Out of the Red
The Karmapa’s escape reminded us forcefully that the cause we are fighting for is alive and just and as desperate as ever.
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The Karmapa’s escape reminded us forcefully that the cause we are fighting for is alive and just and as desperate as ever.
All I can retrieve is a feeling of unreality and a sense of emptiness, buoyed by deeper unresolved emotions that once again question who I really am and what I hope to discover by coming here.
The Dérgé Parkhang Chenmo (Derge Printing Press) in Dérgé County of Kham Region, Tibet, survived through from the beginning the Chinese occupation of Tibet in late 1950s to the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the reconstruction drive in the late 1980’s.
Four decades after the CIA first got involved in Tibet, Roger McCarthy looks back and sums up its outcome: “If we look at what we did to Tibet as about the best that we could do, then I say that we have failed … miserably.”
Ram can claim neither the fire of idealism nor the smokescreen of ignorance to justify his unquestioning promotion of the totalitarian Beijing regime and its colonial hold on Tibet.
The Potala has never been, with the changing of time and space, so colourful, so odd, and even helpless and sad, as it has been during this half century.
Given that China is a totalitarian state, there is no way it can accept the Middle Way approach without itself first undergoing a major transformation.
What the Tibetans have presented to the world is the extraordinary idea of a whole nation, not just individuals, resisting violence and terror through love and compassion. It is not a new concept in itself, but it is the one that has faced the toughest test of all.
We would have to consider Khyentse Norbu’s Phorpa (The Cup) to be the first proper full-length Tibetan feature film, the work of eminent lama Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche.
With so much energy and spirit, perhaps the Dalai Lama can begin to accomplish in life what many fear can happen only after his death.