tibet, Xinjiang,
and Qinghai provinces.” And while there is “a good name for
developing their high-tech, which eventually may make peoples’ lives
better there,” if you look “inside, it’s not that good
actually; they have their own purpose,” including a “big
resettlement program” through which a “big population of Han
people are moved to Tibet, and Tibetans are actually losing their jobs, their
businesses—you know, so that it’s difficult to survive. For
instance in Lhasa, there’s the market on Barkur Street where Tibetans
sell a little bit of incense, ritual things like souvenirs and things like
that,” as they’ve been doing since “one hundred years ago,
just like that. In the ‘50s, ‘60s, I was there, and 99 percent of
the stores were owned by Tibetans. But now the difference is that 90 percent
of them are now owned by Han Chinese, so that’s why the Tibetan people
so upset. So when they have that kind of protest on the first day, on March
10th, they arrested them right away—but the next day there were more
monks, and more people come out to protest for their release. Of course they
cracked them down—but on the third day, there were more people, it
became bigger and bigger. So on March 14, even more people came out, and it
got a little bit violent—that all happened; that’s a very
unfortunate thing. But it’s understandable, that’s peoples’
emotions. That’s why that kind of thing happened.”
Arjia Rinpoche noted that the Chinese refer to the protests
as the “March 14 events,” and not the “March 10
events,” and in so doing draw attention to the fourth, violent day and
not the three days of nonviolent protest that had preceded them. And in China
where the Chinese media is by and large the “only the Chinese
media” that ordinary people have access to, as “otherwise, no
media can go to visit—they cut off every foreign media and other media,
only Chinese TV and newspapers are telling their stories, their
propaganda—always showing what looks like Tibetan guys doing bad things
to the Chinese people, and the Chinese were supporting things in Tibet, doing
better things for Tibet, but those crazy people came and spoiled
that.” He added that the “Tibetan people
are really upset,” and are “fighting for their basic freedoms and
their human rights. That’s why all of a sudden the whole Tibetan
region, fifty different cities, monasteries, villages, had protests and
demonstrations. It’s really difficult to say, but it is kind of an
exciting moment. Very shocking, as the Chinese government educated the
people, they brainwashed those people, for sixty years—and the result
is today they all come out against their government, with no weapons,
nothing—and the very strong, heavily-armed military comes in and cracks
them down, using very modern weapons like machine guns, armored cars,
tanks—using those kind of modern materials, weapons to kill them, and
crack them down. It’s a very unfortunate thing, but a very interesting
thing is that after fifty years of patriotic education, after fifty years of
socialist education, the result is they all stand up against the
government.”
The spread of the protests across the Tibetan plateau, to
over fifty communities, and their continuation despite the crackdown by
authorities and deployment of military and paramilitary forces, is
unprecedented, particularly given the capacity of the regime to strike hard
against dissenters as demonstrated time and again. As Arjia Rinpoche
explained, “If in a free country like the U.S. or Europe or some
country with basic, you know, rights like those [protected by a]
constitution, regulations, legislation and everything based on freedom and
human rights like that, that’s why the government has much more
confidence, and you can see some kind of protests, big demonstrations in U.S.
or Europe. Some people look at that, maybe go crazy or a little bit radical,
and the police come out like that.” In China, “they did this way
before, they had that experience to get this country,” through the
civil war and revolution that gave birth to the Peoples Republic. “But
now they are so scared that some other people will repeat their story against
them; in Tibet something happened of course. Let’s say today there are
around six million Tibetans, but we don’t really know the number, is it
three million, five million? We really don’t know. But let’s say
six million, compared to the 1.3 billion Chinese people. Against 1.3 billion
Chinese people, the population is so different—and Tibetan people
can’t do anything. Why they used these types of [modern] weapons, why
do they crack them down, torture them that way? Because they have the fear
that the Tibetan issue may become the fuse to other reactions. In China,
there are lots of problems there, hiding—all very subtle. Just one
thing—one can say lots of things—to know is that every year in
China, no matter how big or small, thousands of people gather there, from
just a couple of hundred to over ten or twenty thousand, and all added up,
every year, it’s at least 50,000 or 60,000 demonstrations that appear
in China. So the [Chinese authorities] are scared that kind of reaction that
happened in Tibet, there biggest fear is it will happen elsewhere. Their
propaganda says this is a Tibetan thing, and not a Chinese
thing.”
