Asking a question and answering it yourself is a rhetorical device known to the ancient Greeks as hypophora. To be effective the answer should follow the question smoothly, perhaps with a well-timed pause in between to heighten the effect. For example: “You ask, what is our aim? (pause) I can answer in one word: It …
Some Updates on Rakra Rimpoche Obituary
A number of readers have posted comments requesting information on Rakra Rimpoche’s writings and poetry. Some of his books are available at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA), but many of his shorter works and poems are out of print and unavailable. His heirs have put together a project to publish his collected …
Poet, Artist, Scholar, Teacher and Reluctant Rimpoche
. Rakra Thubten Choedhar (1925-2012), In Memorium. The First National Conference of Tibetan Writers took place in Dharamshala in 1995 (March 15-17). Hosted by the Amnye Machen Institute (AMI), sixty-two writers and other delegates from India, Nepal, Switzerland, UK and USA took part in this first ever gathering of its kind in the Tibetan world. …
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Middle Way Economics 101
. One of the more depressing things about being a spokesperson for the Rangzen cause, even in the unofficial “of sorts” way that I am, is being obliged to participate in the occasional Middle Way Approach (MWA) vs Rangzen debate, organized by some SFT or TYC chapter or the other. I am not a good …
Gateway to Lhasa
In my post “Lhasa: Eternal City 2”, I mentioned how the destruction of the Drago Kaling Stupas, the Gateway to Lhasa, had inspired the first “protest” song in the Tibetan freedom movement. I requested readers to help me locate the original song sung by Dadon la. Two readers, Tenzin la (in exile) and another person …
Rangzen in Your Heart?
During the Dalai Lama’s recent visit to the United States he met a group of Tibetan students in Madison, Wisconsin. One of them asked a question that, to put it mildly, made him very upset. The student stumbled over his words and was generally so awkward that it seemed to me he had been set-up …
Lhasa, Eternal City (2)
1980-2000 The next phase of Communist China’s destruction of Lhasa came innocuously enough with Deng Xiaoping’s “Liberalization”, starting from the turn of the eighties. In the groundbreaking cartographic study published by the Amnye Machen Institute, Map and Index of Lhasa City by Christophe Besuchet, a more specific time period is provided in the introduction. “The …
Lhasa, Eternal City (1)
. Tsering Woeser-la’s recent clarion call ““Our Lhasa is on the Verge of Destruction! Please, Save Lhasa!”, stirred me to undertake this modest history project. I thought it would be worthwhile to provide, as aide mémoire, brief overviews of the different periods in the destruction of the Holy City, which began when the Red Army …
Reading Jn in a Banakshol Teahouse
. Its not every day that you can make both your enemies and your friends happy with the same blog post, but I have something special here that I think will do do the job. It was sent to me by a friend who discovered it on a website in Tibet: Sangdhor.com . My detractors …
Highest Mountains to Lowest Gutters
In a somewhat lame effort to divert attention away from the widening discussions on the Dharamshala instigated attacks on TYC and Chushigangdruk, some on the religious right have been circulating this photograph of me taken at Camp Hale, Colorado in 2010, where a commemorative plaque was being dedicated to the memory of the 300 Tibetan …
