It was around 6:00am when I heard a knock at my door. Choosing to ignore it, I rolled over and shoved my earplugs further into my ear. The knock sound again, however, along with my name this time, and I figured I should probably answer the door. My host mother came quickly inside, handed me a bowl, told me to eat it while it was still hot, then proceeded to offer the same breakfast to the gods.
I live in the family's shrine room, a somewhat intimidating dwelling. As I enter the room, the Dalai Lama smiles down, entreating me to be a more compassionate person. There are offerings of water and sometimes fruit to the gods within the shrine, and often, a butter candle is lit in their favor. Unfortunately, that candle often burns well into the wee hours of morning disturbing my sleep. (It really is ridiculous that I need complete silence and darkness to drift off. I feel so high-maintenance). Once or twice, after waking up in the middle of the night and failing to fall back asleep because of the flicking light, I grumpily blew out the candle. I have stopped this selfishness now, as I am pretty sure blowing out the candle is sacrilegious.
Anyways, my family is used to me waking up pretty early as I sometimes walk with my host mother before the sun rises. Thus, I really cannot complain that the one day I decided to sleep in, I ended up drinking heated chang (Tibetan barley beer) and watching traditional Tibetan dances on television well before 7:00am. It was Losar, the Tibetan New Year, and it was certainly a treat to be able to celebrate it with a Tibetan family.
Typically, on Losar, a family wakes up early, drinks their chang and eats sweet rice, before changing into traditional Tibetan clothes and then visiting high lamas or monasteries for New Year’s blessings. Often, Losar is a fifteen-day celebration with dancing and merriment continuing late into the evening. However, this year, Losar was canceled by the Dalai Lama in recognition of the monks, nuns, and laypeople in Tibetan who have self-immolated in protest for religious freedom.
Suicide in Buddhism is considered a terrible sin. There are six realms of reincarnation, and the human realm is considered the best. Human is the only realm that has the ability to reach enlightenment/nirvana and thus, escape samsara, the cycle of life and death in the material world. To commit suicide is to surely be reincarnated into a lower realm; it is throwing away the chance of enlightenment. So to us in the western world, setting yourself on fire would certainly be considered suicide, at least that was what I thought before arriving in Nepal. However, this is not what is actually going on. Although the Dalai Lama has condemned the self-immolations and requested their abatement, these actions are actually considered something other than suicide. In Tibet, where any type of protest is immediately and forcibly put down, self-immolation is a way to still state one’s dissent. Those who self-immolate do so in compassion for others, hoping their sacrifice will force the international community to really look at the conditions they are living under and help to make positive changes. Thus, the cancellation of Losar this year was to honor those people who saw fit protest the only way they thought they could.
My host family celebrated only a slight bit, nothing like in years before. We all donned traditional Tibetan dress and went up to the roof with the neighbors. We hung prayer flags (one should only hang prayer flags on an auspicious day, otherwise, they will bring bad luck until they are weathered away). We at sweets and drank chang and beer. Someone chanted mantras, and then we threw tsampa (barley flour) up into the air. Perhaps it was not the traditional, fun, and celebratory Losar, but I consider myself lucky to have been able to experience it.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Black Horse, White Cloak
The Ambien worked miracles. As I stepped off of my flight at Doha International Airport, I felt mildly human. Unlike the other international flights I have taken, I slept nearly the full twelve hours this time. Nonetheless, I was a bit groggy and confused as I entered the transfer's security line. I became even more confused as a security guard approached another SIT student and me to tell us we had hotel rooms during our ten hour layover. He shoved us back onto another shuttle bus and we rode it around for a little while, unaware of where we were supposed to go. Eventually, I found myself in an immigration line getting a visa for Qatar and then on a bus, ridding to the hotel. Although I was slightly worried that I was being kidnapped by an international airline, the shower, free meal, and bed were much appreciated.
I landed in Tribhuvan International Airport about a week ago now, and since have come to appreciate that last shower even more so. This semester I am studying in Nepal and Bhutan (possibly India also) with the School for International Training (SIT) Tibetan and Himalayan Peoples program. The program was started in 1987 and looked closely at Tibet and other Himalayan regions. For those in my generation who do not know much about the region, Tibet borders Nepal, India, and Bhutan and is located within China today. Its history is quite expansive, but I'll try just to give a basic overview along with some of my favorite stories from their history:
Tibetans believe that they are descended from an monkey and an ogress. The monkey was a quiet contemplative sort who meditated peacefully in a cave. The ogress, on the other hand, was very volatile and displeased. Lonely, she wailed and wailed, until the monkey went to her in compassion. Together they produced the Tibetan race, and it is said that the monkey gave the Tibetans their tame qualities and the ogress gave them their untamed ones. At one point, Tibet was a great empire, but since then, its boundaries were largely undefined. Around the seventh to ninth century, Buddhism first entered Tibet. It was propagated by three kings until 850 AD when the last king was killed. It is said that a monk killed him out of compassion because the king was so corrupt, he had to have been creating quite a bit of bad karma for himself. The monk arrived at a play dressed in white, riding a black horse. Pretending it was a part of the play, the monk pointed a bow and arrow at the king and then actually shot him. As the monk made his escape, he turned his white cloak inside-out, making it black. He then rode through a river, washing the black paint off of his white horse. Thus, while the authorities searched for an assassin wearing white on a black horse, the monk rode away wearing black on a white horse.
