2023年5月20日星期六

唯色RFA博客:与一位藏学家的对话:关于无辜受责的达赖喇嘛(四)

 

2023.05.18
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唯色RFA博客:与一位藏学家的对话:关于无辜受责的达赖喇嘛(四)3月8日在达兰萨拉的法会上,8岁的第十世哲布尊丹巴向达赖喇嘛献供。
 图片取自VOT

我:印度确实是一个很复杂的国家,多民族多宗教。你说印度战略方面的人不希望喜马拉雅藏传佛教化,然而这个世界上并不是只有军事才是权力,经济才是权力,不是啊。你有枪你就权力最大,或者你有钱你就权力最大,不一定的。从人类历史来看,宗教是跟人的精神、人的灵魂有关的这样的一个更大的权力,是生生世世的,是可以跟武器抗衡的,可以跟金钱抗衡的。信仰的权力是无形的,也无法估量的,不然的话,全世界多少国家的政权更替,政客轮换,有枪又怎么样,有钱又怎么样?而宗教信仰一直都存在,佛教都几千年了,基督教伊斯兰教也都是啊。

另外我还想到,前不久应该是三月期间在达兰萨拉有一个很重要的法会,是嘉瓦仁波切专门给蒙古来的信徒灌顶,哲布尊丹巴的转世灵童正式出现在灌顶法会上,而且还被特别授权主持了其中关键的仪式。实际上嘉瓦仁波切在蒙古信徒的心中,还有布里亚特、图瓦、卡尔梅克等蒙古地区的信徒心中也很重要。那么被污名化这个事件有没有在那些信徒当中产生什么反响呢?不过我们现在还不知道。布里亚特那些地区与俄罗斯这样的极权国家的关系注定也是敏感地区,而且现在处于俄乌战争中,很多人在战场上丧命,被认为是普京对少数民族的清洗。

朋友:蒙古国家及蒙古人地区我是比较了解的。也是比较复杂的,跟历史有关。他们受到了共产主义思想的影响。毕竟被共产主义苏维埃统治了七十多年,两代人没有受到佛教文化的教育。但是他们也有历史的记忆。佛教文化对于他们来说是非常重要的。基本上,蒙古有三种人,一种认为蒙古不需要佛教,蒙古只有成吉思汗,成吉思汗决定一切。部分人认为我们是佛教徒,但我们是蒙古人,所以我们是蒙古佛教徒,而不是藏传佛教徒。蒙古人里面的藏传佛教徒的影响不大。当然还有一些人是信仰其他宗教的。

蒙古人分布在两个国家中,一部分在俄罗斯里,一部分在蒙古,因为跟中国的关系,从经济和政治考虑,很多话不会说,不愿意说。而且,因为七八十年没有佛教,现在虽然慢慢地有了,但很多人还是困惑的,找不到自己的道路,这一点与蒙古的学者交流的话可以了解到,他们有不安全感,他们不知道该去往哪里?所以蒙古不会对尊者的事件有什么反应,这是可以理解的。

问题不是蒙古是否该有反应,或者会不会去街头游行。问题在于别的。正如前面我说过的,首先,从人的角度来说,达赖喇嘛他没有错。这个是事实,这个现在已经是全世界公认的了。无论是宗教界的人士还是学者,比如心理学家人类学家等等都认为达赖喇嘛没有犯错。当然有人认为他错了,这就成了一个挑战性的问题。一个人没有犯错,但是却被认为犯错了,那么怎么解决这个问题?这成了一个很大的问题。对于包括藏人以及喜马拉雅地区的信徒来说,达赖喇嘛原本就是一个喇嘛,一个地位很高的喇嘛,但现在成了另外一个层次的喇嘛,成了一个活生生的菩萨,达赖喇嘛具有了永恒存在的神性。

印度的一些抉择者有两种想法:一种认为,喜马拉雅地区佛教化,或者说藏传佛教化,可能更有利于印度的控制,所以他们会在印度政府与达赖喇嘛之间建立很多联系。还有一种认为喜马拉雅地区的藏传佛教化,甚至更进一步,即喜马拉雅地区达赖喇嘛化,这样就有了不确定性。也就是说,印度就不确定如果有一天达赖喇嘛成了问题,那么喜马拉雅地区会怎么办?所以有些人会认为喜马拉雅可以藏传佛教化,但是喜马拉雅不应该达赖喇嘛化。过去在流亡西藏社区里,学校和寺院里的流亡藏人与喜马拉雅地区的人是分得比较清楚的,我们是藏人,你们是喜马拉雅地区的人,但现在由于中国对边境的限制,从境内藏地来的学生和僧人越来越少,另一方面,从喜马拉雅地区来的人越来越多,而学校和寺院的教育体系都是藏文化的、藏传佛教的,所以这次这个事件会在喜马拉雅地区激起这么大的反应,这是必然的。意识不到这一点显然是错的。

中国就更不用说了。中国的决策者都是汉人,他们想利用这件事来攻击达赖喇嘛,完全错了。我认为中国政府犯了一个很大的错误。他们不了解宗教的影响力,不了解信仰的力量。他们只是非常粗暴的,非常简单的,用自以为是的方式来处理这件事。

而西方人对达赖喇嘛的了解,这些年已经不像以前那么多,只是听说达赖喇嘛的名字而已。我观察了很多西方人的网站,与藏传佛教有关的十几万人的网站,当这件事发生后,他们说我十几年前见过达赖喇嘛二十几年前见过等等,但是已经慢慢地忘了,于是另一个动力出现了,他们想了解达赖喇嘛是谁,他的思想是什么样的?随着了解,他们认识到原来他是无辜的,反而他们会支持达赖喇嘛。如果达赖喇嘛以前犯过一个错误,现在又犯第二次错误的话,那就会被西方人认为是污点。但是达赖喇嘛没有错,如果解释了可你还不接受的话,那就不是达赖喇嘛的问题,而是那些人的问题。当然有不少年轻人不了解,他们容易受网络宣传的影响,但也很快就会被新的热点所吸引。

我:420日至21日在德里举办首届全球佛教峰会,尊者19日坐飞机去的。当天达兰萨拉下大雨,一大早天还没亮尊者就乘车去机场了,许多人捧着哈达冒雨相送。20日,尊者在酒店休息了一天。昨天是参加大会并做了发言。今天就回达兰萨拉了,这个时间很紧的。我从网上看到嘉瓦仁波切从德里回到达兰萨拉,无数藏人排队迎接,载歌载舞,场面感人,就好像达兰萨拉是我们的一个家那种感觉,其实是异国他乡,但现在是一个家,一个圣地。而这当然是因为尊者的缘故。

 

4月21日,尊者达赖喇嘛在2023年首届全球佛教峰会上。(图片取自藏人行政中央官方网站)
4月21日,尊者达赖喇嘛在2023年首届全球佛教峰会上。(图片取自藏人行政中央官方网站)

4月20日,尊者达赖喇嘛向直贡噶举最高法王赠予佛陀塑像。(图片取自Facebook)
4月20日,尊者达赖喇嘛向直贡噶举最高法王赠予佛陀塑像。(图片取自Facebook)

尊者在德里的酒店休息那天见了不少人。我注意到,从网上看见的照片大约有五组,第一组是与直贡噶举最高法王直贡绛衮澈赞仁波切的会面,直贡法王也是拉达克的精神领袖,他1975年离开拉萨之后,最早是在拉达克闭关修行传法多年,拉达克的很多寺院是直贡噶举的寺院,他在拉达克有非常高的威望,他与嘉瓦仁波切的会面对于拉达克的影响会很大。

第二组照片是锡金的一位部长与尊者的会面,他看上去像藏人,也是非常虔诚。而锡金是什么地方?是被印度吞并了的国家,现在成了印度的一个地区,跟拉达克一样,实际上也是藏传佛教信仰的喜马拉雅区域。第三组照片是十七世噶玛巴的姐姐朝见嘉瓦仁波切,那么我就遐想了,会不会与锡金有什么关系呢?因为噶玛巴的寺院隆德寺就在锡金啊,而噶玛巴这次专门发表了公开信支持达赖喇嘛的。第四组是拉达克的官员来拜见尊者,很恭敬,像信徒一样,他本人肯定也是信徒。还有一组照片是阿鲁纳恰尔邦的首席长官在他的推特发的,他有26万粉丝,他是带着全家人来朝拜尊者的,磕头,敬献哈达。这几组照片含义很深。

 

4月20日,阿鲁纳恰尔邦的首席长官携全家朝见尊者达赖喇嘛。(图片取自推特)
4月20日,阿鲁纳恰尔邦的首席长官携全家朝见尊者达赖喇嘛。(图片取自推特)

