Mediation for China and Tibet
His Holiness the Dalai Lama must make an impossible choice, according to Thubten Samdup, chair of the Dalai Lama Foundation of Canada.
The time has come now that His Holiness the Dalai Lama must make the difficult choice choice between his Buddhist principle and his people. This is too much to ask of a simple Buddhist monk, but he must make that choice.
His Holiness lives by a fundamental principle of Buddhism, that he may not cause harm even to his enemies, Samdup writes. But this puts him at an enormous disadvantage when dealing with the government of China, which has shown no scruples whatsoever about harming whomever it wishes.
Over the years His Holiness has made many sincere overtures to the government of China, all of which were rebuffed. And Tibet is running out of time. "Tibetans in Lhasa are still being repressed, arrested without cause, imprisoned without charge, stripped of their civil rights and maligned by China's propaganda," Samdup says.
Samdup is not calling for violence, but for third-party mediation. "The Dalai Lama must demand international mediation in talks with China now or the Tibetan people will have lost their battle for justice and he will have lost his own quiet, lifelong war against those who believe good cannot prevail."
Comments
The Dali lama has been making hard choices all of his life. We watched a TV special the other night (I thought of you) He said he may be forced to resign. I didn’t know that he could? And wondered to just what he referred. The subject was warrior monks doing peaceful battle. I just saw you have a blog about Jet Li. I know that some monk learned martial arts meant to be used only if attacked, like Judo and Kung Fu etc. but don’t know if they are Tibetan Monks, or if a peaceful Tibeten Monk has recourse for self defense. The monk we saw on TV were teaching peaceful protest and civil disobedience training.