As the
counter displays, the found medium to show our concern when a conversation
turns on the current hottest elegiac news among us in exile, the precise count
of the tragic self-immolation-protests in Tibet against Chinese further
tightening grip on personal rights and more grandiose waves of sweeping Tibet’s
natural resources under the name of developments but large scale pillages can’t
be missed. It shows 117. Being among ordinary Tibetans like myself, I sometimes
find pre-empted by the other as a sort of competition and thereafter the
expressions of elegy for such losses. And how I can dig deeper to see if it’s a
feeling spontaneous sense of loss or a listless way of saying so, even if I am
so curious now? I don’t mean to hurt the mass sentiments so complex and
unaccountable as I am confident there are a lot Tibetans who have already
overtaken my line—at least personal revolution—but I mean to awaken, unveil any
remaining veils of abstraction to be more sprightly for shaping into a fellow
Tibetan of the time. I mean there is no room for second-rate concern,
mouth-following, pettier preoccupations other than one’s means of livelihood
but to give a grave ponder over personal responsibility for being a fellow
Tibetan that we can brag. I mean other than just taking part in a mass protest,
hoisting national flag, putting on Free Tibet head-band, joining a mass prayer
congregation, etc. I mean the shaping of oneself from within now on. But I
don’t have any novel clue, a magical clue, but the one that we know how to say.
And it’s really the time now to
act.
No matter
how fitting or odd-sounding names of revolution our learned boisterous Tibetan
youths take to brand their moving initiatives as meaningful as Lhakar Day to as
crude as Tsampa Revolution that just looms on like in a dream to be fabricated
into reality. And mine is just like a foundation plan to work out into reality
any such goals. I find we lack such on mass scale, among those I interact and
express solidarity. I find such moment vibe during a protest even where the
closer look gets one into trouble finding the same taken as a chore from the
way the short time is handled through various sings of lightness. Can the core
cause be of lacking a strong will or intention at least to optimize the time
for the benefit of our cause? I couldn’t stop being so moved by truly loving
outsiders for our cause behaved in such spontaneous way during the time. What
lack in us? Or is ours way profounder than how physical reactions and manners
should observe during such grave time?
Something is
seriously missing in us as we can’t get on with as we boast. And I can’t take
this trait of glossing over every sign of weakness and exaggerating what we can
present in any way. It isn’t the time now as those tossing ones’ so precious
lives into cruel blazes with the core altruistic wish for common goodness or
freedom for we Tibetans can’t be taken that way. We know how we take it. No
matter how desperate or profound their found means of protest so
heart-wrenching it has the same implication for the welfare of fellow Tibetans
at large. We should jolt ourselves more strongly to feel it closer, deeper.
Even if we have done our best, if I allow myself to say so, through various
initiatives to draw global attention to our practical plights like repeatedly
shaking someone feigning to be asleep with the same repeated calls, how we have
really taken the same on personal level as an individual Tibetan: Have we
really changed into a brand new fellow Tibetan? We know even a single act of
self-immolation could kindle such wave of mass movement that turned out into a
revolutionary change. But ours is the spate of such that the world or UNO know
but so reluctant to show a sign of concern. We know why, the foul game. Or we
aren’t yet lucrative enough to take into account on state level as we don’t
know how to strike out with decisive, confident and united way? Are we found as
ill-equipped both mentally and intellectually yet?
But before pointing
our fingers against the world for reluctance and silence shouldn’t we first question
ourselves what minimal changes we had on personal level for the cost of those
lives for us? And this is what I am interested in dealing with so far here. I
may be stepping into personal domain but I am craze-motivated to awaken our
lingering senses that I find so static when it comes to learning more and
becoming fuller. We can do such besides our daily chore and work. It’s only up
to bringing up a firm will to do so through letting one’s view broaden rather
than veiling with the static view of self-deprecation and self-content that
shouldn’t be for such. It’s like to be able to cherish at least something as
simple as learning a word a day besides one’s daily routine and job. And, as
it’s clear, I mean it for the majority young mass who have never taken interest in
acquiring such interest to broaden view or left halfway like one ending up in
an odd job after passing a degree from a college. For the sheer fact of our being
rather backward in awakening our gifted talents and creativities as of this
oblivion to learning we have wasted so much as of not reaching up to the line
from where one can enjoy rather than endure. I mean for myself and alike, who
count up to 80 % or more, who haven’t had such time and privilege to bring
forth so. I mean for the same who have had to shape oneself, find one’s own
gifted taste somehow and find the concerned luminary outside of one’s family.
But it’s up to us only.
Suppose, as
an example, how we can have time to watch TV for such long hours, browse
internet, toy with a smart phone, etc. But what they add to you to awaken the
gifted talent within? How possible we haven’t one. We say we can attain
enlightenment within a single lifespan if we work out resolutely. We can strike
such high chord but ignore to hit the minor ones taking them as alien or out of
reach without giving a try. We have to break this seemingly hereditary trait.
And again I
mean for the majority as we are the majority that matters. And I mean for the
mass awakening that matters so much for creating a sound community or state.
And for us with a far heavier responsibility for being displaced refugees with
a common goal.
We say or
know how those in Tibet lay such hope in us. But do we take it closer by
finding and doing what one can in the free world outside? If we know it’s
almost like betrayal, should we still continue so by scolding self and others
in exile? Is such scolding enough? I think we are the strangest of all: such
timely sense of unity and forward-moving at such time of our history is like
blotted out completely from our practical senses.
Without
widening our views to the extent through learning we can never come together in
spontaneous way. How we hold just passing sense of one’s identity as a Tibetan:
why, as said and it’s, we don’t have unbiased oneness in us and towards our
goal? Can it be that we haven’t come up to the stage of such major feeling as
we tend to fall sided when it comes to major cases? How possible we can come
together, if not now in such abject period in our history? Or we don’t know the
profundity of mass movement or unity in true sense that always wins? I answer
myself we have to break this hereditary foul trait or sort of chronic sidedness
from within only.
And only
through widening one’s world view like learning from others how it cost to gain
freedom there is hope of our coming together closer. Through which we can
prepare better, sense deeper and come out more genuinely. As of my own experiences
coming out of a small Tibetan community and serving within it for years I have
sensed the real foul odor of our being sided in such backward way. And I have
vented my disgusts in soliloquy when I could do my best and with ease. Even as
I write this article I have this haunting paranoia how my fellow Tibetans would
take it and so should I not publish it on my blog as I think the major site
like phayul.com may not take mine as an eligible one to be published on its
site. Then it’s again in the same mode that I share what’s burning within me.
And my
notion of needy timely personal revolution as to repay their sublime sacrifices
for our cause is like, as I hold, not below just joining in a mass to show
one’s solidarity. It’s the dual cases of cause and effect: awakening one’s
gifted taste and talent from its crudest form as to develop into a possible
mature cherishing one and thereby unlocking oneself for wider view; as such
learning leads to the firmer sense of oneness rather than foul sidedness and
thereby upholding one’s identity in far
better image. Thus we can be eligible seeds for any turn and twist ahead as to
shape our future. We can learn from many cases: the narrower view, the more
locked up in paranoia or ignorance; the firmer oneness, the tougher to be
conquered.
As I care,
too, even for a single soul not be tossed thus in cruel blaze further. We can
bear and come out in better way instead as for the case of our dwindling
number. As I once read an article in Tibetan Review years back by a Tibetan
woman from Canada to Xining on one year period assignment to teach English
there, it’s so reasonable yet timely to care for our souls inside Tibet: to
find means to go there and teach our deprived but bright minds rather than
being sufficed by only protests and slogans. So how we can bear souls being
destroyed thus? So her concern turns, as the gist of this writing, on every
individual Tibetan to fare better rather than being carried away by far pettier
preoccupations than one’s means of livelihood. We can do something besides. We
can’t say ‘I don’t have time and I can’t.’
It isn’t the time now to say so.
It’s to
unlock the very giftedness so far as to represent our true sense of loving to
be a Tibetan. It’s to become fuller with wider view to come closer
hands-in-hands for our cause. That’s what I take as personal revolution
that we have to make real now on. It’s the prime time.
Those
unfamiliar stern faces in the gallery like reserved for those to vent their muted
fates only among themselves—the colorful backgrounds of races, cultures,
mindsets so minutely struggling up to keep the balance from going lopsided, the
self-condolences in the form of wounded dignity for being here so in the alien
land, but the core role being the same as we are. The plunging heads into a
brood, the forced smiles from the simmering anxieties within as like in the
process of final probation for making sour ends meet, the flustered side
glances, the perturbed naked countenances… Looking at them and trying to find
within them through the means of physical gestures was so stultifying but
rhapsodizing at the same time despite my own being the same, the one who seeks
a funny role to play here, at this building not long before the moment. Why I
can't stop spotting the chill in the bone, goading at it rather voluntarily but
with a detached sense sometimes? It’s to see myself in clear light,
self-mirroring that I call. Yes, and here, the given chances of comparing
myself with the others heterogeneous. But when ventured in a personal
interaction the findings were like blurting out or rapping out coherently those
crude thoughts of fated defeats as one’s staple means of being here or
practical pasts so ready-made in a sort of axiomatic packages. But I wish I can
meet better with firmer or more complex origins. I wish it’s going to be
learning after all. 
