XPost: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.zen, alt.politics.religion   
   XPost: alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan, alt.zen   
   From: cuddly@mindless.com   
      
   Le 09/02/2012 16:44, Peter Terpstra a écrit :   
   > 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.   
   >   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)