Fire at ancient Tibetan temple in old Lhasa

From The Sydney Morning Herald  FEBRUARY 18 2018 - 10:51PM

·      

Kirsty Needham

Kirsty Needham is China Correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age

The most important Tibetan pilgrimage site, the Jokhang Temple in old Lhasa, was ablaze on Saturday night but few details have been released by the Chinese government about the extent of the damage. The 7th Century Tibetan building, which sprawls over 2.5 hectares, is protected by law and is listed for its "outstanding universal value" by the United Nations cultural protection agency, UNESCO.

London-based Tibetan expert Robert Barnett told Fairfax Media: "The Jokhang is widely regarded as the most sacred site in Tibetan Buddhism, with thousands of pilgrims travelling across the plateau for centuries to reach there and still doing so today, when allowed to."

The Dharma Wheel on the Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, Tibet

"It was the earliest Buddhist temple to be built in Tibet and is seen by many Tibetans as the symbolic heart of the country and of its cultural heritage."

A UNESCO report in 2016 stated the temple was in a good state of conservation but noted fire was a "high disaster risk" and prevention measures were in place.

After multiple videos of the large fire in Lhasa's old town, in which Tibetans can be heard gasping and crying, spread on social media on Saturday night, Chinese state media confirmed there had been "a partial fire in the Jokhang Temple. The fire was quickly extinguished and no casualties reported".

Read more here

Terror within and evil without : our capacity for transformation as individuals & nations

From The Editor, one of the most precious sites on the internet is Brain Pickings, masterminded by the wonderful Maria Popova.  There is so much in BP to feed the intellect and the spirit.

The Terror Within and the Evil Without: James Baldwin on Our Capacity for Transformation as Individuals and Nations

“The self,” the poet Robert Penn Warren observed in his immensely insightful meditation on the trouble with “finding yourself,” “is a style of being, continually expanding in a vital process of definition, affirmation, revision, and growth, a process that is the image, we may say, of the life process of a healthy society itself.” Indeed, if the great humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm was correct, as I believe he was, in asserting that self-love is the foundation of a sane society, our responsibility to ourselves — and to our selves — is really a responsibility to one another: to know our interiority intimately and hold our darkest sides up to the light of awareness. But part of our human folly is that we do this far less readily than we shine the scorching beam of blameful attention on the darknesses of others.

That is what James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) explores in a magnificent 1964 piece titled “Nothing Personal,” found in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction (public library) — the indispensable volume that gave us Baldwin on the creative process and his definition of love.

James Baldwin (Photograph: Sedat Pakay)

A year after he contemplated “the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are,” Baldwin writes:

It has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within. And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents — the self one takes oneself as being, which is, however, and by definition, a provisional self — and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to blow the provisional self to bits.

Echoing Bruce Lee’s assertion that “to become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are,” Baldwin turns his critical yet uncynical intellect toward our capacity for self-transformation — the most difficult and rewarding of our inner resources comprising our collective potentiality:

It is perfectly possible — indeed, it is far from uncommon — to go to bed one night, or wake up one morning, or simply walk through a door one has known all one’s life, and discover, between inhaling and exhaling, that the self one has sewn together with such effort is all dirty rags, is unusable, is gone: and out of what raw material will one build a self again? The lives of men — and, therefore, of nations — to an extent literally unimaginable, depend on how vividly this question lives in the mind. It is a question which can paralyze the mind, of course; but if the question does not live in the mind, then one is simply condemned to eternal youth, which is a synonym for corruption.

Complement this particular portion of the wholly invigorating The Price of the Ticket with pioneering social scientist John Gardner on the art of self-renewaland Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön on self-transformation through difficult times, then revisit Baldwin on freedom and how we imprison ourselves, the artist’s struggle, the writer’s responsibility in a divided society, and his increasingly timely forgotten conversations with Chinua Achebe about the political power of art, with Margaret Mead about identity, race, and the experience of otherness, and with Nikki Giovanni about what it means to be truly empowered.

THE MOST SENIOR WESTERN TIBETAN BUDDHIST NUN ALIVE

Tibetan Buddhist nun,  Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. Photo by Olivier Adam.

Imagine a life without Wi-Fi, books, music or even companions, but just your mind for company. The horror, the horror. Alone without any external stimulation might be torture for most of us, but not so for Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo.

The Tibetan Buddhist nun once lived in a remote Himalayan cave for 12 years, including three in total isolation, in a quest for enlightenment and insight into the mind. Offered now the hypothetical choice between a lifetime of constant companionship or one of solitude, Palmo has no hesitation about what she would pick.

"It's not that I don't like being with people, but the thought that I would never be alone would be much more threatening than the thought of spending the rest of my life in solitary."

During her years spent living in the 3 metre by 2 metre cave, from 1976 to 1988, she was almost buried by snow, nearly starved and never lay down – sleeping upright for three hours a night, seated in a traditional meditation box.

Please read more here

Palmo, 74, will be in Sydney, in July.  Her visit includes a public conversation with comedian and writer Magda Szubanzki, titled Steadfast Peace in Unstable Times.

What do people in The West know about Buddhism, the Kadampa and the Dharma Protector?

Picture at left from here. 

Buddhism often seems to be portrayed as a peaceful tradition of sweetness and light.  The first thing to remember is that Buddhists - even the greatest teachers among them - are humans like the rest of us with all the positives and negatives that humanity embodies. As well, there is little widespread understanding of the many "denominations" within the Buddhist stream.  Even Tibetan Buddhism - which is most often recognised through the Dalai Lama - has many groupings.

Kadampa Meditation Centre, near Monbulk, in the Dandenong Ranges, Victoria

I knew something from my academic studies in religion of the great variety within Buddhism.  However, I knew nothing of the Kadampa tradition until I visited the Kadampa Meditation Centre in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne, with a friend who had a connection there.  It was there I got to hear about the Dharma Protector, Dorje Shugden.

Picture above from here

I was told about the Dharma Protector.  I was invited to an afternoon service and there I saw the representations of the Dharma Protector.  I was told by my friend's connection of the disloyalty of the Dalai Lama and the expression of the telling was, I felt, one of burning hatred for the Dalai Lama.  I was given a book to take home about the Kadampa and in this were pictures of demonstrations against the Dalai Lama by Kadampa across the world.

My feelings?  I hope the description of how I felt informed (as I was and continue to be) by my Christian sensibilities will not give offence.  I was stunned at the level of negativity to the Dalai Lama expressed to me.  I can only describe it as 'burning' or 'incandescent'.

Picture below is from here

The people I met at the Centre were fortyish and younger white Australians.  Christians, in the main, believe (and there may be exceptions in some parts of the world) that we have cast off animistic beliefs.  There is also a sort of "Christian animism". To see wooden representations of the Dharma Protector on an altar and having plates of food presented to them was, to me, stunning.  If this had been within the context of an indigenous culture, I think my reaction would have been different.  To see this in the context of modern Australia and modern white Australians was a shock and something I could not get my head around.

Huffington Post has published a review of a book referencing this dispute, The Dalai Lama and the King Demon by Raimondo Bultrini. Some comments by the Dalai Lama can be found here.

The monks of Gden Shartse Monstery create a sand mandala on live video

Live streaming video by Ustream
Watch as the monks of Gaden Shartse Monastery create an intricate sand mandala
in BVU's art gallery.
Live video is available between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily.

Read more at http://www.bvu.edu/livevideo/#ixzz2fNmAgUR9
Buena Vista University