dalai lama

[lostsoul]

i notice many times on this board that people dislike him(dalai Lama), but i never figured out why.

i tried to seach the forums and cound't find a post regarding this topic.

[Dhul Fiqar]

Don't take this the wrong way, but...

You just joined, have three posts, and yet you seem to have a feeling for how the whole board feels about a particular person, without even being able to find a single example of it... Sorry if I'm missing something, but it just seems odd to me.

Anyway, the Dalai Lama is a nationalist, he's pretty anti-communist and pro-religion. For a lot of people here those are pretty damning qualities for a person to have.

He has also inadvertantly gathered a following of anti-communist people who use him and Tibet as an example of the evils of 'Red' China.

--- G.

[El Brujo]

He was a fascist dictator who worked with imperialists against China to keep his fundamentalist system up and going.

[lostsoul]

i never knew this about the dalai lama. I know many people who are anti-chinese goverment and mao, and always made the dalai lama look like a victim. I always kind of thought that since he was against the culture revolution he was made a target by china.

doesn't he have alot of power already? i mean most buddist respect him, and he has a large number of supporters. So what kind of ruling does he extacty want?

[Dhul Fiqar]

I recently saw a documentary about Tibetan history, and it had some startlign insights that are too numerous to go into here.

But the jist of it is that the Mongol invaders that took over China were the ones that propped up the branch of buddhism that the Dalai Lama belongs to. They even CREATED the position of the Dalai Lama and the reason for the emphasis on the re-incarnation was to give the Mongol rulers and their Tibettan puppet regime legitimacy by claiming they were the greatest heroes of their respective histories reborn to their peoples.

It's all a political scam resulting from a deal Tibet made with one of the most disgusting regimes in a long history of bad regimes in China, concocted so long ago it's become tradition to millions of people.

--- G:

[lostsoul]

actually what you said, i heard a bit before, but in an oppsite sense. I believe hearing that the Mogols that invaded China were very kind to the buddhist, and cruel to the chinese and thats why when the communist came into power they wanted to get a bit of revenge on what they saw as traitors.

is there a little truth in that? or was china only against them simply because they supported the old way of life and ccp was trying to move forward?

thanks for the info on the lama, i was actually always wondering where he came from, because buddha never started or planned it.

sorry if this is getting off subject and shouldn't be in chit chat.

take care

[Dhul Fiqar]

Yeah, maybe some nice mod can move it for us, 'cause I'm about to take this way out of Chit Chat territory

Well, basically the ethnic patchwork here is a complicated one, and has come into play in politics for a long time. What follows is a simplification, and one that probably leaves out a lot of important stuff.

Basically the CCP claimed to represent all of China and not one ethnic group like the previous dynasties had. The Qing family (the last dynasty) was Manchu, so the majority Han were easily convinced to back the CCP against them, even though the Guomintang was also Han dominated. As a result the revolution became associated with the Han majority taking power back from ancient invaders and oppressors, but at the same time there were people of all ethnicities in the party and it has always been trying to seem more inclusive.

What the Mongols did in the old days was make a deal with certain segments of the Tibettan community and sanction their very strange version of Buddhism as a semi-official religion, in return for a lot of legitimacy that was given to them by official proclamations from the most respected monks in Tibet, because of this the position of the Dalai Lama was created. These proclamations mostly included things such as who was the re-incarnation of who, and this was always very convenient for the Mongols and Tibettan rulers as it turned out they were always the re-incarnations of some really popular figures.

As such Tibet became a sort of makeshift propaganda center for the Mongol rulers, who were generally despised by the Han and many other Chinese peoples, but managed to hang on to rule through spreading both fear and the superstitious belief that they were some long dead heroes or conquerors or whatever.

So, to get back to the main point, when the mainly Han lead CCP deposed the Guomintang and basically destroyed what little remained of the Manchu royal family, a lot of wheels were put in motion. The Manchu have historic and cultural links to the Mongols, for one thing.

Tibet has historically been under the rule of Chinese dynasties, and some of their people have played significant roles in several less than savoury dynasties and regimes in Beijing. Also the doctrine against religion and superstition meant the CCP couldn't sit back and allow Tibet to become a spiritual enclave in China. So basically they felt they needed a show of force to crush nationalist ambitions in Tibet and they saw religion as the major weapon of the Tibetans because it was what they had used to keep the Han under Mongol rule for centuries.

So, in a way it was payback, but I think it would be more accurate to say that they feared a repetition of history, that religion would be used by the Tibetans to prop up some kind of anti-Han movement in China.
Like I said, there are a lot of omissions here, and it's a murky picture at best, but I hope I at least provided some limited insight into this complicated issue.

--- G.

[MJM]

#Moderation Mode

Moved from Chit chat.

Moved here

[redstar2000]

Good posts, Dhul Fiqar.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

What was that thing, that he had slaves. Can someone give me info plz.

[MJM]

http://apodion.com/vad/dark/dalailama.shtml

Mentions the slave numbers and also some more good info.

[synthesis]

I, for one, would like freedom for Tibet.

Tibet may have been a feudal society before the Chinese invaded, but what the Chinese did to Tibet was, in my opinion, an atrocity.

China's Reign in Tibet

It's much the same as Africa. Africa may have been home to a mostly patriarchal, slave-trading populace, but the colonialists destroyed their culture, decimated their people, and forced their slave labor.

The colonialists were imperialists, much the same as the Chinese.


(Edited by DyerMaker at 5:35 am on Jan. 7, 2003)

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

thanks all.