The Making of Tibet-A Sketch

By Lee Sun Org

hen Lee Sun has translated Laozis Dao De Jing into both
plain Chinese and English (Laozis Dodejing, ISBN9781462067237). She
is also self-taught on Daoism and Confucianism but had done studies and
discussions on Western philosophies and linguistics in Taiwan University,
Oxford University, and the University of California. She had also corresponded
with Sir Alfred Ayer (A. J. Ayer) and Sir Karl Popper for many decades.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479796656

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Lee Sun Org.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/23/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

113175

Contents

Preface By the Original Author (A Translation)

Foreword By the English Interpreter

The Original Chinese Book (Xikang Yange Kao)—Contents

Chapter One  Prologue of the Book Xikang Yange Kao (Translation from the Classical Chinese)

Chapter Two  At the Dawn of History (Partial Translation)

This book comes with An English Introductory Review of the Evolvement of Tibet from the Chinese Historical and Geographical Records of the Last Four Millennia, as well as Reviews of Tibet from Modern Religious, Philosophical, Sociological and Political Prospects

简述中国历史上记载四千年来西藏民族的演化

浅析西藏社会的政教合一的渊源与扩张

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

—Thomas Jefferson

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

—Aristotle

Know thyself.

—Delphi Oracle

The unexamined life is not worth living.

—Socrates

Religion is the opiate of the masses.

—Karl Marx

宗教是群众的陶醉麻癖剂

—列宁

You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

—Abraham Lincoln

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

—Karl Marx

Dedicate to the Memory of

Sir Karl R. Popper

The Author of

"The open Society and Its Enemies"开放社会

A Torch Bearer for the Greek Tradition of

Science and Humanism

Religion, in particular, should not be a substitute for dreams and wish fulfillment; it should resemble neither the holding of a ticket in a lottery, nor the holding of a policy of an insurance company. The historicist element in religion is an element of idolatry, of superstition.

(The Open Society And Its Enemies p.462)

I believe that wherever Plato considers religious matters in their relationships to politics, his political opportunism sweeps all other feelings aside. Thus Plato demands, in the Laws, the severest punishment even for honest and honorable people.

(The Open Society And Its Enemies p.140)

Only he who has been socioanalyzed or who has socioanalyzed himself, and who is free from his social complex, i.e. his social ideology, can attain to the highest synthesis of objective knowledge.

(The Open Society and Its Enemies, p.401)

Lamaism-Buddhism.jpg

西康 甘孜

Lamaism-Buddhism Temple in Ganzi (in Xikang) Sichuan, China)

Map of Xikang西康地图

Image6610%20copy.jpg

East of Tibet, North of Yunnan and South of Qinghai, between Sichuan, Tibet, Yunnan, Qinghai, and Gansu Provinces四川，西藏，云南，青海 和甘肃。Qinghai is heavily inhabited by Muslims.

Below: Topographic map of the Himalayas sliding down from the Tibetan plateau, at a height of 16,000 feet, to the Sichuan Basin, at a height of 1,000 feet.

113175-ORG1-layout.pdf

Dream map of the Tibetan independence map, the so-called Greater Tibet, inherited from the nineteenth century British imperialists and the thirteenth Dalai Lama: an artificial disruption of documented world history and geography.

Image6622.JPG

Vast areas of China for four millennia were annexed through the grandiose daydream plot, conspired by British imperialists and the thirteenth Dalai Lama. They first attempted in the early twentieth century to browbeat the young Republic of China to accept. It is also the blueprint for the Tibetan independence or the Free Tibet Movements by Friends of Tibet, whose real identity and underlying motive require to provide further clarifications and analysis because their knowledge of Tibet’s origin, history, religion, and evolvement was inadequate to support their claims.

The Making of Tibet 西康沿革考

中国历史上对西藏渊源的简述

Based on the Chinese Historical-Geographical Records of the Last Four Millennia

Insets 附图

Map of Xikang西康地图

Old Tibetan Independence Dream Map

New Tibetan Independence Dream Map

Part 1

The English Introduction

A.   My Ancestral Land Lies Next to Tibet: Part of the Sichuan Basin Shadowed by the Himalayas.

B.   About the Background of This Book—The Evolvement of Tibet and Its Neighboring Chinese Region

C.   A Brief Summary of My Father’s Book

a.   About the History of Tibet

b.   About the Geographical Spread of Tibetans

D.   Two Authors Responsible for the Completion of Data for This Book Were Private Chinese Citizens Working for Themselves

E.   More Details about That Short-lived Xikang Province and Its Relevance to Xizang (a.k.a. Tibet) and Its Tibetan Residents

