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/

2023年4月22日星期六

特约评论 | 唯色:“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……(三)


2023.04.21
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评论 | 唯色:“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霸……(三)英国谢赫拉扎德基金会代表将奖章交给藏人驻英代表
 图片由藏人驻英办事处提供/西藏之声官网

 

各种甚嚣尘上的泼污,恰如见过的一尊古老的犍陀罗佛传浮雕所表达的,手持刀剑斧的群魔扑向菩提树下静修的佛陀。群魔众多,分上、中、下三层,然而又如何?佛陀降魔成道的故事几千年来鼓舞人心。

 

9

变态辣椒阴阳怪气地@我:“別洗了,达赖喇嘛都道歉了,洗地更伤教主尊严。”

攻击者振振有词地说:“他都道歉了,这就说明错了,不错干嘛道歉?“

这让我想起中国古代有个三季人的故事,也即是说有些人类似生命只有三季的绿蚂蚱,永远不肯相信一年有四季。事实上,很多人都是三季人,而跟三季人:夏虫不可语冰,井蛙不可语海,凡夫不可语道,此乃中国古训。三季人相信的、挖掘的不过是他们想要的、预设的“真相”,他们的思维就是这么简单。他们根本不会相信在这个世界上,有人会为自己没有的过错而道歉,只是为了不让误会产生的冲击波影响了人们的情绪,可能会让被卷入漩涡的当事人难受。

有推友说:“那些以为达赖喇嘛尊者公开道歉就是承认犯下猥亵男童罪行的白莲花们,其实只是些缺乏正常阅读理解能力的低智商人群。”

有推友说:“达赖喇嘛尊者是在为自己的行为被公众误解而给男孩及家人带来困扰这件事向他们表示歉意,而且表明自己只是开了一个无伤大雅的玩笑。在(尊者办公室发布的)文中,达赖尊者没有为自己的正常行为对公众道歉。”

然而那些有意带风向的,就一定要把这样的道歉完全扭曲。

有位推友说:“尊者达赖喇嘛用慈悲心来表法,却招来这些人的恶言恶语,尊者慈悲发表歉意的公告,这是尊者发慈悲心来让这些人停止造恶业。但这些人不了解佛法,却用世俗最龌蹉的想法和言语来攻击尊者。这些人才是最可怜的众生。”

我担心年迈的尊者会不会因此受伤。但很快了解到,尊者达赖喇嘛一切照常,一切如故。依然睡得好。依然早起念经修法不变。依然接见各地来的各种人。身边的侍者和秘书婉转地说,以后见人不要太亲切为好。“为什么?”尊者惊讶地问。他们就大概地说了一下这几天的事。尊者说“我知道啊,我看BBCCNN,我知道,哈哈哈,”尊者大笑。又说:“不过你们这样说,我觉得奇怪,为什么不能亲切待人?我没有色欲。”而且,尊者平日里说得最多的一句话,就是藏语发音的“宁皆”。“宁皆,宁皆”是他的口头禅,有值得怜悯、值得怜惜的意思。观世音菩萨的化身,六道众生都宁皆。

得知八十八岁的尊者完全不为外面的泼污所动,我一下子轻松了。并想起了几天前见到的一尊古老的犍陀罗佛传浮雕所表达的,手持刀剑斧的群魔扑向菩提树下静修的佛陀。群魔众多,分上、中、下三层,然而又如何?佛陀降魔成道的故事几千年来鼓舞人心。我在推特、脸书、instagram都写了这几段:

佛陀在世时也被无明罪人攻击。米拉日巴尊者也被无明恶人下毒。人的里面,太多阴毒之人。但是,米拉日巴尊者的道歌中唱到:“有人扔来烂泥巴,正好种朵金莲花。”

六世班禅喇嘛的《香巴拉指南》一书里的这段话,恰如今天这个网络世界的呈现:“……比如见到一碗水,在天神、世人和饿鬼看来分别出现不同的观相:天神的眼里映现为甘露,世人的眼里映现为清水,饿鬼的眼里则映现为脓血。由于各自业力的不同,仅于彼一碗水,眼中见到不同景……”

又正如这句话:清净的心,清净的言说,清净的行为,从不清净的人那里得到不清净的反映,就是这样。

 

