130 posts tagged with tibet.
Displaying 1 through 50 of 130. Subscribe:
A Closer Look at Self-immolations in Freedom Struggles
Dying in the Truth: Self-immolation is an unthinkably costly and tragic method of last resort sometimes used by those striving for justice and freedom in asymmetric conflicts. The first person to perform this fiery protest as a modern political tactic is Thich Quang Duc, who sat in the lotus position at a busy intersection in Saigon in 1963 and set himself on fire to decry Buddhist suffering under a pro-Catholic regime. Since the birth of the tactic in 1963, the world has witnessed some 3,000 incidents of self-immolation, according to sociologist Michael Biggs. About 160 of these occurred in Tibet between 2011 and 2018, marking one of the greatest waves of suicide protests in history. Considering the extent of the practice, we, scholars and practitioners of nonviolent resistance, must ask ourselves: Why do some people prefer to die in the truth, rather than to live in a lie? And does the involvement of death, in and of itself, automatically place any tactic in the camp of violence?
Archaeology is Not Often Thought of as a Tool of Politics
Historical accuracy and truth are not important for Beijing’s purposes. China would obviously prefer a more comprehensive interpretation of Zhangzhung’s extent, and the lack of knowledge and certainty surrounding Zhangzhung make it ripe for exploitation and distortion. The importance of the kingdom is that it is tied to so many cultural and geostrategic dynamics China wants to manipulate today. Beijing is therefore actively creating historical revisionism through the sponsorship of archaeologists and historians to provide a new narrative of Zhangzhung in order to justify its territorial, cultural, and geopolitical control in the region. from How China Reinvented an Ancient Kingdom to Advance Its Claims in the Himalayas [The Diplomat]
This is the world’s most riskiest project.
Damming the Great Bend. The Chinese government is apparently committed to building what may be the world's most difficult dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo river. It would be a megastructure in the Himalayas, closely involved with the Indian border, in the world's deepest canyon, would control a major source of water for India and Bangladesh, and in a seismically dangerous area. [more inside]
Drawing a Buddha in the Tibetan style
The Tibetan Book of Proportions is an eighteenth century manual that gives precise iconometric guidelines for depicting the Buddha and Bodhisattva figures. Labels for each image in the book. Clouds. Buddha face and teaching mudra. Earth touching mudra and Tara. [more inside]
"Personal Instructions from My Totally Excellent Guru."
Bön is a Tibetan religion followed by about 10% of Tibetans within Tibet and internationally, similar to Tibetan Buddhism yet usually seen as a pre-Buddhist indigenous religion originating within the Zhang Zhung region in what is now Western Tibet. That area is filled with a number of abandoned caves and other historic sites, many of which are adorned with rock art and rock art paintings (pdfs). Many early Bön texts have been found in a walled off cave called the Library Cave, closed up around the 11th century and re-opened and accessed in the early 1900s. The International Dunhuang Project is attempting to provide one central place to access many of the documents from that cave which were given away or sold. [previously]
A blind and opaque reputelligent nosedive
Data isn't just being collected from your phone. It's being used to score you. - "Operating in the shadows of the online marketplace, specialized tech companies you've likely never heard of are tapping vast troves of our personal data to generate secret 'surveillance scores' — digital mug shots of millions of Americans — that supposedly predict our future behavior. The firms sell their scoring services to major businesses across the U.S. economy. People with low scores can suffer harsh consequences."[1] [more inside]
Ringfencing the Roof of the World's Waters
Asia's vital rivers - "The headwaters of 10 major rivers originate near some of Earth's highest points. Known as the world's 'third pole', the land of Mount Everest and other peaks holds the largest concentration of perennial ice outside of the polar regions. Along with snow and rain from the mountains, this ice helps supply the river basins below that support the water, food, and energy needs of almost two billion people." [more inside]
The Tibetan Gaze
The Sherpa of New York
Atop a dark Himalayan ridge, a short, silhouetted climber gazes at the icy jags of Mount Thamserku. That climber is Serap. One of the world's best climbers now sells climbing gear to people who seldom know who he is.
And I think it's going to rain today
China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain,
“Modifying the weather in Tibet is a critical innovation to solve China’s water shortage problem.”
The system could increase the water supply by five to 10 billion cubic meters a year which will help China’s acute water shortage which imperils its economic future.
China Water Crisis The big picture.
The system could increase the water supply by five to 10 billion cubic meters a year which will help China’s acute water shortage which imperils its economic future.
China Water Crisis The big picture.
But could he hit a curveball?
