Can't Touch This!

I looked closely to figure out the deity depicted on the front of the amulet box: Was it Jetsun Dolma? - Hard to tell with only the head showing.

The Ga'u was probably as old as the hills with the holy image yellowed and weather-beaten. But Arya Tara would make sense. Placing your faith in her, and especially so in her green version, is said to effectively protect one from all kinds of obstacles and that's the whole purpose of a Tibetan protective amulet box after all.

While holding up the amulet box as I dusted my altar, fragments of an old conversation came to mind:

"What's this, Pala?"

"It's a Ga'u. I wore it for protection during the escape from Tibet."

"How did it protect you?"

"It has a holy content that protects the wearer against any harm. But Girls mustn't touch it."

"Why mustn't girls touch it?"

"Girls just mustn't touch it," was the laconic answer.

I must have been around seven or eight years old, just about starting to realise that humans come in two forms. An amulet box that loses its protective power when touched by a girl? Are girls so mighty they can disempower a Ga'u just at a touch? Innocent thoughts.

One day when no one was around I quietly approached the altar. The idea was too tempting. So I opened the glass cupboard and clandestinely poked the Ga'u sitting in a corner with one finger. After I had done what was forbidden, I expected something terrible to happen. But nothing happened for the longest time, neither to my dad whose protector was now wrecked, nor to me as some kind of divine punishment. Eventually, I concluded that the Ga'u must have been damaged. Soon I forgot about it and didn't think of "girls mustn't touch it" until much later when I stepped into a monastery in Tibet as an adult.

Many monasteries have a side-chapel housing so-called Dharmapalas or protector deities. Above the entrance are signs saying: "Ladies not allowed". Tibetans say it's because women are unclean and their presence would displease the Dharmapalas - or their jealous consorts to be precise. Only Tibetans can think of such an explanation. But most of the time there is no explanation at all. You just have to go with the flow, meaning you have to wait outside.

I was concerned what foreign tourists would think. "Women not allowed" could quickly slide into the same category as "Blacks not allowed" or "Jews not allowed". It could share the disdainful company with Apartheid and Anti-Semitism. Once in bad odour, it's hard to get rid of.

"Akhaa," I sighed, "I came from so far and now I am not allowed to go inside, adzeee, phanga-la!" The caretaker monk heard me. He had pity on me but still wouldn't let me enter. Instead he gave me the following word of advice: "Bumo, the Dharmapalas off limits in this monastery are on open display at the next monastery down the road. Just go there."

It was a well-meant insider's tip. It was also when I began to suspect that it's the monasteries which decide who displeases the Dharmapalas. My suspicion was reinforced during another occasion when I traveled in a group led by a Lama who "exceptionally authorised" women to enter a forbidden protector chapel. He simply overruled. All this seemed to suggest that barring women from entering certain parts of a monastery is probably just about putting on an air of great importance: "We have something so important here, that you cannot see it."

And there isn't anything to marvel that would justify the fuss in the first place. To all the ladies who have never seen a protector chapel from the inside and have been dying to see one: You haven't missed a thing! All you'd be able to find after stepping into what is usually a moldy, dark room are furiously looking statues drowned in loads of Khatas wrapped around them. Any ride through a tunnel of horror is more interesting. It's best not to even care about not being let in. It is most definitely specific monasteries in Tibet creating a fuss because in Tibetan monasteries abroad everyone can view Dharmapalas if they wanted to.

Only recently I learned the legendary Tibetan freedom fighters held similar superstitions about women's malignant and destructive powers. As they resisted the Chinese invader, many wore protective amulets. Stories of their lifesaving, bulletproof capacity abound. In "Histories Arrested", Carol McGrannahan writes that some Chinese soldiers deliberately dipped their bullets in women's menstrual blood to “override” the omnipotent armour. - No wonder we lost the war.

Behind my cousin's farm in the valley where my dad was born, rises a soft, forested hill. I always wanted to build a little house on its slopes. In the beginning my relatives smiled at the idea. I thought they were happy that I intended to come back and live with them. But with the years I learned that the hill was the home of a Shidag or local protector deity. Nobody in his right mind would build a house there, disturb the Shidag's peace and bring misfortune over oneself and the community. I bid farewell to the idea.

But when I was getting ready to join the others for a smoke offering at the very hill, my cousin pre-informed me that girls could only go up to a certain point and that the peak was off-limits. - Phew, what a busu dokpo Princess-And-The-Pea Shidag they had living behind their farm! But again I gave in out of considerations for local beliefs. After all I was an outsider. The last thing I wanted was for my relatives to get tired of that niece from abroad who keeps arguing with them about their outdated habits. And I had to grant them that in their eyes, there was no misogyny involved. They thought it's for the girls' own good.