左图:印度克什米尔地区拉达克数万民众集会抗议泼污尊者达赖喇嘛。(转自instagram); 中图:噶举派十七世噶玛巴仁波切的公开信中文译文。(唯色提供); 右图:薯伯伯用AI制作的尊者达赖喇嘛图像。(唯色提供)
左图:印度克什米尔地区拉达克数万民众集会抗议泼污尊者达赖喇嘛。(转自instagram); 中图:噶举派十七世噶玛巴仁波切的公开信中文译文。(唯色提供); 右图:薯伯伯用AI制作的尊者达赖喇嘛图像。(唯色提供)

而从清净者那里,则依然是清净的反映,就像环绕雪域高原的雪山一样洁白:最新的消息是,英国谢赫拉扎德基金会向尊者颁发了谢赫拉扎德金质奖章,以表彰尊者长期以来在倡导和促进世界和平与宗教和谐等方面,所付出的无私奉献和毕生服务,该基金会曾向南非前总统纳尔逊·曼德拉、德蕾莎修女等19名这世界上无比宝贵的杰出人士授予此奖。

419日清晨,尊者达赖喇嘛离开达兰萨拉前往印度首都新德里,出席4月20 日至21日举行的首届全球佛教峰会,并于4月21日发表讲话。据报道:峰会汇集来自全球的杰出学者、僧伽领袖和佛法修行者,讨论当前紧迫的全球问题,包括和平、环境可持续性、健康、纳兰陀佛教传统的保护以及佛法朝圣和佛陀舍利的重要性,作为印度与南亚、东南亚和东亚国家文化联系的基础。”【1

而这,可能也是此番网络霸凌的目的之一:阻扰或制造隔膜之类的障碍。

10

藏人实在是太善良。是的,我说的就是这个民族。这些天,除了痛苦就是分辩,也有人希望这个风暴消停下来。我读到一位藏人电影人的文章,在讲述了尊者一生所行诸多伟大事业之后写道:“……尽管如此,尊者认识到他的言行于无意中可能让世界上不少人不舒服了,就发表了一份道歉声明。我们祈祷并希望这件事到此为止。”

哦,可能不会这么容易就结束的,因为这不是尊者一个人的事。这场针对尊者的网络霸凌,并不会因为我们不再提及就慢慢消失,并不会如同网络上的诸多热点很快被新的热点替代,使得人们的注意力转移,不会的。对于尊者的这场网暴其实是一个精心设计的局,有心人从3月份就开始了,截取视频,技术处理,各种语言,全面出击,而且已经飞快地以“丑闻”为小标题,添加进尊者的维基中文百科词条。有藏人担忧:他们说,我们也说,这会像滚雪球一样,越滚越大。可是,这个网暴事件一出来就像雪球,那么你能让其暂停吗?

415日,我在instagram和脸书上看到位于印度克什米尔地区的拉达克有上万民众集会和游行,主持人悲愤演讲:“2月28日尊者接见了120位印度学生,为什么现在突然冒出来不实视频?我们是印度公民,却无视我们,我们不会沉默,直到澄清事实。十四世尊者达赖喇嘛是我们的根本上师,生死之皈依,是我们的父母。我们没有什么可荣耀的,只有尊者达赖喇嘛。这种对达赖喇嘛的指控,深深刺痛我们的心,我们无法容忍,也不会低头。如果不向达赖喇嘛道歉,我们会抗议到底!”深受伤害的男女老少泣声一片,强烈要求媒体收回、纠正对尊者达赖喇嘛的泼污。

显而易见,如果以为这场可耻的网暴伤害的是尊者达赖喇嘛一个人,如果以为伤害的是因为在境内而不得不沉默失声的大多数藏人,可能错了。因为那些如群魔扑来的中伤者,伤害的是所有信仰达赖喇嘛和藏传佛教的人,包括喜马拉雅地区的所有信众;以及全世界各地了解、尊重、钦佩达赖喇嘛和藏传佛教的人。被认为属于“环喜马拉雅区域”的地区不只是包括了西藏高原,而是犹如喜马拉雅山脉一样漫长的国家和地区。历史上以及现在,这些区域的诸多地方保留了并延续着属于西藏文化和宗教信仰的传统,而这并没有受到现代边界的划分、所属等影响,即便现在被归为中印两国、中尼两国、中不两国等等的边境区域。尊者达赖喇嘛及诸多藏传佛教领袖的流亡,更是趋同了“环喜马拉雅区域”民众的精神向心力。