And with the continuation of unrest on the Tibetan plateau
in the weeks that followed, and rumors of further protests breaking out in
other far-flung provinces—from Xinjiang to Inner Mongolia, the fear
felt at the highest levels of the Chinese government are understandable,
despite Beijing’s vast military and economic superiority. Indeed, a
year later an uprising would break out across Xinjiang, plunging that
province into a chaos reminiscent of that which gripped Tibet the year
before. After the March 2008 protests in Tibet, Arjia Rinpoche noted that
“after that, in Xinjiang, also known as Eastern Turkistan,”
people have been “searching for independence—and that area also
had demonstrations,” though inside China there’s been a
“blackout of the media” so “we don’t know the really
true story, but I guess at least 2,000 people” participated in an
“uprising there.” And then on April 4, 2008, he said he had
“heard that some Inner Mongolians, searching for independence, had an
uprising too. Maybe elsewhere in China somewhere also, we don’t
know—they block all the information.” That’s “why the
Chinese are using this kind of modern weaponry, against one demonstration,
for the whole of China so they know they can’t do anything. The
government is really, really mad, and the government has this kind of modern
equipment, and uses this logical, Chinese philosophy. They have a saying:
kill the chicken to scare the monkey,” and so “in front of
monkey, you kill the chicken so the monkey gets really scared.” And the
government is “really scared of the other people, there are lots of
problems hiding in china—that’s why they will show the military
power.” Adding to Beijing’s anxiety is that “the Olympics
are very important to the Chinese people,” and fear what might
transpire “should the crazy Tibetans interrupt, destroy the Olympic
games.”
Arjia Rinpoche recalled how “some years ago” he
was “reminded of a story in which one Chinese leader was in an
interview with the western media, and was asked by them, is your law stronger
than your politics, or is your politics stronger than the law? And that
person was confused, and couldn’t answer, and said, ‘Well,
well.’ The law, the constitution, they have everything
perfect—but they have different rules, policies, and the current policy
is that—so they use that and never, never use the constitution.”
And yet, the constitution protects freedom of religion, and whether
“you believe in that religion or not, that’s your
freedom—as non-believers can’t control the practitioners. But if
you become a party member, it clearly says the party member never, ever
believes in Buddhism, you are kind of a traitor or something like that if you
do.”
China’s constitution is thus “definitely in
conflict” with party policy, and this is true with regard to political
protest as it is with religious practice. “You have the freedom of
protest, but when you protest they say you are a counter-revolutionary, and
they will kill you. You say, ‘the law says that’, and we [the
government] say ‘we have current rules that say you can’t do
protests, and you did—that is why you are a counter-revolutionary. So
the government will always win, the people, the majority, will
lose.”
Faith and Freedom
I asked Arjia Rinpoche whether the struggle in Tibet may be
defined as a struggle between religious freedom and secularism, or between
religion itself and atheism as preached by communist ideologues, or if behind
the atheistic tradition of communism, there remained a shared religious
heritage between Tibetans and Han Chinese through Buddhism that promises hope
for reconciliation between the two peoples, and which could bring the two
nations together through their shared spiritual heritage. He noted this was
an “interesting question,” and recalled how during the 1950s,
“they considered religion to be a poison. Why? I think that they
understood religion was a very powerful force and that they really were very
scared as religion can unify lots of people, no matter if you are Han,
Tibetan or Mongolian, we can all come together with religion. So they were
really scared of that kind of result, and used these terms [derived] from
Marxism, or wherever they came from. And so after a few decades, they
struggled, but there were no results, and still people believed. So, they
changed their tone, but they still considered religion as a
poison—they’re not really afraid of religion, but afraid of the
power of religion. It is a big umbrella.”
