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nunia (
女 ,
114 ) |
地区:
美国, 新泽西 |
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时间:
2008-04-11 18:58:45, 来源:未名交友 |
标题:
Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth |
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D of Political Science from Yale
http://www.michaelparenti.org/biography.html
I. For Lords and Lamas
Along with the blood drenched landscape of religious conflict there is
the experience of inner peace and solace that every religion promises,
none more so than Buddhism. Standing in marked contrast to the
intolerant savagery of other religions, Buddhism is neither fanatical
nor dogmatic--so say its adherents. For many of them Buddhism is less a
theology and more a meditative and investigative discipline intended to
promote an inner harmony and enlightenment while directing us to a path
of right living. Generally, the spiritual focus is not only on oneself
but on the welfare of others. One tries to put aside egoistic pursuits
and gain a deeper understanding of one’s connection to all people and
things. “Socially engaged Buddhism” tries to blend individual
liberation with responsible social action in order to build an
enlightened society.
A glance at history, however, reveals that not all the many and
widely varying forms of Buddhism have been free of doctrinal
fanaticism, nor free of the violent and exploitative pursuits so
characteristic of other religions. In Sri Lanka there is a legendary
and almost sacred recorded history about the triumphant battles waged
by Buddhist kings of yore. During the twentieth century, Buddhists
clashed violently with each other and with non-Buddhists in Thailand,
Burma, Korea, Japan, India, and elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, armed battles
between Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils have taken many lives on
both sides. In 1998 the U.S. State Department listed thirty of the
world’s most violent and dangerous extremist groups. Over half of them
were religious, specifically Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist. 1
In South Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist
order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in
pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of
the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2
million, its millions of dollars worth of property, and the privilege
of appointing 1,700 monks to various offices. The brawls damaged the
main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some
seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling
that no matter what side took control, “it would use worshippers’
donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars.” 2
As with any religion, squabbles between or within Buddhist sects
are often fueled by the material corruption and personal deficiencies
of the leadership. For example, in Nagano, Japan, at Zenkoji, the
prestigious complex of temples that has hosted Buddhist sects for more
than 1,400 years, “a nasty battle” arose between Komatsu the chief
priest and the Tacchu, a group of temples nominally under the chief
priest's sway. The Tacchu monks accused Komatsu of selling writings and
drawings under the temple's name for his own gain. They also were
appalled by the frequency with which he was seen in the company of
women. Komatsu in turn sought to isolate and punish monks who were
critical of his leadership. The conflict lasted some five years and
made it into the courts. 3
But what of Tibetan Buddhism? Is it not an exception to this sort
of strife? And what of the society it helped to create? Many Buddhists
maintain that, before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a
spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles,
empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern
industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and
Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable
Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated that “the pervasive influence
of Buddhism” in Tibet, “amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled
environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We
enjoyed freedom and contentment.” 4
A reading of Tibet’s history suggests a somewhat different picture.
“Religious conflict was commonplace in old Tibet,” writes one western
Buddhist practitioner. “History belies the Shangri-La image of Tibetan
lamas and their followers living together in mutual tolerance and
nonviolent goodwill. Indeed, the situation was quite different. Old
Tibet was much more like Europe during the religious wars of the
Counterreformation.” 5 In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan
created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other
lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the
Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an
ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai
(Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet.
His two previous lama “incarnations” were then retroactively
recognized as his predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama
into the 3rd Dalai Lama. This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized
monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have
destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity.
The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying
many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed
unfitting for an incarnate deity. For these transgressions he was
murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized
divine status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high priests or
other courtiers. 6
For hundreds of years competing Tibetan Buddhist sects engaged in
bitterly violent clashes and summary executions. In 1660, the 5th Dalai
Lama was faced with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of
the rival Kagyu sect with its high lama known as the Karmapa. The 5th
Dalai Lama called for harsh retribution against the rebels, directing
the Mongol army to obliterate the male and female lines, and the
offspring too “like eggs smashed against rocks…. In short, annihilate
any traces of them, even their names.” 7
In 1792, many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks
were forcibly converted to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lama’s
denomination). The Gelug school, known also as the “Yellow Hats,”
showed little tolerance or willingness to mix their teachings with
other Buddhist sects. In the words of one of their traditional prayers:
“Praise to you, violent god of the Yellow Hat teachings/who reduces to
particles of dust/ great beings, high officials and ordinary people/
who pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine.” 8 An eighteenth-century
memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian strife among Buddhists
that is as brutal and bloody as any religious conflict might be. 9 This
grim history remains largely unvisited by present-day followers of
Tibetan Buddhism in the West.
Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but
with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic
exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the
Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over
Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial
estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups:
the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer
sympathetic to the old order allows that “a great deal of real estate
belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches.”
Much of the wealth was accumulated “through active participation in
trade, commerce, and money lending.” 10
Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world,
with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000
herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small
numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and
had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived
richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” 11
Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the
commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s
lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs.
12 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a
nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily
observed the laws of karma.” 13 In fact. it had a professional army,
albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the
landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway
serfs.
Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families
and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there,
they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was
common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the
monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age
nine. 14 The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong
servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.
In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a
kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who
composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and
small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were
slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring
were born into slavery. 15 The majority of the rural population were
serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without
schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the
lord's land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair the lord's
houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also
expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16
Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise.
They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama.
And they might easily be separated from their families should their
owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17
As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no
responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his
or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to
support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their
masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could
neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a
market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.
One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty
serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used
as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.”18 Serfs needed
permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture
those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese
intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was
subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed
escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood
poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic
soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.19
The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of
each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for
planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed
for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being
sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work
were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another
village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could
not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest.
Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who
could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.20
The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The
poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles
upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence
they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic
atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their
next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a
reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims,
blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others
openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal
Tibet, torture and mutilation--including eye gouging, the pulling out
of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments
inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying
through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former
serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a
monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand
mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist:
“When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in
religion.”21 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human
life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the
freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe
are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. 22
In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture
equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were
handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and
instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking
off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and
special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented
photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled
or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose
master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay.
So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed.
Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his
lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist
activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped
and then had her nose sliced away.23
Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In
1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was
under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions
they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon
described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about
that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed
that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own
dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the
people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and
priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and
stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937,
another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not
spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . .
The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the
jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to
increase their influence and wealth.”24 As much as we might wish
otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized
Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western
proselytes.
II. Secularization vs. Spirituality
What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the
country in 1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible
self-governance under the Dalai Lama’s rule but gave China military
control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese
were also granted a direct role in internal administration “to promote
social reforms.” Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce
usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. At first,
they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect
reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated,
and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound
peasants. “Contrary to popular belief in the West,” claims one
observer, the Chinese “took care to show respect for Tibetan culture
and religion.”25
Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese
come and go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang
Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.26 The approval of
the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the
Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the current 14th Dalai Lama was first
installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chinese troops and
an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old
tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas in the early 1950s
was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a
matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing
their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.
The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed
convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received
extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous
airlifts.27 Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a
Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of
Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan
Norbu, playing an active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama's
second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence
operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a
CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.28
Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the
country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety
percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from
the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.29
“Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army
joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its
failure,” writes Hugh Deane.30 In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and
Mathos reach a similar conclusion: “As far as can be ascertained, the
great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining
countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both
when it first began and as it progressed.”31 Eventually the resistance
crumbled.
Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after
1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid
labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects,
and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular
schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries.
And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.32
Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s
SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made
into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who
resisted the Chinese “were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas;
they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as
laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being
made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived.” They also had
to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants--all of
which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the
Chinese occupation.33
By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed
estates owned by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of
acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants, reorganizing them into
hundreds of communes.. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to
collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding
of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat
and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of
which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.34
Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the
clergy. But monks who had been conscripted as children into the
religious orders were now free to renounce the monastic life, and
thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived
on modest government stipends and extra income earned by officiating at
prayer services, weddings, and funerals.35
Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin
Choegyal, claimed that “more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a
result of the Chinese occupation.”36 The official 1953 census--six
years before the Chinese crackdown--recorded the entire population
residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.37 Other census counts put the
population within Tibet at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2
million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would have been
depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps
and mass graves--of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed
Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and
exterminated that many people even if it had spent all its time doing
nothing else.