F.   The Living Buddha Mythologization: Reformer Thangtong Gyelpo and His Fighting Off Primitive Bon Religion. His Two Disciples Were Later Mythologized as Living Buddha¹—Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama with the Help of Chinese Politicians

a.   Buddhism and Bon Religion in Tibet and The Tibetan Book of the Dead

b.   Two Innovators of Tibetan Buddhism Had Tried to Guide Its Practice Back to the Original Buddhism

c.   How the Titles of Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama Were Launched. The Ordainment of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama in 1940.

d.   An Examination of the Reincarnation and History of Its Political Upholding Process

e.   Spiritual Pursuit and Earthly Existence: Analysis of the Reason Saint Thangtong Gyelpo 宗格巴 (AD 1357-1419) Left His Flocks in order to Further His Personal Spiritual Pursuit

G.   Religion Should Be Separated from Politics—Even If There Is a Thin Line between Them

a.   Religion and Politics in Modern Society

b.   Buddhism Examined from Scientific and Philosophical Prospects

c.   Know thyself—The First Step to Buddhism: Self-reflection

112

d.   The Epistemology (the Theory of Knowing) in Buddhism—The Net-Consciousness-Only Theory唯识论

e.   More about The Tibetan Book of the Dead

H.   Conclusion: A Demythologization of Lamaism for a Brave New World

a.   Time to Disentangle the Intertwining of Religion and Politics, Particularly Those Stagnant Religious Practices That Hold Back the Progress of Science and Humanities

b.   First the Chinese Qing Government, Then the Politicians of the West, Are Instrumental for Strengthening the Policy of Intertwining Politics with Religion in Tibet—A Faux Pas

c.   Self-sufficiency, Self-support, and Self-dependence

d.   Proper Universal Education Could Lead to the Opening of the Closed Society: Free Tibet from Its Thousand Years’ Dependence on the Closed Society

e.   Humanism, Individualism, and Democracy for a New and Advanced Tibet

f.   Unexamined Public/Political Life Is Not Worth Living; Know Thyself as a Building Block for the Social Cohesion—for All the People

g.   Why Politics Historically Weighed So Much in Tibetans’ Religious Life, Especially After the Sixteenth Century When the Qing Chinese Created an Official Full-fledged Government and Army in This Land

h.   Chinese Nationalism May Be Awakened and Fanned by the Issue of Tibetan Independence

i.   Freedom of Religion—Tibetan Style, Excluding Other Religions

j.   Intelligent Directions for Freeing Tibet

K.   Chinese Summary of the English Introduction of This Book

Part 2

西康沿革考

(中国历史上对西藏渊源的简述)

The Original Chinese Book

页一 到 页一四二 (bp. 7-148 U.S. edition)

(for example, 页五四 = bp. 75, 页五五 =bp. 76 etc)*

*bp. indicates the original Chinese book page number

The Evolvement of Tibet 西康沿革考

中国历史上对西藏渊源的简述

Based on the Chinese Historical-Geographical Documentations of the Last Four Millennia

Preface By the Original Author (A Translation)

Xikang (western Sichuan region) is the pivoting region of the western frontier of China. It lies in the middle of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan Provinces. Once this region is disturbed (invaded), the peace of all these five provinces will be shaken. For this reason, its importance in national defense is equally important with the northeast provinces—Manchuria.

However, as the area is inadequately developed, its importance was normally ignored by Chinese people. The situation of today’s Xikang is similar to that of the northeast Region (Manchuria) thirty years ago.² If we similarly allow foreigners to touch and to occupy it, Xikang will certainly suffer from the same misfortune like that of the northeast region. We certainly should carry on some preemptive measure to prevent this to happen once more.

I remember that my father Chen Shutao responded to China’s failed negotiation with British and Indians in the Simla Conference³ by lamenting,

"The super powers could manage to be aggressive enough to annex the weaker nation’s territory, yet the aggression is getting so outlandish that they are even trying to possess and alter our history. Xikang⁴ and its neighboring areas has had being been part of China since the beginning of the Chinese history. I hope you will continue collect evidences to further prove it in details."

When I last saw him (in 1925), my father handed down all his handwritten copies of collected documentations of historical and geographical data to me (wanting me to continue his task).