而在德里举办的首届全球佛教峰会很重要,这个重要性让我觉得可能也是为什么污名化尊者的事件,会在这个时间发酵。说不定是跟这个会有关,因为有些人可能想制造障碍。

昨天看全球佛教峰会上嘉瓦仁波切讲话,相信很多人都很高兴。很明显,虽然尊者的年纪越来越大,已经八十八岁,但他的思维是敏捷的,经文是大段大段的背,几十分钟的讲话根本无须看稿。完全没有任何退化之说,他的智慧是非常了不起的。而在峰会上也是众望所归,大乘小乘金刚乘的那么多高僧大德,还有那么多学者,这场景就像经书里记载的佛陀与众多菩萨在一起那样美丽非凡。其中一段话给我的印象深刻:“乍看之下,就以我们西藏的现况而言,确实是步履蹒跚、寸步难行。然而,若能以菩提心与空正见,懂得违缘转为道用的话,愈多的违缘,所带来的是愈高的智慧与经验值,愈能于成佛之道接近果位。所以法友们,务必加强思惟菩提心与空正见,这点很重要。当您懂得如何将违缘转为道用时,等于去除所有的违缘。”

当然我一想起来还是生气。这个类似“他人即地狱”的世界,却需要尊者达赖喇嘛以八十八年及未来更苍老的人生付诸于全部的慈悲和爱,只能说这个自以为是的世界及无数傲慢世人不配得到他的付出。而另一方面,在这个世界几乎遗忘藏人的困境之时,尊者达赖喇嘛以这样的无辜受责的方式重新让世界“看到”图伯特,与此同时,让绝大多数藏人及信仰藏传佛教的佛教徒凝聚在一起,这不能不说是某种神奇,恰如一句藏语俗语:རྐྱེན་ངན་གྲོགས་ཤར། (坏事变好事),也如佛教里面经常讲的逆缘变成顺缘。而事实已经证明,一切业已反转。并且这次这个事件的出现,可能对未来深具密意,所以我赞同你说的,这不是坏事而是好事。

哦,我们已经聊了很久,要不就这样吧,我要整理的话也会是很长的。

朋友:好的,那就再见吧,天气真好啊。(完)

 

(2023/4/22对话,5/2-5/14整理,于北京)


本文发表于自由亚洲唯色博客专栏:https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/weiseblog/ws-05152023141126.html

唯色RFA博客:与一位藏学家的对话:关于无辜受责的达赖喇嘛(三)

 

2023.05.17
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唯色RFA博客:与一位藏学家的对话:关于无辜受责的达赖喇嘛(三)拉达克数万民众的抗议游行
 图片截自拉达克民众上传的视频

我:还有一点不知你有没有注意到,这次网暴尊者的事件激起反响最多的,或者说是抗议最有力的,应该是喜马拉雅地区的民众,他们集会,游行,充满情绪地呐喊。还不单是藏人和藏传佛教信众,像拉达克就有很多穆斯林参加,还有基督教徒和其他宗教的信众。也就是说抗议者并不都是藏传佛教徒。而历史悠久的拉达克,本身也是一个敏感的地区,是一个在如今的地缘政治上,处于中国和印度之间的敏感区域。仅拉达克就有数万人几次集会游行,抗议对达赖喇嘛的泼污,这么大规模的抗议据说是拉达克历史上没有过的。这个现象不应忽略。

喜马拉雅地区在地缘政治上的意义很重要。其实中国是很关注的,中国非常关注喜马拉雅地区的。“一带一路早就把喜马拉雅研究得很透彻了。我读过相关的书籍和文章。中国和尼泊尔,中国和印度,中国和不丹等等。而在这些边境相连的地区,嘉瓦仁波切的影响力相当大,那么这一点,之前有没有被中国注意到呢?

我观察到的是,之前在中国的新浪微博,针对嘉瓦仁波切的妖魔化是特别凶猛的,各种谩骂各种漫画的点击率都是数十万甚至更多,都冲上热搜排行第三了。但是正往上冲的时候,突然就降温了,现在已经很降温了,这是为什么?在中国的社交媒体上,涉政话题要想成为热点话题,没有官方的允许是不可能的,更何况是与达赖喇嘛有关的敏感话题。所以我看到415号新浪微博开始降温,417号更是特别明显地降温,而这两个时间都是拉达克民众大规模抗议的日子,让我觉得之所以降温或许与喜马拉雅地区的抗议有关。

拉达克的藏人和流亡西藏社区的藏人不一样,在印度的流亡社区的藏人是难民,而拉达克的藏人是印度人,有印度的身份。我还注意到拉达克当局通过了一个决定,宣布印度的一些媒体一些网络大咖,如果不向被他们污名化的嘉瓦仁波切做出公开道歉的话,拉达克是不允许他们进入的,不让他们来开会来旅游等等。拉达克这么做,是不是与这些年尊者在喜马拉雅地区的影响力有关?我们可以看到,在尊者每次举办的法会上,来自喜马拉雅的民众是最多的,拉达克的传统服饰很引人注目。去年夏天,印度的新冠疫情缓解,尊者就去了拉达克,还住了一个多月,而且跟拉达克的穆斯林关系非常好。

 

尊者达赖喇嘛于去年7月间在拉达克首府列城举行三天法会的盛况。(图片截自推特)
尊者达赖喇嘛于去年7月间在拉达克首府列城举行三天法会的盛况。(图片截自推特)

朋友:我的感觉,世人看达赖喇嘛有两种看法:一种是把达赖喇嘛当人来看,而人的话,会犯错误。但是达赖喇嘛所代表的不仅仅是个人,他代表的是神,这是第二种看法。而且不仅仅是一个神,还是人们心目中非常完美的神。政治、文化、军队等等,都无法解释也不能解决这样一种现象。

达赖喇嘛一年比一年更多的得到喜马拉雅地区人民的认可。其实也不仅仅是喜马拉雅地区的人民,我最近参加了几次西方佛教徒的聚会,非常多的人,他们在达赖喇嘛被污名化的事件刚发生时可能有怀疑,但是在观察和了解之后,他们认为达赖喇嘛没有错,是无辜的。这样一来,达赖喇嘛就真正的成了一个佛。而成了佛之后,他不会死的。即使肉体死了,精神也不会死的。

实际上印度有很大的担心,担心喜马拉雅藏传佛教化,他们怕这个。印度有一个战略研究所的所长,拉达克人,他不太喜欢喜马拉雅藏传佛教化,写了一本书。印度的政治决策者和军事决策者有这方面的担心。如果喜马拉雅藏传佛教化,所有的喜马拉雅地区比如印度的拉达克、达旺等边境地区,还有尼泊尔的一些边境地区也变得越来越藏传佛教化,而佛教的力量可能会让印度觉得是麻烦。所以在印度的一些决策者那里有这样的考虑,就是说喜马拉雅地区不应该藏传佛教化,但他们没有考虑到这次对达赖喇嘛的污名化可能会带来另外的效果。印度的那些媒体其实没有战略的考虑,他们可能不喜欢达赖喇嘛,主要是不喜欢藏传佛教的影响力,但是他们没有考虑到在做了歪曲的报道之后,会在喜马拉雅地区激起什么样的反应,他们完全没有想到。

实际上喜马拉雅地区的民众在过去跟藏传佛教的关系并不像现在这么紧密。他们以前也不知道自己究竟是哪种宗教的信徒,是印度教的还是藏传佛教的并不太清楚。随着藏人在印度流亡的时间越来越长,逐渐地,仁波切和高僧们建的寺院多起来了,从喜马拉雅地区来寺院学习藏传佛教的小孩子、年轻人也多起来了,学成后从寺院回到自己家乡盖庙传法的僧人也多起来了。这样几十年后,藏传佛教在印度已经很有成果了。印度一些决策者并不愿意看到,但他们已经没有办法了。既然他们说这些地区的人是印度人,那么就应该给这些人和所有印度人一样的权利。

而这次对达赖喇嘛污名化,印度政治方面的人会发现,从政治角度来讲的话副作用太大了。不仅对印度政府如此,对中国政府也是一样。现在出现了一个什么情况呢?喜马拉雅地区与流亡藏人社区甚至所有藏区在某个意义上来说已经统一了,都非常地信仰达赖喇嘛,达赖喇嘛确实已经成了一个佛。

 

住在欧洲的藏人上街抗议对达赖喇嘛的污名化。(图片取自Facebook)
住在欧洲的藏人上街抗议对达赖喇嘛的污名化。(图片取自Facebook)

如果把达赖喇嘛当作人来看,如果达赖喇嘛确实有问题,那么就不会是神或菩萨。但是达赖喇嘛没有问题,没有犯错甚至没有犯罪,那么对他的这种污名化就是不能接受的!藏人就不用说了。喜马拉雅地区的民众同样无法接受。你为什么攻击我的喇嘛?你为什么辱骂我的宗教?这必然会激起强烈的反效果。

无论是印度的一些政客、一些媒体人等,还是中国的很多人,他们实在是不懂得信仰的力量,不了解信仰者的心理。这些人现在惹了一个他们不应该惹的人。如果这个人做错了什么,那么他的神性就会消失。但这个人根本没有做错,那么他的神性就会翻倍地增长。我们可以看到:任何一个国家任何一个地方,如果想消灭一个宗教,你就给他自由,他会慢慢地变弱,但是你如果压迫宗教,特别是在印度这样的社会几乎是不可能这么做的,那么宗教就会更加强大。今天我和一个西方学者谈到这个事件和这些话题,他说“这是上帝给你们的礼物”,他相信上帝,所以这么说。当然藏人很痛苦,信众很痛苦,我们看到了藏人和信众公开表达了这种痛苦,我们也看到了达赖喇嘛现在不是人了,而是神了,是真正的图吉钦波(千手千眼观世音菩萨)!

