Theos-Talk Archives (July 1998 Message tt00126)

The following concerns millions of people and millions of
people's deaths and while pretty long for a Theos-talk post, seems
appropos considering Clinton's recent visit to China.   "Evil ignored is
Evil repeated"     - The address for International Campaign for Tibet
is:  1825 K Street NW Suite 520, Washington, D.C  20006  Donations
accepted and ask for a "Save Tibet" bumper sticker.       -   Jake Jaqua



THE LAST THEOCRACY
    In what was to be the beginning of one of the periodic madnesses
that grip parts or all the globe, in the spring of 1950 Tibet was
invaded by China after China's declaration that it intended to free
Tibet from the "influence of foreign imperialists" (there being six
westerners in Tibet at the time.)  It was to prove the total destruction
of the base of exoteric Mahayana Buddhism, which has identical doctrines
to that of Theosophy.  The invasion was to directly and indirectly
result in the death of some one million Tibetans and to make refugees of
100,000 others including the Dalai Lama.
        Before China's attempted "modernization" of Tibet, it was the
home of some 3,000 Buddhist monasteries and 200,000 monks.  By 1984
these vast numbers had shrunk to a remaining or rebuilt 45 monasteries
housing some 1,400 monks.  For years any practice of religion was
forbidden in Tibet, but in the last ten years under a new Chinese
administration some of these strictures have been loosened.  Partially
this change in policy is due to the value of Buddhism as a tourist
attraction.  While the superficial ceremonial practice of Buddhism is
allowed, any serious scholastic study of its scriptures is forbidden.
    Most the destruction of monasteries occurred during the chaos of
China's "Cultural Revolution" in the 1960's.  Some monasteries were
taken apart brick by brick while most were dynamited or shelled with
field artillery - although the walls of most were too thick to be
totally destroyed.  The process was to first take an inventory of all
valuables.  Gold and silver artifacts were taken in truck convoys to
China to be melted into bullion.  Manuscripts were either burned on the
spot or sent for use as shoe padding and toilet paper.  Clay images were
pulverized and recast for the specific purpose of making public
lavatories.  At the central temple in the capital at Lhasa, sacred
manuscripts kept bonfires burning for five days.  Monasteries not
totally destroyed were used for granaries, barracks or offices.  The
temple at Lhasa was renamed "Guest House #5" and used for government
offices and its courtyards for keeping pigs.
   Monks were either killed or shipped with other Tibetans to work camps
such as that at Golomo to build railroads, Tsala Ka to mine borax, or
Kongpo for timbering.  At Golomo, which is at 10,000 foot elevation and
has six months of winter with gale force winds much of the time, large
numbers died almost immediately from exposure and starvation.  One
account claims that 1,400 of 1,700 prisoners held at Drepang monastery
died of starvation from Novermber 1960 to June 1961.  Tibetan's homes
were arbitrarily seized and all their possession sold.  During this
period Tibet's agricultural production actually increased, but nearly
all the harvest, except that kept for Chinese troups, was shipped to
China to offset its own famine.  While famine was previously unknown in
Tibet, formerly prosperous peasants were reduced to stealing scraps from
the Chinese's pigs, picking horse offal for undigested grain, and
feeding their own blood mixed with tsampa (tea)  to their to their
starving children.  Fare at the work camps, when there was any, was
typically barley husks mixed with sawdust or ulcer-producing tree bark.
     Monks and lamas were special objects of Chinese persecution. 
Lamas, formerly heads of monasteries, were lashed through the streets of
Lhasa with heavy statues of Buddha strapped to their backs.  Monks and
nuns were forced to copulate in public or branded with irons,  There
were crucifixions.  Monks and nuns were forced to marry while other
Tibetans were sterilized in large numbers.  One of Tibet's highest
lamas, the Panchen Lama, was publicly beaten in his trial for "crimes
against the state" - chiefly his support of the Dalai Lama.  His aged
tutor was sent to Golomo where he shortly died and the Panchen himself
was imprisoned for fourteen years, and released in 1978 for political
reasons.  It is still illegal today to even have a picture of the Dalai 
Lama.  NBC recently reported an arrest for having his picture on a
T-shirt.
    In China's "development" of Tibet, the provinces of Gansu and Amdo
were transformed into what a 1979 "Time" magazine article calls a "vast
sea of prison camps" with up to ten million Tibetan and Chinese
prisoners - a "black hole... from which little information ever reached
the outside world."  By 1978 China's largest nuclear weapons factory was
located at Nagchuka 165 miles north of Lhasa.  Whole mountain ranges
have been denuded of timber.  Tibet's vast herds of wild yaks have
become nearly if not extinct and her formerly endless flocks of ducks
and geese have disappeared.  Sixty western scientists were allowed to
visit Tibet in 1980 and according to their account there is not a large
wild mammal to be seen anywhere and only a few birds in Tibet's now
steril landscape.
      In short, there has been nothing worse in Nazi Germany, Stalin's
Gulags, or under the Khymer Regime in Cambodia that what has occurred in
Tibet under the Chinese.  There is no outcry in the West, however, over
this atrocity or even sparse public knowledge.  It is good politics to
be friends with China and its billion people, while Tibet is important
neither economically or militarily and Buddhism matters very little in
the political grist mills of the world.  Our country, which prides
itself for its stand on worldwide human rights, has chosen expediency
and officially recognizes China's claim to right of sovereignty over
Tibet.
      What was to befall Tibet was perhaps forseen by the Thirteenth
Dalai Lama when he wrote in 1932, a year before his death:    "It may
happen that here, in the center of Tibet, religion and government will
be attacked both from without and within.  Unless we can guard our own
country, it will now happen that the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, the Father
and Son, and all the revered holders of the Faith, will disappear and
become nameless.  Monks and their monasteries will be destroyed.  The
rule of law will be weakened.  The lands and property of government
officials will be seized.  They themselves will be forced to serve their
enemies or wander the country like beggars.  All beings will be sunk in
great hardship and overpowering fear;  the days and nights will drag on
slowly in suffering."
        While the present Dalai Lama has become a world ambassador in
his never ending efforts to gain independence for Tibet, his attitude is
also objective and philosophic.      "There are many prophecies which
indicate that I will be the last Dalai Lama.... The world is changing so
dramatically, that there may no longer be a need for the lineage."    
Elsewhere he has stated that     "the very aggregates of a human mind
and body have, as their actual nature, suffering.   They serve as a
basis for suffering, and as long as one has them one is susceptible to
suffering.  Form a deep point of view, while we Tibetans don't have our
independence and are living in someone else's country, we are subject to
a certain type of suffering, but when we return to Tibet and gain our
independence, then there will be other types of suffering.  So, you see,
this is just the way it is.  You might think that I'm pessimistic, but I
am not.  This is Buddhist realism.  This is how, through Buddhist
teaching and advice, we handle situations.  These sorts of thoughts make
one stronger, more active." 
                         [From "Protogonos,"  Winter 1987-88]
References:  (1) In Exile from the Land of Snows, John F. Avedon, Alfred
A. Knopf, NY, 1984; (2) The Making of Modern Tibet, A. Tom Grunfeld,
M.E. Sharp Inc., Armonk, NY, 1987