After the death of the third king, Tibet entered into a sort of dark age until the second diffusion of Buddhism. Eventually, Dalai Lamas became the political and spiritual leaders of Tibet. The Dalai Lama is a chain of the same reincarnated scholar/lama, Chenrezig. After the thirteenth Dalai Lama died in the late 1930s, a search began for a new Dalai Lama. Following predictions from the previous Dalai Lama and visions, a search party set out to Eastern Tibet, where they found the a young three-year-old boy. After passing several different tests, the boy was renamed Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (or just Tenzin Gyatso) and in 1940 was taken to the capitol city of Lhasa where he began his studies. However, trouble was brewing, and in 1950, China invaded Tibet. Met with poorly coordinated and equipped resistance, it did not take long for the Chinese Army to reach Lhasa. Over the next several years, tensions brewed until 1959, when things exploded during March of that year. Fearing that the Chinese were planing to kidnap the Dalai Lama, Tibetans gathered outside his residence in mass to protest. On March 17th, the Dalai Lama disguised himself as a common solider and fled Tibet, going into exile in India. The next day, the Chinese began shelling his residence and the people surrounding it.
Over the next decades, many Tibetans have gone into exile in Bhutan, India, Nepal, and all over the world. Those who stayed in Tibet faced extremely hard times of famine, thamzing, imprisonment, religious prosecution, and the cultural revolution. Today, many people are still leaving Tibet, including my host mother and father, and protests against Chinese rule continues. In the past two years, there have been many cases of monks, nuns, or even lay people setting themselves on fire in protest. Losar, the Tibetan New Year, has been cancelled in order to honor these people.
At the moment, I am based in Boudha, Kathmandu, a portion of the capitol that is largely Tibetan refugees. Along with studying Tibetan and attending lectures on Buddhism, development, this region, and cultural anthropology, I live with a Tibetan host family. In about a month, I will leave for Bhutan, and then the month after that I will be doing independent research.
I landed in Tribhuvan International Airport about a week ago now, and since have come to appreciate that last shower even more so. This semester I am studying in Nepal and Bhutan (possibly India also) with the School for International Training (SIT) Tibetan and Himalayan Peoples program. The program was started in 1987 and looked closely at Tibet and other Himalayan regions. For those in my generation who do not know much about the region, Tibet borders Nepal, India, and Bhutan and is located within China today. Its history is quite expansive, but I'll try just to give a basic overview along with some of my favorite stories from their history:
Tibetans believe that they are descended from an monkey and an ogress. The monkey was a quiet contemplative sort who meditated peacefully in a cave. The ogress, on the other hand, was very volatile and displeased. Lonely, she wailed and wailed, until the monkey went to her in compassion. Together they produced the Tibetan race, and it is said that the monkey gave the Tibetans their tame qualities and the ogress gave them their untamed ones. At one point, Tibet was a great empire, but since then, its boundaries were largely undefined. Around the seventh to ninth century, Buddhism first entered Tibet. It was propagated by three kings until 850 AD when the last king was killed. It is said that a monk killed him out of compassion because the king was so corrupt, he had to have been creating quite a bit of bad karma for himself. The monk arrived at a play dressed in white, riding a black horse. Pretending it was a part of the play, the monk pointed a bow and arrow at the king and then actually shot him. As the monk made his escape, he turned his white cloak inside-out, making it black. He then rode through a river, washing the black paint off of his white horse. Thus, while the authorities searched for an assassin wearing white on a black horse, the monk rode away wearing black on a white horse.
After the death of the third king, Tibet entered into a sort of dark age until the second diffusion of Buddhism. Eventually, Dalai Lamas became the political and spiritual leaders of Tibet. The Dalai Lama is a chain of the same reincarnated scholar/lama, Chenrezig. After the thirteenth Dalai Lama died in the late 1930s, a search began for a new Dalai Lama. Following predictions from the previous Dalai Lama and visions, a search party set out to Eastern Tibet, where they found the a young three-year-old boy. After passing several different tests, the boy was renamed Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (or just Tenzin Gyatso) and in 1940 was taken to the capitol city of Lhasa where he began his studies. However, trouble was brewing, and in 1950, China invaded Tibet. Met with poorly coordinated and equipped resistance, it did not take long for the Chinese Army to reach Lhasa. Over the next several years, tensions brewed until 1959, when things exploded during March of that year. Fearing that the Chinese were planing to kidnap the Dalai Lama, Tibetans gathered outside his residence in mass to protest. On March 17th, the Dalai Lama disguised himself as a common solider and fled Tibet, going into exile in India. The next day, the Chinese began shelling his residence and the people surrounding it.
Over the next decades, many Tibetans have gone into exile in Bhutan, India, Nepal, and all over the world. Those who stayed in Tibet faced extremely hard times of famine, thamzing, imprisonment, religious prosecution, and the cultural revolution. Today, many people are still leaving Tibet, including my host mother and father, and protests against Chinese rule continues. In the past two years, there have been many cases of monks, nuns, or even lay people setting themselves on fire in protest. Losar, the Tibetan New Year, has been cancelled in order to honor these people.
At the moment, I am based in Boudha, Kathmandu, a portion of the capitol that is largely Tibetan refugees. Along with studying Tibetan and attending lectures on Buddhism, development, this region, and cultural anthropology, I live with a Tibetan host family. In about a month, I will leave for Bhutan, and then the month after that I will be doing independent research.
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