需要正告各类傲慢者、阴谋者:这个世界不是只有一种声音,也不是只有一种文化,更不是只有一种权力。这个世界,在今天,可能不应该忽略来自“环喜马拉雅区域”的民众的声音。417日,在拉达克首府列城,当地的包括佛教徒、伊斯兰教徒、基督徒在内的三万人,再次举行集会和游行,愤怒,悲痛,呐喊:“媒体无耻! Media Shame! 达赖喇嘛万岁! Long Live Dalai Lama!我们与达赖喇嘛站在一起!We Stand With Dalai Lama!”据说这可能是拉达克近代历史上最大规模的抗议行动。

“我们无法忍受我们的眼泪和痛苦。我们会继续提高我们的声音,抗议那些诽谤我们根本上师的媒体和‘影响者’。”一位拉达克青年说。不只是拉达克如此,还有中印边境敏感区域的达旺地区等等,深受伤害的人们都在集会、游行。

包括印度流亡社区的藏人,以及散布世界各地的藏人,都在抗议这场对尊者达赖喇嘛的泼污,流亡二代、流亡三代。藏传佛教诸多领袖都发声了:十七世噶玛巴仁波切、萨迦法王达赤仁波切、林仁波切等等,以及苯教法王。当年14岁逃出西藏投奔尊者的噶玛巴仁波切在公开信里写道:

“达赖喇嘛尊者毕生惜人甚于己,修菩提心,无论所思所言,始终非暴力利他,意念清净,不虛伪,不口是心非。……很多人心里都觉得他是爱和慈悲的化身!他友爱地对待他们。有时他会开玩笑地扯别人的胡子,或挠他们的痒,或轻轻拍他们的脸颊或鼻子等等。……尊者的一生,为了世界的和平与和谐,牺牲了自己的需要和欲望——他这样做的程度是我们普通人难以理解的。我们藏人,从热情的问候中可以看出全世界的人都对他表示赞赏。即使现在,在他将近九十岁生日的时候,他的决心也从未动摇过:佛法,利益众生……”

年轻的二世卡卢仁波切的公开信沉痛而有力:“……新闻媒体和一些人,抨击我活着的佛陀达赖喇嘛,已远超可悲可叹。尊者是地球上最美好睿智的存在,我永怀感激。”

与此同时,在境内出现的一种现象也是深具意义的。正如才让吉的脸书写:“突然间,#达赖喇嘛成为微博上最搜索和最热门的话题,这是中国从未发生过的事情。……中国不愿意让自己的人民看到达赖喇嘛,而西藏的藏人也没有权利了解他。……我非常关心当境内的藏人听到和看到这个被曲解的视频与新闻,…许多藏人表示他们很高兴终于在没有恐惧的情况下,可以自由地看到嘉瓦仁波切的视频。这是我今早收到的消息。我以前从来没有这样想过。”

更是悲欣交集,因为境内的藏人随即得知了这场对嘉瓦仁波切的网暴泼污,毕竟泼污不只是在微博上发生,抖音及微信视频号也不停地滚动,包括妖魔化藏传佛教,诋毁藏民族信仰的各种小视频,比滚雪球还多。境内藏人的泪水和诅咒,都在流淌。而天天把“稳定西藏社会局势”“稳定社会大局”“把稳定作为第一责任”等等挂在嘴上的中共当局的官员们,难道愿意看到各种“不稳定因素”涌现吗?

11

其实,这个故事与之前所有的故事一样。但现在,被诽谤的这个故事与之前所有的被诽谤的故事一样。而那些诽谤者,现在可能还在日夜加班翻寻、查看尊者海量的影像资料,然后技术处理,做成各种小视频散播网络,投喂乌合之众,掀起“网民声讨达赖集团罪行”大批判运动。

比如2018年在荷兰的一个关于科技发展的讲座上,一位因幼时患重疾截肢,如今双手双足都安装了机械义肢,她向尊者讲述了自己的故事,而尊者心疼女孩,伸手轻揉女孩的背及上臂,就像医生治疗病人,也是给予宗教力量的安慰,如此感人场面却又一次被心理阴暗者截屏,技术处理,恶意地说“这是正常的吗?”这一切是多么荒诞的喜剧啊,原谅可怜虫的他们,在终日毒霾的现实中,实在是太缺少欢乐了。

