Long live Tibet

Aug. 30, 2007

Dear Patty,

When DC and I were in Santa Fe, N.M., a few years ago I happened upon a store filled with things from and about Tibet. The smell of incense greeted everyone at the door, and inside awaited an inkling of life on the Roof of the World.

The sight of prayer flags rippling in the winds off the Himalayas makes me shiver. I've only seen this in films. Did I sip hot yak butter tea on the Tibetan Plateau in a previous life?

The Chinese Communist government invaded and annexed Tibet in 1949. Tibet didn't have any weapons of mass destruction, either. Tibet did have an ancient religious tradition and a revered leader.

Since then China has been systematically trying to destroy both the tradition and the leader. Soldiers have ruined thousands of Buddhist temples in Tibet, and a program of population transfer has turned Tibetans into a minority in their own country.

The Dalai Lama's beatific face beams from a billboard above a pawnshop on Independence Street in Cape Girardeau. The message, sponsored by the Foundation for a Better Life, says: "Doesn't just wish for peace. He works for it."

Ten years after the invasion the Dalai Lama fled to India and became leader of a government in exile. He was only 19 years old at the time.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his work on behalf of all the peoples of the world.

He is the 14th Bodhisattva of Compassion, all reincarnations of the previous Dalai Lamas, Tibetans believe. Buddhists don't simply believe in reincarnation. They live the way the rest of us would live -- mindfully -- if we truly believed we've been here before and will be here again until we attain nirvana, "the highest happiness," and are released from the wheel of reincarnation.

China could use a good press agent right now. Poison dog food, poison toys, poison drugs, poison toothpaste. We buy many billions of dollars in goods from China because they make them cheaper than anyone else can. Then we protest getting what we paid for.

DC worries about almost everything she buys now. Who can disagree?

Last weekend I attended a workshop to find out what qigong really is. All I knew is that the Chinese government had outlawed Falun Gong, one of more than 3,000 forms of qigong. Qigong is a system of exercise and meditation its practitioners claim has healing qualities. But some people call Falun Gong a religious sect.

The man leading the workshop was a former professor of comparative religion, He thinks Falun Gong could qualify as a religious cult because the followers have practically deified their leader, Li Hongzhi. The Chinese government in turn has tried to demonize him. That would sound familiar to the Dalai Lama.

Qigong was relaxing and energizing. It felt like tai chi without the trappings of a martial art.

The Dalai Lama has said Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader who supervised the invasion of Tibet, has been his greatest teacher. That is one of the teachings of qigong, that our teachers are all around us. Sometimes they are disguised as enemies.

The Chinese government hopes the world will quit paying attention to Tibet when the charismatic Dalai Lama, now in his 70s, eventually dies. Maybe until the birth of the 15th Bodhisattva of Compassion.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a reporter for the Southeast Missourian.