Indeed, during the March 2008 protests, “they
assembled this time in almost fifty different regions, each had this
uprising, all came together. The Chinese are really afraid of that. Before
said all religion was superstition, and that we should denounce them, get rid
of the very bad influences, those kinds of things, and approach the modern
ways. But then, Falun Gong emerged in the 1990s, rapidly spreading throughout
China. As Arjia Rinpoche observed of the spread of the protests in March, it
“reminded me of the Falun Gong, actually,” noting how
“before, during the Cultural Revolution every religion was considered a
poison and was denounced,” and that “only the Qigong could
progress,” and was thus “allowed to continue.”
Qigong can be described as a wide variety of traditional
cultivation practices involving movement and/or regulated breathing designed
for health maintenance purposes, as a sort of therapy. “The Qigong
masters tried to find some other ideas from other religions,” and the
idea of Falun Gong reflects the “Buddhist way” or the
“Dharma wheel,” with its name derived from the “Gong”
in “Qigong,” and the “Falu” meaning the “Dharma
wheel.” Arjia Rinpoche recalled that it
“became very popular, and lots of people practiced that.” The
rising popularity concerned party officials, and they held a private meeting
some ten or fifteen years ago at which they said, “Oh, we should be
careful about the Falun Gung,” and this was a “secret meeting
involving only a small number of very high level officials in China. And yet
the next day, there were 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners around Tiananmen
Square and the Forbidden City and they had a big protest from Falun Gong. Oh
wow, they really got scared,” since they “had a very secret
meeting only yesterday, and a Falun Gong guy” was among them, showing
that the “roots already had spread in the Chinese government to a very
high level, and the information traveled so quickly using the
Internet—just one e-mail spread out to thousands—then, the
Chinese government didn’t concentrate so much on e-mail as so
important, and didn’t pay attention—so from one e-mail, then
10,000 people demonstrated They got really scared, and since that time they
have tried to squash down the Falun Gong.”
But despite government efforts to oppress this new religious
movement, “it got bigger and bigger,’ and this generates
“one kind of reaction in China—like the Tibetan action,”
which is officials deciding, “‘Now we really have to crack
down,’” just as they did against Falun Gong as they did again
against Tibetans in 2008. “My point is that mainly the Chinese
government denounces religion as a poison. For Falun Gong people there was no
solution to re-educate them, as they still practice it even when in jail. But
now they are using one solution—they give them a Buddhist book to read,
to convert them to Buddhism—that means the Chinese government, the
communist government, has no settled law on which way they can respond, which
methods they can use, will use. For instance, the Panchen Lama thing,
it’s a reincarnation thing—but even non-believers think,
they’re very superstitious about reincarnation, how come it’s
like that? But the Chinese, first of all they denounce it, then, they find
out it is very useful, they find out the power of reincarnation is very
useful—so now the government can come out and say you are the
reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, or you are not the reincarnation. How come
you are a non-believer and try to really control the details of Buddhism: it
makes no sense, but they still use it. The Chinese communist government
really scares their people—even when dealing with a very peaceful
demonstration, that almost always reminds them of just some other big kind of
threat alert: that’s why they are so scared, and think ‘we have
to crack them down’.”
Free Tibet – or Free China?
