The Mystery of Shambala

himvani.com

…The Tibetans and tourists sometimes speak about strange phenomena occurring in the Himalayan region. In the beginning of the 20th century, an article was published in one Indian newspaper (but there are many such stories) about a visit of a British mayor who camped in the Himalayas. He suddenly saw a tall strange man who watched him. The man jumped out of his hiding place and disappeared, but to the mayor’s big surprise the Tibetans with whom he camped in the mountains were not surprised in the least – they explained to him, without showing any excitement, that he saw one of the snowy men who kept guarding the entrances into the holy Earth.

A Russian scientist, Andrej Strelkov, has studied Shambala for quite a log time. He says that the existence of this legendary kingdom is really described in ancient texts and that its “inhabitants” are superior to us in their abilities. He says that all attempts to go deep into the secret of Shambala brought bad luck or failure. For example, he says that most scientists who studied Shambala tragically died. A German Orientalist Albert Gruenwedel, who lived in the first half of the 20th century, went crazy while translating some Shambala texts. In a state of temporary lunacy he threw himself out of the window and died. There are more such cases. …

I think that the legend of Shambala exists to remind us that the Earth is sacred, that She is alive, and that Her sanctity is protected. Scientists, who when all is said and done, have done more to destroy the beauty and integrity of our Earth Mother than any other class of people, are in no way, shape, or form qualified to penetrate her secrets. We are about to experience a cycle of natural disasters which will destroy the destructive materialist bent of human civilization. That is what will initiate the Golden Age.

When we raise our consciousness high enough, we can see Shambala. It is exactly our Earth Mother arrayed in all her real beauty. But then, how do you raise your consciousness? Not by polluting, not by preying on any living thing, not by playing word games with ancient texts, not by addiction to anger, greed, and stupidity, not by the will to power, and not by lust. Every single one of those motivations blinds us to Shambala, and any single one of them, taken by force of a concentrated mind into Her sacred space, can easily kill the perpetrator.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

The beginning of low-level diplomacy between the Obama administration and Peking

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Google hosted news

…Obama has called for a broader relationship with China that includes cooperation on pressing global issues such as climate change and the economic crisis. The US leader is due to visit China later this year.

“President Obama, with his unique gifts in communication and popularity, will be looking for ways to reach out to Chinese audiences and connect,” Bader said.

Before his appointment, Bader served at the Brookings Institution think-tank where he led a project encouraging Chinese academics to make contact with the Dalai Lama. He said he was pleasantly surprised at the response.

“It suggested to me that there is an openness to discussion among non-official Chinese on this subject and I hope that one of these days officials will catch up,” Bader said.

But Ken Lieberthal, who held Bader’s position at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, said there was a “total disconnect” between the way the US public and the Chinese government viewed the Dalai Lama.

“So long as the Chinese refuse to understand that to most of the world this is a revered religious figure — someone who has extraordinary ethics and is deserving of great respect … I don’t see a good future here,” Lieberthal told the same forum.

“Once he passes from the scene, if there has been no progress, I think the next generation of Tibetans have the possibility to be China’s worst nightmare,” he said.

The Dalai Lama, 73, has frequently said he wants to retire but has kept a frenetic travel schedule. His current visit to the United States has included serving food to the homeless in San Francisco and opening an ethics center named after him at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology…

Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of this is that the Obama team realizes that, with issues of this magnitude, you must necessarily start with low level talks if you expect to get anything done diplomatically.

Ken Lieberthal has been a diplomatic nightmare with respect to Tibet because of the focus articulated above. The Dalai Lama’s death is quite beside the point. This is just an irresponsible scare tactic, propagated largely by the European conspiracy theorists who quite unfortunately have had the Dalai Lama’s ear. It’s the Dalai Lama’s current initiatives, while alive, that are very clearly and very specifically the diplomatic problem between him and Peking.

The Dalai Lama is a very benevolent and charming Bodhisattva, please. But he is not a diplomat and he is not a head of state. He has never understood the first basic of state power, which is the control of territory. That is why he ran away from the territory he was supposed, as the de facto government of Tibet, to control, and has failed to control a single square centimeter of territory ever since. And that is why he can’t communicate with Peking, which knows everything about state power, and basically has for several thousand years.

