Tricycle | Awake in the World

Losar Tashi Delek! With Losar, the Tibetan New Year, celebrated this past Wednesday there is no better time to bring up a topic that has been sadly neglected on the Tricycle blog: Tibetan self-immolations. In the past year over twenty Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest Chinese government occupation and all that comes with it—"patriotic re-education," unmerited arrests, attacks on monasteries and nunneries, a ban on photos of the Dalai Lama...the sad list of human rights violations in Tibet is a long one. Phayul, a pro-Tibetan independence news outlet based in Delhi, reported on Wednesday that despite a general Tibetan sentiment to boycott Losar celebrations in tribute to the self-immolators, Chinese authorities in Tibet "issued orders requiring Tibetan officials and the general public to prepare song and dance routines for Losar." Nothing like forced merriment, huh? More »

The Monday blues have hit meditation month—at least they have for me. I spent the weekend researching Milarepa, the famous Tibetan poet-yogi, because of a journalism assignment. You know, this Milarepa...   ...the one who went through agony just to receive basic Buddhist teachings from Marpa, and then, when he got them, stayed in solitary meditation for years. When his food ran out, he ate nothing but the nettles that grew outside his cave (which is why he is often portrayed with green skin) until he became fully awakened. More »