There is something raw and wild about protector deities that strangely enough, I find fascinating I must say. Whereas the sophisticated construct of Buddhism for which Tibet has become a synonymous the world over, is an Indian import, protector deities are an autochthonous creation. Through Buddhism Tibetans were able to transcend the small, the local, the isolated and the strange. It has ennobled their culture by making it internationally compatible and respectable. Protector deities on the other hand are superstitious local relics of an ancient past. While Buddhism is the monks’ religion, making offerings to protector deities is the people’s religion. This is the Tibetan contribution grown under their own steam free from external influences. In other words, if anyone is unhappy with protector deities, we have no one to blame but our own genius!

I still see the five slightly haggard-looking Austrian climbers before me. They had dinner next to our table and my cousin whispered: "See those yang ren over there?" pointing at them discretely in Tibetan-style by pursing his lips and shoving forth the lower lip, "They're the ones who vanished at the sacred mountain!"

What had happened?

During a trek, these greenhorns disappeared from sight in plain daylight. That's what had happened.

The Chinese flew in a military helicopter and soldiers to search for them, but the Austrians remained lost for several days. When they miraculously reemerged by themselves, all they were able to explain was that the path between them and the rest of the group suddenly disappeared from view and then just as suddenly reappeared. To them it hadn't felt like days but hours. My cousin like other locals at our table, were convinced that the mountain Shidag had abducted the foreigners for intruding into his domain.

"Ré,ré,ré," I joked, "but after two nights, our Shidag discovered these guys didn’t understand Tibetan, so he kicks them out!" The Austrians had no clue why the people next to them were so jolly that evening. Yet humour couldn't disguise that something in us said protector deities are a force to reckon with. Even I felt a trace of doubt in the back of my head.

Girls are not supposed to touch it and here I am inheriting this thing, which now takes a seat on my altar. Eyeing the amulet box in my hands now, I'm actually all smiles. I wish my father could see me as a grown woman, with a profession, in an egalitarian relationship with a man I love, and two children we are raising together. I don't mind him anymore saying I mustn't touch it. It was the time. All these biased Tibetan stories used to bother the hell out of me. I used to be vocal about it and didn't leave out any opportunity to fight and argue against this kind of discrimination. But now it seems as if these are stories from another world. Because having to argue with someone over alleged female inferiority now feels as awkward as having to argue in all seriousness that the earth is flat: snows of yesteryear. But even when it seems like bygones, the question remains: How do you convince people of something they aren’t aware of, but they badly need?

A young man once asked the Lama how he could influence his non-Buddhist farming parents to stop making a living from raising animals for slaughter. What could he do so the parents avoid accumulating unwholesome karma? The Lama advised the young man not to mention "unwholesome karma. He said since the concept of the law of cause and effect was alien to his parents, their first reaction could well be disbelief followed by rejection - a dead-end in other words. Instead, he recommended the young man turn himself into a shining role model of a Buddhist so that the parents realise all by themselves what they do for a living is not good.

Perhaps this is also a valid approach for us Tibetan girls and our well-wishers? From my early experience with Tibetan youth and women's groups, girls who push too hard for women’s rights are quickly perceived as feisty and dogmatic to people caught unprepared. Once this unfortunate impression is created, we have the dead-end situation. In the Tibetan case, feminism is the alien concept provoking disbelief and rejection and society is the ignorant parents. Rather than debating then, perhaps we ladies could try to transform ourselves in to a peach of a girl: Outwardly non-threatening and gentle, inwardly dedicated to work towards change. How could it cross someone’s mind to slight such people?

Factually speaking, the situation of Tibetan women today is already fundamentally different from fifty years ago. More and more are overcoming their "bad" karma of being born into an allegedly inferior female body, even in Tibet. There is no longer any compelling reason to be born as a male when one can accomplish the same in a female body. More and more girls can afford to ignore the nonsense because they have an education and with it come choices. Not everyone is in this fortunate situation yet, but the trend is irreversible: girls are getting on track and sooner or later society will find itself before a fait accompli.

Sometimes when I look at myself however, I wonder whether the cultural prejudice sits deeper than I prefer and perhaps is also unintentionally internalized. Because after all these years, I am somehow still impressed with not being allowed touch it. I had to gather all my courage to open the amulet box in order to take a look at the so holy content forbidden to girls. What came to light were a tiny, well-preserved peacock's feather and a small heap of what I took to be soil crumbs wrapped in a piece of cloth.

