CHINA: Tibetan Buddhism tries to find a place under China

The sprawling Sakya Monastery in China's far western Tibet Autonomous Region is testament to the survival of Tibetan Buddhism today, standing strong after decades of political change in China. During the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Maoist zealots rampaged across Tibet, smashing Buddhist statues, destroying temples and forcing monks and nuns to abandon their religious lives. Now, workers crowd the monastery's grounds, as the region embarks on rebuilding its facade and its famed Buddhist frescos. With more than 120 monks under its wings, the Sakya monastery is dreaming big with plans to restore its former glory, all done under the watchful eyes of China's ruling Communist Party. Tibetan Buddhism is today seeking an answer to a dilemma between religion and politics. Its spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, is living in exile in northern India, fleeing on horseback after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. China accuses him of seeking independence for Tibet and refuses to deal directly with him while the Dalai Lama says he only wants greater autonomy for the region. In Tibet, simply having the Dalai Lama's picture can be grounds for charges of crime against the state. So to Tibetans, China and the ruling Communist Party seem to have offered them a clear choice - you are either with us or against us. After the extreme policies of the Cultural Revolution when temples were dynamited, Buddhist statues melted down for metal and monks and nuns jailed, Beijing has sought reconciliation by allowing Tibet a degree of religious tolerance. It has long been a rule that party officials must also be atheist, although in Tibet that regulation had appeared to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Many have quietly told visitors in recent years that they visit the temple to offer prayers when they can. And so, Tibetan Buddhism is seeking its revival by carefully toeing the lines between religion and politics. "From a Buddhist perspective, the will to build a harmonious society must come from the heart. In the future, our religion will be very useful. The culture of Sakya Buddhism will have its contribution to our society, people and the country," said Bandian Dunyu (pron: ban-deeann-doon-yu), head of administrative committee of Sakya Monastery. Local government officials said Tibet currently has more than 1,700 religious sites with more than 40,000 Buddhist monks and nuns. The central government has invested billions of dollars in improving Tibet's infrastructure, including a new railway opened last year, linking it to the rest of the country. And the estimated 860 million yuan (120 million U.S. dollars) cost of renovating the Sakya Monastery, has all come with the blessings and full funding of the central government. In Lhasa, the Jokhang temple, the holiest shrine in the region's capital, stands as an example of the religion's compromise with Chinese politics. Tibetan and ethnic Chinese peddlers vie for business with stalls set up along the route of Buddhist pilgrims. There are restrictions on the numbers of monks in Tibetan temples and also the religious content they preach inside. But senior monks just brush them off and preach the political line. "But today, every monk like us, is free to go anywhere and if you want to preach here, you will need to go through the appropriate procedures. You will have to inform the governmental religious authorities, and if they approve, you are free to do so. As to the relation between religion and politics, Tibet is inseparable from our motherland China, and this has been so since the beginnings of the Yuan dynasty till today," said Awang Quzha (pron: ah-wang-chee-zhar), member of the administrative committee of Jokhang Temple. Since the end of the chaotic Cultural Revolution, China's ruling Communist Party has allowed religion in controlled settings, although the most dramatic spiritual threat to party rule, the Falun Gong movement, was outlawed in 1999. Buddhism, with more than 100 million followers in China, is the favoured religion of the central government to fill the spiritual void of China's increasingly affluent population and ease growing social unrest. Last year, China gave its blessings to the country's first major international forum on religion since 1949, the World Buddhist Forum, attended by about 1,000 monks and experts on Buddhism in the city of Hangzhou in eastern China. But it has always been a give and take on religious matters by Beijing. China has recently announced tighter controls of Tibetan Buddhism, with Beijing deeming illegal and invalid the reincarnations of "living Buddhas" in Tibet which fail to get government approval. The new regulations, which come into force on September 1, are to "regulate the management of the reincarnation of living Buddhas", the State Administration for Religious Affairs said in a statement on its Web site (www.sara.gov.cn). "Temples which apply for reincarnations of living Buddhas must be legally registered venues for Tibetan Buddhism activities and capable of fostering and offering proper means of support to the living Buddha," it said. The regulations are to "guarantee citizens freedom of religion and respect Tibetans' tradition of living Buddha succession", it added. Critics say China continues to repress Tibetans' religious aspirations, especially their veneration for the Dalai Lama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner whom China denounces as a "separatist". ENDS.

ITN Source | August 12, 2007

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