After that, for the next decade, I took various jobs (as teacher and journalist) overseas (in Indonesia and Australia) and busily traveled (around Southeast Asia and Europe). His collection was preserved with my possessions all the time, yet I do not have spare time to go through them. When China suffered from Japan’s treacherous stealth attack on September 18 (Nine Eighteen),⁵ I returned to China from Vietnam. Under this circumstance, I especially realized the importance of national defense of the southwestern part of China. Accordingly, this spring, I began to manage to allocate some of my spare time in order to start writing this book. However, I am just a temporary visitor (in Nanking); all I have are just my father’s handwritten notes and a few historical books he had given me (when I was in Yunnan Province with him). Furthermore, most of the additional reference materials I collected were from local libraries. Since I am due to take my next overseas assignment (to the United States), I have been pressed for time.⁶ In my haste, I finished this succinct small book. Inevitably, my research and work (collection and compilation) were constrained in that I may have involuntarily omitted some useful data.

Notwithstanding, my purpose of writing this book is, as the proverb says, To throw out the brick in the pot with the hope of attracting jade into this collection. I wish to remind my countrymen that they must pay more attention to border areas and devote more time to do research on what was historically China. By doing so, they could lend a helping hand to the country when it must (make extra effort to) assert its sovereignty, in politics and diplomacy (under the pressure of imperialists).

Chen Zhiming of Xichang

On December 15, 1932, in the Capital (Nanking, China)

Foreword By the

English Interpreter

There are so many experts on Tibet nowadays, especially in the West, particularly with the ever-prospering high-tech-aided media. Nevertheless, most talks tend to focus on a single individual, the star (czar) or poster boy of Tibet—Dalai Lama, who is being called the spiritual leader and warrior of Tibetan people. Nevertheless, those catch words have already conveyed a great deal of misinformation—inadequate or twisted. The common sense shared by the world on Tibet is shaped by such poorly founded and easy-to-catch information as well. It does not take too much for self-appointed activist to claim expertise and shout out weighty slogans, that is, Dalai Lama is a saint and spiritual god of Tibet. The fact is that, on equal footing, legally and religiously, with the fourteenth Dalai Lama, there has always been another lama in Tibet. His name is Panchen Lama, whose existence has been overshadowed overwhelmingly to obliteration by the celebrity Dalai Lama. Nevertheless, the right pathway for those who truthfully care about Tibet should get facts straight about Tibet—starting as early as thirteenth century BC. To say the least, one should respect its history instead of treating it like inferior people who need the charity from whimsical, or not sufficiently sincere, Western activists.

Nowadays, the world is becoming more and more a stage. More and more people are focusing their attention on the notoriousness, for example, the sound of fury, of activism, and celebrities have not only drown the silent majority but also wiped out their significance. Accordingly, the social animals, men and women strive to be impressionable players for existence, in any form of theaters that brought in publicity and financial gains. Accordingly, these savvy performers have been followed inadvertently and unreflectively by innocent audiences, who are usually lesser performers but impressionable. Consequently, the better performers managed to become leaders of the mass—the silent majority through their acting skills. Their notoriety, through the attention-grabbing mass media, overwhelms over other innocent and trusting bystanders. With the modern technology of communication, tongue-in-cheek-type information travels widely fast. We surf well on this information age, especially if they are media friendly, regardless whether their truthfulness are but skin deep or they speak torn out-of-context partial truth.

The purpose of this English introduction is about the necessity of a straightforward and honest discernment of imagination (of Free Tibet activists) and reality (historical facts) in handling issues about Tibet. Even though there are Tibetans whose ancestors had left behind the hardship-ridden Tibet to emigrate to live in more prosperous areas of China, including my ancestral land in Sichuan, they are the minority of minority inhabitants in that region. There are far more other ethnic people living there, for example, Han, Zhuang, and Miao, as well as to the West, yet it is utterly irrational to call the historical Chinese territory Greater Tibet just because there are Tibetans and their temples within it. We’ve never included in the State of California the Greater Mexican Baja because dissimilarities of two regions far surpass the similarities immigrants from the South have had brought with them to the area. What’s good about Mexican emigrants to the United States is that they have particularly shunned away from influencing state politics and converting people with their religion. Similar to Tibetans’ propaganda, since there are so many people of Mexican origin in California, California could be described as part of the Greater Mexico? Mexicans there could get away from observing laws of the United States.

Having been an American citizen for more than four decades, I am pretty sensitive to this violation of my human rights, particularly of my Chinese heritage rights,⁷ because this almost mindless Tibetan independence or the Free Tibet Movement is proclaiming my ancestral place part of the Greater Tibet. This coarse course of distortion has generated anger of a person like me involved. People with the conviction that there is a politically and historically justified Greater Tibet are gullible with hearsay; they are seriously ignorant of the interwoven social-political history of Tibet and China. The historical fact was that it was during the term of Kublai Khan (a Mongolian Chinese) that Tibet was accessed as part of China, and the Manchurian Chinese emperors had solidified the control by reaffirming and developing the reincarnation-based leadership-succession lama system.

