Optimism on Tibet

Is there reason for optimism for Tibet? I believe so.

First of all, the world is watching. Never before has Tibet won such sustained media coverage and discussion. (I say that not knowing fully how much attention it gained in 1988-1989 when the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize and peaceful protests/celebrations in Tibet were violently put down. But I do not think it was as much as we have today.)

Second, the world is learning. Interest in and discussion of Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, has been on the rise over the last 20 years. When I taught a Tibetan Buddhism course at UM last year, the course overflowed at first with nearly 50 students even though the course fulfilled no requirements – they were taking it purely out of personal interest. Celebrities from Richard Gere to Adam Yauch (of the Beasty Boys) and composer Phillip Glass have embraced the Tibetan cause and worked to expand global awareness of the plight of the Tibetan people.

Finally, the world is feeling the impacts – perhaps more slowly than many of us would like – of its dependence on cheap oil and cheap products from depressed parts of the world.

Fifty years ago the US got rich by selling stuff to the world and investing the profit in building a great nation. Now the US is buying so much stuff from the rest of the world that it has to sell off chunks of that great nation.

The flow of capital has turned 180 degrees. As I write this an email has come in saying:

$3 trillion. That is what Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates the war will cost our country. It’s crippling our economy and causing our Iraq recession.

The ‘American Dream’ needs rethinking. The idea that we can all have more than our parents’ generation is failing; the world can no longer support our nation’s growth spurt. At least not in the materialistic fashion it has over the past half century.

People sense this, too. Those who do sense it are quickly searching for alternatives. And some have looked with fascination at countries with economic hardships but abounding happiness. It is easy to exaggerate the happiness of the people of Tibet before the Chinese occupation of the 1950s, or those of Bhutan today. But it is nonetheless clear that something rather amazing has happened in these and similar countries; an alternative to the ‘American Dream’ of bigger houses, newer cars, and more stuff has worked there.

So, as the world watches, learns, and ponders its own future, hope must emerge. But hope, I always warn, must not replace action. It is upon us each to be a part of the future we wish to see.

You can read the transcript from or watch Ann Curry’s recent interview with H.H. the Dalai Lama – here. Recently international journalists have appealed to the Chinese government to allow them to do their job there. Please support them. As reporters have been forced out of Tibet in the past month, with them we have lost news of what is actually happening in the region – aside from the occasional staged tour by the Chinese government and reports put out by the Chinese government news agencies. If China is successful in controlling media inside Tibet, then the rest of us will be blinded, cut off from the truth. Please help the Dalai Lama and others to re-open the roof of the world.