Chinese authorities claim to have put an end to floggings,
mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They
themselves, however, have been charged with acts of brutality by exile
Tibetans. The authorities do admit to “mistakes,” particularly during
the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when the persecution of religious
beliefs reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising
in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the
Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming were
imposed on the Tibetan peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect on
production. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls “and tried
to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades.”38
In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly
designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and
self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private
plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops
to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world
was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit some
Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal.39 By the 1980s
many of the principal lamas had begun to shuttle back and forth between
China and the exile communities abroad, “restoring their monasteries in
Tibet and helping to revitalize Buddhism there.”40
As of 2007 Tibetan Buddhism was still practiced widely and
tolerated by officialdom. Religious pilgrimages and other standard
forms of worship were allowed but within limits. All monks and nuns had
to sign a loyalty pledge that they would not use their religious
position to foment secession or dissent. And displaying photos of the
Dalai Lama was declared illegal.41
In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent
of China’s immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into
Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization
are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops
and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers
have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water
treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view
their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic
development and “patriotic education.” During the 1990s Tibetan
government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were
purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit
the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to
arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist
activities and engaging in “political subversion.” Some were held in
administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets,
subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.42
Tibetan history, culture, and certainly religion are slighted in
schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus
mainly on Chinese history and culture. Chinese family planning
regulations allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families. (There is
only a one-child limit for Han families throughout China, and a
two-child limit for rural Han families whose first child is a girl.) If
a Tibetan couple goes over the three-child limit, the excess children
can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and education.
These penalties have been enforced irregularly and vary by district.43
None of these child services, it should be noted, were available to
Tibetans before the Chinese takeover.
For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention
was an unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai
Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some
discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living.
Many, however, escaped that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan
exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the
CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998.
Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself
issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars
from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet
to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual payment
from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him
and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his
brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.44
In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina,
carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced
by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline
“Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right.”45 In April 1999, along
with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush,
the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto
Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA
client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not
be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes
against humanity.
Into the twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for
Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable sounding than
the CIA, the U.S. Congress continued to allocate an annual $2 million
to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for “democracy
activities” within the Tibetan exile community. In addition to these
funds, the Dalai Lama received money from financier George Soros.46
Whatever the Dalai Lama’s associations with the CIA and various
reactionaries, he did speak often of peace, love, and nonviolence. He
himself really cannot be blamed for the abuses of Tibet’s ancien
régime, having been but 25 years old when he fled into exile. In a 1994
interview, he went on record as favoring the building of schools and
roads in his country. He said the corvée (forced unpaid serf labor) and
certain taxes imposed on the peasants were “extremely bad.” And he
disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes passed
down from generation to generation.47During the half century of living
in the western world, he had embraced concepts such as human rights and
religious freedom, ideas largely unknown in old Tibet. He even proposed
democracy for Tibet, featuring a written constitution and a
representative assembly.48
In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an
unsettling effect on the exile community. It read in part: “Marxism is
founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with
gain and profitability.” Marxism fosters “the equitable utilization of
the means of production” and cares about “the fate of the working
classes” and “the victims of . . . exploitation. For those reasons the
system appeals to me, and . . . I think of myself as half-Marxist,
half-Buddhist.49
But he also sent a reassuring message to “those who live in
abundance”: “It is a good thing to be rich... Those are the fruits for
deserving actions, the proof that they have been generous in the past.”
And to the poor he offers this admonition: “There is no good reason to
become bitter and rebel against those who have property and fortune...