When Russian domination of Eastern Europe came to an end in
1989, and soon after that the Soviet Union itself broke apart into
independent, sovereign states, it all seemed to happen very fast—with
the East Bloc states winning their freedom over a period of several weeks or
months as people-power demonstrations spread like a wildfire along the Iron
Curtain. Then when the Wall came down, both physically and metaphorically,
everything changed—almost overnight. I asked Arjia Rinpoche if the hope
among Tibetans is for something like this to happen in Tibet and to permeate
across the body politic of China, resulting in a sudden awakening of
tolerance in Beijing much like that which came to Moscow during the final
years of the Soviet Union—with a rediscovery of the central importance
of religion to life, a renunciation of atheism as the official state
religion, and a generational change in attitude toward the outlying peoples
that were once perceived as a threat to the motherland.
Rinpoche explained that he believes that “in China,
even the Communists are very, you know, thinking about that kind of thing
too. Some have even a little bit of a concept—maybe a little bit
today—to think like federalism, like in Russia, for the different
provinces, like they are different little countries, those kind of things,
those kinds of structures. They’re thinking about this, but again once
you are thinking this way, once you are on this position, you will say,
‘No, no, no!’ Something that is against the central government,
they will say no—so always that stuff happens. I guess something could
happen; inside, China has a very different kind of conflict. It’s like,
you’re father and my father; your bases and my bases are in between
these conflicts, it’s very, very complicated. People didn’t
mention that, I don’t know why—every authority, like Hu Jintao,
and before him, Jiang Zemin—every person that became a president of
China, recognized a bunch of people as some kind of General, offering them
some kind of promotions like that—and giving them a very high position
like that, and honors them like that—that says something. The message
is: ‘You are my people! You are on my side.’ . . . And the
military is another different problem facing China; every authority tries to
control them at every moment—after a new presidential [inauguration]
ceremony, they are wearing some new kind of military uniform, a style thing:
‘You’re the general of some kind,’ something like
that—it’s a big problem in China, the military. And also the
farmers and the students. And the, you know, the intellectuals like the
teachers, professors, scientists—everyone has their own view, and a
different outlook to the conflict here, but it’s very subtle. I hope
that a big thing, coming from where, has to come from China, not from other
places. Tibetans and everybody involved in the struggle have a lot of hope
for a Free Tibet, but now we should say a ‘Free China.’ That is
our hope.”
Some analysts have argued that young Tibetans are rejecting
the Dalai Lama’s advocacy of nonviolence, having grown frustrated after
half a century of talk without positive results, and they have attributed
this in part to the success by independence seekers in what was the Serbian
province of Kosovo, which launched a campaign of terror and insurgency
against Serbian officials in their quest for independence, ultimately winning
broad international support for their declaration of independence on February
17, just a few weeks before the Tibetan uprising began. Kosovo, with two
million inhabitants, is 90 percent Albanian Muslim, and thus ethnically
distinct from the rest of Serbia, and a decade ago, Serbia had tried to
ethnically cleanse the province of its Muslim majority during the last of the
Balkan wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, an effort thwarted by
NATO military action. I was wondering if young
Tibetans, in their increasingly boldly asserted aspirations for true,
sovereign independence and not just the autonomy sought by the Dalai Lama,
took inspiration from Kosovo’s successful effort against a larger,
mightier, and ruthless foe, and thus emulated its use of violence in its
quest for independence. But Arjia Rinpoche did not see a direct impact, given
the isolation in Tibet from the world media, though he noted “maybe
it’s different outside Tibet, where Tibetans may have this kind of
reaction or inspiration. But inside, I don’t think so, it’s
totally different inside” where it’s “almost impossible to
learn about that kind of thing in China, so it doesn’t make sense. We
can struggle, we can hope—but still, there is nothing.”
I also noted how the 2008 uprising by Tibetans followed by
just a few months the Saffron revolution, where a similarly widespread
rebellion led by Buddhist monks against a military dictatorship in
neighboring Burma spontaneously erupted, with information quickly spreading
around the world by Internet. I was curious if and how recent in events in
Tibet might be inspired by the monks’ earlier rebellion in
Burma—and if the Burmese government’s successful crackdown
provided Beijing with a successful field test of how to crush a
people-powered uprising in the digital era. Rinpoche believes the Saffron
revolution may have had a “a little bit” of an impact on Tibet,
but added, “I don’t think a lot, because the Chinese government
realized that before the people paid attention to it, and China’s
newspapers and TV news never showed it—so maybe a little bit, but not
really very much, I don’t think.” Arjia Rinpoche said he recalled
being asked by a journalist, “Why is it the monks always protest?
