XPost: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.zen, alt.politics.religion   
   XPost: alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan, alt.zen   
   From: peter@dharma.dyn-o-saur.com   
      
   Commentary: A Cry for Freedom   
   Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 4:27PM   
      
   by Robert Thurman   
   Oh my heart! Oh, my life! How can this happen! What can I do? I’m   
   overwhelmed as I watch a video of the brave and passionate Tibetan   
   Buddhist nun Palden Choetso standing in the street, burning herself as a human   
   torch. I want to respond, to douse her flames. It’s   
   impossible. So too is it to salute her for her bravery, for her faith in love,   
   for her determination, and her belief that peace is possible.   
   Did she cry out for freedom? For herself? Her people? Her land? Her nation?   
   For her beloved lama, teacher, and savior?   
      
   I watch as an elegant laywoman, a passerby startled and gripped with horror,   
   manages to quickly take a white khata greeting scarf out   
   of her bag, a traditional offering of goodwill and respect. She waves the   
   scarf toward the stock-still flaming nun and then offers it into   
   the fire as Palden Choetso passes out, dying in agony, her body crumpling to   
   the ground. I also offer a khata from my heart.   
      
   In a gathering we held at Roosevelt House in New York, in a hall adorned with   
   the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms and a   
   picture of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin at Yalta (where once again they ignored   
   the fate of Tibet), Kirti Rinpoche, exiled abbot of one of   
   the monasteries where some of these brave monks and nuns who have   
   selfimmolated came from, declares: “This is an ultimate act of   
   nonviolence!” I am not sure at first, and surprised, as all evening he had   
   been deploring that this is happening, as we all do. If any young   
   monk or nun were to ask their abbot or their lama, His Holiness the Dalai   
   Lama, “Should I offer myself for freedom?”— the answer   
   would be an emphatic “No! Absolutely not! Endure the oppression and turn   
   your mind toward practice to attain the ultimate freedom of   
   nirvana and buddhahood for the sake of all beings!” But once they do commit   
   such sacrifice, one cannot help but respect their courage.   
      
   When you destroy your body, you violate your own life, the lives of what   
   Buddhists call “the 84,000 cells” that constitute it. This does   
   seem violent. Yet in this case, the individual sacrifices herself to appeal to   
   her enemy, to convey the perhaps all-too-subliminal message   
   that they have nothing to fear from her, that she will resist their   
   relationship of fear and harm by removing herself from being the   
   target of their ultimately self-destructive, evil behavior. That is true   
   non-harming—perfect resistance by complete surrender. If your   
   victim prevents you from harming her by harming herself and taking herself out   
   of your reach, then why were you afraid of her and   
   wanting to harm her in the first place? Since she won’t harm you, she must   
   love you. She wants you to stop fearing and hating; she   
   wants you to be happy! Indeed, she cries out to you with her very life to wake   
   up and behold the power of love—how it does not fear   
   death, how it gives itself away to reality, how it overwhelms hatred.   
      
   His Holiness the Dalai Lama is being blamed by the Chinese Communist Party   
   government for these dread-inspiring demonstrations of   
   their illegitimacy in the eyes of the Tibetan people, if not in the eyes of   
   the hypocritical world of diplomacy and commerce that favors   
   the rich and powerful winner of whatever illegal action, even the theft of a   
   country. Such blame is totally unfair. I still remember His   
   Holiness’ reaction to the selfsacrifice of Thubten Ngodup in Delhi, whom he   
   was able to visit in the hospital before he died. His Holiness   
   was very upset by it, and Thubten Ngodup was elderly, not young and brilliant   
   with a whole life of study and achievement ahead of him.   
   His Holiness said, “This is violence, even if it is self-inflicted. The same   
   energy that can cause someone to do this to himself is very close   
   to the energy that enables someone to kill others in fury and outrage.” His   
   Holiness was also worried about this powerful gesture. But he   
   was pleased that at least he was able to whisper into the ear of the totally   
   bandaged victim, “Do not pass over with hatred for the   
   Chinese in your heart. You are brave and you made your statement, but let not   
   your motive be hatred.” Thubten Ngodup somehow   
   signalled that he understood, to His Holiness’ great relief.   
      
   One of the brave monks who set himself on fire did so in the close presence of   
   Chinese military police, who were so confused by this   
   astonishing gesture, they shot him and then proceded to beat him as he was   
   dying, as if to punish him for freeing himself from their   
   punishments! It was a sign of their utter confusion. They could not understand   
   the power of his act to completely cancel the conflict of   
   oppressor and victim, nor his wish to take control of his own life by giving   
   it away.   
      
   Buddha said that hate will never put an end to hate—only love can. Hate   
   wants to destroy its object, a person seen as obstructing the   
   hater’s happiness; but love wants even a hating person to be happy, not to   
   be any sort of obstruction—that’s how it can overcome the   
   hate.   
      
   The numbers of young monks and nuns burning themselves in a final appeal for a   
   change in the iron hearts of their oppressors strikes   
   straight to the heart of our whole world.   
      
   I think of the Buddha Dipamkara, Buddha the Lamp-maker, who offered his body   
   as a lamp for the wise and loving enlightened beings   
   who strive ceaselessly to bring beings out of the fires of hell and other   
   nether realms, and humans out of the tragedies of death,   
   famine, plague, and war. Oh please Father Chenrezig and Mother Drolma, reach   
   out to these young souls as they leave their bodies   
   behind in writhing agony and guide them to havens of healing and a further   
   life of ideal circumstances for spiritual advancement! Oh all   
   you savior deities and protecting angels, go to the cruel despots in their   
   dreams if necessary, and help them face reality, heed the power   
   of truth, let go of their paranoid fantasies of making eternal their deadly   
   suppression of freedom everywhere!   
      
   From the Spring 2012 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly,   
   available on newsstands and by subscription.   
      
   Robert Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist   
   Studies at Columbia University, and cofounder and president   
   of Tibet House U.S.   
      
   http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/web-archive/2012/2/8/commentary-a   
   cry-for-freedom.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)