54th Anniversry of the Tibetan Uprising 1959: rally/march/rally

The rally downtown at the art gallery.
Much of the talk was of the 108 Buddhist monks who have self-immolated since 2009, trying to bring
attention to the atrocities that continue in Tibet -- monks as young as fifteen.

Sad, so very sad.

From downtown those concerned marched over to Granville, over the Granville Bridge doing call & response chants: "What do we want?" -- "Free Tibet!" || "China lying!" -- "People dying!" etc. and rather wistfully: "Where is..? -- "The Panchen Lama!"

A fairly large police motorcycle escort all the way.  Up Granville to the Chinese Consulate at 16th and Granville and more chanting.

And then some magic. A Tibetan man took the microphone and started singing the Om Mani Padme Hung.  It was beautiful. And the sound transformed the moment as everyone joined in and for a long time serenaded whoever was in the Consulate (and the rather bemused police constables). The whole mood changed from frustration and despair--to love.

Mao's armies invaded Tibet in the
1949-1959 "Dragon Attacks" and
continues to claim Tibet as part of China.

Tibetans say Tibet is Tibet, not China.
Tibetans have lived there for millennia.
They should know, shouldn't they?

Sad, sad, sad...Tibetan culture struggling to survive

I went to the Tibetan Cultural Festival this afternoon. It was put on to raise money for the earthquake victims (many of them ethnic Tibetans) in Jyekundo, also known as Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China where a devastating magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck April 14th, 2010. 


The theme of the festival was "Celebrating Survival."

It was sad, though, to watch minuscule numbers of young Tibetans performing -- part of an increasingly desperate attempt by Tibetans to preserve their culture in the face of what often seems like insurmountable odds - and the very negative energy of the might and not entirely good will of China.

Today I saw a handful of Tibetan performers where you would much prefer there would be hundreds.

As a Canadian, I feel a poignant kinship with Tibetans. We Canadians, too, live adjacent to a huge superpower -- one that at any time could decide it wants our resources, as China did with Tibet, and could just roll over the border and help themselves.

As much as we have trouble defining just what Canadian culture is, I know that we would suffer and mourn it just as much as the Tibetans do if it was taken away from us.  (I'm not quite sure where we could possibly go to in exile to preserve it though - at least the Tibetans had India).

It is awful to watch the remnants of a once-magnificent culture being bullied out of existence.

Namaste.

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