Shouldn’t they stay in the monastery—why do they get involved in
political things?” To this, he responded: “I say no, if you have
freedom of religion they won’t do anything—but if you don’t
have freedom of religion then the monks will protest. In Burma that happened,
and Chinese monks did protest before—as we don’t have freedom of
religion. If there’s no freedom in school, the students will protest.
And if there’s no freedom in the army, the army will protest. It is the
same for monks—they will protest. This is a regular
thing.”
Excerpts from Surviving the Dragon
Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama's Account of 40
Years under Chinese Rule
By Arjia Rinpoche
Rodale Press (March 2010)
Hardcover: 288 pages
ISBN-10: 1605297542
ISBN-13: 978-1605297545
I. Beginnings
My life as a reincarnate lama began on a peaceful
midsummer day of 1952. A search committee of ten monks had set out from
Kumbum Monastery to select the reincarnation of the late seventh Arjia
Rinpoche. They rode sturdy horses and traveled quickly across the Dolun Nor
Steppe in northeastern Tibet, intent on their mission. …
As the monks came into view, the people of our nomad
camp grew excited. Perhaps they were the selection committee come to choose
a candidate. Two families, my own and another, had already been interviewed
by the search party in its quest to find the new abbot of Kumbum Monastery.
…
At last, the senior monk rose, placed khatas (white
hand loomed scarves) around my parents’ necks, and offered
congratulations to them for having given birth to Arjia Rinpoche, eighth
incarnation of the father of Lama Tsong Khapa, founder of the Gelugpa
tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. My joyful family prostrated before the monks
in gratitude; my mother was so happy she cried. Before my birth my mother
had had a dream, a prophetic dream: She dreamt she was with her family, and
it was summer. Storm clouds were gathering; the sky darkened. With a big
clap of thunder, a dragon appeared before her startling her out of her
dream.
II. The Cultural Revolution
Sometimes when I recall what people did during the
Cultural Revolution, I feel it was completely absurd. Chairman Mao’s
red book of quotations was the only book that people could read, all other
books were illegal; his statue was the only statue that people could
worship. Everyone had to “support what our enemies are against; rebel
against what our enemies support; if you don’t knock them down, the
anti-revolutionaries won’t fall by themselves.” These were the
slogans of Chairman Mao that we had to recite every day. As usual, before
setting out to work in the field, all monks were made to gather in front of
the barn, which served as the office of the monastery production team. One
day, a bizarre event occurred. Before we went to work that morning, team
leader Lobsang Rabgyal called everyone to the front of his house, and
requested that we straighten our wrinkled clothes. He led us to a picture
of Chairman Mao in his room and reverently bowed to it three times. After
that, he demanded that every morning we report to “Chairman
Mao” what we expect to accomplish for the day.
In our sadness was a hope; we waited for Chairman Mao
to die. As the Cultural Revolution went on, our dream and purpose were
simple—that monks would be re-robed one day and free to recite their
Sutras. Everyone surmised that as soon as Chairman Mao passed away,
Buddhism would revive. Unfortunately, my teacher and first mentor Tsultrim
Lhaksem was not able to wait that long. On February 11, 1973, he passed
away at the age of eighty-four. On and off, I had studied the Dharma with
him for over twenty years, during which we had all gone through so much
hardship. What cannot be forgotten was that in 1958 he was an ordinary
monk, but was imprisoned for many years solely because he bore the title of
Arja Sutra Teacher and had taught Sutras to my previous
incarnation.
