The real Dalai Lama revealed (video)

We want a free Tibet. Let the Dalai Lama return. China has no business being on the plateau. China has no business engaging in human rights abuses or cultural genocide (due to Han-Chinese opposition to Tibetans, Uighurs, Taiwanese, or any other indigenous group). The CIA has no business destabilizing governments or installing operatives as US-backed dictators.

Research it. The story is out. It's unbelievable: The narrative we have been fed -- which has made us so angry at tyrannical China and portrayed pre-invasion Tibet as a Shangri-la, a mythical dreamland of spirituality, enlightenment, equality, and peace -- is wrong.

If the CIA is allowed to succeed, Tibet is doomed. It's an expendable pawn in a cold war with China, going from bad (pre-invasion) to worse (invasion) and even worse (post-invasion). It didn't take a Tibetan oracle to see what was to happen. But it has taken an honest historian to reveal the hard truth of what brought us to this point in history.

The Story behind the Dalai Lama's rule

CNHabs

Michael Parenti is an American historian, political scientist, and author. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. His works have been translated into at least 18 languages. His book The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome was selected as a Book of the Year for 2004 by Online Review of Books and Current Affairs.

• "He [the Dalai Lama] headed a social system that was exploitative, terribly terribly unequal, and terribly brutal."
• "You had a privileged priest class, living in utter luxury and opulence, and you had a mass of serfs living in utter misery."
• "His holiness would tell you that he must return to power for the good of his people. In this case 'good' may translate to his people living in squalor and his government condoning slavery."
• "As this State Department internal memo reveals, the Dalai Lama at one time took $180,000 a year from the CIA for his living expenses and $1.5 million a year from the spy agency to finance Tibetan guerrilla operations against the Chinese, which included, running a covert guerrilla training center in Colorado."

Richard Gere praising Bush with CNN's Wolf Blitzer

COMMENTARY

It's an abuse of Mahayana teachings (with messianic reincarnating political leaders) not seen since the exploitation of Christianity by imperial Roman rulers.

Like the "Holy Roman Catholic Church" ruled from the Vatican, the Lama system claims a "divine right" to rule Tibet as regent-kings given to them by extraterrestrial sky "gods."

It's a big deal dragging Buddhism into the mire of geopolitics.

But who will confront His Holiness, interestingly the name used for the pope, with the tough questions when Americans -- particularly influential Jewish-Buddhist-Americans often in the media -- line up to praise him while we demonize China and ignore the CIA's involvement?

Dalai Lama and the Obama to meet (video)

Dalai Lama-Obama meeting to come amid US-China tensions

Bodhi Tree closing: bad news for Buddhists

Bodhi Tree Bookstore in trendy West Los Angeles (laweekly.com)

(Wisdom Quarterly) The loss of Bodhi Tree, LA's spiritual mecca, is tragic. I grew up building an extensive collection of Buddhist texts (now in the thousands) in its large Buddhist section. Moreover, many of us learned so much at the Bodhi Tree Annex -- the adjacent building where authors came to present and sign their latest books. There's no place like this bookstore. It's been offering far more than books for decades. It's the best independent bookstore in southern California. Just the atmosphere, a reading library, a used book building, shelves of herbs, spiritual objects from around the world, gongs, pyramids, jewelry, CDs, and great people to rub elbows with. Who will buy the inventory and keep the name going?

Bodhi Tree is Closing: Bad News for Buddhists

Gendy Alimurung Los Angeles Weekly (Jan. 12, 2010)

​Bad news for Buddhists and others seeking enlightenment: the Bodhi Tree Bookstore is closing. Owners Phil Thompson and Stan Madson informed their staff last Wednesday that the cozy Melrose Avenue shop, a nationally renowned and much beloved spiritual center, will be shutting its doors in a year's time.

Paris Hilton shopping at Bodhi Tree with her fake Buddhist monk spiritual advisor

After some eight months of discussion, Thompson and Madson decided to sell the property to a local business owner who leases space to several other nearby retailers. The Bodhi Tree opened in 1970. Land values in the area have risen dramatically since then. Meanwhile, the business of selling print books has been on a steady decline.