The post-truth gospel. In 1894 Nicolas Notovitch's The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ was published and briefly became a huge, global story. The book claimed that during the 18 undocumented years of Jesus’s life – the gap in the Bible between his childhood and the beginning of his ministry in Palestine – he had visited India, Nepal and Tibet and trained with yogis as a Buddhist monk. When skeptics investigated, the story began to unravel. Today, Notovitch is virtually unknown. But is it possible that his claim that Jesus had trained as a Buddhist was a misdirection and the book had a more subtle ulterior motive? [more inside]
"Never has empty space been so full"
Guge rose to prominence in the tenth century following the collapse of the early Tibetan empire ruled from central Tibet. Tibetans speak of a “second diffusion” (chidar) of Buddhism to the high mountain plateaus under the patronage of the Guge kings, who developed a distinctive form of political organization: one of the royal princes would assume what might be called secular power, while his brothers and nephews would take monastic vows; among them, one became abbot of the Tholing monastery and thus emerged as the religious leader of the entire Guge region. Our modern categories should not, however, mislead us.David Shulman reviews "Peter van Ham’s astonishing new book, Guge: Ages of Gold." [more inside]
A rare bear - the golden Brown Bear of the Gobi Desert
At a global glance, the awe-inspiring brown bear is the most widely distributed bear in the world. Of the eight bear species*, only the brown bear and American black bear are listed as of least concern. But some of the brown bear sub-species are critically endangered, including the rare Gobi bear (Ursus arctos gobiensis), one of the few larger animals to call the extreme desert its home, where they have adapted to be shaggier and smaller than their North American relatives in order to survive a far harsher climate (YouTube / National Geographic). [more inside]
More fun than a barrel of monks
Roly poly Tibetan monks having roly poly fun (FB link) doing handstands badly over barrels. [more inside]
'Praying is not enough'
Crisis on high
Tibetan Girls, We are in the Process of Losing ‘Plateau Redness’
Children make toys of it
Yak Dung: a documentary exploring an unexpectedly essential substance in the traditional life of Tibet (SLYT).
Embroidery on Youtube
Embroider a Guanyin with the hair of the descendant of Rinpoches. Embroider with hooks and gold in India. Embroider with the techniques of European (late) renaissance and modern embroidery. Embroider (...eventually) a kimono. Embroider with horsetail. Embroider with designer Yohji Yamamoto. Embroider like a Ukrainian.
"Severity always, justice when possible"
The Lure of Everest
With their empire in tatters, postwar Britons were desperate for a source of renewal to pierce their collective mourning; they needed grand projects to restore national pride. They looked eastward, and up. Starting in 1920 the lexicon and tactics of war were applied to the attempts to scout and conquer Everest. Vast expeditions — the first in 1903-4 had taken a load so hefty that 88 porters died of exhaustion — made their way across the Tibetan plateau.- writes Holly Morris in the NYT review of Into The Silence, a book by Wade Davis of the National Geographic Society covering the British Everest expeditions of 1921, '22, and '24. [more inside]
A Son Rises in the West
Twenty years ago a Seattle boy moved to Nepal after being recognized as the reincarnation of a revered Tibetan lama. The public’s reaction to his mother’s decision to let him go says as much about our understanding of parenting as it does about Buddhism.
The pizza effect
Tripping On Good Vibrations : Cultural Commodification and Tibetan Singing Bowls
The tragic tale of Mt Everest’s most famous dead body
The tragic tale of Mt Everest’s most famous dead body is part one of a two part BBC article centered around the story of Tsewang Paljor, known as "Green Boots", whose body has remained for 20 years near the summit where he died.
Part two is Death in the clouds: The problem with Everest’s 200+ bodies [more inside]
Come again?
“I don’t think the Dalai Lama would mind if you saw this through the prism of Monty Python,” said Robert Barnett, director of the modern Tibetan studies program at Columbia University. Zhu Weiqun, a Communist Party official who has long dealt with Tibetan issues, told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that the Dalai Lama had, essentially, no say over whether he was reincarnated. That was ultimately for the Chinese government to decide, he said, according to a transcript (in Chinese) of his comments on the website of People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper.
Asian Art - Sale Record
A large, Yongle-Ming period Buddhist embroidery sold at auction this week for $45 million - the highest price ever paid for a piece of Asian art. The 11ft x 7ft (335cm x 213cm) silk & gold thread thangka from the early 15th century depicts "Raktayamari, a meditational deity in Mahayana Buddhism, in an embrace with his consort, Vajravetali." ~~~
Full screen hi-res zoom frame /// Short overview video /// NYTimes /// Note the 'Lot Notes' and 'Features' tabs in the main Christie's link (where there are overview/context essays too).
