American Buddhist Net

July 24, 2008

The Indian government has refused to allow Tibetan spiritual leader the Karmapa Lama, the only major monk reincarnate recognised by both the Dalai Lama and China, to visit areas close to the China border ahead of the Beijing Olympics, his aides said here Thursday.

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Himalaya: Land of the Snow Lion
October 4, 2008 through March 1, 2009

Baldeck explores the territory, often called "between heaven and earth," encompassing ethnic, cultural and historical Tibet, which stretches from the western Himalaya mountains of Ladakh (northern India), to Bhutan, the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and east into Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. Her photographs offer a compelling look at an ancient, mostly Buddhist world through portraiture, landscapes, architecture and still life.

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07/21/2008

Stupa burial and cremation are reserved for high lamas who are being honored in death. Sky burial is the usual means for disposing of the corpses of commoners. Sky burial is not considered suitable for children who are less than 18, pregnant women, or those who have died of infectious disease or accident. The origin of sky burial remains largely hidden in Tibetan mystery. Sky burial is a ritual that has great religious meaning. Tibetans are encouraged to witness this ritual, to confront death openly and to feel the impermanence of life...

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New Delhi, July 17 : An earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale hit a remote area of the Tibetan plateau in China's Qinghai province early Thursday, the State Seismological Bureau said.

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July 17, 2008
Jane Macartney

A month before the Olympics, China is so determined to present a trouble-free image to the world that it has imposed a news blackout on reports of continuing deadly unrest in Tibetan parts of the country.

Three Tibetan sources, all speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Times that two monks at a monastery in western Sichuan province that borders Tibet proper were killed in a clash on July 12. For monks of what are popularly known as the “red hat” sects, the date is one of the most auspicious festivals of the year.

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July 13, 2008

More than 1,000 Buddhist monks are still locked up under armed guard in monasteries around Lhasa, four months after anti-Chinese riots, while the authorities implement their harshest crackdown on religion in decades.

Eyewitnesses confirm that People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops have sealed off Drepung, the largest monastery in Tibet. Nobody may go in or out. Photography is banned and passers-by are shooed away.

A camp of olive-green tents and two rings of roadblocks surround this sanctuary of meditation. Local people say the monks pay the army for food to be sent to them.

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By Tom Heinen
Thursday, Jul 10 2008, 04:08 PM

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly" -- which got word this week that Lilly Endowment renewed funding for the award-winning PBS newsmagazine's 12th season to the tune of $6.25 million for 2008-'09 -- has two interesting pieces on its program this coming Sunday.

The cover story, on Lourdes' 150th anniversary, looks at the religious significance of the historic village and Marian shrine in southwestern France.

Then, in an exclusive U.S. interview, Kim Lawton talks with 23-year-old Karmapa Lama about his role as Tibetan Buddhism's second highest-ranking spiritual leader.

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The Tibet-China talks are a sham, Sarkozy has said he won't go to the opening ceremonies if there is no progress, but after all that good food and wine, who knows? Now China tells him--with no apparent sense of irony--that he must not meet with the Dalai Lama in FRANCE because that would “would be contrary to the principle of non-interference in internal affairs.” ABN
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By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: July 9, 2008

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who is expected to announce on Wednesday that he will after all attend the opening ceremonies of Beijing’s Olympic Games, was warned by China on Tuesday not to meet with the Dalai Lama in France next month.

China’s ambassador to France, Kong Quan, told reporters there would be “serious consequences” for Chinese-French relations if Mr. Sarkozy meets the Dalai Lama, asserting that it “would be contrary to the principle of non-interference in internal affairs.”

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"We do not recognise this 'Tibetan exiled government'," Xinhua quoted an unnamed spokesman of the party's United Front Work Department as saying in an exclusive interview.
"The central government will never hold consultations with such an illegal organisation."
Tibet's "illegal" government-in-exile also has no role in the dialogue, the Xinhua news agency quoted the senior Communist Party official.
The official also insisted the dialogue only concerned the "personal future" of the Dalai Lama, in an apparent reference to negotiations on whether the Tibetan spiritual leader could one day return to China and eventually Tibet.
This has been China's central position since the talks started in 2002, although the Tibetan side has pushed for the dialogue to cover a broader range of issues, such as more meaningful autonomy for the Himalayan region.
AFP | China warns Dalai Lama ahead of Olympics

Mon, 07 Jul 2008

London, July 7: Fears over the possible occurrence of fresh unrests in Tibet on the occasion of the birthday of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, have prompted the Chinese authorities into virtually emptying out Tibet's main monasteries and banning visits to a sacred site on the edge of Tibetan capital Lhasa.

