On the 14th Dalai Lama's betrayal of Buddhism

Thursday's People's Daily (overseas edition) carried a signed article titled "Why does the "Buddhist leader" frequently violate dharma and break faith: on the 14th Dalai Lama's betrayal of Buddhism".

The basic criterion to distinguish pious Buddhists from bogus ones is "taking precepts as masters" and "abiding by precepts to practice Buddhadharma". dGe-lugs-pa Sect, the Yellow Sect of Lamaism, of the Tibetan Buddhism is even better known for its strict observance of those commandments. Master Tsongkha-pa wrote in his book, the Great Exposition on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, that "the great achievers will be so only in name if they fail to fully follow Buddhist precepts and teachings". Though the commandments followed by Tibetan Buddhists vary, they are all based on the common ground of four precepts, namely no killing, stealing, adultery and lying. Monks would be seen as committing serious offenses if they betrayed one of the four precepts. However, the 14th Dalai Lama, a self-claimed "Buddhist leader", repeatedly broke the commandments and betrayed his faith by violating the precepts of no killing and lying.

Firstly, let's look at how he betrayed the precept of no killing. In the late 1950s, Tibetan reactionary leaders launched an armed rebellion in an attempt to permanently maintain the feudal serfdom and their autocratic rule. The 14th Dalai Lama was the chief representative of the feudal serfdom. The armed rebels set houses on fire, looted Tibetan people and raped women. What happened then still lingers in Tibetan people's minds today. In the late 1980s, the Dalai Lama clique stirred up unrest in Lhasa, which seriously harmed people's lives and damaged their property. Moreover, who was behind the mid 1970s assassination of Gung-thangTshul-khrims, one of the leaders of the Group 13, who failed to obey Dalai's orders? Who nodded to plot and implement the assassination of Li-thang A-thar? Who, in the late 1990s, sent killers to the home of Rin-po-che Kun-bde-gling and seriously wounded him? Who threatened to exterminate the "life and activities" of two young Rin-po-ches, Chi-jang and Sun-po? Vjigs-med Tshe-ring, who once was one of the key members of the Dalai Lama clique, said that at least ten Tibetans, who disagreed with the Dalai Lama, had been assassinated.

Secondly, let's have a look at how the 14th Dalai Lama violated the precept of no lying. The Dalai Lama sent a telegram in 1951 after the signing of the agreement on the peaceful liberation of Tibet, in which he said that the agreement, signed on May 23, 1951,was based on friendship and thus won unanimous support from the local government of Tibet, Tibetan monks and the people. But on March 10, 1961, the 14th Dalai Lama said in a speech that the agreement was written fully in the will of the "Red Han" and was signed by his representative, who was put under house arrest. In 1953, the 14th Dalai Lama wrote an article, saying that Tibetans were one of the ethnic communities in China, which enjoyed long and rich history and Tibetan people enjoyed freedom and equality as all the other ethnic groups did in China after they returned to the great family of the motherland. But on March 10, 1960, he said in another speech that Tibet has been "a completely independent country" with its own political system and government ever since the Tibetan people created their own written language.

In 1954, I accompanied the 14th Dalai Lama and the 10th Panchen Lama to Beijing. Till now, the zealous and respectful manner that the Dalai Lama demonstrated during that visit is still vivid in my mind. In the eulogy he presented to Chairman Mao Zedong in both Tibetan and Chinese, he extolled Chairman Mao as the "red sun", which "glorifies the whole nation, drives away invaders, and brings peace and blessing to people of all ethnic groups". However, when he fled abroad, he went back on his words and broke the precept of no lying by wantonly attacking and defaming his home country and calling on the so-called free world to unite to block the development of his own people and motherland.