Nicholas Vreeland: Monk with a Camera
Diana Vreeland, noted fashion columnist and editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine from 1963 until 1971, once famously said, "Pink is the new black." This post is about her grandson, Nicholas Vreeland, who as a teenager worked as an assistant to legendary photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon (both friends of Grandma). Nicholas began studying Tibetan Buddhism in 1977. This (8:39) PBS Video from 6/15/2012 provides some background: "Buddhist Abbot Nicholas Vreeland". Now, the trailer to Monk with a Camera: The Life and Journey of Nicholas Vreeland", a documentary film by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, has a North American release date of 11/21/14. A Leica Camera Blog article: Nicholas Vreeland: Capturing Photographs to Honor and Preserve His World. Perhaps you would just enjoy seeing some of what Nicholas Vreeland can do with that camera. Enjoy!
Tibetans breathe thin air because of extinct cavemen ancestors?
A new paper in Nature suggests the gene variant that allows Tibetans to thrive at high altitudes may have arisen in the mysterious Denisovans, an extinct branch of hominid that co-existed with modern humans and Neanderthals. Denisovans were discovered through DNA analysis of a single bone from a cave in Siberia.
Popular article in Slate. Just as Neanderthal ancestry contributed 1-4% of genes to modern people with ancestry outside of sub-Saharan Africa, Denisovan ancestry lives on in Southern Asia, and as the new research suggests, conferred benefits to the people of Tibet. From links here and here you can download the DNA letters for the first Denisovan discovered, along with a report generated based on personal genomics analysis.
Forty-three Werner Herzog films that can be streamed
Inside, please find a list of forty-three movies, TV episodes, and short subjects by Werner Herzog, all of which can be streamed, along with some short descriptions of their content. One or two of the films are in German without subtitles; this is noted in the description. [more inside]
Thousands of photographs of Tibet
Gorgeous photographs of Tibet, thousands of them by Jan Reurink with excellent, informative captions. Exceptionally detailed, clear photographs of a huge variety of Tibetan landscapes, architecture of all kinds, flowers, wildlife, cool details, monastic cities. Of course, all kinds of Tibetan people, from a high plains cowboy in a dusty town,
monastic staff, nomads to kids. [more inside]
What I learned in the slush with His Holiness
The Dalai Lama says he isn’t tired and wants to go into the mountains to see skiing. What should I do? (Single link Slate article, sweet anecdote that's worth it for the really big question.)
The 1952 Mongol "invasion" of New Jersey
"By figuratively sticking her foot in America’s front door and keeping it wedged there long enough for an anonymous band of war-tossed Mongols to navigate around daunting racial barriers, Countess Tolstoy not only became the architect of the Mongol “invasion” of New Jersey and the country’s first ethnic Mongolian community, she also served as the midwife for the birth of Tibetan Buddhism in America." -- tells the amazing story of how a small band of Kalmyk Mongols (all WWII Wehrmacht veterans) established Tibetan Buddhism in America, as told by David Urubshurow, who was one of them. Featuring Leo Tolstoy's youngest daughter, Cold War CIA and Ivy League intrigues, how the Dalai Lama came to America and why this was only possible under president Carter and more.
Razing and burning: the costs of rapid urbanization in China
With 53 self-immolations since 2009, these Chinese villagers might bring to mind the self-immolation by Tibetans, but the Chinese villagers are highlighting a different issue. The rapid urbanization of China is having a number of impacts across the country, with rural communities being demolished to build new urban centers. While many people are moving from rural farms to cities to find more lucrative jobs, some are fighting back to keep their rural communities intact, or to retain their family farms. When other options are gone, desperate villagers turn to self-immolation (NPR). [more inside]
On a path to liberation....
Over a thousand monks and laymen are revered in Tibetan Buddhism as the incarnations of past teachers who convey enlightenment to their followers from one lifetime to the next. Some of the most respected are known by the honorific "rinpoche." For eight centuries, rinpoches were traditionally identified by other monks and then locked inside monasteries ringed by mountains, far from worldly distractions. Their reincarnation lineages were easily tracked across successive lives. Then the Chinese Red Army invaded Tibet in 1950 and drove the religion's adherents into exile. Now, the younger rinpoches of the Tibetan diaspora are being exposed to all of the twenty-first century’s dazzling temptations. So, even as Tibetan Buddhism is gaining more followers around the world, an increasing number of rinpoches are abandoning their monastic vows. Reincarnation in Exile. [more inside]
The mural in Oregon the Chinese government wants destroyed
A colorful mural adorns Chao Tsung-song / Tibet House in Corvallis, Oregon. Commissioned by Corvallis businessman, David Lin, the 100 foot long mural depicts at one end, a cheerful Taiwanese countryside scene, and at the other, police beating Tibetan protesters and a Tibetan monk in the process of self-immolation. The Chinese government has requested that the mural be destroyed. Mr. Lin and Corvallis city mayor, Julie Manning, say, "no."