哈哈哈。所以现在最大的问题就在这。政治家今天考虑这个明天考虑那个,今天滑向这边明天滑向那边,而且新闻也是一个热点被另一个热点很快覆盖。但是藏人和喜马拉雅地区的人一直在谈论,不会结束的。

从政治学的角度来说,那些政客是不愿意把一个人当成神来看的。但现在很多人的心目中,是把达赖喇嘛看成殉道者了,He becomes a martyr(他成为一个殉道者)了!他本来没有做错什么,却无端遭到很多力量的压迫。但他们不愿意看到他这样的一个人成为殉道者成为神。尤其是把他当成敌人的那些人更不愿意。因为达赖喇嘛成了殉道者,那就会是永恒的存在。从政治学的角度,那些人已经失败了,百分之百的失败了。正如jesus was first martyr(耶稣是第一个殉道者),达赖喇嘛也是这样。

我:你说的太好了!我也是这样感觉的。就是这样啊。嘉瓦仁波切在我们的心目中本来就是观世音菩萨啊。藏人自己和藏传佛教徒把尊者视为观世音菩萨,而在其他的他者那里,他们把尊者看作是人,而且是个老人,在这次事件中还有人说什么老年痴呆、老年退化等等等等,完全想当然了。你说得太对了,经历了被污名化、被妖魔化之后,嘉瓦仁波切已经成为类似耶稣那样的殉道者。耶稣受难,耶稣被钉在十字架上,殉道了,这个形象是无比深刻无法磨灭的。嘉瓦仁波切他以自己被世人伤害的方式,成为一个现世中救度众生的、大慈大悲的菩萨。现在这些人的泼污,反而完美了尊者的观世音菩萨的形象。(连载)


本文发表于自由亚洲唯色博客专栏:https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/weiseblog/ws-05152023140232.html

唯色RFA博客:与一位藏学家的对话:关于无辜受责的达赖喇嘛(二)

 

2023.05.16
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唯色RFA博客:与一位藏学家的对话:关于无辜受责的达赖喇嘛(二)尊者达赖喇嘛吐舌逗乐的幽默场景
 图片取自Facebook

我:我从49号知道这个事件,到现在都十几天了,每天思考这些。今天读到齐泽克(Slavoj Žižek写的一篇文章(《Suck My Tongue, Crush My Balls》),我把链接发给你啊,也许你已经读过了。齐泽克是当今世界很重要的知识分子,他在文章中提到了东方主义的视角,谈到了文化差异呀他者呀等等。他说了这样一段话:“我们现在都看到了达赖喇嘛作为他者的一瞥,他不能被简化为像我们这样的人,他的他者代表着一个无法逾越的深渊。西方观察家对他滑稽动作的高度性化解释,反映了文化理解上不可逾越的鸿沟。”(另有译文《我什么都给你了 就剩下舌头让你吃了》这样翻译:达赖喇嘛是“一个不能被简化为跟我们一样的‘他者’,他与我们之间隔着一道无法穿越的深渊。西方观察家对他举止采取高度‘性化’解释,反映出不可逾越的文化理解鸿沟。”)

这是推特上有个人翻译的其中一段,我对此也有评论。我说:这段关于“他者的评论,让我想到的是达赖喇嘛对于内部的意义,包括这次事件,因为内部或者说内部内部,我指的是境内族人的感受和意会截然不同,反而悲喜交加地认为是非常良善的缘起,没有亲见尊者的缘分,却从攻击尊者的中国网络上看到很多法像,因此视为我们的福报,是某种深意的吉兆。

 

(我发给朋友一张图片,上面的藏文说的是近日安多地区的一位藏人老师,因为公开谈论尊者被污名化的事情而被拘捕。据在德国汉堡大学亚非学院攻读硕士、并为“白纸运动”参与者的黄意诚/噶玛西热塔钦的翻译,其中写到:“410日,阿坝州的一个中学早课上,在所有师生都聚集的地方,一位藏语老师说最近中国网路上常常能见到尊者达赖喇嘛的照片,这是‘非常良善的缘起’,因此他遭到拘捕,受到迫害。”这位老师说:“最近中国的网路上出现尊者达赖喇嘛和一位印度小男孩的短视频,这是很良善的缘起。我们藏人尽管没有亲见他本人的缘分,能够从反面看到他的照片,这也是我们的福报。这是尊者达赖喇嘛能够迅疾回到藏地的好征兆,请所有师生都发善愿,祈请能够亲见尊者。原本他的短视频是心里不喜欢他的人制造的,但他是佛,因此不会沾染过失。”又据媒体报道,这位老师被拘押两周,现已获释但被开除教职。)

 

藏文讲的是境内的一位藏人老师因公开谈论达赖喇嘛被拘捕。(图片取自推特)
藏文讲的是境内的一位藏人老师因公开谈论达赖喇嘛被拘捕。(图片取自推特)

朋友:对,你说的非常对,我们必须从两个层面来看,一方面是西方,一方面是中国。其实大汉民族主义的思想不奇怪,虽然很多中国人也讲民主自由平等,但他们是大汉民族主义者。我认识这样的中国人,在中国、在欧洲都遇到过。他们反对共产党反对极权,却是很狭隘的民族主义者。他们要的民主和自由都是从汉人的立场考虑的,而不会考虑其他民族。这与他们声称的“共和国共和这个概念是违背的。既然声称共和,那么所有的民族就应该是平等的,而平等是普世价值,是全世界都要追求的。如果不要“共和”,那么你是你我是我,这就是民族主义的道路啊,更过分的话就是种族主义的道路。

印度这方面,我认为是种性制度的原因。caste system (种姓制度)。在印度,达赖喇嘛的影响非常大。所以印度教派里的民族主义者,他们也不怎么喜欢尊者。然而在印度各宗教里,像达赖喇嘛影响这么大的人几乎没有,所以他们会有一些嫉妒,会没有文化的安全感。印度的民族太多了,宗教也很多,彼此之间的关系复杂,不过我觉得没什么太大问题,他们只是玩种姓制度。

我再强调一下:达赖喇嘛的影响力很大,是世界级的影响力。如果是伊朗的一个政治家,他这样做不会有任何反响和讨论。但达赖喇嘛就会引起世界的关注,成了一个文化现象。当然,也不是只有这次事件才成为文化现象,之前跟达赖喇嘛有关的事都会变成文化现象,达赖喇嘛的所作所为经常是全球性讨论的话题。罗马教皇都做不到,罗马教皇的新闻也只是当地的新闻而不是世界的新闻。

大致地说,就这次事件而言,西方有两种批评者,一种是右派,像川普的支持者,他们是真正的种族主义者,他们不喜欢其他宗教其他民族,他们只有一个基督教和一种白种人;一种是左派,并不喜欢宗教领袖,他们的思想与共产主义很接近。但对多数人来说,尤其是喜欢、了解和支持尊者的人来说并没有任何改变,可能一开始会有些不理解,文化的不理解,但经过解释就明白了。所以这个事件就是一个文化现象。

为什么我会觉得这个事件反而很好?这是因为很多藏人其实生活在一个泡泡中,以为世界各地都支持我们喜欢我们,实际上不是这样的。在西方生活久了就会知道支持者只是一部分。这次就更清楚了:支持的人会一如既往地支持,而那些不支持的人到底是什么想法就暴露出来了,那么我们现在也不再是处女处男了,我们成熟了,innocent is Lost!(失去纯真),我认为这是对于藏人的意义。