It is known to all that in the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the Fifth Dalai Lama paid respects to Emperor Shunzhi and was conferred by the Emperor with honorific title. The title and position of Dalai Lama was also legalized by the central authorities during the visit. The move not only helped maintain the unification of China, but also boosted the social stability and economic development in Tibet. The Tibetan people, who were profoundly grateful to the Fifth Dalai Lama, commended him as "theGreat Fifth". It was shocking to many people that as a descendent of the Fifth Dalai Lama, the 14th Dalai Lama unabashedly attacked the Fifth Dalai Lama in May 1986 at a gathering of Tibetan people in the Netherlands, saying that it was shameful for the Fifth Dalai Lama to have "joyously accepted the mandarin jacket conferred by the Qing emperor." He also derided the Fifth Dalai Lama for paying respects to the central authorities, saying he had" lost face by setting up the relations." Those sayings were Dalai Lama's real thoughts, which also proved that he had totally betrayed his ancestors and his religion.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the 14th Dalai Lama believed that the dramatic changes in the former Soviet Union and east Europe brought new opportunities for "Tibet independence". In August 1991, he said in France and Switzerland that it would take no more than five or ten years for Tibet to be separated from China. In January 1992, he said again that Tibet would achieve independence in five or ten years. In 1995, it seemed that Dalai Lama gained more "magic power" even though his clique was low in morale. In March of the same year, he formally issued a prophecy, proclaiming that great changes would take place in China that year or in the following year. In August, he said in public that the "upcoming changes in 1995 or 1996" would benefit his group. As a matter of fact, Tibet did witness "great changes" in 1995. During that year, Tibetan people celebrated the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region, and most of the 62 key construction projects in Tibet financially supported by the whole nation were completed. Also in 1995, the divine reincarnation of Panchen Lama was successfully completed. The development of Tibet played a joke with the "magic power" of the 14th Dalai Lama, which, perhaps, is the judgment on Dalai Lama for his betrayal of the precept of no lying.

The spiritual essence of the tenets and canons of the Tibetan Buddhism include the basic essentials of observing the rules, sincerity, equilibrium, even share of wealth, altruism and harmony, which are also the basics of the healthy practice of Buddhism over the past 2,000 years and grounds for Buddhists to cultivate themselves through meditation and encourage people to do good. All Buddhists should follow the tenets to distinguish right from wrong on cardinal issues and make further progress in their religious accomplishment. However, the 14th Dalai Lama has been playing with the divine Buddhism to achieve political goals and purposely mislead the public, which fully demonstrates his hypocrisy in faith. By Shi Shan, the author is a research fellow in Tibetan Buddhism, who used to work in Tibet for a long time.

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Pregnancy kills over 500,000 women a year

More than half a million women still die every year in pregnancy or after childbirth in spite of two decades of efforts to bring down the toll, reports revealed on Friday.

Little has changed, particularly in much of the developing world. Women die of avoidable complications such as high blood pressure or haemorrhage in childbirth - and often the baby dies too or does not survive the next few years without a mother. Tens of thousands die painfully in backstreet abortions in countries where contraception is not readily available and abortion is heavily restricted or banned.

Papers prepared for a major conference in London next week and published in the Lancet on Friday reveal the scale of the failure. New figures show it is highly unlikely that the Millennium Development Goal 5 - to slash death rates by 75 percent from their 1990 level by 2015 - will be achieved.

In 1990 it was estimated that 576,300 women died in pregnancy, labor or after giving birth. The latest calculations, from the Harvard Centre for Population and Development Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, show that 15 years later, in 2005, some 535,900 died. The maternal mortality ratio dropped from 425 in 100,000 to 402 in 100,000.

But that, says Ken Hill, lead author of the paper, is a best estimate. Because of the lack of data from some of the countries with the worst death tolls, calculations have to be based on better performing countries that do collect figures. That makes it look as though there has been a drop of 2.5 percent in the mortality rate a year but it could be as low as 0.4 percent.

"0.4 percent unfortunately I think is the more realistic figure for the globe as a whole," said Professor Hill. "The proportion of sub-Saharan African births is going up and maternal mortality is not going down."

Abortion rates have dropped, mostly due to a big rise in contraceptive use in Eastern Europe. Globally numbers came down from 46 million in 1995 to about 42 million in 2003. But the picture in Africa and parts of Asia remains dire and some experts accuse the Bush administration of worsening the problem due to its anti-contraception, pro-abstinence policies there.

"There couldn't be a better set of findings to show the failure of the Bush administration policy - the emphasis on abstinence and monogamy, the obsession with abortion, the defunding of good family planning organizations because they talk about abortion," said Sharon Camp, president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, which carried out the abortion study with the World Health Organization.
Source: China Daily/agencies