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Sunday 6th July, 2008

The 73rd birthday of the 14th Dalai Lama is being marked by the University of Madras and Alliance Francaise here Sunday with a three-day festival of Tibetan culture.

The festival began with a presentation on an extraordinary French woman, who was one of the only two French explorers to be able to reach the forbidden land of Lhasa in the hundred years between 1846 and 1950.

Many foreign explorers, 'missionaries, army officers, diplomats, spies' wanted to have a look at Tibet at the time, explained Claude Arpi, French journalist and historian, speaking on the life Alexandra David-Neel whose numerous writings contributed to make Tibet and Buddhism known the world over.

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By ASHWINI BHATIA

DHARMSALA, India (AP) — The Tibetan government-in-exile won't hold any celebrations to mark the Dalai Lama's birthday Sunday because of the ongoing suffering of the people of Tibet, an official said.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader turns 73.

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July 6, 2008

They seemed an unlikely pair — the Tibetan Buddhist monk who had spent 33 years in Chinese prisons and labor camps and the aspiring Japanese filmmaker.

The filmmaker, Makoto Sasa, said she first heard of the monk, Palden Gyatso, when she was in college in Japan. After she arrived in New York to study film, alone and speaking no English, she read his memoir, “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” (Grove Press, 1997). “His story made me think my problem is nothing,” she said.

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Jul 05, 2008

DHARAMSHALA, India - Representatives of the Dalai Lama and China made no headway on the status of Tibet in formal talks this week, an envoy of the spiritual leader said today, describing himself as "disappointed."

"There is a growing perception among the Tibetans and my friends that the whole tactic of the Chinese government is to engage us to stall for time," said Lodi Gyari, who led the two-man team which met Chinese officials in Beijing.

"My colleague and I told our Chinese counterpart candidly that we ourselves are beginning to inch towards this school of thought."

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China insists the Dalai Lama prove he doesn't support Tibetan independence or disruption of the Beijing Olympics, telling two envoys for the spiritual leader that such "positive actions" are needed before further talks, a state news agency said Thursday.
The demand made by a top Chinese official in two days of meetings indicated no change in Beijing's position toward the Dalai Lama.
AP | China: Dalai Lama must disavow Tibet independence

This week’s talks are typical of the pattern in place since formal dialogue began in 2002. We’re starting to see the limits of Beijing’s approach of demanding more concessions while granting none itself. The tack is only emboldening Tibetan extremists.
This might be normal patter for Party leaders, but it’s no way to telegraph seriousness about the talks. Contrast it with the Dalai Lama’s approach. Over the past 30 years, he has modulated his position to the point where he now advocates autonomy, not independence, for Tibet. More recently he has expressed his support for the Beijing Olympics, and held a prayer ceremony for victims of the Sichuan earthquake last month. But he can’t express goodwill to a stone wall indefinitely.
Beijing needs to show it’s negotiating in good faith. It could start by ending verbal attacks on the Dalai Lama and beginning a public investigation into the policy failures that resulted in the riots in March. Otherwise it risks fanning the flames of the very independence movement of which it is so afraid.
Wall Street Journal | Talking to Tibet

July 04, 2008 06:15]
By Maura Moynihan

...But the most compelling purpose for heading towards the Chinese Consulate with a Tibetan flag is to speak for people who are in jails, torture cells and graves, who would join you if they could. Just ask Palden Gyatso.

Palden has come to New York City with a new documentary about his life, "Fire Under the Snow". It tells of his childhood in old Tibet, his monastic education, and how he was arrested by PLA soldiers in 1959, soon after Dalai Lama took flight to India. His crimes were only that he refused to denounce his Buddhist teacher or state that Tibet belonged to China. He was savagely beaten, he saw his friends die in torment, for decades he was given no more than two cold buns each day for his food. He had to pray in secret; if anyone was caught intoning prayers, they were severely punished. For two years his hands and legs were shackled with iron bars, in the years that followed he had electric cattle prods shoved into his mouth and stomach.