For years, real estate agents had been circling the Bodhi Tree like vultures. In the end, selling the property became a much more profitable option than continuing to sell books. Thompson and Madson started the bookstore when they were in their 30's. They are now both in their early 70's. They were aerospace engineers who left a life of science for one of contemplation and meditation. More>>

Lama Marut, public talk, Bodhi Tree Annex. (Other podcasts available at aci-la.org).

• Bodhi Tree Bookstore
  Bodhi Tree is a bookstore specializing in books on metaphysics, Eastern and Western religions, and personal growth. Events - Contact - Map - Reading Lists - About - Photos - A New Earth - Conversations Under the Bodhi Tree

Tibetan Monastery Reopens

The health of a jailed Buddhist Chinese dissident outspoken on Tibet and other sensitive topics is poor and he is not being allowed to communicate freely with his family, according to a source who met him recently. Hu Jia was found guilty of "inciting subversion of state power" in April for criticizing the ruling Communist Party, a verdict that drew quick condemnation from the United States, Britain, and the United Nations (Reuters).

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BEIJING, China (AP) -- A major Buddhist monastery in Tibet reopened this week five months after being shut by authorities during anti-government riots that rocked the region's capital, a staff member said Friday.


Drepung Monastery on 11/07 when it was closed after the U.S. honored the Dalai Lama

The Drepung Monastery, on the outskirts of Lhasa, reopened to dozens of visitors earlier this week and has been "fairly busy" since, said a staff member who gave only his first name, Luobu. He said the monastery will hold ceremonies Saturday as part of a larger religious festival.

The 15th century monastery had been closed to the public since March 14, when monk-led protests against Chinese rule turned violent, and businesses, shops and vehicles were looted and torched. Since then, Chinese authorities have sent investigative teams into the monastery to determine which monks took part in the protests and to carry out purges of suspected supporters of Tibetan independence.

Beijing banned foreign visitors and journalists from traveling to Tibet for months after the riots.

China has said 22 people died in the violence, but Tibetan supporters said many times that number were killed in the protests and subsequent military crackdown.

Drepung was one of the three historic Buddhist monasteries in the Tibetan capital where monks commemorated the March 10 anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. But after several days of quiet protests, tensions exploded on March 14 and the monasteries were ringed by troops and monks were not allowed to leave.

The Lhasa protests and later sympathy demonstrations that spread across a wide area of western China inhabited by Tibetans posed the most significant challenge to Chinese rule in nearly two decades. In 1989, similar mass demonstrations in Lhasa were also cut down by military force.

China poured tens of thousands of troops into Tibet and surrounding provinces to quash the demonstrations. Its harsh response garnered worldwide criticism, and several world leaders even threatened to boycott the Beijing Olympics, which ended last Sunday.

China repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan religious leader, and his followers of instigating the unrest and trying to derail the Games. Bowing to international pressure, Beijing agreed to hold talks with the Dalai Lama's representatives two times after the violence.

However, Beijing has continued to vilify the exiled Tibetan leader, most recently for a trip to France that ended last week. An editorial by the official Xinhua News Agency excoriated him, saying, "The more surprising the lies, the easier they are to expose."

During his trip, the Dalai Lama accused Chinese troops of firing at a crowd of Tibetans in China last week and said people may have been killed during the incident.

In an interview with the newspaper Le Monde, he accused Beijing of imposing a new, long-term "plan of brutal repression" and building new military camps in Tibetan areas.

The Dalai Lama has said that despite China's harsh crackdown on the March demonstrations, he still supports a solution of meaningful autonomy for the Tibetan people under China's rule, not independence.

Catherine McLoughlin, one of the few foreign journalists allowed into Tibet after the protests, wrote for the Far Eastern Economic Review in late July that Drepung Monastery remained under heavy guard by military police.

"Drepung, the largest Tibetan monastery and once home to as many as 10,000 monks, is now a re-education camp for monks involved in the March 14 uprising," she wrote. Up to 1,000 monks inside are being forced to undergo "patriotic education" in which they are required to denounce the Dalai Lama and embrace Communist Party directives, she wrote.

Tibetan authorities said earlier this week that they would hold a forum Saturday to seek suggestions for reviving the region's tourism. Tourist arrivals in the first half of the year dropped by 69% from the same period last year, with 340,000 visitors recorded.