当然藏人心里很难过,尤其是印度那边的藏人,他们生活在某种泡泡中,现在没有泡泡了,这是一件好事。所有都曝光了,打破了我们那种“纯真的思想。“纯真”有时候也是短视的,比如我们是淳朴的,世界都喜欢我们,我们有真理,我们的达赖喇嘛世界人民都尊重等等。这么想也可能不太对。

达赖喇嘛就是文化现象。不仅仅是西藏的文化现象,也是世界的文化现象。不过我们曾经认为,这样的文化现象可能吸引西方人,因此也就会得到他们的帮助,其实并没有多少,原来就没有过,以后有没有是另外一回事。而经济上也并没有多大的帮助。我们可能以前的自我感觉太好了,以为全世界的人都喜欢我们,但是现在会知道谁喜欢谁不喜欢。所以我觉得这是一件非常好的事。

 

尊者达赖喇嘛与诸多人士的亲密互动,包括与英国国王查理三世。(图片取自Facebook)
尊者达赖喇嘛与诸多人士的亲密互动,包括与英国国王查理三世。(图片取自Facebook)

我自己刚来西方时也有过那样的想法,包括曾经对藏学家的想法。其实那些学藏文的藏学家有他自己的考虑。所以这两个星期,我们都有了这样的认识:你们西方人,无论你们怎么学藏文,你们也不了解我们藏人的想法。当然我们也一样。比如我在西方生活了几十年也不一定了解所有的西方人。然而这都不重要。重要的是需要交流,需要文化的多元化。如今的世界已经不是原来那样,你生活在这,我生活在那。如果我们不接受多元化的话,那么就会遇到很多困难很多问题。文化都是平等的。文化对不对好不好,我们可以讨论,但是,达赖喇嘛是一个文化现象。如果认为批评甚至诽谤达赖喇嘛是他一个人的事,这是不对的,因为这针对的是所有藏人的文化现象,所以骂的是所有的藏人,打的是所有藏人的心。

事实上,并没有像达赖喇嘛这样一个东方人,会在西方社会长期成为话题并且被讨论。也许甘地是一个。但是甘地的时代没有互联网没有自媒体,很多西方人其实也不知道他。达赖喇嘛却不同。过去我还不太相信达赖喇嘛会有这么大的影响力,抱有怀疑态度,但从这件事看出达赖喇嘛的影响力太大了。整个西方社会,无论大人还是小孩,几乎所有人都知道达赖喇嘛。但你在街上问习近平是谁,不一定很多人知道。我自己也不知道伊朗的宗教领袖是谁,而且也没几个人讨论跟他有关的话题。所以达赖喇嘛真的是超越了宗教的界限,超越了文化的界限,超越了时代的界限。这是一件非常了不起的事情。比如说有一百万人反对他,但会有一百万人保护他支持他,那么这个世界上还有谁会如此?没有。我不记得有哪个亚洲人有这么大的影响力。

如果有一天达赖喇嘛不在了,肯定这个时刻会来的,来的话也没什么,不必惶恐无措。因为文化会存在,文化现象会存在,达赖喇嘛的言论和思想会存在。其实这次这个事件是对西方的考验。无辜之罪!无罪之责!无辜受辱!这已经是达赖喇嘛的形象。他们现在讲的也是被伤害者。被伤害者的能量是非常大的。起先人们认为那个印度小男孩是被伤害者,现在越来越多的认为达赖喇嘛才是被伤害者。而人会记得被伤害者的。尤其是无辜的被伤害者。哦,今天的天气非常好。

我:你讲的很精彩,对我很有启发。你的眼光更远,视角更广,所以你的分析,我觉得很赞。我们这样的讨论很有意义,如果整理成一篇文章应该不错。

刚才我也跟薯伯伯(香港作家Pazu薯伯伯,在拉萨开过咖啡馆,走遍全藏很多地方,写过关于西藏的书,在西藏生活过多年,学会了藏语文并学习佛教,去年获得香港大学的佛教硕士学位)讨论过。你知道他现在在香港。就这次网络霸凌尊者达赖喇嘛的事件,他连续写了好几篇文章,主要是技术方面的分析、语言方面的分析。比如他分析网络上冒出来的这些做过技术处理的视频,有的视频很拙劣,但制作者出于什么用意呢?可能不单单是为了吸引眼球,所以薯伯伯的分析也很精彩。

另外,像在中文世界里的不光是中国人,还有香港人,台湾人,那么他们的想法是怎样的?还有其中的那些佛教徒的想法,等等等等,这些都很有意思,就是说你一下子发现这个世界特别多元,有各种各样的人群各种各样的声音。正如你刚才说的,可能没有其他人会像达赖喇嘛这样,被如此广泛地关注,而每个人都有自己的立场来议论。

我跟薯伯伯也说,在亚洲包括印度有这么多宗教,而这当中没有一个人像嘉瓦仁波切这样,作为来自被夺走的图伯特的一个难民、一个流亡者,在今天被世界如此广泛地、持久地关注。

我们可能还要注意到难民问题。在这个21世纪,难民问题是全球化的,各国都有难民问题的存在,包括难民的文化与强势文化的冲突等等。而达赖喇嘛从1959317日不得不逃离拉萨的那一天起,就成为难民了。24岁的时候成为难民,现在都快90岁了,尊者可能是世界上年纪最大的难民吧,或者说之一。一个难民会成为全球关注的焦点,世人议论的话题,这是为什么?其实这个问题很有意思,而我们毕竟是知识分子,我们要研究要分析要讨论要写作,在这样的时候,我们不能只是一个佛教徒,我们还有知识分子的身份而这很重要。(连载)


本文发表于自由亚洲唯色博客专栏:https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/weiseblog/ws-05152023135426.html

唯色RFA博客:与一位藏学家的对话:关于无辜受责的达赖喇嘛(一)

 

2023.05.15
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唯色RFA博客:与一位藏学家的对话:关于无辜受责的达赖喇嘛(一)
 图片取自Facebook

就尊者达赖喇嘛前不久无端遭受网络霸凌,我与一位在欧洲的藏学家朋友有了这次对话,是自然而然发生的。422日,我这里的时间是晚上,但不算深夜,不时耳闻高楼下有车突然加大油门倏忽驶过的刺耳声。对于我来说,这个时间是我的工作时间,近日喜欢喝的阿根廷的马黛茶有提神醒脑的奇效。而朋友那边是白天或者午后,这我没问,但他发来了他所在环境的照片:晴朗的碧空下,碎石铺的街道上有几个行人的背影,两边数层白色公寓下有绿植和鲜花盆栽,他可能正坐在一个安静的露天咖啡馆。

没想到我们那么能聊。虽然受到网速太卡的影响,我们这种特殊的对话方式,即语音留言不是你一句我一句,而是你一大段我一大段,仿佛各自各具口语风格的独白,但在停顿太长的时间里有益于彼此的思考和启发。经他同意,我将对话整理出来发表,这里就简称他为朋友吧。

我先是收到他发来的一张图片,图片上用英语、藏语和汉语各写了一段话,这里我摘录汉语部分:

如果我们将藏语词语“jip””“suck”)翻译成英语,根据一部新的藏英词典,它至少有九个不同的含义,其中没有任何一个与性有关联。在西藏,这个词只是意味着从另一个东西中提取某物,例如吸气、吸乳汁(就像孩子从母亲那里吸奶一样)或从某物中拔出。吸力是由唇舌运动产生的,例如父母吮吸孩子的嘴巴和舌头。又如,嘴巴等词语,本身从未被性化,直到它们被用于性行为中。将性化是当代的一个发展,是由欧美人通过色情的影响和口交的正常化对西藏人的强加。

 

下面是我和这位藏学家朋友的对话——

 

朋友:你的文章我看到了,写得很好。(他指的是我写于416日至19日的长文《“有人扔来烂泥巴,正好种朵金莲花”:这场针对尊者达赖喇嘛的网暴……》,发表于最近的自由亚洲特约评论专栏)

我:你发来的这张图片上的文字是你写的吗?