薯伯伯幽默地引述鲁迅的名言说:“‘一见短袖子,立刻想到白臂膊,立刻想到全裸体,立刻想到生殖器,立刻想到性交,立刻想到杂交,立刻想到私生子。中国人的想像惟在这一层能够如此跃进。’将近一世纪后,依然如鲁迅所言,有些人在性意识层面上的想像力,创作力量同幻想,跃进得吓人一跳。”

这些天,目睹在墙内的各种社交媒体上,对藏传佛教的各种妖魔化如“人皮鼓”、“人皮唐卡”之类已经甚嚣尘上。同时注意到,当局钦定的那个班禅受到推崇,还出现了把他与尊者达赖喇嘛对比的测验题,显然用心很深。但不知那位长大成人的班禅,是否了解那些虚情假意的人其实充满了对藏传佛教的鄙夷和仇恨,而他绛红袈裟里面的那颗心又会如何想?

 

左图:2018年在荷兰的讲座上,达赖喇嘛与残疾女孩的互动今也被抹黑。(薯伯伯提供) 中图:新浪微博近日截图。(唯色提供) 右图:一位印度网络大咖向尊者达赖喇嘛致歉。(才让吉提供)
左图:2018年在荷兰的讲座上,达赖喇嘛与残疾女孩的互动今也被抹黑。(薯伯伯提供) 中图:新浪微博近日截图。(唯色提供) 右图:一位印度网络大咖向尊者达赖喇嘛致歉。(才让吉提供)

对此,作家唐丹鸿的这两条推文精彩:“想起了天葬、人骨法器……‘文明人’纷纷指责‘野蛮’、‘落后’,其实都是他们自己的想当然。这段视频中,尊者的真挚无邪与幽默逗乐一如既往。他完全没想到会成为‘文明人’的道德垫脚石,会被‘文明人’如获至宝踩上去,按‘文明人’的心理投射肆意解读。我看见尊者慈悲为怀而致歉。我看见‘文明人’享用文明的幻觉。”

“义愤填膺的欢乐、扮失望的欢乐、刷流量的欢乐、搏眼球的欢乐、吐口水的欢乐、秀毒舌的欢乐…白莲花的欢乐颜色斑斓,都是白莲花所熟悉的色欲。盯着老和尚的舌头,他们的脑中闪过一幕幕不堪的声画,电影似地投影到老和尚的舌头上,啊、啊……邪恶的舌头!尊者不单给了小男孩和信众欢乐,众生也各取欢乐。 ”

尊者自己的声音也是必须要有的。他早就说过:

“我只是一个简单的佛教僧侣——没有更多,也没有更少。”

“我所信仰的是仁慈,我的宗教是简单的。”

对于我——一个藏人,一个佛教徒——来说,我要表达的是:我是尊者达赖喇嘛的追随者,信奉者,生生世世。无论有多少次的构陷、泼污和中伤,我们自己的爱、勇气和信念愈加坚固。四年前的1210日,尊者达赖喇嘛获诺贝尔和平奖三十周年纪念日,我写了一首诗,最后写道:

“发四弘誓愿的嘉瓦仁波切的声音响起了

愿我一直聆听:

虚空尚存 轮回未尽

愿留世间 普度苦厄……”【2

 

2023/4/16-19,北京

 

补充:写完这篇长文,我才看到美国著名佛教学家罗伯特·瑟曼(Robert Thurman)教授最近在 Tibet House US Menla Digital Archives 的 YouTube 频道,专门分析和评论了这场针对尊者达赖喇嘛的网络霸凌。我请薯伯伯听了相关内容,据他介绍,在这个视频片段中,瑟曼教授为尊者达赖喇嘛辩护,并指出这是针对达赖喇嘛的长期宣传活动的一部分。瑟曼教授认为针对尊者的指控是基于蓄意曲解传统,并误导群众相信其带有性暗示。而他认识尊者近六十年,当然可以证明他的清白。瑟曼教授敦促观众观看完整影片,全面分析。

又据介绍,瑟曼教授在视频中分析了几个重要的部分:许多独裁政权正在通过使用媒体部门的资产和得到回报的“影响者”,在他们的全球宣传媒体和社交媒体的歇斯底里闪电战中合作。一些极右翼的民粹主义政客及其平台也参与其中,提倡思想封闭的激进宗教形式,无论是锡克教、印度教、基督教、表面上的伊斯兰教,还是一些反佛教、反宗教(无神论者等)团体等等。媒体行业的资产与 SCL Group/SCL Elections、Cambridge Analytica、AggregateIQ(AIQ-SCL 加拿大)、CROW MENA(SCL-中东和北非)、Emerdata、Auspex、Palantir 等空洞的公司实体相关联。”

