Tibet: Difference between revisions

<blockquote>This center of heaven, this core of the earth, this heart of the world, fenced round by snow, the headland of all rivers, where the mountains are high and the land is pure.<blockquote>

This is the meeting place of the etheric and physical octaves in the East. The [[Inner Retreat]] and the [[Western Shamballa]] is the Place Prepared and chosen in the West for that very phenomenon of the merging of the etheric and physical octaves. And the physical and the etheric are connected at the heart of the chela. At the point of the heart and the expansion of the [[threefold flame]] of the [[three jewels]] of the Buddha, the dharma, the sangha, there we find that the etheric octave may descend and be in the physical earth for the the beginning of the days when the [[golden age]] will come and earth shall be raised again to the etheric octave.

The ''Times'' also quotes a letter written by Roerich about Tibet in which he said: “Here are high Lamas who, on their sacred beads, are calculating their commercial accounts, occupied completely with thoughts of profit.” The article continues: “The Lamas also beg and indulge in dishonest methods to get money from others, the letter sets forth. Many monasteries, the writer said, are in ruins.”

As author John Avedon writes in his study of the Chinese occupation called ''In Exile from the Land of Snows'', fifteen years after the arrival of the Chinese mission, “their attempts at subterfuge had grown to include Tibetans in all segments of society. It was not until July 1949 that the Tibetan government realized the extent of the infiltration and, fearful that the newly victorious Communists would take advantage of it, closed the “liaison’ office, deporting its staff, along with some twenty-five known agents and their Tibetan accomplices....

<blockquote>On New Year’s Day 1950, just three months after the formation of the People’s Republic of China, Radio Peking announced to its people and the world that “the tasks for the People’s Liberation Army for 1950 are to liberate Taiwan, Hainan and Tibet.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>The main event of the second prayer festival was the chastisement of evil spirits. The full force of the tantric order was mobilized. In front of the central cathedral the abbots of the great monasteries were challenged to throw dice to decide the fate of Tibet. Two scapegoats symbolizing evil were the challengers. Representatives of the Tibetan government supervised the contest. They took no chances. The dice were loaded—the faces of the abbot’s dice all marked with sixes, those of the demons with ones. The moment ritual victory was won for Tibet, the scapegoats were driven from the town. The prayers ended with a great procession to the foot of the Potala Palace.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The Dalai Lama’s government tentatively agreed to cooperate with a number of measures aimed at improving the Tibetans’ lot by introducing certain features of modern life, such as roads and electricity. This uneasy alliance did not last long. Suspicious of the communists’ motives, the Khampas in Eastern Tibet staged a revolt in 1956 that soon became a full-scale insurrection.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Everywhere monasteries were prime targets. Monks were compelled to publicly copulate with nuns and desecrate sacred images before being sent to a growing siring of labor camps in Amdo and Gansu. In the face of such acts, the guerrillas found their ranks swollen by thousands of dependents, bringing with them triple or more their number in livestock. So enlarged, they became easy targets for Chinese air strikes. Simultaneously, the P.L.A. threw wide loops around Tibetan-held districts, attempting to bottle them up and annihilate one pocket at a time. The tide of battle turning against them, a mass exodus comprised of hundreds of scattered bands fled westward, seeking respite within the precincts of the Dalai Lama.</blockquote>

Following the revolt in Kham, Batchelor relates that “tensions mounted in Lhasa and an armed resistance movement was soon active in Central Tibet. In March 1959 the general of the Chinese forces in Lhasa made an unusual request for the Dalai Lama to attend a theatrical show inside the Chinese military base. This was immediately interpreted by the Tibetans as a ploy to kidnap their leader, and they reacted with a series of popular demonstrations in Lhasa and outside the Norbulingka, the grounds of the Dalai Lama’s summer palace.

<blockquote>This explosive confrontation finally erupted on March 17th. The Chinese started shelling the city and that evening the Dalai Lama and his entourage fled south in the direction of India. The demonstrations turned into an outright rebellion against the unwanted Chinese presence in Tibet that was met with full fury of the Chinese military. Fierce fighting broke out in Lhasa but the superior Chinese forces quickly overwhelmed the Tibetans, inflicting heavy casualties and damaging many buildings. From now on the Chinese dropped any pretense of “peaceful liberation” and set out to incorporate Tibet into the People’s Republic of China.</blockquote>

At one meeting an organizer said, “The meeting will not stop until the whole audience denounces the Dalai Lama.... Everyone had to say, ‘The gods, lamas, religion and monasteries are tools of exploitation.... The Chinese Communist Party liberated us.... The Chinese Communist Party is more kind than our own parents.’”  

By March 1967 tens of thousands of copies of Mao’s Little Red Book were given out. Tibetans were required to memorize passages and were tested in nightly meetings by the Red Guard who demanded flawless recitation on pain of violence. The traditional Tibetan greeting was forbidden. Private pets were exterminated by Red Guards. Tibetans were forced to hang portraits of Mao in every room. Tibetan youths were marshaled into pet and insect extermination campaigns to counter Tibetans’ abhorrence of taking life.

During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese committed unspeakable atrocities against the Tibetans. People were branded with hot irons. They were subjected to executions and impromptu thumzing in the street. There were gang rapes. The female children of four hundred families were marched naked in public by the Red Guard, submitted to thumzing, then raped.

The Chinese occupation debilitated Tibetan agriculture and caused the onset of a severe famine that lasted from 1968 to 1973. Since they invaded Tibet in 1950, the Red Chinese armies have killed 1.2 million Tibetans.

After consolidating control in Tibet, the Chinese also undertook a massive population transfer, encouraging Chinese citizens to emigrate to Tibet by offering them triple salary and other benefits in an effort to make Tibetans a minority in their own country. In 1987 it was reported that there were 7.5 million Chinese occupying a country of 6 million Tibetans. In the 1960s, the Chinese began a campaign of involuntary sterilization of Tibetans. Gradually this method was phased out in favor of inducing Tibetan women to marry Chinese soldiers.  

John Avedon writes: “A 2,000-year-old civilization was essentially destroyed in a mere 20 years.”