From the Mind Training text "Peacock in the Poison Grove" which the Lama taught a while back, I deducted the feather stands for protection against all kinds of poison and dangers. The text uses the symbolism of the peacock, which is said to be immune against bites from poisonous snakes. I don't know how zoologically accurate that is but in a transferred Buddhist sense one's delusions rooted in egoism are the "poison". The peacock represents the power of Emptiness and Universal Compassion, which cuts through the delusions and destroy them.

What I naïvely mistook for soil crumbs were parts of a disintegrating Tsatsa, a small clay image of a Buddha or a saint. The Tibetan government handed them out to Tulkus and government officials on the eve of the Chinese invasion. And how did this exclusive gift end up in a regular guy's G'au and now sits on my altar in the West? It turned out the amulet box belonged to my uncle, my dad's Tulku-brother. He gave it to my father for protection amidst the turmoil. Lhasa was under heavy fire when they escaped. Those must have been crazy times. If only the Ga'u could speak!

Still unclear is the deity depicted at the front of the amulet box. Could it really be Jetsun Dolma? My little one refers to her as bumo sangye, that's "girl-Buddha". That would beat everything. Have a girl-Buddha on an amulet box that girls are not supposed to touch, hilarious!

Mountain Phoenix Over Tibet

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Emptiness And Empty Talk

Emptiness And Empty Talk

One of my Dharma buddies confided that she had a fall-out with her Lama. He walked out on her in a private conversation after she raised a point about “nuns’ unequal treatment in Tibetan Buddhism”.

I wanted to exclaim: “Welcome to the club! Welcome among the once-bitten-twice-shy-women-in-Tibetan-Buddhism!”

The girl asked what he thought about the restoration of the full ordination for Tibetan nuns which, depending on the story, either never made it to Tibet or was disrupted once it arrived there. The basic problem was that modern-day nuns in the Tibetan monastic system could not move beyond the novice stage (Getsul) to become fully ordained Gelongma (“Bikshuni”) and proceed in their studies like their male counterparts due to this procedural issue.

What’s the big deal?

I guess not being able to become a Gelongma as a nun is like not being allowed to move beyond high school as a girl in lay life - an outrage, in other words.

Some nuns found a work-around by going to China, Korea, Vietnam or some other Asian country where it’s still possible to receive full ordination. Only with this ordination can they hope to study the complete set of scriptures just like the monks. The nuns who do not go outside but decide to stay within their order live as eternal novices.

I don’t know whether my Dharma buddy was contemplating on becoming a nun but I knew her Lama was a modern and erudite person; kind and soft-spoken, leading an exemplarily pure life of a renounced monastic, trained to love all sentient beings without discrimination from childhood on, and intelligent enough that the irony of our traditional view “We Tibetans don’t have a gender problem; every woman has the possibility to be reborn as a man in her next life” was not lost on him.

She raised the topic because he seemed trustworthy and empathic enough to acknowledge the legitimacy and timeliness of the nuns’ cause. A Lama of his stature would never be against the restoration of the nuns’ full ordination and thereby deny equal opportunity for all members of the Sangha. My buddy for that matter was also a reasonable person, not a male-hating, frustrated Inji feminist who was up to breed discord among the Sangha, as some may perhaps suspect.

But although both Lama and student were down-to-earth people, they still didn’t see it the same way: The Lama basically said a disrupted transmission lineage – to nuns or whoever - could not be fixed just like that through an act of goodwill, a majority vote by the Sangha or a word of command by any Lama from the top. Only the Buddha himself would be in a position to restore the nuns’ full ordination, no one else had the power or legitimacy to do so. That was his final word on this topic.

I empathised with my friend and her disappointment: The answer basically made the issue unsolvable. This is real life: Where on earth should the Buddha come from all of a sudden and restore the nuns’ ordination? Please.

This was the sad end of her discussion and all I could think of as a reaction was to share my own disastrous “feminist incident” - misery loves company.

I had a showdown with a Tibetan Geshe not long ago – ironically about the same topic: nuns’ full ordination. The Geshe, who seemed merely happy that I attended Buddhism classes, jokingly suggested I’d become a nun so I could devote more time to study and practice. His well-intended comment didn’t go down well with me. I heard myself say: “I’d never become a nun because they cannot become fully ordained like the monks and are always in an inferior position, that’s not nice.”