影片出处:HH Dalai Lama Archetype of Radical Innocence with Robert Thurman : On The Recent Viral Video

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f62zivSnTQM

 

注释:

【1】西藏之页2023419日报道:达赖喇嘛尊者将出席在德里举办的首届全球佛教峰会

【2】诗句转自20191210日,尊者达赖喇嘛获诺贝尔和平奖三十周年纪念日,我写的一首诗:https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/weiseblog/ws-12192019103335.html

本文发表于自由亚洲特约评论专栏:https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/ws-04192023132258.html


延伸阅读:

特约评论 | 唯色:“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霸……(一)http://woeser.middle-way.net/2023/04/blog-post.html


特约评论 | 唯色:“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霸……(二)http://woeser.middle-way.net/2023/04/blog-post_21.html

2023年4月21日星期五

特约评论 | 唯色:“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……(二)

 

2023.04.20
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评论 | 唯色:“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霸……(二)达赖喇嘛与视频中的印度小男孩和他母亲的当天合照。
(来自4月13日RFA报道/札西慈仁提供)

 

各种甚嚣尘上的泼污,恰如见过的一尊古老的犍陀罗佛传浮雕所表达的,手持刀剑斧的群魔扑向菩提树下静修的佛陀。群魔众多,分上、中、下三层,然而又如何?佛陀降魔成道的故事几千年来鼓舞人心。

 

5

我在脸书上看到伦敦威斯敏斯特大学教授Dibyesh Anand(迪比亚什·阿南德)先生的文章,以及他和尊者达赖喇嘛的一张合影。迪比亚什教授是印度人,因为多年前即与他结识,知道他是研究藏学的资深学者,所以我反复阅读了他的这篇短文,并深以为然。

 

威斯敏斯特大学教授Dibyesh Anand脸书截图。(唯色提供)
威斯敏斯特大学教授Dibyesh Anand脸书截图。(唯色提供)

他的语气是难过的、气愤的。他问道:

“在所有这些对达赖喇嘛的诽谤和虐骂中,你是否或者懒得听以及阅读任何藏人所说/写的任何东西,包括有小孩的西藏妇女?你见过他和德斯蒙德·图图几十年来的公开互动吗?见到过他与许多成年人或孩子们的公开互动吗?你知道吐舌对藏人的意义吗?你甚至愿意倾听吗?可能不愿意。……不,你不在乎也不会在乎。因为抹黑很容易,自以为是的道德愤怒更容易,但反思是很难的。”

不只他一人,也不只我一人,我们都在思考一件事。正如VOA藏语部的主持人才让吉注意到的,报道这一事件的那些印度媒体、西方媒体,并没有采访任何一个藏人的看法。她发推询问了这些媒体,但她@的这些媒体都没有回应。居住特拉维夫的好友唐丹鸿问我:“这些媒体中好几家过去都曾采访过你,对这一耸人听闻的‘新闻’,他们报道之前或之后,有没有征询你的看法?”

我说:“没错,这些媒体,BBC、CNN、纽约时报等等,以前采访过我的,不只一次。但这次全都没有。是认为藏人的声音不重要吗?还是说,他们也会选择性的报道西藏话题?有意思。”“他们连举手之劳的采访都不做:没有采访一个藏人,没有采访男孩或家人,没有采访一个研究西藏宗教和文化的学者。他们什么都没有做。只是完美地传播了这场网络霸凌病毒。”

其实我还想问:在社群媒体上分享信息和传播真实新闻之前,先核实一下事实,难道会很难吗?到底是因为什么,需要这么匆匆忙忙地加入这场网暴呢?无论如何,一个真正的、正常的媒体,应该不是这么工作的。

这让我想起美国之音粤语网,在较早报道这个事件的时候,转载了我的第一条推文,但我注意到,报道通篇都写“达赖”而不是达赖喇嘛,我于是发推:“谢谢引述我的评论。但有个建议,当提到尊者请写‘达赖喇嘛’而不是达赖。达赖喇嘛是全称,如果了解西藏文化就会知道。美国之音是正常的媒体,在以媒体的方式报道时,不应该模仿中共素来对尊者的轻蔑。谢谢。”

