Puppet Masters in Tibet

Chinese-Tibetan puppet leaders in Lhasa informed monks they would increase patriotic education classes in monasteries. Re-education through Reform, ideology, propaganda and thought control is the way comrades. We use Power to Control using fear and intimidation.

The Chinese, after destroying and looting monasteries and killing millions in Tibet and main land China during the 10-year Cultural Revolution, restricted the number of monks at the three major Lhasa monasteries, Sera, Drepung and Ganden. They recruited Tibetans to live and work in monasteries as spies and informers.

This system proved effective during the Cultural Revolution when family members reported on each other, neighbors and wild capitalist running dogs. It was a practical peoples campaign of fear and suspicion creating paranoia and ideological control.

Monks and nuns in monasteries who resisted or questioned this form of subtle patriotic education risked imprisonment, torture and death. They knew what happened to monks and nuns at the notorious Drapchi Prison outside Lhasa.

“There are two kinds of suffering,” said a girl weaving wool carpets in her yurt on the Tibetan plateau near rivers and mountains. “Suffering you run away from and suffering you face.”

Inside Drapchi, Chinese guards beat Tibetan nuns and monks with rubber hoses filled with sand. They applied electric cattle prods to skin, sending wire-cranked juice into skeletons, extracting screams.

“Denounce the Dalai Lama!” screamed a young illiterate soldier from Human Province. He tightened metal screws around a nun’s wrists, bending them at a horrendous angle until she screamed in broken pain.

“Never!”

He wiped her blood off his broken glasses and increased pressure. It was a job.

“Save my face,” sang a Chinese girl, an innocent ignorant victim of the national one-child genocide policy, wringing out a mop of spider webs inside water rainbows.

She was in a large bland cavern classroom at a private business university in Fujian. All the students had failed higher-level exams for more prestigious universities. They settled for this. No choice. She cleaned crumbling uneven cement floors with strands.

A Century is Nothing

My new life

Whew, what a first week it was for my little existence, my little humanoid welcoming. I began a new strange scary awkward weird and transforming experience in a couple of human’s lives.

I begin at the beginning.

I fell out of my mom, a female production company last week. Talk about letting go. She was big and fat and she dropped me out, pushing and pushing and exhaled an infantile projection of freedom feeling her pain and my pleasure and I came slathering, slipping through some universal ectoplasm fluid, like a gusher, whoosh, into millions of bright shining suns. A crescendo of angels, luminous spirits, formless forms and shapes swirled like whirling Sufi dervishes along light waves and particles. Such splendor. My last nine months did little to prepare me or allow me to know anything.

I was born dead and slowly came to life.

It’s all sensation.

My tiny black eyes welcomed light energy into my being. I was a galaxy. It was awesome and mesmerizing. I was an Eagle nebula, a gathering of space dust melding, morphing into a solid state, a unified field theory. I was beside myself with wonder and delight. I joined seven billion others. I am another in the stream of life.

Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? The remaining atom particles are life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.

Existence precedes essence.

Most people merrily exist.

Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

living things

Julia and Montessori friends explored living things using plastic objects.

Living things need air, water and food, she said. Like animals. Like us. We are talking animals.

As we live and breathe, said Aiko, scribbling in her creative notebook. She read the fine print. Don't be fooled by cheap imitations. Education is a business. Parents paid. Managers/teachers managed.

Eat fear and stay dependent, said a parent spoon feeding their child past their bedrhyme. Here, she said, let me carry everything for you. 

The child said, how much does conditioning cost?

Now or in the long run, said the parent.

During class on a balcony overlooking a plastic playground, security guards and kitchen women shucking peas, an administrative woman stood silent as a 7th grade girl cut her nails. Why, said Aiko. They didn't conform to school policy, said the woman. We must have standards. 

I'd rather be a hammer than a nail, said Julia.

Nelson, another five-year old genius said, yes and we need stories. Our brains are wired for stories.

Am I safe?

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

What happens next?

What's essential is invisable to the eye, said a boy on a planet with a flower.

Don't think. Look, said Julia.

Grow

He's a student in a Montessori program in Mandalay.

Do one thing at a time.

Slow.

Center.

Focus.

Present.

Independent. Free choice. 

We don't learn. We grow.

*

"I would like to house my spirit within my body, to nourish my virtue by mildness, and to travel in ether by becoming a void. But I cannot do it yet . . . And so, being unable to find peace within myself, I made use of the external surroundings to calm my spirit, and being unable to find delight within my heart, I borrowed a landscape to please it. Therefore, strange were my travels."
 - T'u Lung
(T'u Ch'ihshui)
translated by Lin Yutang
The Travels of Mingliaotse  Read more…

the walnut story

A Zen monk related a story.

“Before becoming a monk I was an English teacher in an Experimental High School near Chengdu in Southwestern China. One day I held up a walnut.

“What is this?”

They answered in Chinese.

I wrote “walnut” and “metaphor” on the board.

“This walnut is like a person I know, very hard on the outside. They are very safe and secure inside their shell. Nothing can happen to them. What is inside this shell?”

“Some food,” said a boy.

“How do you know?”

“My mother told me.”

“Do you believe everything your mother tells you?”

“Yes, my mother always tells the truth.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good, but I wonder if mothers always tell their children the truth. Why? Because mothers and fathers like to protect their children and keep them safe. Especially young children. Now you are in high school and developing as a more complete and mature human being. It’s good to question things and find out the truth for yourself. Do you understand?”

Some said “yes,” others nodded passively.

“This walnut is a metaphor for the self. A symbol. The self that is afraid to take risks because they are “protected” by their shell. Maybe the reality is that the shell is empty. How do we really know what is inside.”

“It’s a mystery,” said another boy.

“That’s right, it’s a mystery. How will we find out what’s inside?”

“You have to break it open,” said a boy with poetic aspirations.

“Yes, you or I will have to break open the shell, our shell, break free from the shell to know what is inside. That can be a little scary when we are conditioned and comfortable carrying around the shell every day isn’t it?”

“It’s our self,” whispered a girl in the front row.

“Very good. Exactly. It’s our self, this shell and the mystery. We have to take risks and know nothing terrible is going to happen, like trying to speak English in class.”

“If we don’t break the shell we’ll never feel anything,” said another boy.

A girl in the back of the room said, “it means it’s hard to open our heart. It’s hard to know another person and what they are thinking, how they are feeling.”

“You got it,” I said. “We’ll never experience all the feelings of joy, love, pain, sorrow, or friendship and miss out on life.”

This idea floated around the room as I juggled the shell in my hand.

“I know people who grow very tired every day from putting on their shell before they leave home. It gets heavier and heavier, day by day. Some even carry their shell into adulthood. They look alive but inside they are dead. But eventually, maybe, something important happens to them at the heart-mind level and they decide to break free from their shell and see what’s inside. They say to themselves, ‘This shell is getting really heavy and I’m so tired of putting it on and carrying it around. I’m going to risk it.’”

I smashed the shell on the table with my hand. It splintered into pieces. Students jumped with shock.

“There, I’ve done it! I smashed my shell. Can it be put back together?”

“No,” they said.

“Right, it’s changed forever. The shell is gone.”

I fingered small pieces of shell, removing them from the nut.

“See, it’s ok. Wow! Now it’s just an old useless shell. It doesn’t exist anymore. It’s history. I know it will take time to remove pieces of my old shell. Maybe it’s fair and accurate to say the old parts represent my old habits, behaviors, and attitudes. It happened and now I will make choices using my free will accepting responsibility for my actions and behavior. And, I know nothing terrible will happen to me. I feel lighter. Now I can be real.

“That’s the walnut story.”