朋友:是我写的,都是我写的。

我:实际上对于我们藏人来说都知道是怎么回事,天性慈悲又爱开玩笑的尊者就像老爷爷对待小孩子。但外界的反应就是一个文化差异造成的误读和曲解,居然还扯到什么性啊恋童啊,太荒谬了。

朋友:是啊,这涉及到藏人怎么看待性。当然如何看待性,在全藏各地差不多所有藏人都一样,就是说嘴和舌头不是性的象征,这是一方面;第二,性与空间的关系,藏人在表达性的时候,是不可能在公共空间或者在有亲友的场合来进行的。

而亲吻这样的动作,在藏区有些地方很常见,比如果洛一带的牧人习惯亲嘴来表示打招呼,就像法国人一样,见面时亲嘴亲脸颊。这些牧区现在还有这种亲嘴的习惯,可能拉萨不会亲嘴吧,不过这不重要。

 

藏学家朋友发给我的图片。
藏学家朋友发给我的图片。

重要的是,藏人不会把嘴和舌头当作性的表达工具,这个从人类学的角度是非常清楚的。在藏语的词汇里是没有口交这个词的。文化人类学如果就此做个研究是很有意思的。再强调一下,藏人,无论是哪个地区的,并没有把嘴巴和舌头当做性的代表。藏人是不会想这个问题的。在藏人的心目中,嘴巴和舌头跟性没什么关系,所以我觉得主要的问题在这。

而且在藏人的风俗习惯里,表达爱情和性的时候,是不可能在长辈和亲友的面前去做的,也不会在大的场合去做的。在父母面前不要说亲吻连手都不会拉。当然不只藏人如此,像蒙古人、汉人,也就是说东方人一般都不会这样表达的。最近在瑞士发生了这样一件事:一个藏族女孩子,她是在欧洲的文化中长大的,男友是瑞士人,那么在瑞士,两人相爱了,亲吻拉手是常态,但在藏人的家庭里这么做的话就可能接受不了,所以在女孩的家庭就发生了争吵,父母认为女孩不知羞耻。这就是文化冲突,即便是在家庭里也会发生。

而达赖喇嘛,一辈子都不会看过黄色录像之类,从来没有接受过西方人的这类教育,像他这样的自幼出家的僧人,而且是旧时代过来的僧人,根本不会想到嘴和舌头会跟性有关。

这其实很有意思,可以看出藏人与西方人之间的文化差异出现了。就西方人来说,他们去文化不一样的地方,他们也有无法接受的事情。而他们这次对达赖喇嘛的批评是典型的东方主义。爱德华·萨义德(Edward Wadie Said有一个词:Orientalist gaze (东方主义的凝视),也就是说这是他们的看法,跟我们其实没有关系,是他们内心的投射。他们把嘴和舌头看成与性有关,这就是他们的理解。当然,也是因为比如天主教某些神职人员的性骚扰事例很多。还有就是某种变态化,Sexualization of children (儿童受到性化)

就达赖喇嘛的行为被外界曲解的这个事件发生之后,我要问:西方世界不是提倡多元文化吗?可是反映出来的却不是这样,而是典型的东方主义和种族主义。当然对藏人来说会觉得很不舒服,很痛苦,会有抗议,不过这不是坏事而是好事,因为达赖喇嘛并没有做错什么。

我周围有很多研究藏学的学者,他们现在很尴尬,因为他们的理解大错特错了!他们会发现他们对西藏的了解实际上很不够,他们其实并不了解也不理解西藏的文化。所以有的人现在很不好意思,因为他们对这件事最初的看法是错的。但对我来讲,这是一个不错的机会,我可以研究这件事反映出来的殖民主义、帝国主义、强权主义、文化上的东方主义等等,所以我不难过,一点都不难过,我觉得这是一件好事。

从另一个方面也可以看出达赖喇嘛的吸引力很大,全世界很多人议论这件事,我们给了世界一个镜子。

我:是的,这个事件对研究者,以及像我们这样的写作者来说,是一个值得分析与评论的案例。当然起先很痛苦。因为那么多人误解尊者达赖喇嘛,这令人愤怒、难过,我哭了好多次。但现在明白这个事件非同寻常。你说的是一个方面,就是西方对西藏的那种东方主义看法,太典型了。西方用他们自己的标准、视角来看西藏文化,正是萨义德批评的东方主义。

而我写的文章呢,是针对中文世界里的那种强大的妖魔化来写的,尤其针对被政治权力洗脑的中国人来写的,这个里面就更复杂,除了东方主义还掺杂了政治的阴谋。很多人充满了恶意的想当然,其中最有意思的是许多所谓的自由派对达赖喇嘛的攻击,我指的是在中国外边的那些所谓的反贼,居然跟在中国里面的,在主流媒体和网络上攻击达赖喇嘛的那些人完全一样,他们就像是商量好了,当然我相信他们可能没商量,但表现出来的却那么一致,这是为什么?其实很多中国人、很多中国知识分子看西藏、看藏人也是东方主义。他们从来都是东方主义。那种妖魔化他们玩得特别娴熟,以致于他们的这种看上去不约而同的诽谤,其实是系统性的,普遍的,根深蒂固的。

 

2月28日达赖喇嘛与一名印度小男孩的亲切互动。(图片取自达赖喇嘛尊者办公室)
2月28日达赖喇嘛与一名印度小男孩的亲切互动。(图片取自达赖喇嘛尊者办公室)

尊者达赖喇嘛的行为对我们藏人自己来说,我们都太知道是怎么回事了,因为这是我们的文化啊,虽然全藏各地区的习俗稍有不同,但我们都知道是怎么回事,根本不是他们臆想的那样。比如说像我的话,或者是与我母亲卫藏的传统有关,或者是与我父亲康区的传统有关,跟父母之间的亲切表达很正常啊,蔷布其(贴脸)、贝果度(碰额)、喔节(亲嘴)很正常啊。跟性无关。

而且嘴巴,还有这样的说法,嘴巴是念经用的,怎么能做那些事?就像这两天我说要把嘉瓦仁波切的签名纹在身上,我说以前没纹过,但现在想把嘉瓦仁波切的亲笔签名纹在身上。我在网上说过后,好些藏人说也要纹身,但有人就问我,说我结婚了,如果把尊者名字纹在身上,要和妻子做那样的事会不会不好?我说应该没问题,但你要是觉得在意的话,你自己再想一想。其实藏人在这方面还是非常在意的,因为宗教的原因、信仰的原因、习俗的原因等等吧,实际上有很多界限。并不是说毫无界限,不是这样的。

毕生为了众生的事业付出全部的达赖喇嘛,不能被自以为是的庸俗之辈就这么污名化了。肯定是不允许的。但是,我们也不能简单地说一句不允许污名化就完了,而是需要更有力的发声,这就需要冷静的研究、分析和评论。我们可以分析各种文化的视角。主流文化、强势文化、弱势文化的视角。西方的那种东方主义的视角。中国的文化帝国主义的立场,而且他们出于企图掩盖一直以来的压迫,对尊者达赖喇嘛和西藏文化总是竭力地妖魔化。另外,还有印度一些媒体的反应。本来印度文化跟西藏文化有特别密切的联系,而且达赖喇嘛在印度生活了那么多年,应该说印度人对尊者有很多的了解,对藏文化有起码的理解,但为何会做出歪曲的反应呢?会不会有一种宗教上的排斥?印度的宗教多,是不是隐含了对藏传佛教的排斥?

在这些关系里面,藏人是弱者的弱者。因为藏人的文化,面对西方是一个弱势文化,非主流的文化;面对中国,因为强权之下,藏人的文化更是一个弱势的文化,而且是被压迫的文化;当在面对印度的时候,藏人还是弱势的,因为是处于流亡的状态,寄人篱下的状态,也就是难民的状态。尊者达赖喇嘛对我们来说万分宝贵,菩萨一样的存在,但印度的那些所谓网红却可以信口诋毁,这从另外一方面也可以看出,藏人作为难民在今天这个现代社会的困境。

然后就是我们藏人自己。美国之音藏语部的记者拍了这个视频,他们完全不当回事,并没觉得有任何不正常,所以会坦然地放在YouTube上、脸书上。当然我们看的时候也没觉得有什么不正常。我当时就看过了,我觉得很正常呀,我还很羡慕那个印度小孩啊,觉得他好有福气,得到嘉瓦仁波切的关爱。那么,我们藏人为什么意识不到会被外界曲解成这样?美国之音的藏人媒体人为什么意识不到会掀起这么大的波澜?而今天这个为求流量和眼球可以不择手段的网络世界,会把各种有意无意的歪曲放大,以至于像病毒一样蔓延开来。(连载)


本文发表于自由亚洲唯色博客专栏:https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/weiseblog/ws-05152023101252.html

2023年4月28日星期五

ASYMPTOTE: An Interview with Tsering Woeser






An Interview with Tsering Woeser

Kamila Hladíková

Born in Lhasa in the summer of 1966, amid the turbulence at the outset of the Cultural Revolution, Tsering Woeser’s mixed Sino-Tibetan origins and early education in Mandarin prefigured the poet’s estrangement from her ancestral land. Her lifelong exile was first spiritual, and then, inevitably, material. Unlike many of her fellow uprooted Tibetans, the present locus of her exile is Beijing, where she is largely confined to a heavily surveilled high-rise on the outskirts of the city’s inner circle. The view from her window stretches to the chaotic tangle of highways and flyovers of the outer ring roads, foregrounded by a forest of cranes and skyscrapers. Yet the apartment itself, furnished in the Tibetan style, featuring an agglomeration of Tibetan Buddhist objects and a small personal shrine, provides tranquil refuge from the curtain of smog shrouding the megalopolis that hems Woeser in.