6

呵呵,又有一个人让我大跌眼镜。那个人是推特上的网友德国人老雷,前不久我们在推特上还有互动,他说他想起前些年去拉萨的时候在街头听过一首藏语歌,他问我能不能替他找到这首歌。我帮他找了,花了不少时间。我觉得这个会说中国话、曾在中国学习并在中国官媒工作过的德国人,对多年前偶然听到的一首很普通的西藏歌曲念念不忘,这让我有些感动。

在YouTuber上开频道的他,节目多用中文表达,很关注这个世界尤其是中国社会的各种热点,冷嘲热讽有批评很热心,像是一个有正义感的西方白左人士。但这次,听到他在412日的专题节目里,一口一个达赖让他怎么怎么失望了,声音刺耳,表情做作,并没有为人的礼貌或教养。我看不下去,就关了视频,发推问他:“你加入这场网暴有意思吗?”

他倒是回复了:“我懂你的痛苦。i am sorry.

他懂我的痛苦?我脱口而出:“你根本不懂……”

有位推友说:“其实看穿了老雷不过就是个YouTuber,靠‘贩卖’自己的汉语嘴皮子营生,懂不懂当下热门的话题一点都不重要,重要的是必须赶上热潮,这样他的视频才能吸引更多的人点阅。悲哀的是多年下来,他竟然还真以为自己成了一家之言的网红。”

面对批评,德国人老雷坚持说“我观点就这样”,坚持让他的这个节目出现在YouTuber上(当然这是他的权利),迎来很多中国人对尊者的谩骂。那么,我也就想了想热衷于表达各种观点的他,以前有没有表达过与藏人有关的其他观点?比如藏人的各种困境,如藏人自焚、儿童在寄宿学校接受汉化教育、生态环境被破坏、宗教信仰被压制等等,好像并没有。看来他也是选择性的表达观点啊,就看什么热点更火或者更能迎合粉丝吧,毕竟他的粉丝很多是中国人。也正因为如此,连他的失望也是选择性的失望,不然被他的中国粉饰拉黑了怎么办?

我又想,如果这个德国人有一天去西藏,找到那个藏人歌手说喜欢他的歌,然后一口一个达赖怎么怎么令他失望,那么那位歌手会怎样做呢?他会感激这个老外喜欢自己的歌吗?还是说他会掉头走开?看都不想再看这个老外一眼?我觉得是后者。因为我就会这么做,对喜欢“异国情调”却并无真实尊重的傲慢人,敬而远之。

住在华盛顿的媒体人、来自安多藏区的诗人才让吉对我说:“看到了本不想看到的平时觉得还不错的很多人,……原来他们根本不了解我们啊。我花了一个小时去删了那些不该follow的人们。”

没错,是这样,就是这样,不过无所谓,世界很大,众生芸芸,你我原本就是陌生人,完全没必要相互关注。

7

412日、414日,中国《环球时报》原总编辑、《环球时报》评论员、中国网络大V胡锡进,在他的微信公众号连续发文两篇声讨尊者达赖喇嘛,并在新浪微博发帖。接着,新浪微博、抖音等等中国社群媒体,都开始猎巫了,渐渐铺天盖地了。这些墙内的社群媒体,在这之前,“达赖喇嘛”是敏感词,关于尊者的动态根本搜索不到,现在这条突然可以搜索到了,就像是一声令下,全都跑出笼在咬了。

415日晚,我打开新浪微博,看见对尊者的泼污上热搜第六名了(据说还上到了第三名)。突然间,达赖喇嘛不是敏感词了。连尊者的照片都能发微博了,当然是泼污的画面。只要是肩膀上长的是脑袋的人,应该会知道这场针对达赖喇嘛的网暴是怎么回事了。

 

左图:胡锡进微信公众号文章截图。(唯色提供);右图:新浪微博4月15日晚“热搜”排行榜截图。(唯色提供)
左图:胡锡进微信公众号文章截图。(唯色提供);右图:新浪微博4月15日晚“热搜”排行榜截图。(唯色提供)

为了抹黑,敏感词瞬间解禁!但除非是有意丑化的照片,尊者的照片依然发不出。我在微信里试过,即便是把尊者的照片做得模糊,也发不出。某双盯视者的目光,严密地盯视着,根本不可能破除这个禁区。甚至会警告你。我有过被警告、被禁言的经历。前几年还被关闭过一个微信账号。所以在墙内的社交媒体是不可能正常谈论达赖喇嘛的。除非你是泼污,那就畅通无阻。不觉得这个事情很蹊跷吗?