The last paragraph above is just one of the innumerable examples of this. Heads of state may travel, but that is not their sole, or main, activity. The Dalai Lama is utterly unable to comprehend that when you say one thing and do another, as a head of state, you make it difficult for anyone to trust you or help you, or your nationals. The Dalai Lama’s use of the Western media, to simply dramatize a one-sided story about Tibetan history, is deplorable and wrong. When he does that, and then accuses the Chinese of being insincere, how can they trust him? The Dalai Lama’s inflammatory and contradictory statements about China have been first-class violations of diplomatic protocol all the way down the line. That he doesn’t even know what diplomatic protocol would look like in his case is not China’s fault.

As long as the Dalai Lama continues to compete with Peking for political hegemony in Tibet — and he does that every single time he accuses Peking of bad faith — he will be accused of separatism, because that is what that behavior is. His Holiness needs to stop getting in his own way, and the way of his people, by continuing to attempt to do something that he is clearly unqualified to do, and has been from the beginning of his career. He needs to let experts handle the diplomatic process with Peking. Ken Lieberthal was incapable of being one of those. One hopes that Jeff Bader will prove more qualified.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

World Diplomacy by Ven. Xing Yun

File photo of Ven. Xing Yun

Read the Reuters article.

… But there’s a note of conciliation in the presence of Abbot Hsing Yun (at the 2nd World Buddhist Forum in Wuxi), one of Taiwan’s most influential monks and an advocate for improved relations between the Dalai Lama and China.

“All the exiled Tibetans should support China; the Communist Party should welcome them back,” Hsing Yun told reporters on Friday. He noted the “positive merits” of the monk Beijing demonizes as a separatist.

Cooperating on the forum could help strengthen ties between China and self-ruled Taiwan, which have been warming since the Nationalists, or Kuomintang party, regained the presidency last year. Over 1,000 delegates fly directly to Taiwan on Monday, a trip that would have been impossible a few years ago.

“I hope for increased exchanges, back and forth. The more exchanges there are, the more people can’t distinguish between the two, and that will lead to unity,” Hsing Yun said.

China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and has vowed to bring the island under mainland rule, by force if necessary. …

This entire Reuters article should be read in detail by anyone who wants to understand current affairs in East Asia, or current affairs in Tibet. Buddhism really is the key to the resolution of China’s hegemonist quarrels with both Taiwan and Tibet, and the fact that the Chinese central government is reconfiguring Tibet into a Buddhist problem is a HUGE harbinger of positive geopolitical change in central Asia.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Monks Don’t Rule

Read the whole sadly missing story in the West

…It was startling to see a political meeting that took place in Dharamsala on May 3-4 2008 and broadcast on YouTube. It was attended by the heads of all the Tibetan religious sects and was presided over by HH the Dalai Lama. One of the topics of the discussion was the tulku issue, the reincarnated lamas, but the outcome of the discussion has not been reported. Not a single layman took part in the gathering not to mention any women. One wondered what happened to the famous democratization of the exiled Tibetan community in India. …

It’s actually an exceedingly long and exceedingly sad story, but this article is a place to begin.

Monks don’t rule. It’s just not who they are. The Tibetan lamas, in fact, never ruled Tibet. They played dominance games with “wrathful practices”, and had a lot of fun with their Tantric girlfriends, but somehow, they never got interested in the dumb ordinary administrative attention that is the business as usual of any government.

The Chinese takeover of Tibet had been predicted by the predecessor of the current Dalai Lama, if the lamas didn’t get a viable military force together, and that warning changed absolutely nothing. There were probably a dozen existing state powers, including both the Soviet Union and the US, that would have trained and armed a Tibetan military in the decades before the Chinese takeover, because nobody wanted this, but there was no viable government in Tibet to negotiate with about it.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xiong Ping

Lamasic Buddhism not in Tibet

(click to enlarge image)
This is Qinghai, not Tibet

There are a couple of other great graphics on this Xinhua page: Buddhism in Qinghai

In general, the vast majority of Lamasic Buddhism exists somewhere else in Central Asia or the Himalayas than Tibet. Why is it that we never hear of this in English?

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping