yeshe gawa To: lamashree@caremail.every1.net
subject: Re: The Buddha's Tear-drops 2
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 21:21:57 -0800

Dear Lama,

Congratulations. Impressive writing! I am all sympathies and would like to exchange notes with you - in a peculiar manner that I have grown rather accustomed to in the present medium - so do bear with me!

My notes: -

The week following UTD's escape in 2000, I wrote to Tricycle editors to tell them what I thought of Thruman's platform of 'enlightened politics'. Three months further on, Tricycle added Bulletin to its website where readers coud post comments without exception. My letter, however, was not posted; but it was a critique of Christian (in origin) Buddhists and their presumptions of superiority. [Where can one get a copy of the said documentary?]

I would prefer to see finer distinctions being made here -- at least in terms of the selective as opposed to the wholesale recognition processes, and maybe an explanation as to their respective methods or modes of operation.

I see this as the result of how the game is played out eventually rather than the intention of the players, and India was a player no less, at least in the beginning. When Chou En-lai wanted to align with India (against ex-colonialists and US) before DL escaped, PM J Nehru vacillated. India has always been slow to act just when it matters - because India is more alive to the metaphysics and logic than hard actions - while the mongoloid peoples are far more pragmatic, and therefore impatient and quick to actions. India is more likely to have been her own victim. But in any case DL's thick-skinned ingratitude is in very poor taste indeed.

Isn't that a foregone conclusion? -could one expect anything gracious from a family of horse traders! Buddha Sakyamuni had royal blood, the XVI Gyalwa Karmapa was aristocratic. Blood matters, and karmic forces are set to play regardless of class consciousness and very much in sync with blood lines!

Race may be an issue here, but marginal. But surely self-interest will always come first -- it being the prennial villian -- the DL notwithstanding.

Gratis to, I dare say, conjunction of the virulently anti-Chinese propaganda of the US Republican Party of the Far Right and naivety of affluent Westerners who prefer the titillations of new cults any day to bankrupted Christian dogma. It seems you're still hung up on cold war rhetoric!

As I see it, there are those who are so tradition-bound and mediocre (to overcome cultural divides) they are at a loss in free society of the West -- like the likable but timid Gharwang R. Then there are those free spirits, like Shamar or Chogyam Trungpa, who feel more at home in the West than with home-grown conservativism. But revival of monastic estates is just a Chinese ploy and smaller fish see no harm in taking the bait. Credit must be due to those who reject any bait be they big or small fish: not to forget that the Chinese are naturally keen on the big ones only - they are ready to offer new privileges that are worth a lot more than a mere patch of earth in the middle of frozen nowhere.

Don't forget Situ was himself under influence of his seasoned 'mentor' Akung tulku, who had ingratiated himself with the Chinese in return for business contracts. Renouncing homeland for Dharma wasn't in Situ's calculations in any event.

One has to mention here is 10th Shamar's open resistance to Gelugpa hegemony which eventually cost him his Hat!

........and the culprit? It's got to be the propaganda machine of the liberal West, marred except by self-righteousness.....Was there any wonder then, that -- in spite of his well-documented connection to the CIA -- the DL took the Nobel peace prize right after the Tianaman massacre!

One must assume then that you are arguing for patience?

Three cheers to that!!

I will send you my critique of Western presumptions addressed to Tricycle.

The old Soviets had 'glasnot'. Beijing had Tiananman Square !

Gratitude must surely comes with appreciation of those who stood up against Dharma politics. But would be childish to think it was quite enough to oppose it by reciting a lot of mantras.

The nirmanakaya is the vehicle for incarnated bodhicitta: but for 'mortals' bodhicitta would not be evident without the vehicle in question. The Karma Kagyu Lineage is a teaching vehicle: but for tradition and its formal connotations, the uninitiated and the unsuspecting would be without facility to the path of the practice or to maintain his course and bearing on the path. Of course in the final analysis contents is what matters. But who are we to say when we will have the contents. Free thinking is all very well, but Buddha's teaching is not about free thinking; on the contrary, it's about harnassing the mind, and the Sanskrit word for that, I believe, is 'yoga'. If one can be certain of that, then everything else pales in comparison.

Can one ever take a Lama's words literally?