This is not a topic controlling the headlines today in our tumultuous world, but it is one deserving some reflection, in our view. The Tibetans practiced a culture at least 1,200 years old centered on their version of Buddhist beliefs. Their land was the size of Western Europe today.
This is not a topic controlling the headlines today in our tumultuous world, but it is one deserving some reflection, in our view.
The Tibetans practiced a culture at least 1,200 years old centered on their version of Buddhist beliefs.
Their land was the size of Western Europe today. An essential element of their belief is reincarnation of all human souls in a continuous cycle of regeneration. In that regard, Tibetans believe that the Dalai Lama is in fact the reincarnation of Buddha himself.
Until 1949, when communists established their ideology in China, Tibetans lived in relative isolation near the “top of the world” surrounded by the Himalayas to the south and west and a high desert plateau to the north and east.
With more than 6,000 Buddhist monasteries, they were a center of Asian culture and intellectual achievement pertaining to the human spirit.
While the West explored outer space, Tibetans did the same with “inner space.” Most of that culture and the libraries and “universities” reflecting it have now been destroyed and Tibetans themselves scattered around the world.
To some degree, the Chinese destruction of Tibetan culture over the past 60 years is reminiscent of what we, the predominantly white European culture, did to the American Indians in the 1800s.
While Indians were far more tribal and without a dominating leader such as the Dalai Lama, they lived in relative isolation practicing a culture of deep spiritual significance and communion with the land, sky and all forms of life therein.
American Indian “libraries” were verbal rather than written, but nonetheless libraries of history and knowledge now lost to modernization and “civilization.”
World population, technology and other forms of civilization are expanding geometrically. The new overwhelms the old, leaving in some cases devastation in its wake as “progress” marches on.
This is a story as old as human existence itself. We, as humans, have yet to find a way to preserve and cherish the old while the new continues to evolve.
We sometimes ponder where and when it will eventually leave us as a species.