一个有三百多万粉丝的微博大V,洋洋得意地说的这句话值得研究:“30年资料详实外宣没做到的事,现在只用了三天做到了~并且很多人满怀热情的表示要挖掘更多真相,坚决揭露旧西藏落后吃人的恶行~”

而那些几百万几千万粉丝的微博大V,就像复读机,各种谩骂的话语十分相似,差不多一模一样。薯伯伯评论:他们是“人肉录音机”。

丹鸿发推:“中共紧盯达赖喇嘛的私生活而未能如愿抓住污点,这次被广大白莲花人民群众的火眼金睛发现了。”

我回复:“广大白莲花群众哪里有火眼金睛呀,都是等着老大哥喂食的“邦过”(藏语的乞丐),吃到了喂的食,就应声起舞了。刷流量的刷流量,博眼球的博眼球,扮失望的扮失望,吐口水的吐口水,各个黄脸白脸的邦过,在这网暴的时刻好不欢乐。“

有推友观察道:“这已经上升到民族问题了,很多评论从抨击宗教到诋毁整个民族,甚至有如:‘如果我是中共,我当初就直接灭了这帮人’,看到这些你的心就算是钛合金做的也会碎。”

这可能正是此番网络霸凌的目的之一。注意,是之一。

这条推文有必要转载:“我要提醒一件事,先不管你对达赖喇嘛这件事的看法是什么,这次事情的报导和专题很大一部分来源都是中国官媒和旗下组织。不要在这推底下讨论他怎样,那不是重点。重点只是为什么中国会那么热衷这件事,可以细细品味想一下。”

但很多人可能不会这么想的,不然怎么会发生所谓的反贼们,竟跟胡锡进和中华网军们合流的事?有推友说:“做假新闻+抹黑,算老套路了。只是这次又快又准,还找了很多‘路人’一起声讨。”我不禁笑了,“路人”中就有那些平日里的所谓反贼,这该是有多么的默契啊。强调一点:这样的“路人”不一定是找来的,而是主动地加入的。

刚刚又发现了一位,曾也是有名的中国传媒人、曾被当局囚禁过,现在美国办媒体的程益中,在推特上义愤填膺地说:“……达赖喇嘛举止失范,有违世俗社会道德和法律”。呵呵,他甚至提到了法律!研究西藏问题二十多年、居住瑞典的作家茉莉问他:“达赖喇嘛这次什么地方失范了?违反了哪一条民主国家明文规定的道德和法律?”茉莉批评他:“诬陷与否的标准,在于拿出法律条文对照行为事实。……你也是公众人物,还是获奖的媒体人,不能红口白牙说人违法不举证。再次请你拿出法律依据来!”

 

达赖喇嘛这样对待麻风病患者。(唯色推特截图)
达赖喇嘛这样对待麻风病患者。(唯色推特截图)

看看,程这样的媒体人,与胡锡进那样的媒体人,就这么奇妙地叠合了。这是为什么呢?不过对我来说,已经不惊讶了,而是一种印证了,总是在不断地印证着。

8

正如迪比亚什教授质问的:“把一个可能在公众场合‘越界’的笑话(并没有暗指被发现或是察觉的时刻)变成了一个施虐的故事,对你理应关心的男孩会产生什么影响呢?你们认为男孩不舒服并声称要关心他,却公开分享了他的照片/视频,还把这个行为描述为施虐,有比这更糟糕的吗?请不要声称你关心这个男孩以及这一切可能对他产生什么影响。”

难道人们不需要听听这个孩子、孩子的母亲和祖父的心声吗?

实际上,集会当天,228日,在达兰萨拉的几家媒体就对这位印度男孩做了采访。同时还采访了男孩的母亲和祖父,全都在现场近距离地见证了整个过程。Pazu薯伯伯翻译了全部访问,发布于脸书和instagram。这里,我觉得有必要转载,虽然已有不少转载或其他人的翻译:

在尊者祝福小孩后,有三个访问片段,特别值得留意。当事件过度解读,并被利用来对尊者达赖喇嘛的攻击,有三段访问极为重要,可以看清楚小孩及其家人的真正想法。

 

受访者分别是:

 

  1. 小孩 Kiyan Kanodia
  2. 小孩的母亲 Payal Kanodia 博士(其丈夫是 Deepak Kanodia 先生)
  3. 小孩的爷爷 Basant Bansal 先生

 

会面在 2023228日举行,与会者共150人,地点是印度达兰萨拉大昭寺。

男孩这样说:“与尊者会面真是太好了,我认为与如此正能量的人会面真是太好了。见到他真是太好了,你会得到很多正能量。不仅如此,一旦你获得正能量,我认为你会更快乐,这是一件好事,你会笑得更多。总的来说这真是非常好的经验。”

另一段对小孩的访问,由自由亚洲藏语部进行。记者问:“我们看到尊者抱你,你那刻感受如何?”