The Geshe replied it was not discrimination but a historical development: The transmission was discontinued because there weren’t enough nuns to keep the order alive and only the Buddha (there you go again) could revive it.

The Geshe’s line was all too well known. It was the same as propounded by arch-conservative patriarchs like Samdong Rinpoche. Longtime Professor of Buddhism and a former Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile - himself an officially recognised reincarnated Lama or Tulku - Samdong Rinpoche’s line rejected the notion that the nuns’ full ordination was an equal rights’ issue. As propounded at international Buddhist conferences to help restore the nuns’ full ordination, this line reduced the concern to a mere technical problem that needed to be resolved within the Buddhist “code of conduct” (Vinaya) which he expounded so conservatively to the letter that the entire discussion degenerates into an unbearable technical debate delaying any pragmatic solution.

It was enough to make me weep.

This type of conservative thinking blocked the opening of Tibet and excluded the outside world in the past. And now it was blocking the opening of Tibetan Buddhism and excluding women. In my eyes, it was a tragedy of epic proportions. They were babbling about the importance of re-establishing the Gelongma ordination so the Tibetan Sangha would be complete. But their acts were obstructive. When you looked at proceedings from conferences about this topic, all they do is treat the concern as an academic debating exercise. 

The most worrying part though was that even modern, otherwise progressive Lamas, as my Dharma buddy’s example showed, could share this conservative attitude when it came to helping nuns gain an equal position in the Dharma. This was unsettling and showed just how much more persuading the nuns and their supporters had to do.

The Geshe and I argued back and forth for about 30 minutes with no winner, only ill feelings on both sides: He thought I was a foreign-bread Tibetan kid too heavily influenced by Inji girls who were out to breed discord (trukshin lang) under the pretext of equal rights (sic!) and I accused him and “the male-dominated Sangha” of sabotaging nuns equal rights by hiding behind the Buddha who is not here to take a position and twisting the law of cause and effect (“it’s the nuns fault if they have lost their transmission”). I even had the face to say something like: “Geshe-la, for someone who enjoys all the privileges of the system, it just doesn’t look good (lembo mindug) to tell those less fortunate that they have to be satisfied with their position.”

Old habits die hard. I pretty much emptied my entire arsenal of gender equality and Buddhist feminist arguments acquired over the last twenty years over the poor man’s head. I realized too late that I was unable to have such a conversation without my ego interfering. In hindsight I should have just shut up and smiled at the Geshe’s suggestion to become a nun.

How can we hope to improve the situation for women in Buddhist institutions, if talking about their inferior position and the cultural male bias - which we haven’t even mentioned - makes everything worse? Looking at my friend’s and my experience, direct verbal confrontation was not a good idea. It risked upsetting everyone including ourselves. But what would be a good way to approach this topic more effectively?

Even in the world outside the Dharma and the teacher-student relationship, Tibetan society has been slow to read the sign of the times: In other countries, government agencies and women’s organisations take up the gender topic and spearhead the push for equality and social change through education and policies. With every generation, people become more gender-neutral and fixed gender roles are starting to crumble.

In the Tibetan context, the public focus is on human rights abuses perpetrated by China and, as far as gender is concerned, on women-specific human rights’ abuses such as forced abortions and sterilisations or torture of nuns. In recent history, gender discrimination in our own rows has always been overridden by our political problem with China. So with no serious taker for the gender issue even in our times, the cultural male bias that sneaked into Buddhism unchecked for centuries is staining the Dharma more callously than ever - while the people and the world around us are becoming more gender-neutral day by day. This is the context within which the monastic representatives of Tibetan Buddhism teach today.

Instead of using the new situation to adapt, many try to preserve the old ways by using the Buddha as a scapegoat: They cite that he was against women entering the Sangha in the first place and use that as an argument to generally oppose women playing a bigger role in the Dharma.

But others say the only reason why the Buddha was not forthcoming in ordaining women in the beginning was because (Indian) society at the time was anti-egalitarian and the Buddha was skillfully taking social customs into consideration in order not to upset society. In other words, the Buddha’s action at the time was a “preliminary” advice, not a final stand.

Sure, we are all looking at the situation with our own preconceived ideas okay, but in the Buddha’s absence, we simply have to work with something. We can’t just say: “Oh, he’s not here, so we can’t do anything, we’re not authorised”. That’s so fatal. 

Personally, I find it hard to believe that the Buddha should have had any bias. I believe if he were among us today, he would give both nuns and monks equal rights so as to not upset society because societal gender norms have profoundly changed.