It is better to develop a positive attitude.”50
In 2005 the Dalai Lama signed a widely advertised statement along
with ten other Nobel Laureates supporting the “inalienable and
fundamental human right” of working people throughout the world to form
labor unions to protect their interests, in accordance with the United
Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In many countries “this
fundamental right is poorly protected and in some it is explicitly
banned or brutally suppressed,” the statement read. Burma, China,
Colombia, Bosnia, and a few other countries were singled out as among
the worst offenders. Even the United States “fails to adequately
protect workers’ rights to form unions and bargain collectively.
Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions….”51
The Dalai Lama also gave full support to removing the ingrained
traditional obstacles that have kept Tibetan nuns from receiving an
education. Upon arriving in exile, few nuns could read or write. In
Tibet their activities had been devoted to daylong periods of prayer
and chants. But in northern India they now began reading Buddhist
philosophy and engaging in theological study and debate, activities
that in old Tibet had been open only to monks.52
In November 2005 the Dalai Lama spoke at Stanford University on
“The Heart of Nonviolence,” but stopped short of a blanket condemnation
of all violence. Violent actions that are committed in order to reduce
future suffering are not to be condemned, he said, citing World War II
as an example of a worthy effort to protect democracy. What of the four
years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most
of the world—even by a conservative pope--as a blatant violation of
international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was
undecided: “The Iraq war—it’s too early to say, right or wrong.”53
Earlier he had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention
against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into
Afghanistan.54
III. Exit Feudal Theocracy
As the Shangri-La myth would have it, in old Tibet the people lived
in contented and tranquil symbiosis with their monastic and secular
lords. Rich lamas and poor monks, wealthy landlords and impoverished
serfs were all bonded together, mutually sustained by the comforting
balm of a deeply spiritual and pacific culture.
One is reminded of the idealized image of feudal Europe presented
by latter-day conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and
Hilaire Belloc. For them, medieval Christendom was a world of contented
peasants living in the secure embrace of their Church, under the more
or less benign protection of their lords.55 Again we are invited to
accept a particular culture in its idealized form divorced from its
murky material history. This means accepting it as presented by its
favored class, by those who profited most from it. The Shangri-La image
of Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic actuality than does the
pastoral image of medieval Europe.
Seen in all its grim realities, old Tibet confirms the view I
expressed in an earlier book, namely that culture is anything but
neutral. Culture can operate as a legitimating cover for a host of
grave injustices, benefiting a privileged portion of society at great
cost to the rest.56 In theocratic feudal Tibet, ruling interests
manipulated the traditional culture to fortify their own wealth and
power. The theocracy equated rebellious thought and action with satanic
influence. It propagated the general presumption of landlord
superiority and peasant unworthiness. The rich were represented as
deserving their good life, and the lowly poor as deserving their mean
existence, all codified in teachings about the karmic residue of virtue
and vice accumulated from past lives, presented as part of God’s will.
Were the more affluent lamas just hypocrites who preached one thing
and secretly believed another? More likely they were genuinely attached
to those beliefs that brought such good results for them. That their
theology so perfectly supported their material privileges only
strengthened the sincerity with which it was embraced.
It might be said that we denizens of the modern secular world
cannot grasp the equations of happiness and pain, contentment and
custom, that characterize more traditionally spiritual societies. This
is probably true, and it may explain why some of us idealize such
societies. But still, a gouged eye is a gouged eye; a flogging is a
flogging; and the grinding exploitation of serfs and slaves is a brutal
class injustice whatever its cultural wrapping. There is a difference
between a spiritual bond and human bondage, even when both exist side
by side
Many ordinary Tibetans want the Dalai Lama back in their country,
but it appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he
represented. A 1999 story in the Washington Post notes that the Dalai
Lama continues to be revered in Tibet, but
. . . few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt
aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the
bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no
interest in surrendering the land they gained during China’s land
reform to the clans. Tibet’s former slaves say they, too, don’t want
their former masters to return to power. “I’ve already lived that life
once before,” said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing
his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the
holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai
Lama, but added, “I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am
better off than when I was a slave.”57
It should be noted that the Dalai Lama is not the only highly
placed lama chosen in childhood as a reincarnation. One or another
reincarnate lama or tulku--a spiritual teacher of special purity
elected to be reborn again and again--can be found presiding over most
major monasteries. The tulku system is unique to Tibetan Buddhism.