小孩说:“你感受到正能量,我无法表达那种感觉有多好。能遇到他真是太好了,说不出的幸福。当你得到他的祝福,你会感觉到,你感到很多正能量,你身上有很多正能量。总的来说这是一次非常好的体验。”

男孩的母亲Payal Kanodia 博士,她全程坐在台上,座位在尊者法座的右手边,近距离见证整个事件。访问亦是在会面当天进行:“我是 Payal Kanodia 博士,M3M 基金会的受托人。我们一直在达兰萨拉为我们去年开始的技能中心工作。从那时起,我们就寻求尊者的祝福。你知道今天我们得到了这个机会,尤其是当我的家人和我在一起的时候,所有从 iMpower Academy for Skills 毕业的学生也都在场。我们非常、非常幸运能够从尊者那里得到祝福。他亲临并向我们讲话,教导世界需要和平,以及每个人都要像兄弟姐妹般团结在一起的道理。我绝对无法表达被他祝福的感觉。谢谢。”

男孩的爷爷Basant Bansal 先生亦有接受访问,他亦坐在台上,是在法座的左手边,较其女儿与尊者的距离更为接近,他正正就在尊者旁边,中间没有隔着任何人,访问以印地语进行:“我在达赖喇嘛的寺庙里感到非常高兴,我首次来达兰萨拉,但我这辈子从来没有感受过这么好的经验。我见过达赖喇嘛,对他的伟大有了新的体会。他为人民奉献了自己一生,为人民做了很多。我们捐了很多钱给人们,他们给了我们一个信息,我们应该永远快乐,我们应该保持心态平和,不要争吵。他们告诉我们,最好的解决方法是爱、兄弟情谊,我们可以团结并解决一切问题。武器不是解决方法。”

薯伯伯说:“观看以上四段在会面当天之后进行的访问,可以更为清楚当事人及其家人的感受。我特意把西藏之音及自由亚洲对小孩访问同时译出,是因为小孩在两段访问中表达的意思虽近,但用字稍有不同,可见小孩是即场发挥,不是照字读稿。其实他即场发挥并用自己语言说出感受这一点非常明显,但考虑到坊间近日对尊者达赖喇嘛的攻击,一切正面之事都可以轻易被扭曲,所以多作说明也有必要。”

 

左图:薯伯伯13日分享当事小男孩和母亲当天受访画面。右图:薯伯伯分析达赖喇嘛遭网路认知作战攻击。(Pazu薯伯伯脸书)
左图:薯伯伯13日分享当事小男孩和母亲当天受访画面。右图:薯伯伯分析达赖喇嘛遭网路认知作战攻击。(Pazu薯伯伯脸书)

薯伯伯还补充:“在网上核实资料,小孩的家族大有来头,旗下拥有印度地产公司M3M,根据世界富人榜胡润的推算,家族拥有17亿美元,德里位居第二,印度排名第127位,全球排名第1975位。小孩的父母 Payal Kanodia 博士与 Deepak Kanodia于2015年成婚,被当地形容为‘最昂贵和奢华的印度婚礼’。小孩父亲于2022 年创建金融科技SmartLoans公司,以更具弹性的方式借贷。印度商人一向出名做慈善工作,发财兼立品,其企业在2019年成立M3M基金会,致力推动公平发展,帮助边缘化社区得到资源,实现长足发展。而今次举行的 iMpower技能学校见面会,正是M3M基金会旗下一个项目,帮助过600名儿童、350名妇女及青年。”

之所以转载这段对孩子背景的介绍,是出于避免有心人做更多的联想,比如对穷人等弱势群体似乎更容易施虐。当然他们可能还会说,无论是富人的小孩还是穷人的小孩都是弱势的,可是他们有什么权力如此自以为是呢?连小孩的母亲和祖父的感受难道都可以无视吗?


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