You don't need a visa on Google+
The Dalai Lama was prevented from going to South Africa for Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday by visa problems. So they used Google+ to "Hangout" instead.
Cutting through the ego with song...
We've talked about throat singing on the Blue before, but Mongolia and Siberia aren't the only places where throat singing is practiced. In Tibet, an ancient collection of traditions called Bön keeps throat singing alive and well. [more inside]
The Dalai Lama Resigns
The Dalai Lama announces his resignation as a political leader. It remains to be seen if the Tibet Parliament will accept.
Tibet, 1942, on film!
Adaptation to High Altitude in Tibet
Tibetans May Be Fastest Evolutionary Adapters Ever. "A group of scientists in China, Denmark and the U.S. recently documented the fastest genetic change observed in humans. According to their findings, Tibetan adaption to high altitude might have taken just 3,000 years. That's a flash, in terms of evolutionary time, but it's one that's in dispute."
The Twain Shall Meet
Asia Snapshots "is a blog that examines topics in Asia through the perspectives of interesting people interviewed by a group of bloggers in Mainland China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and more." Meet Gao Qingrong and family, who along with seven other households are part of an organic farm co-op in Anlong Village, Sichuan. Or there's the tale of how one of the bloggers met Jun Jun, a male prostitute in Beijing; an encounter with Silang Laji, a road maintenance worker in Kham, a Tibetan region of China; and Gege, an enterprising journalist in Chengdu.Via
We love the Dalai Lama. We also love french fries.
Why Americans Love the Dalai Lama : an insightful piece from CNN preceding his appearance tonight at 9PM EST on Larry King Live. [more inside]
Sky burials in Tibet
Sky burials are often practiced in the mountains of Tibet, both for religious and practical reasons. Basically, the corpse is placed on a mountain top and sliced open in various places, to attract the birds of prey circling above. They’d probably feast on it anyway, but an invitation like that doesn’t hurt.
Time-lapse Mandala
Time-lapse video, shot from overhead, of Tibetan monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery creating a sand mandala over 5 days: Eight frames per second (1:30); Thirty frames per second (0:23). [via MeFi's Own™ carter]
At the Roof of the World...
The CIA in Tibet
The CIA in Tibet l the Cold War in ShangriLa l The CIA's Secret War In Tibet by Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, the entire book online. [more inside]
Ethnic conflict in China
"On the evening of July 5th, several hundred Uighur youths went on a bloody rampage [in Urumqi, Xinjiang] following a peaceful demonstration over a separate incident of ethnic violence at a Guangdong toy factory. . . . In the days that followed, bands of roving Han vigilantes armed with kitchen knives, hammers, metal pipes and other improvised weapons sought to mete out revenge in the Uighur suburbs of the city. . . . Caught in-between these increasingly polarized and agitated ethnic communities is the Chinese state, which, rather than orchestrating the brutal oppression of the non-Han minorities, finds itself increasingly powerless to stop the spiralling circle of ethnic hatred which its policies helped to foster in the first place." [more inside]
The Dalai Lama's Buddhist Foes
The Dalai Lama's Buddhist Foes contrasts "the tolerance and rationalism that the Dalai Lama represents globally and the theological hardball over mystical principles that he seems to play on his home turf." But the Shugdenpas aren't the Dalai Lama's only Buddhist opponents. Tibetan Buddhism's only female living Buddha, the twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo, who chose to stay in Tibet when the Dalai Lama fled, has said, "The sins of the Dalai Lama and his followers seriously violate the basic teachings and precepts of Buddhism and seriously damage traditional Tibetan Buddhism's normal order and good reputation." [more inside]
Contemporary Painting from Tibet
The remotest places on Earth
Ever wondered where the remotest place in the world is? Short answer according to New Scientist: the Tibetan Plateau. Lots of cool maps showing transport times and methods. [more inside]
Field Force to Lhasa
Field Force to Lhasa 1903-04 Captain Cecil Mainprise accompanied General Sir Francis Younghusband's expedition to Tibet in 1903. He wrote 50 letters home which trace the expedition’s progress into Tibet. Read this insider's account on the day they were written some 105 years later. Final post is 18 November 2009. [Via]