Buddhism on the Mainland

The Dalai Lama´s welcome in Taiwan represents an economically comfortable Chinese population seeking some spiritual sustenance.

The Dalai Lama´s trip to Taiwan gives an inkling of the future, and a faint lining of hope. Thus far, for all the euphoria associated with the discovery of Tibetan-Buddhism-ln-Exile by a soul-starved West, the  prognosis for Tibetans within Tibet was nothing but bleak. Even if Richard Gere says so, the fact is that cultural inundation  is going on there. What has been so frustrating of the Tibetan encounter with the Han has been the latter´s blanket refusal to consider the case for "genuine autonomy", which is the Dalai Lama´s demand, and represents a card he should have kept close to his chest but disclosed back in 1988. Beijing has stonewalled every effort by Tenzin Gyatso to shove an olive branch into its hands, which represents extreme (Han) nationalism and not a little bit a racism on the part of the Middle Kingdom towards its peripheral minorities.

Even while the Dalai Lama jets around the world as the most liked spiritual statesman of our times, the compassion he preaches falls among brambles over in Beijing. The Chinese phalanx against the Tibetans include not only the aged commissars, but the reformers and the dissidents as well. While a few of the last category, in exile in the West, might make some genuflections, that is only momentary compassion.