Lately I've been learning about the situation in Tibet, and I can't get over what's going on there. I know that disgusting wars are going on all the time, all over the world, but for some reason this has grabbed my attention. Maybe it's because the Tibetan people are so peaceful and won't fight back, even as the Chinese rape and torture them, prevent them from practicing their religion and destroy their monastaries. (It's not unlike what America, as they say "land of the free", has done to the Native Americans.) Maybe seeing movies of Tibetan monks and nuns (who have taken their vow not to harm another living creature) being beaten in a public square was what got to me. Or maybe it's that I've met some of these people and seen how happy they are, despite what's going on, laughing all the time without the same agenda of worries that so many of us carry in our modern society. Or maybe it's that I see their society as an example or blueprint of a way that a culture can operate in harmony with itself and land. It's clear that if our world continues on its present course it will be destroyed and man extinct. As the author in a book that I read put it, the Tibetans are the example of "inner modernity" that we need to contrast to our completely of control, selfish "outer modernity". With these put together, we can balance out the powerful technological advances we've made with the intelligence to use them to do good. Tibet is in a sense a last hope. It is not so much that we should be so kind as to help these people for their sake alone, as that it is just as important for our own survival and that of the human race. In any case, I'm not sure exactly what it is that graabed a hold of my attention, but my intention on writing it here is clear. That the more people who become aware of the depth of the Tibetan culture, and the unimaginable human rights violations that are going on there, the sooner something will be done.
See you later,
Lolita Banerjee