Spinning with the spinny people: Tibet

When the Rangzen Spring hit (in March of 2008), I was informed by many people in the "buddhist" community that my outspoken behavior was "samsaric" and not spiritual. For those of you who aren't buddha-nerds or not even Buddhists (unlike me who is one) "samsaric" means I am too focused on this world, as opposed to some buddha-nerd's conception of nirvana. (Sorry, but in Buddhism, nirvana is either here and now, or it simply fucking isn't at all. I realized I have just popped a whole lotta people's bubbles about the so-called Buddhist spiritual quest and all....as if I give a crap about their delusions.)

It got to the point where certain Buddhists quoted New Age truisms to me, claiming that they were Buddhist teachings..all in an attempt to get me to give up my unflinching support for Tibetan Independence. (Yeah, that's right. Independence. As in fully free from China. Nope. Not some stupid fucking "autonomous zone" like the Beijing spags describe it today...but full independence, as is the Tibetan birthright.) I was called "worldly." As if this would sway me.

Now....

What some of those dumb asses never realized is that I have been doing the Buddhist practice thing for a while. And I actually practice it. I mean I really do sit there on the floor for long periods of time. I also not only practice meditation, but I practice the precepts. One of which, in the lineage of Buddhism I follow mostly (as opposed to some others which I am also part of but can't seem to be bothered to remember) is to defend oppressed people...not because it is a religious rule nor because it would make me a better person or any of that stupidity, but simply because I see a wrong being done and I yearn for it to be right. I feel the pain of other beings. Just like I seek to help my own arm if wounded, so other people's pains.

What hit me most about the whole episode was that people were telling me how upset or disillusioned they were with Tibetans, because Tibetans were throwing rocks at police and setting fires to Chinese-owned shops. My question to them was "why do you think Tibetans aren't living on the earth?"

The idea many in the West have of Tibetans is some willy nilly spiritual fantasy that has nothing to do with either Tibet or Buddhism. For instance, in Tibet today, a Tibetan concerned with their own survival may see it necessary to throw a rock through a Chinese bank window (thus reinforcing the idea to Chinese colonists that they can never be safe while in Tibet). I do not understand why so many so called spiritual people in the West would begrudge the Tibetans this resistance. Is it because it makes the Tibetans a real people with real concerns, and not anything like the elves from Tolkien?

The New Age has done a lot to hijack the Tibetan struggle, at least in the minds of Westerners. It's not enough that the New Age gets Buddhism wrong almost every time some dumb assed new age crystal wearing goo goo muck decides to speak about karma. No. Now they have to judge the Tibetans as being wrong for standing up to an aggression that almost makes the Third Reich seem tame.

I once asked some pacifist puke what they thought of Tibetans standing up for themselves by either getting firearms or by destroying the colonists' property. That person actually told me that since Tibetans were being violent, their cause lost its legitimacy.

WTF?

How is it that because an oppressed people will not do what you want them to do, they suddenly become undeserving of freedom?

This may shock the new agers a bit, but Tibetan resistance to China has been largely militant and violent for the past 6 decades, Dalai Lama notwithstanding. While Buddhists seek to avoid killing, there is nothing which says you cannot defend yourself or your loved ones from aggression. There is nothing in Tibetan Buddhism that says "roll over and pacify yourself into playing Chinese."

Tibet was around long before either Tang China, or European peacenik ideas about what constitutes morality. It was a nation and has been on its own for centuries. The Tibetan Empire was vaster than Tang China (despite what today's Chinese nationalists would like to think.)

It is stupid and spinny for another Buddhist to tell me that my support for Tibetan Independence is too caught up in the samsaric world. There is really no other world. And anyone who tries to dissuade me from a truth (Tibet) by claiming I am samsaric, is simply being a fuckwit.