For Woeser, the ultimate refuge, however, is her wide-ranging writing practice, comprising poetry, essays, blogging, and documentary narratives of modern Tibetan history. Though her mother tongue is Tibetan and she grew up speaking a Kham dialect, Woeser learned to read and write only in Chinese. During the economic boom of the nineties, she had the opportunity to publish her works on the Chinese market but ultimately chose not to comply with the strictures of the official system.

Her first poetry collection, Tibet Above, was published in 1999 by the Tibetan People’s Publishing House of Qinghai Province. Her second book, the essay collection Notes on Tibet, however, skirted more traditional publishing channels and was carried by an influential liberal publisher in Guangzhou controversial within the Party. It was banned as soon as the authorities in Lhasa caught wind of it. This proved to be a pivotal moment for Woeser, galvanizing her desire to write more openly about the situation in Tibet. The first thing she focused on after becoming a “dissident” was the heavily tabooed subject of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. In 2006, she published Forbidden Memory: Tibet during the Cultural Revolution, a documentary treatment of personal photographic material left behind by her father (a high-ranking officer in the People’s Liberation Army), and Memory of Tibet, a collection of oral histories. A prolific blogger and essayist, Woeser remains a poet at heart. Rebel Under the Burning Sun, a new collection written during the author’s last visit to Lhasa in spring and summer 2018, is forthcoming in English, translated by Ian Boyden. Woeser is the recipient of numerous honors recognizing her literary and humanitarian achievements, among them the U.S. Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award (2013), the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Award (2010), and the Norwegian Authors’ Union’s Freedom of Expression Prize (2007). 

—Kamila Hladíková

 
How was your understanding of Tibet shaped, and what compelled you to begin unearthing its “forbidden memory”?

I am three-quarters Tibetan and one-quarter Han Chinese. I was born in Lhasa. I have spent about two-thirds of my life in Tibet, partly in Lhasa and partly in the eastern area of Kham, and only one-third in Chinese cities, first Chengdu and now Beijing.  

For a long time, during my educational years, I did not distinguish between Tibetan and Han national identities. We all studied in Chinese and everybody was speaking Mandarin. I have not had any Tibetan education. At the time, Tibetan language education was not established in any part of Tibet.

I left Lhasa when I was four years old and came back when I was twenty-four. Only then did I realize that I had been completely Sinicized and become a stranger in my own homeland. My identity was confused. At one time I thought that I had solved this question: I convinced myself that my identity as a poet transcended everything, and that national identity was not important. In fact, I had lost myself, and from my current perspective, the process of searching for, resisting, and finally accepting myself really took me too long.

Part of my understanding of Tibet comes from reading. In the earliest phase, I read Thubten Jigme Norbu’s Tibet: Its History, Religion and People (co-written with Colin Turnbull), In Exile from the Land of Snows by the American journalist John F. Avedon, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s My Land and My People and Freedom in Exile, all in Chinese translation. The interesting fact is that the first two books were published officially in Lhasa in the 1980s. The authorities allowed them to be translated as material intended “for critical evaluation” but did not expect them to become so popular and they were banned very quickly.

Another part comes from my life in Lhasa and my extensive travels throughout Tibet. As I have written in my poetry collection The White of the Land of Snows: “Having experienced many changes during my life, bathing in the exceptionally splendid sunlight of Tibet, unceasing and resistant to the wind of changes, I gradually started to experience and truly appreciate the compassion and wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism. Gradually, I was able to see and hear the glory and the suffering embedded in Tibetan history and presence . . . that all gave me the sense of a mission: I wanted to tell the world about the secrets of Tibet.”   

So, what are the secrets of Tibet? In my view they are embedded in both the hidden present reality and the hidden past. In a synopsis to a new story that I am working on about an aristocratic family, I have written: “There are too many gaps between us and the historic Tibet, between us and the geographic Tibet, between all the innumerous small details. It is the reason why I want, through the story of one aristocratic family, to put more light on the collective memory, the trauma of one nation. I want to attempt to use a personal story to fight back and regain a part of my own history, the history of my land, that was stolen and forcefully rewritten.” I hope that through the story of my own family I will be able to excavate the voice of an oppressed nation.    

After publishing Notes on Tibet in 2003, you became a “dissident,” and with dissident status came the inherent politicization of your work. Nonetheless, much of your writing, not only your poetry but also your nonfiction, is highly personal, subjective, and rich in literary or poetic flavor. How do you navigate the relationship between your political status and your literary voice—do they go hand in hand for you, or do you feel that becoming a dissident has limited the reception of your literary work as such?  
 
In terms of form, my writing can be divided into four categories: poetry; literary nonfiction (essays, travelogues, and narrative pieces); journalistic and documentary texts, including commentaries; and long-term research-based work making sense of archival photographic material of Cultural Revolution-era Tibet left behind by my father.

In a certain sense, though, I am always writing poetry. Whether I write an essay, a story, or a commentary, my approach is always as if I was writing a poem. The Chinese character for poem (诗) consists of two components, one representing “speech” and the other a Buddhist monastery. Taken literally, a poet’s tool is thus both aesthetically and spiritually purposive. A poet endowed with the exceptional ability to perceive beauty can at the same time become a witness and use poetry as the vehicle to express what one remembers.

As I wrote in Notes on Tibet, which was banned for “serious political mistakes”: “The enormous and suffering body of Tibet is pressed by a stone pushing onto its spine. ‘Glory’ and ‘indifference’—I can only choose one!” By “glory” I meant not only the “glory” of the poet, but also the “glory” of someone with a conscience.  

A person of conscience must face both present reality and history upright, no matter how cruel. As a Tibetan poet, I have felt the tension between the two, and it was this tension that ultimately scattered the “ivory tower” and “art-for-art’s-sake” stance of my previous writing. In autumn 2004, as my work underwent this transformation and began to touch more on Tibetan reality and history, I wrote: “So one should write, if only that they be remembered; / And this shall be the author’s pitiable claim to righteousness. / Of course, I am not worthy. I’ll be, at most, one who reveals at times / her private thoughts.”

That Notes on Tibet was banned meant I was expelled from the official system and thus became a “dissident.” Paradoxically, for me it was a liberation of the soul. If I had stayed within the system, I would have become resigned and depressed. Since the Tibetan protests in 2008, and the self-immolations that followed, everything has changed—I have started to see myself as a documentarist, trying not to betray those who made such sacrifices.

Nevertheless, I do not consider my work to be activism. I write to search, to clarify things, to keep my own identity, and to regain my individual voice and that of my nation.

Your writing often touches on memory—suppressed or forbidden memory, the gaps in memory, and trauma. You seem to be inspired by writers of Jewish origin (like Osip Mandelstam or Elie Wiesel) and writers whose lives were defined by their resistance to communist regimes (Anna Akhmatova, but also the Czech writers Václav Havel and Milan Kundera). How do these experiences dovetail with the experiences of Tibetans in the twentieth century?  

One sentence from Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting made a very deep impression on me: “The struggle between a man and power is nothing else than a struggle between remembering and forgetting.” Those in power use lies to construct memory, to make people forget, to confiscate and destroy memory. Memory is the foundation for our individual as well as collective existence. The history of a nation consists of the personal histories of its people. Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am”; but in Tibet, it should be, “I remember, therefore we are.” We need the memories of eyewitnesses.

The way I write today is a gradual expression of my own Tibetan identity, which is closely bound up with Tibetan history, geography, and traditional culture, as well as with the personal history of countless Bödpa (Tibetans). Retelling personal histories, our own or those of others, is in fact a means to restore personal and collective memory. It is a kind of healing process, at least for me.

As my writing developed into a more self-conscious stage, I started to pay attention to writers, poets, and scholars who have resisted totalitarianism (especially communist totalitarianism), colonialism, and imperialism. As Edward Said wrote: “Colonialism and imperialism are for me not abstract terms, but rather a specific life experience and form of life, almost unbearably concrete.” In fact, only because of my own experience with colonialism and that of my nation did I start to read and be influenced by works dealing with colonialism and post-colonialism. Among them, the deepest influence came from Said, whom I can almost consider my teacher. Recently I reread his book Culture and Imperialism and once again felt really inspired by it. I should add a few more names, like Fanon, Camus, Naipaul, and Rushdie. Because of my own experience, I am interested in other totalitarian regimes and the writers, poets, and scholars who examine them, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries like Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania.

