Thursday, October 8, 2020

Sinicization of Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhism: Fact or fancy


The recent much hyped news about the transformation of Tibetan Buddhism, namely Tibetan Buddhist Studies, into that of China’s version or adapted into the needs as per the party’s propaganda tools, for its hypochondria of sky-falling paranoia of detecting a more powerful attraction above it and its shallow philosophical grounds, as could be learned from the suppression of Falun Gong movements or sect throughout China, what could be so confidently presented just as a generality is that Tibetan Buddhist Studies (Science of thoughts and emotions to its arrays of knowledge fields including, as the major factors, ontology, epistemology and training of minds) is so much or far above socialistic ideals brimming just along a blurry horizon of just perorating but not of praxis, for being a commoner, self-interested one. We have far sounder evidence related to coherentism, shared knowledge that can be postulated so much by why a Westerner is that interested in our mindfulness training (physical body, feelings, core mind, and the reality), and heuristic approaches for self-liberation first. 


But the sinicization of Tibetans, though being more than farfetched, is an interesting matter, granted that a commoner’s mind can be lured by mundane pleasures or this-life-related, matter-of-fact glitter and glamor, so obtainable, if one could betake oneself to the fray. Then, despite stark impossibility, once formed and molded as a hardy cast as thus, as a run-of-the-mill Chinese now, China could arm herself with the highest altitude dwelling legion of brave herders of warrior instinct. We had been merciless once. Mark it! 


While jotting it down, these odd notes, I happen to get struck with a sudden thought. What, could my late  beloved mother have ever envisioned his only son could be that cranky, staying in an alien land as a guest, trying to convey his deep seated feelings through an extrinsic means of expression? So unfortunately, the first alphabet I learned back then when I was seven was ABCD rather than ཀ་ཁ་ག་ང་།, ABCD each displayed on a smooth square wooden card by a Bhutanese English teacher, maybe named Sir Mencha, for us, the snotty village lads on the plank floor, to be identified by pronouncing it aloud. The crude, axe-hewn, weathered dark wooden shingles roofed oblong shack housing some four classes, with a balustraded verandah of wooden balusters raised from the ground level reached by wooden steps on its either end; it stood just at the foot of a scrubbed over hummock, with the strays of bushes at hand’s reach from the back windows: I am ephemerally once there, when she lived.  


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