ah, Tibet

I've mentioned it on this blog before but feel it worth mentioning again: Master Shin Go Seong of Hanguk-sa in Germantown, Maryland feels the Dalai Lama "should have stayed in Tibet." I think he should have, too. I have mixed feelings about his relationship with the media, with politicians, with commercialism, and with Hollywood elites like Richard Gere. The Dalai Lama might be a nice guy, but an immutable cosmic truth is that big religion means big business.

--yours truly in April of 2006

Now we see this:

Protests spread from Tibet into three neighboring provinces Sunday as Tibetans defied a Chinese government crackdown, while the Dalai Lama decried what he called the "cultural genocide" taking place in his homeland.

Questioning the actions and motives of the Dalai Lama might be about as politically correct as taking a sledgehammer to Mother Theresa's skull, but I do have to wonder what the Dalai Lama had been hoping to accomplish in abandoning his people to their fate, effectively making them the outsiders, the people who strain to hear news of their spiritual leader from across whatever communication barriers China has set up and maintained to keep Tibetans both in and controlled. What's it like to be an outsider in your own country-- to know, through news that trickles inside your homeland's borders, that your spiritual leader is alive and very well, thank you, but that he's otherwise occupied?

Still, this isn't to exculpate China, which continues to show an unbelieving press what real imperialism is, as opposed to the bogus imperialism usually ascribed to the United States. Hell, if I had tickets to the Beijing Olympics, I'd consider boycotting.

All hail Spielberg!


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