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July 4, 2008

Tibet's foreign minister in exile yesterday said the latest round of talks between the Dalai Lama's envoys and China so far did not look encouraging.

"Judging from some of the statements made by the Chinese leadership, particularly the office for the autonomous region of Tibet, what they have to say about the Tibetan situation is not very encouraging," Kesang Yangkyi Takla told a news conference in Tokyo.

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Beijing scolds Dalai Lama as envoys talk

July 2, 2008
By JIM YARDLEY

BEIJING — Chinese officials and senior envoys of the Dalai Lama opened their latest round of negotiations over Tibet on Tuesday, as international pressure for a breakthrough intensifies ahead of the Olympic Games.

The discussions, held at an undisclosed location in Beijing, are the second round of formal talks since March, when anti-Chinese protests erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and spread to Tibetan regions of western China. The precise agenda is unknown, but the two sides have sharp differences over the political status of Tibet and the possible return of the exiled Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader.

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7/2/2008

A group of 42 Tibetan protesters were detained close to Nepal's border with the Chinese-controlled Himalayan region yesterday as they tried to march back to their homeland, police said.

The group, most of them Buddhist monks and nuns, left Kathmandu seven days ago, participants said, and avoided detection on the main roads by using remote hill trails.

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2008-07-01

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) - A group of Tibetan monks and nuns trekked for days through the treacherous Himalayan mountains from Nepal's capital and were set to protest at the Chinese border Tuesday against a crackdown in their homeland. Tashi Dorje, an activist coordinating the march, said the group of 42 people reached the border point at Tatopani, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Katmandu, late Monday.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008
By Ben Preston

...At 40 years old, Namkha Rinpoche is a relatively young Tibetan Lama, who bases his spiritual and Tibetan freedom efforts out of Switzerland. After organizing a series of prayer festivals for the Dalai Lama in 1998, Rinpoche narrowly escaped being jailed by Chinese police. A relative who worked for the police informed him that he was going to be arrested, and he fled to Nepal. In recent years, Rinpoche said that thousands of Tibetan students have been jailed by the Chinese government for their participation in protests against Chinese repression of Tibetan language and culture. One of Rinpoche’s cousins was imprisoned for his role in the demonstrations. “When he was in jail, the Chinese police cut off his arms and legs in front of his friends and family to scare people and make sure they don’t do the same,” he said.

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Thursday 26th June, 2008

Defying the possibility of imprisonment or even death, over three dozen Tibetan monks and nuns have begun a secret 'freedom march' to Tibet from Nepal to draw the world's attention to their demand for freedom and respect for human rights on the eve of the Olympic Games in China.

A resolute group of 23 monks, 17 nuns and two novices began the dangerous journey under secrecy Wednesday from the outskirts of Kathmandu in a bid to evade arrest by Nepal police, who have been put on high alert to stop anti-China protests in Nepal.

In the first daring deed of its kind, the 'suicide squad' will attempt to cross frozen mountain passes and untrodden routes in northern Nepal to reach the former Buddhist kingdom of Tibet that China invaded and annexed in the 50s.

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June 24, 2008
Lisa Katayama for Giant Robot Magazine

...GR: At a young age, you, too, were recognized as a reincarnate of an important man, right?

TC: Oh, that’s bullshit. I don’t believe it. From a Buddhist perspective, we are all reborn. But choosing a particular person as someone special and saying he’s a reincarnation of so-and-so is bullshit. I don’t consider myself special. I’m just like you. I want happiness, and I don’t want suffering. I think it’s just a sheer accident that I was chosen.

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2008-06-23 15:26:08 -

ROME (AP) - Fiat said Monday it will keep running an ad featuring actor Richard Gere and a reference to Tibet that has angered some in China and prompted the Italian automaker to issue an apology.

Gere, a Buddhist who has been active in the movement to free Tibet, appears in the TV ad for Fiat's new Lancia Delta, using the car to whiz from Hollywood to the snows of the Himalayas, where he plays with a group of young Buddhist monks.

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