But the Tibetan monastic Sangha doesn’t seem to share this view. They prefer to believe that the Buddha classified women as lower, less capable and less worthy. Some even deny the validity that from a worldly aspect, nuns’ full ordination is an equal rights issue that needs to be resolved. Even the Dalai Lama, who is the only person I can think of who comes close to the historical Buddha, and who takes a laudably progressive position on this topic, can’t seem to make the Tibetan monastic community move in the right direction.

When your counterpart is mentally that rigid, no matter how much one values dialogue and consensus-building, it’s clear that you will look for other ways to move forward. That’s a very human reaction. So when nuns are given a hard time to become fully ordained in the Tibetan tradition, they will get ordained in other traditions - which they are already doing - or they will make their way outside monastic Buddhism, which they are also doing.

Especially outside Buddhist institutions, women seem to be on the advance: What was once the prerogative of aristocratic ladies and elite monks is available to any serious woman practitioner today. Every girl is free to study, meditate and practice at any level based on her interest and individual capacity irrespective of her social background. Whether girls use this new opportunity is up to the individual but there is nobody making restrictions. This is the advantage of our times. Maybe that’s also a reason why some nuns don’t go on about obtaining the full ordination any longer: They’ve figured out that there is another way outside the male-biased monastic system. No more waiting for other’s grace, you help yourselves, that’s the attitude, dear Anila-tso!

As for our personal situation, maybe we have to be realistic. For one, the Buddha did appear in the form of a male, that’s a historical fact. For another, many would probably agree that it is extremely difficult to come across a Lama who fulfills all the ten requirements of a suitable spiritual guide as outlined in the scriptures. Even meeting a Lama who fulfills only the minimum six, I am convinced, is very rare to encounter. So then when “gender-neutral outlook” is not part of such a spiritual guide’s skill-set, should we allow that to overshadow the teacher-student relationship?

Maybe turning away from a “realised master” because he has conservative gender views, is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater: The gender part we girls can figure out ourselves, for that we don’t need a Lama. But for the other part a Lama’s guidance is indispensable. This way we may be able to carve out a path for ourselves. In the patriarchic Tibetan world, the cleverer give in.

But unfortunately the general problem with the conservatism in Tibetan monastic institutions persists even if we find a personal arrangement.

Well then, if it’s so difficult for the monks to understand that the current practice is far from “normal” and if restoring the nuns’ full ordination is such a difficult problem to solve, why don’t the wise and compassionate ones among them just reincarnate as women in the meantime?

Taking female rebirths would be a genuine contribution towards gender equality. The advantage of this method is that the decision to reincarnate into whatever body is entirely at the personal discretion of the respective Lamas: No approval from an institution or the Buddha required! No more lame excuse to do what is necessary to prove that gender is irrelevant, ha!

Having more officially recognised female Tulkus would really help everyone to let go of their idée fixe that a Buddhist master “usually” comes back as a man. When you hear all this talk about remembering the kindness of the “mother” and regarding all sentient beings as your kind “mother” you wonder anyway why they haven’t chosen female bodies for the longest time.

… or maybe they have all along!?

We really do have plenty of female Tulkus but they all go unrecognised because society with its male fixation only looks for the ones in boys’ bodies - when I think about it, it can only be that! Lamas must reincarnate as girls just as often as they reincarnate as boys, because Lamas minds are trained to understand emptiness, move beyond duality. So there must be just as many female Tulkus as there are male Tulkus. The only reason why we don’t have more officially recognised female Tulkus is the people looking for reincarnations have a male-biased mindset. They have gender-jaundice and they don’t realise it. And when you tell them, they won’t accept it.

In this regard, the Dalai Lama’s occasional statements that he may come back as woman are really welcome. If only this isn’t one of his jokes! If only he dared to do it! Once the top shot among the monks shows that it’s practicable, the ice could break and those people who are in charge of identifying a Lama’s reincarnation would finally begin to look comprehensively through gender-neutral eyes.

It takes two - a boy and girl - to produce humans. Neither is “better”, both are indispensable: Only in a human form, it is said, does our mind-stream have a chance to work with Dharma at all. When mind has no gender and emptiness is beyond dualism, what is there left that would speak against reappearing as a girl?

Please Kundun and all other compassionate Lamas out there: Come back as girls in your next life! Teach us a powerful lesson so emptiness does not remain empty talk when it comes down to gender.