Scores of Tibetan lamas claim to be reincarnate tulkus.
The very first tulku was a lama known as the Karmapa who appeared
nearly three centuries before the first Dalai Lama. The Karmapa is
leader of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as the Karma Kagyu. The
rise of the Gelugpa sect headed by the Dalai Lama led to a
politico-religious rivalry with the Kagyu that has lasted five hundred
years and continues to play itself out within the Tibetan exile
community today. That the Kagyu sect has grown famously, opening some
six hundred new centers around the world in the last thirty-five years,
has not helped the situation.
The search for a tulku, Erik Curren reminds us, has not always been
conducted in that purely spiritual mode portrayed in certain Hollywood
films. “Sometimes monastic officials wanted a child from a powerful
local noble family to give the cloister more political clout. Other
times they wanted a child from a lower-class family who would have
little leverage to influence the child’s upbringing.” On other
occasions “a local warlord, the Chinese emperor or even the Dalai
Lama’s government in Lhasa might [have tried] to impose its choice of
tulku on a monastery for political reasons.”58
Such may have been the case in the selection of the 17th Karmapa,
whose monastery-in-exile is situated in Rumtek, in the Indian state of
Sikkim. In 1993 the monks of the Karma Kagyu tradition had a candidate
of their own choice. The Dalai Lama, along with several dissenting
Karma Kagyu leaders (and with the support of the Chinese government!)
backed a different boy. The Kagyu monks charged that the Dalai Lama had
overstepped his authority in attempting to select a leader for their
sect. “Neither his political role nor his position as a lama in his own
Gelugpa tradition entitled him to choose the Karmapa, who is a leader
of a different tradition…”59 As one of the Kagyu leaders insisted,
“Dharma is about thinking for yourself. It is not about automatically
following a teacher in all things, no matter how respected that teacher
may be. More than anyone else, Buddhists should respect other people’s
rights—their human rights and their religious freedom.”60
What followed was a dozen years of conflict in the Tibetan exile
community, punctuated by intermittent riots, intimidation, physical
attacks, blacklisting, police harassment, litigation, official
corruption, and the looting and undermining of the Karmapa’s monastery
in Rumtek by supporters of the Gelugpa faction. All this has caused at
least one western devotee to wonder if the years of exile were not
hastening the moral corrosion of Tibetan Buddhism.61
What is clear is that not all Tibetan Buddhists accept the Dalai
Lama as their theological and spiritual mentor. Though he is referred
to as the “spiritual leader of Tibet,” many see this title as little
more than a formality. It does not give him authority over the four
religious schools of Tibet other than his own, “just as calling the
U.S. president the ‘leader of the free world’ gives him no role in
governing France or Germany.”62
Not all Tibetan exiles are enamoured of the old Shangri-La
theocracy. Kim Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk
in Berkeley, California, had occasion to talk at length with more than
a dozen Tibetan women who lived in the monk’s building. When she asked
how they felt about returning to their homeland, the sentiment was
unanimously negative. At first, Lewis assumed that their reluctance had
to do with the Chinese occupation, but they quickly informed her
otherwise. They said they were extremely grateful “not to have to marry
4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time,” or deal with sexually
transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband. The younger
women “were delighted to be getting an education, wanted absolutely
nothing to do with any religion, and wondered why Americans were so
naïve [about Tibet].”63
The women interviewed by Lewis recounted stories of their
grandmothers’ ordeals with monks who used them as “wisdom consorts.” By
sleeping with the monks, the grandmothers were told, they gained “the
means to enlightenment” -- after all, the Buddha himself had to be with
a woman to reach enlightenment.
The women also mentioned the “rampant” sex that the supposedly
spiritual and abstemious monks practiced with each other in the Gelugpa
sect. The women who were mothers spoke bitterly about the monastery’s
confiscation of their young boys in Tibet. They claimed that when a boy
cried for his mother, he would be told “Why do you cry for her, she
gave you up--she's just a woman.”