In some of your essays you have questioned the Chinese “right to represent Tibet.” There are not many voices from Tibet heard worldwide aside from the official Chinese narrative and Tibetan voices in exile. Do you encounter any voices representing Tibet coming from within? Is there such a thing as “real Tibetan literature”?

I never questioned the “right” of the Chinese or Han people to “represent Tibet.” Wang Lixiong, for example, is Han Chinese, but his books and articles about Tibet are extremely deep and sober works about Tibetan history and the present moment. In fact, the key question is not who has or does not have the right to represent some place, but how best to represent it. What I have questioned, or what I am against, is the representation of Tibet based on the ideology of state nationalism and national unification.  

Actually, this is not only the problem of Han Chinese people. Tibetan intellectuals within the system hold the same positions and, as they try to please the authorities, their waists are even more crooked. I used to work as a reporter for a Party newspaper and as an editor for a Party periodical, I even wrote some “main melody” reportage pieces. I know very well what it is like when you do not have the right to speak for yourself. Intellectuals have no choice but to swallow their conscience and comply with the rules about what to talk about and how.

And what is so-called “Tibetan literature”? Is it literature from Tibet? Or literature about Tibet? Or is it literature that is written in Tibetan? I worked as an editor of Tibetan Arts and Literature for more than ten years and as I understood it, the whole term “Tibetan literature” was coined in reference to the works written under Party leadership. The Party invested a lot of money and effort to establish this Tibetan Arts and Literature magazine in Lhasa, and the only reason was to let it speak for the Party. It is the Party that designs, organizes, and censors “Tibetan literature”­­­­­­­­­—if the work complies, it can be considered “Tibetan literature”; if not, then it is not. Back then I planned to do special issues on “Amdo literature”, “Ü-tsang literature”, and “Kham literature” to cover the whole of Tibet. I even made contracts with local writers from these areas to submit their texts. But in the end I could not finish these special issues as I intended, because all “Tibetan literature” had to go through the censorship of the propaganda department and they thought it was supporting the “Great Tibet” and did not approve it.

And what is Chinese literature? What is American literature? If I write something in Tibetan, but not about Tibet, is it still “Tibetan literature”? Herta Müller, who also lived under a totalitarian regime, once quoted the words of another emigrant: “Homeland is not the language you speak but what you say.”  If you do not talk about the reality of life in your homeland, the local language only becomes a cruel tool for whitewashing. Therefore, I strongly oppose the use of this so-called “Tibetan literature” concept.   

Of course there are voices representing Tibet. But we should not limit them only to Tibet proper. Voices from within Tibet aren’t the only “Tibetan voices.” People from the West who want to listen can hear many of them. After His Holiness and tens of thousands of Tibetans were forced into exile, an unprecedented number of Tibetan voices speaking many languages emerged. There are Tibetans who write in Chinese, English, and other languages, and their voices are no less rich and colorful.

For decades now in the West, Tibet has been “orientalized” as the exotic and mysterious Shangri-la. Many so-called supporters of Tibet refuse to see it as a real place with real problems. To me it seems that–hand-in-hand with “modernization”–this “orientalization” has been one of the key strategies used by the communist regime to legitimate the Party’s “civilizing project” in Tibet. I have noticed that the efforts of Tibetan writers seem oriented towards “writing back” against these stereotypes. Do you see Tibetans as “prisoners of Shangri-la”?

Has the West really “Shangrilaized” Tibet? Yes, but mainly in the past. After several centuries of continuous in-depth research, as the Tibetan studies scholar Elliot Sperling once told me, the (Western scholarly community) has realized that it is problematic to picture Tibet as mysterious. Nowadays, they are paying attention to the real situation in Tibet, both historical and present, and their scope of interest has for quite some time expanded beyond religious studies. There is a lot of research and discussion, for example, about the Tibetan self-immolation resistance to the Communist regime.  

I want to make clear, this “Shangrilaization” of Tibet by the West is an artificial debate. Whose voices are mostly heard in this debate? Tibetan? No, in fact, the dominant voices are those of Tibetan studies scholars from China repeating and emphasizing their criticism of the Western “Shangri-la complex” or the “myth of Shangri-la” as a kind of mysterious “orientalism.” It has become part of the Chinese Tibetan studies mainstream.

There are two kinds of “orientalism” at work—one that plays with the “mysteriousness” of Tibet and another that demonizes it. In an essay called “Whose Orientalism?” I wrote: “Tibet is not the imagined pure land, but neither is it an imagined ‘land of filth.’ Tibet is the same as every other place on Earth. It is a place where people live. Only thanks to religious faith, it has a purple tinge (of the Buddhist monks’ robes). But still, there used to be two opposite approaches to Tibet, demonizing it and seeing it as sacred. They both had the same consequences: Tibet and Tibetans were not seen as real.”

Chinese intellectuals always passionately criticize the Western form of orientalism in regard to Tibet. When Said’s works were translated into Chinese, it provided a weapon for the Chinese scholars of Western orientalism, and the “Shangrilaization” of Tibet by the West was the first bullet they fired. Just as Elliot Sperling said, the Chinese criticism of the Western “Shangrilaization” has already become a myth used to legitimate their colonial rule. It is a colonial perspective whose aim is to make the West feel ashamed and stop paying attention to and supporting Tibet.

Why don’t the Chinese intellectuals criticize the Chinese form of “orientalism”? Why do they never criticize the Chinese tradition of demonizing Tibet, which is already customary in their own culture, society, and regime? They criticize the West, but overlook or excuse the behavior of their own country, because of opportunism, but also because this “big unity of the motherland” is deeply imprinted in them.

There is always a “specific political intention,” as Said called it, in whatever they do. I want everybody to see it clearly. In the Tibet debate, they pretend to play a neutral role. But in reality, they are the tools of the regime’s outbound propaganda. But their technique is more sophisticated than the usual loud and fervent Party propaganda. With their criticism of the Western “Shangrilaization” of Tibet, they in fact mask the real state, cover the authoritarian pressure, and silence the authentic voices of Tibet. At the same time, works that demonize Tibetan history and culture, like “Serfs,” the 1963 propaganda film produced by the Chinese army, are still screened today and continue to have a strong influence on the Chinese perception of Tibet. For the last ten years, the Tibetan TV news has included a two-minute propaganda piece “comparing the old and new Tibet,” presenting the past as the most miserable time and the present as the happiest one. It is a denunciation of the “evil old Tibet” and a celebration of the “happy new Tibet,” a continuous rewriting of history and whitewashing of the present.  

You should ask those Chinese scholars if they believe the Party’s characterization of the “old Tibet” as “reactionary, dark, cruel, barbaric.” Ask them if this is not a kind of Chinese “orientalism,” or orientalist demonization of Tibet. During the March 2008 revolt, these scholars criticized the West for taking the side of the Tibetans, but why did they not reflect at all about why so many people in Tibet were out in the streets, why so many people—even from the most remote grasslands—set their bodies on fire one after another, when they were all born after Tibet’s “liberation”?

How has your personal experience of “exile” (because you live in Beijing and not in Tibet) shaped your writing?  

For quite a long time I believed that “exile” meant going to another country without the possibility of return. There are tens of thousands of my fellow Tibetans in exile, scattered across many countries. Every time I hear His Holiness the Dalai Lama giving a speech to Tibetans in India or other countries mentioning “tsänjol” [ བཙན་བྱོལ btsan byol] (exile) and “tsänjolpa” (exiled [people]) it makes me sad. With the image of the aging Dalai Lama before our eyes, these words now sound even heavier.
 
Finally, I have fully understood that “exile” is the key word in my life. My people and I, both within Tibet and abroad, share the same fate. “Tsänjolpa” is our common identity. For me there is no possibility of getting a passport to travel abroad, and there are not many places where I have lived, basically just three cities: Lhasa, Chengdu, and Beijing.
 
When I was expelled from the system, I became an independent writer. But I could still frequently leave my fugitive home in Beijing and travel back to Lhasa or other parts of Tibet, so I was basically free. This ended in 2008. In March of that year, protests broke out in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas, drawing the attention of the whole world, but they were immediately suppressed by the government. That year I only spent seven days in Lhasa. It was dangerous for me to stay, so I left, or escaped, rather. After that everything was wrong. Every time I went to Lhasa I was followed and monitored. The last few years have been even more difficult, because I have continued recording the stories of self-immolated Tibetans. I was frequently “invited for tea”, visited by the police, pushed into cars and taken various places. These memories are really humiliating. I do not even want to talk about it anymore. But even more tragic is the fact that despite this humiliation I still want to go back to my beloved home.