With reverence for the Buddhadharma
Mountain Phoenix

All written content on this blog is coyprighted. Please do not repost entire essays on your websites without seeking my prior written consent. 

7 Steps To Make The Tibetan Beauty Pageant More Successful

Every year the same drama. You bet it'll be the same in 2008: Huge effort just to get a handful of candidates together; another huge effort to get the winner listed in some international pageant; culmination: China spoils the broth, Miss Tibet withdraws refusing to run as Miss China-Tibet. Heartfelt Tashi Deleg to the winner? What a joke!

Dear fellow Tibetans, Shoenu-nam, I gave this some serious thought. I think the Miss Tibet pageant can be an enrichment for our culture. This is what I would to improve it if I were in Lobsang Wangyal’s shoes:

Step 1: Make the prize relevantRight now, the pageant is geared towards participants from India and Nepal. One what? Luck? Lakh? What’s that? How much? Rupees? Jowo Rombo (I really mean Jowo Rombo, not John Rambo), winners of beauty pageants in other countries receive modeling contracts, prizes that serve as a door-opener, something constructive the women can instrumentalise to get ahead in life and in the way they want. But just a bunch of something not even convertible into hard currency? Improve on the appeal of the prize, make it relevant.

Step 2: Drop the “Green Book” requirementAny person who is Tibetan by ethnicity and fulfils the requirements of a pageant should be able to participate. The Green Book requirement may seem like the politically correct thing to do. Fact is however, that many Tibetans abroad are foreign citizens and, for whatever reason, do not pay. If you want to increase participation in the pageant, drop this requirement. It’s obsolete. - Isn’t the pageant a private-sector undertaking, Lobsang-la? Applying for the pageant is not like applying for a post in the Dharamsala administration, right? So consider dropping it. Let’s not make this more bureaucratic than necessary.

Step 3: Move itConsider a more cosmopolitan venue for the pageant than Dharamsala. It’s like holding a beauty pageant in the Vatican. Where is the audience apart from a couple of "Sister Act" type monks and nuns? The conservatives are upset already claiming Miss Tibet “is not Tibetan culture”, why add oil to the fire by holding it right under their nose? Move it to a neutral place where you also have a decent audience.

Step 4: Be specific
“Miss Tibet” is misleading as the event is geared towards Tibetan women living abroad in India and Nepal. Specify. Make it “Miss Tibet Abroad” or “Miss Overseas Tibet” or “Miss Tibet India” or whatever. You understand where I’m coming from. This is not only common practice as in the example “Miss Taiwan USA”, it is also more accurate. Plus our candidate is less likely to irritate China in international beauty competitions.

Step 5: Exploit the potential
Something as glamorous as a beauty pageant would be so easy to market! The website and the entire promotion of this event could be so much more improved. If the organisers don’t have the know-how in-house, they should get professional marketing help from externals. Influence reputation, increase participation. Make the most out of it. Be creative!

Step 6: Stop mixing politics
All Miss Tibet give the same robot-like answer when asked what she would like to achieve during her year: “I – reba – really – reba – want to help create - reba – awareness about the Tibetan cause, reba”. - Good grief! As if we needed them to reconfirm all clichés about the intellectual capacity of women who participate in beauty pageants. Lobsang-la, why hasn’t anybody told these ladies that if all they want is spreading awareness about Tibet, they should join an NGO? Kuncho sum!

A beauty pageant is just that, a beauty pageant, all over the world, operated based on criteria specific to that industry. Stop using it as a platform to spread a political agenda for goodness sake. It’s shooting yourself in the foot. The winner has had enormous difficulty to participate in subsequent international competitions. Who can blame China when they claim “Miss Tibet” to be a political thing? It is! You allowed it to become that! If you want to be professional and if the winner of the pageant should be able to compete internationally, stop the political overtones.

Step 7: Be bold
And if China still has the face to ask our candidate to run as “Miss Tibet China” so be it. If I were Miss Tibet, I would go for it. I would look at it not as treason but as an act of pragmatism and courage. The Tibetans know my heart is in the right place (left that is). The Chinese will come to like me because I accept them. I will be in the unique position to look after my individual goals without ever compromising my commitment to my people. Of course I would also rather wear a tag that says “Miss Tibet” only. But sometimes you have to be flexible. For a patriot, it takes more guts to wear “Miss China Tibet” than to quit. That’s the way I see it. But then I would’nt qualify in the first place. Akha!

Mountain Phoenix




All written content on this blog is coyprighted. Please do not repost entire essays on your websites without seeking my prior written consent.