The monks who were granted political asylum in California applied
for public assistance. Lewis, herself a devotee for a time, assisted
with the paperwork. She observes that they continue to receive
government checks amounting to $550 to $700 per month along with
Medicare. In addition, the monks reside rent free in nicely furnished
apartments. “They pay no utilities, have free access to the Internet on
computers provided for them, along with fax machines, free cell and
home phones and cable TV.”
They also receive a monthly payment from their order, along with
contributions and dues from their American followers. Some devotees
eagerly carry out chores for the monks, including grocery shopping and
cleaning their apartments and toilets. These same holy men, Lewis
remarks, “have no problem criticizing Americans for their ‘obsession
with material things.’”64
To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to
applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is
seldom understood by today’s Shangri-La believers in the West. The
converse is also true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean
we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be
perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent
political symbols. “To idealize them,” notes Ma Jian, a dissident
Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), “is to deny them
their humanity.”65
One common complaint among Buddhist followers in the West is that
Tibet’s religious culture is being undermined by the Chinese
occupation. To some extent this seems to be the case. Many of the
monasteries are closed, and much of the theocracy seems to have passed
into history. Whether Chinese rule has brought betterment or disaster
is not the central issue here. The question is what kind of country was
old Tibet. What I am disputing is the supposedly pristine spiritual
nature of that pre-invasion culture. We can advocate religious freedom
and independence for a new Tibet without having to embrace the
mythology about old Tibet. Tibetan feudalism was cloaked in Buddhism,
but the two are not to be equated. In reality, old Tibet was not a
Paradise Lost. It was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme
privilege and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La.
Finally, let it be said that if Tibet’s future is to be positioned
somewhere within China’s emerging free-market paradise, then this does
not bode well for the Tibetans. China boasts a dazzling 8 percent
economic growth rate and is emerging as one of the world’s greatest
industrial powers. But with economic growth has come an ever deepening
gulf between rich and poor. Most Chinese live close to the poverty
level or well under it, while a small group of newly brooded
capitalists profit hugely in collusion with shady officials. Regional
bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and
looting local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by
avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the
populace are almost everyday occurrences. Tens of thousands of
grassroot protests and disturbances have erupted across the country,
usually to be met with unforgiving police force. Corruption is so
prevalent, reaching into so many places, that even the normally
complacent national leadership was forced to take notice and began
moving against it in late 2006.
Workers in China who try to organize labor unions in the corporate
dominated “business zones” risk losing their jobs or getting beaten and
imprisoned. Millions of business zone workers toil twelve-hour days at
subsistence wages. With the health care system now being privatized,
free or affordable medical treatment is no longer available for
millions. Men have tramped into the cities in search of work, leaving
an increasingly impoverished countryside populated by women, children,
and the elderly. The suicide rate has increased dramatically,
especially among women.66
China’s natural environment is sadly polluted. Most of its fabled
rivers and many lakes are dead, producing massive fish die-offs from
the billions of tons of industrial emissions and untreated human waste
dumped into them. Toxic effluents, including pesticides and herbicides,
seep into ground water or directly into irrigation canals. Cancer rates
in villages situated along waterways have skyrocketed a thousand-fold.
Hundreds of millions of urban residents breathe air rated as
dangerously unhealthy, contaminated by industrial growth and the recent
addition of millions of automobiles. An estimated 400,000 die
prematurely every year from air pollution. Government environmental
agencies have no enforcement power to stop polluters, and generally the
government ignores or denies such problems, concentrating instead on
industrial growth.67
China’s own scientific establishment reports that unless greenhouse
gases are curbed, the nation will face massive crop failures along with
catastrophic food and water shortages in the years ahead. In 2006-2007
severe drought was already afflicting southwest China.68
If China is the great success story of speedy free market
development, and is to be the model and inspiration for Tibet’s future,
then old feudal Tibet indeed may start looking a lot better than it
actually was.
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
※ 来源:Unknown Friends - 未名交友 http://us.jiaoyou8.com ※
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