Everybody should have the right to go back home, it is supposed to be one of the basic rights, isn’t it? It is a shame that those in exile cannot have this right. However, for me it does not matter so much anymore where I live. The circumstances of my physical body cannot leave me at a loss, because I know where my heart belongs. When the soul finds its place, the problems connected to “living in another place” have been solved. On the surface, my identity is multilayered: three-quarters Tibetan, one-quarter Han Chinese; my mother tongue is Tibetan, but I am not able to write it, only Chinese. But I do not worry about it anymore. The superficial identity does not say anything about a person, the self-identification is what really matters. As for me, I can identify with these four notions: Tibetan, Buddhist, writer, exile.

My exile is different from the situation of those living abroad. The Dharamshala-based poet Tenzin Tsundue, for example, is living in an external exile, while I am in a kind of internal exile. He lives in a host country where he can experience personal freedom, whereas I live in the occupied country and my personal freedom is very limited or even endangered.

Nevertheless, in my internal exile I can see the empty Potala Palace and cry silently as I watch its lonesome silhouette delving into the dark, when the theatrical lights go off deep at night. In my internal exile, on His Holiness’ birthday, I can go to the tourist-packed Norbulingka and offer a white khatag to the empty golden throne. And on that day, I can run into people in festive clothes, men and women, old and young, bringing fresh flowers to celebrate. In my internal exile, I can hear an old man around the same age as His Holiness saying: “We are still waiting . . . He will come back, there will be the day when he comes back to Lhasa, I believe that.”

Your writing continually alludes to things that “cannot be seen” and cannot even be talked about. What motivates your writing? Whom are you writing for?

At the beginning, after coming back to Lhasa and experiencing a kind of awakening, it was just as I wrote in Notes on Tibet: “I finally found the direction for my future writing – I want to become a witness, I want to see, explore, reveal, and let people know about those secrets, not individual, yet shocking and extremely moving secrets. Let me go on telling tales. Let me use the most common, but newly defined, purified, or even newly reinvented language, to tell the story of Tibet.”  

In 2008, I published another essay collection in Taiwan called Invisible Tibet. In May of the same year my (Chinese) blog was shut down and I was attacked by hackers. So I opened a new blog outside of the Chinese “great (fire)wall” and gave it the same name, “Invisible Tibet”. I still run it today.

Why this name? Because what is “visible” is what the authorities, the colonizers, allow and want us to see. I do not want to become their tool. There are so many “mysterious” stories of Tibet or stories that “demonize” Tibet, and readers willingly accept them, because these stories appeal to their taste. But they are not the stories I want to tell. Of course, sometimes I ponder how many people in this big world are willing to stop for a while and listen to my stories about the “invisible” sufferings of Tibetans, when many other nations endured or are still going through something similar. My intention is not to tell stories that make people feel uncomfortable or depressed. I hope that one day I will be able to talk about the extraordinary beauty of my high-plateau land of snows, shining under the free sun.    

Said once said in an interview: “I understood that my role was to tell and retell a story of loss where the notion of repatriation, of a return to a home, is basically impossible.” I often go through the photographs I made in Lhasa, twenty, ten, or just a couple years ago. I am always shocked by the enormous changes, the complete geographical change, which saddens me because it is a constant, never-ending, real time loss. Twenty years ago, for example, the Barkhor was still relatively close to the original Barkhor. But today’s Barkhor seems more and more artificial, fake, empty, rebuilt from the ground up, and it seems every day more distant from the life of the locals.

The poetry collection that I finished in 2018 in Lhasa is called Rebel Under the Burning Sun. Why this name? Because the secret police called me “ngologpa,” which in Tibetan means “rebel” (or traitor).

When I was sending this poetry collection to my publisher in Taiwan, I wrote: “The poems are like little memorials, I have used them to record the perishing Tibet, perishing Lhasa. Poetry has indeed always been a non-mainstream kind of literature, but I am not writing my poems for some niche of readers. I see these poems as the kind of monuments that, erected on the occupied land, can break people’s hearts with their beauty.”

I used to have certain ideas about who my readers could be. At one point I thought that my writing about the “invisible Tibet” and my social media activities could change the distorted perception of Tibet, but trying to resist the process of indoctrination put forth by those in power through my efforts alone proved to be very difficult. It is not just the Communist Party and not only the last one hundred years that this indoctrination has been going on. Confucianism was already doing it. In the Chinese world, some voices are never heard, because they are voices that go against the notion of unity. I gradually understood that I should write to preserve the past. History itself is the true “reader.” 

In your recent conversation with translator Ian Boyden for the August 2019 issue of Words Without Borders, you discussed the poem “Absent, or Not Absent”. I read the symbols of absence or emptiness in the poem as references to the aspects of Tibetan reality and history that are censored by the authorities. The people and events that are “absent” seem to be shouting with every step in Tibet, especially in Lhasa. Do Tibetans themselves hear them?

The word “empty” (空, pron. kong, that is translated as “absent” in the poem) can symbolize many things, from entire historical eras to something as small as a single tiny figure on a wall painting in a Buddhist shrine. It is a blank space that, just as you said, stands in for all the parts of reality and history that have been censored, wiped out, made absent. Filling these blank spaces is a kind of rejection, resistance, non-collaboration, an attempt at restoring eternal presence.

As a writer whose work centers on these “invisible” things, I myself have become an object that has been made “absent”. Like many Tibetans who have been swallowed by this unnatural “emptiness” imposed by our Others, I have my own means of resisting it. 

I wrote a poem on the occasion of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s eighty-third birthday. Perhaps it can answer your question about whether Tibetans “hear” the events and people made “absent”:
 
There are many ways of waiting,
One of them is to paint
Your face on the wall of a Buddhist shrine,
Who cares that the cadres will recognize You and report.
You may have a beard, so that you look like the Thirteenth,
Anyway, the Thirteenth is also You,
You are all of them, from the First to the Fourteenth,
You are all previous and following incarnations. 

There are many ways of waiting,
One of them is to preserve and guard every shrine that survived,
And fill the empty ruins
With mud and stones brought down from the mountains,
To rebuild the monks’ dorms and kitchens, same as they used to be,
Never to give up the faith that one day you will return to your homeland,
And all the lamas coming with you will inhabit the former Khamtsän

“We are still waiting, waiting, and waiting . . . 
Many people have meanwhile departed for their long journey to rebirth.
Our Gönpo originally had His own palace and monastery,
Had His people and land, everything here used to belong to Him,
The present as well as future lives of every person all belong to Him.”
An old man of Your age, holding my hand in the sweet-tea house
Told me this in a low voice, using honorific language, his eyes full of tears. 

“Kundun, see You in Lhasa!”
That winter, a young man from Lhasa
Travelled alone to Bodhgaya to take part in the Kalachakra initiation,
And as he slowly walked toward the old man in purple robes,
He cried out, his palms put together, hot tears running down his face. 

Another young man, from Amdo,
Before departing for his doctoral studies in the West,
Tattooed several Tibetan numbers on his arm,
The total number of years of His Holiness in this world.

Indeed, you can “hear it.” The people living in an empty place can rely only on their “faith”—it is a soundless sound, which allows you to hear the stories of people and events that were “made absent.” 


Click here to read Tsering Woeser's nonfiction, translated by Kamila Hladíková, in the same issue.

Kamila Hladíková (b. 1978, Prague) is an assistant professor of Chinese literature at Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, teaching both traditional and modern Chinese literature and Sinophone cinema. She received her Ph.D. in sinology from Charles University, Prague, in 2011. In her doctoral thesis, she focused on the representations of Tibet in Chinese and Tibetan literature from the 1980s and examined questions of identity in modern Tibetan short stories (The Exotic Other and Negotiation of Tibetan Self: Representation of Tibet in Chinese and Tibetan Literature of the 1980s, Palacky University Press, 2013). She has published an article on Tibet-related cinema, “Shangri-la Deconstructed: Representation of Tibet in Pema Tseden’s Films” (Archiv orientální, volume 84, no. 2, 2016) and a chapter in the book Tibetan Subjectivities on the Global Stage (“A Tibetan Heart in a Chinese Mouth: Tsering Woeser’s Notes on Tibet,” Lexington Books, 2018). She has translated works of Chinese and Sinophone Tibetan literature. For example, she co-edited and co-translated a Czech-language anthology of short stories from Tibet, Vábení Kailásu (The Lure of Kailash, DharmaGaia, 2005). Her Czech translation of Tsering Woeser’s 西藏笔记 (Notes on Tibet, Verzone) was published in 2015.】


转自:https://www.asymptotejournal.com/interview/an-interview-with-tsering-woeser/