Nexus - 1502 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

"Friendly Feudalism" Continued from page 48 What is clear is that not all Tibetan women "were delighted to be getting an Ruddhists accent the Dalai T.ama as their — education. wanted ahsolutelv nothing to do What is clear is that not all Tibetan women "were delighted to be getting an Buddhists accept the Dalai Lama as their education, wanted absolutely nothing to do theological and spiritual mentor. Though with any religion, and wondered why he is referred to as the "spiritual leader of Americans were so naive" about Tibet. Tibet", many see this title as littlke more The women interviewed by Lewis than a formality. It does not give him _ recounted stories of their grandmothers' authority over the four religious schools of ordeals with monks who used them as Tibet other than his own, "just as calling "wisdom consorts". the US president the ‘leader of the free By sleeping with the monks, the world' gives him no role in governing grandmothers were told, they gained "the France or Germany". means to enlightenment"—after all, the Not all Tibetan exiles are enamoured of | Buddha himself had to be with a woman to the old Shangri-La theocracy. Kim Lewis, reach enlightenment. The women also who studied healing methods with a mentioned the "rampant" sex that the Buddhist monk in Berkeley, California, had — supposedly spiritual and abstemious monks occasion to talk at length with more than a __ practised with each other in the Gelugpa ozen Tibetan women who lived in the — sect. The women who were mothers spoke monks’ building. When she asked how __ bitterly about the monastery's confiscation they felt about returning to their homeland, of their young boys in Tibet. the sentiment was unanimously negative. They claimed that when a boy cried for At first, Lewis assumed that their his mother, he would be told: "Why do reluctance had to do with the Chinese you cry for her? She gave you up—she's occupation, but she was quickly informed just a woman."* otherwise. The monks who were granted political They said they were extremely grateful asylum in California applied for public "not to have to marry four or five men, be assistance. Lewis, herself a devotee for a pregnant almost all the time” or deal with time, assisted with the paperwork. She sexually transmitted diseases contacted observed that they continue to receive from a straying husband. The younger government checks amounting to US$550 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..."°” 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." 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.” 78 = NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com FEBRUARY — MARCH 2008