He was the first old monk whom I personally attended.
His passing made me realize that a monk’s attitude towards death is
different from those of lay people. It also made me reflect more on the
question of impermanence. He passed away after being sick for three days. I
remember the second day after he caught a cold, he called Gyayak Rinpoche
and me over to him and told us that he had been a monk for over seventy
years and had nothing to regret as he recalled the past. The only thought
that saddened him was that he would not be able to see the day of the
Buddhist revival with his own eyes.
III. Backlash
The provincial United Front issued an ordinance to
launch a new socialist education campaign, and Kumbum Monastery was not
exempted. Just the name ‘campaign’ raised fears. I was reminded
of the events which were a prelude to the Cultural Revolution. In the Tibet
Autonomous Region, this kind of campaign had begun several years before. It
was terrible. Monks had been forced to denounce and stomp on pictures of
His Holiness; photos of him were taken out of all the temples and monks
were required to sign a loyalty oath agreeing never to pray to him,
participate in demonstrations, and to obey all laws in every respect. We
were fully aware of what had been going on in other parts of Tibet and were
shocked that we would now also have to suffer the same indignities. Not
knowing exactly what to expect and remembering times past, we made full
preparation for this campaign. We told monks at Kumbum to hide the photos
of the Dalai Lama before government personnel arrived.
In the winter of 1997, over forty cadres were
stationed in Kumbum Monastery. The Socialist education campaign began. I
talked to the leaders. I asked why they were bothering us; Kumbum monks
weren’t causing political troubles. Their answer was that they were
just following orders, doing as they were told. I did not fight them but
thought to myself, this is a bad beginning. In the early 1980s, when the
monastery was reopened, many monks, who had been revolutionary activists
trying to keep in good with the occupiers, now loudly claimed regret for
what they had done and apologized to their victims. However, some of them
pretended or convinced themselves that they had done nothing bad, and even
claimed that by their activism they had protected the
monastery.
At that time they seem to have enjoyed persecuting
people and from the stories we were hearing about events in the Tibet
Autonomous Region, not much had changed. It is true, however, that the
cadres who now came to Kumbum behaved differently from thosein the Cultural
Revolution. These cadres were not fanatic ideologists; they seemed only
interested in keeping their ‘rice bowls,’ their paid positions
and did not really care what we did, said or believed. The topics of their
meetings with the monks were mostly about their own problems—delayed
salaries, layoffs and employment problems—not ideology. The cadre was
local, so they went home every night to their families. The monks clearly
saw that this entire program was a formality. Of course, everyone had to
listen to those dry official documents improving their
education.
After two months, this campaign ended
‘victoriously.’ The final act was that every monk had to
denounce His Holiness and sign a ‘patriotic agreement.’ I was
the first who had to sign, but I excused myself saying that I could not
write.
At the meeting to end the campaign, I was feeling
depressed. No only was the program reminiscent of the bad days but the
location was in the same place as in 1958 meeting where I publicly suffered
denunciation. That time, I sat huddled on the ground. Now, I sat on the
stage. That time, I was denounced as a “class enemy.” Now, I
was a vice chairman of the Qinghai People’s Political Consultative
Committee, the equivalent of a deputy governor of a province. Position,
however, had not helped the Panchen Lama when things turned bad. Soon, it
would be my turn to read speeches pre-written by the Bureau of Religious
Affairs. How could I avoid these hypocritical words?
Things were converging around me; my freedom of
movement narrowed. Thoughts of denouncing His Holiness, the Dalai Lama,
being tutor to a counterfeit Panchen Lama, fearing the signs of a new
political movement, beat against my mind. I sighed, and looked up to the
blue Tibetan sky. I really wanted to fly to the other side of the clouds
…
Serdok Rinpoche, my dear friend who knew me so well,
leaned close to me and whispered, “What are you thinking? Do you want
to escape somewhere?”
So astonished, I responded, “How did you
know?”
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