Kyle the Reformed Buddhist found a copy of the January 8, 1940 Life magazine. In it, a young Quentin Roosevelt (grandson of President Theodore R.) describes traveling to China and Tibet and encountering Buddhism there. This link takes you to PDFs of the magazine pages, vintage advertising and all, so you can read the article yourself. You may find it a bit disturbing.
From the introduction to the article, written by somebody other than Quentin Roosevelt:
Buddha, in the 6th century BC, was Prince Siddhartha Gautama, heir to a province in northern India. Revolted by the superstitions of India's native religions and the caste system they supported, he turned philosopher, and taught a pessimistic denial of religion, a stoic, agnostic despair of the riddles of life that make religion a necessity.
Within two centuries of Buddha's death he was enthroned ... as the God of a religion more elaborate and fiend-ridden than those he once denied.
The part of the article that (I think) was written by Quentin Roosevelt repeats the same theme -- that Buddhism started out as a perfectly noble, rational philosophy but got hijacked and ruined by superstitious claptrap. I believe this reflects a majority view of western academicians of the time. The Wheel of Life, om mani padme hum and Tibetan prayer wheels are described with considerable derision.
The article mentions the then four-year-old Dalai Lama. At today's Huffington Post there's an article by Kate Saunders, Communications Director for the International Campaign for Tibet, that describes another Dalai Lama-Roosevelt connection.
You might remember that a month ago, His Holiness met with President Barack Obama at the White House. Saunders writes that during that visit, the President gave the Dalai Lama a bound copy of the letters he exchanged with presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Franklin R. was only distantly related to Theodore R., but First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was Teddy's niece, which made her a great aunt to Quentin. One wonders if the Dalai Lama correspondence was discussed at Roosevelt family get-togethers.
Saunders writes that the letters are a "symbolic expression of de facto state to state communication" that undermine China's claim of ownership of Tibet. I'd love to read them.
I actually found a couple of the letters from FDR to His Holiness written in 1942 that I’m going to put up on my site tomorrow. Even more interesting is the British and Indian involvement in(or perhaps a better word, against) the Tibetan cause of autonomy prior to the end of the war, and the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War.
The British, seemingly for Tibetan autonomy prior to 1943, drastically changed course, in favor of the growing Chinese sentiments, because of British interests in Burma, Malaya and most importantly India. It did not matter which side of the Chinese forces came out on top, both Mao Zedongs communists and Chiang Kai-sheka Nationalists expressed hostile intentions towards the government in Lhasa.
That was fun to read. One of my favorite passages was:
In a trance meditation under a magic fig tree he was transported to Nirvana, where he set the Wheel of his Law in motion. Back in the world again, he spread his teaching and then retired to eternity in Nirvana.
I couldn’t help but thinking of something like a magic carpet (in the shape, perhaps, of an over-sized fig leaf?) whisking the stoically pessimistic “philosopher/thinker” up to the kingdom of Nirvana, where he entered his magic code, and was then returned to the world
i love art of buddhism it rocks
hey im india i love the pictures im only in the 6th grade and i know buddishm
The British have a deplorable past history of promising one thing at one time to one people, then doing the same to others in complete contradiction. It was almost Policy for much of the 19th and 20th Century. Palestine, the Arabian Peninsula, India, SE Asia, all suffered from this double dealing.
Tibet stands in good company!
The magazine article was interesting. All of us have preconceptions, and biases. Everything is always seen though those filters, isn’t it? In fact, isn’t this one of the basic ideas of the Buddhism – We don’t see the world as it really is until we are enlightened?
So, the biases in Roosevelt’s writing expose a basic truth of what he was writing about!
would love to get my hands on it
Total wow! Images of that period, the advertisements, the attitudes and what we in that time saw of Buddhism. As I emailed to a friend of mine, what was Then is not Now. We’ve grown in slight and significant ways and the emergence of the Internet has changed everything forever. For the record, I am not a Buddhist. What led me to this site was the respect Aleister Crowley held toward Buddhism. With that introduction, I will be learning more about it and thanks to all of you. What I look forward to is understanding the heart and soul of the Buddha, the path of peace and the connection with our ultimate selves. Your path is not so much different than mine in Paganism. Thanks again, Darkenwulf.