Chinas aggression against Buddhism: Tibet is only part of the story

Chinas aggression against Buddhism: Tibet is only part of the story

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During the running of the Olympic torch last year, for the Beijing games, the Chinese secret police and military cleared all the areas of populated Tibet, including Lhasa, of any possible dissenters, in a political attempt to hide what is really going on from the world.

CBS News Reported:

"China blanketed restive Tibetan areas Thursday with a huge buildup of troops, turning small towns across a wide swath of western China into armed encampments.

Beijing acknowledged that last week's anti-government protests had spread far beyond Tibet's borders and that police opened fire on protesters. It warned foreign tourists and journalists to stay away from a huge expanse of territory across four provinces".

However, Tibet is just a small part of what the Communists have done to traditional Chinese Buddhism. Over the last few years, China has extended its control over the information coming to its population through the internet by outright blocking and banning some websites, such as youtube and any pro-Tibetan sites. China put on a face of reform to the West, celebrating its so called new freedoms of personal liberties, speech and press, yet, its monitoring and manipulation on what news the population receives has exploded to some new 'Orwellian' level.

China has some 600 million practicing Buddhists or Buddhist/Taoist mix, yet all gatherings, teachings and congregations are still mostly prohibited from public view unless sanctioned, ie controlled by the Communist Party for propaganda purposes. It is an awful shame, as many Chinese Buddhists are responsible for countless great literally dharma writings and the formation of several different Mahayana sects and schools of practice. Buddhist traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation, from village to village, and much of what has survived to this day has made its way through China at one time or another. Over the past 2,000 years, the influence of Chinese teachers has had a direct influence in the spreading of Buddhism to Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia and Central Asia.

I do think there is a move within China to have some real reform, some real movement towards personal freedoms, we in the West take for granted. Ironically, it is China's quest for economic gain that has exposed this festering sore of oppression and control. Will its desire for monetary gain outweigh the desire to control the spiritual thought of its population? I don't know, but sooner or later, this emerging Chinese middle class will come to the stark realization that they've been living in a box, sealed by political ideology.

I believe that it is a monumental tragedy that in this modern age of communication and information sharing, there still exists such oppression on such an enormous scale. China's problems are not that much different than what is seen currently in Burma, some parts of Vietnam and North Korea. As progressives in the west, we must not abandon these ancient cultures, for whom