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October 2003 - August 2004

Tibet, part III

Brett Voegele
2005-11-19 14:02:35

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The following day I read that the/a Panchen Lama had been in Lhasa the day before. He had performed a dawn ceremony at the Jokhang Temple. Talk about your suspicious deals. He was brought in early in the morning, on a day when most Tibetans were actually out of the city for the beginning of the Shotun festival. I later heard from somebody that saw coverage on TV, and they said all pictures were close-ups. That would be because a wide-angle shot would have revealed no true Tibetans in attendance. I sometimes wonder if people actually believe they're fooling anybody with such blatant trickery and propaganda. Crazy. Most Tibetans I talked to didn't know he'd been in Lhasa. Not that it would have mattered much, as in their eyes he isn't the recognized Panchen Lama, anyway. The Panchen Lama's are spiritual leaders second only to the Dalai Lama in importance in Tibetan Buddhism. The 10th Panchen Lama died in 1989, after trying to tread a thin line between honoring his culture/people and obeying the Chinese government - he spent 14 years in prison. As with all incarnate lama's, his successor had to be 'found'. Information was smuggled out to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile, in Dharamsala, India, and 6 years later a six-year-old boy was recognized as the 11th Panchen Lama. China was not amused. Within a month the boy had been forcibly relocated to a government compound in Beijing. He remains under house arrest to this day, with his whereabouts unknown. An irate Chinese government then ordered the senior lamas of Tashilhunpo to come up with a second, Chinese-approved choice.

A few days later I walked out to the Norbulingka - the former summer home of the Dalai Lamas, for lhamo, or Tibetan opera. I only lasted about an hour, as in my mind the event did nothing except illustrate greed and complete lack of respect for traditional culture. First, the event has historically been held according ...