The treaties forced on Chinese in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the British were intended to carry out, successful only on paper though, an imperialist bullish annexation of my ancestral land, which was once called Xikang and called Kham by Western activists for the Tibetan independence. Those people in the West, who are very well versed in English and the English version of the history of India,⁸ are following the steps of their bygone glorious bullying imperialist forerunners robotically and unreflectively. The problem is they know neither themselves nor Tibet. My people know much more about Tibet because we had close encounters with them for many millennia.

When it comes to the number of populations among non-Han Chinese ethnics, the following statistics show that ethnic Tibetans rank number eighth:⁹

Zhuang (壮族 1617.88k)

Manchurians (满族 1068.23k)

Muslims (回族 981.68k)*

Miao (苗族 894.01k)

Wevir (维吾尔族 839.94k, also Muslims)*

Tujia (土家族 802.81)

Yi (彝族 776.23k some live in Tibet)

Mongolians (蒙古族 581.39k)

Tibetans (藏族 541.60k)

In addition to Han, other minority ethnics who have lived closely or mingled with or surrounded Tibetans are Zhuang, Tujia, and Yi; their neighbors have far greater groups of people as well. The Zhuang ethnics has 1,617.88k people. Miao ethnics consists of 894.01k people. And the back-to-back adjoining neighbor, Yi ethnics, consists of 776.23k people. Although Tibetan ethnics consists of only 541.60k people, it ranks eighth at the bottom at this chart. Then there are Yi ethnics, which consist most of the descendents of the very original insurgent people of that area—Xinan Yi (southwest non-Han).¹⁰ Yi people have a highly developed sun-based calendar, which demarcated a year into ten months. They also have created their own self-contained comprehensive language, one of the six oldest languages in the world. Its unique written system could be traced back to their rock paintings.¹¹ Way back in the second century BC, this language was mentioned in Chinese history books. Many Chinese classics had been translated into the Yi language as well. This also shows that the Yi language is self-sufficient and rich. They also have a wise motto—Knowledge is food; knowledge is water; knowledge is life. It is reminiscent of the early aphorism that propelled the births of philosophy, science, and humanities. If they follow this dictum, they surely will not be trapped in the vicious circle of ignorance and superstition. These original innate culture and people of the prehistoric Tibet, that is, the southwest region of China, seem to deserve much more attention by both Chinese and Westerners; their independence would mean much more than the Lamaism-influenced Tibet. They have, in the Yi language, their own poets as well as an abundant documentation of their own history.¹² The other factor might be Yi people are self-content people. Their music employed sophisticated use of string instruments. Perhaps this rich culture and civilization is innately healthy that it has never been contaminated by the naked Bon religion as well as the well-dressed overblown Lamaism.

However, exceeding and surpassing all their neighbors, Tibetans alike have emitted such sound of fury against China, for nothing but the restoration of Dalai Lama’s status quo of religious monarch. In other words, back to their ruling class’s happy days to enslave and ride on top of people. Chinese governments since the tenth century have been pampering this unnatural and closed society by providing free benefits in many capacities. Those privileged beneficiaries of that closed society have managed arousing much bustle, through the maze of farces, globally for the restoration of their unearned privileges. It all derived from the perceivers’ mixture of their subjectivity, that is, speculation based on their limited knowledge and China-bashing disposition. It is particularly so under the leadership of the traditional aggressive culture of the Dalai Lama Branch (Sect)—their public relations deployments.¹³ Their loud baby crying, seeking more additional substantially privileges, like extra aids, extra freedom, and administrative independence of anarchists (as they presented themselves in kind of disguise), has become a propelling force to make them visible and irresistible. Will they thus allow their follower more religious freedom as well as improvement of life to catch up with other Buddhist countries? The religious freedom they seek covertly is for the exclusiveness of a kind of tilted Buddhism, excluding even Buddhism practiced outside Tibet, not to mention the progressive Christianity of the last two millennia.¹⁴ All the other aforementioned ethnics have practiced the type of Buddhism that has been universally practiced in Asia, that is, from Korea through Japan down to Sri Lanka; their monks did not interface with their Tibetan counterparts. Furthermore, there are also people of other faiths living among them, for example, Catholics, Protestants, and Daoists, nor had they corroborate the reincarnation talk with the original Buddhist scriptures. Even present Dalai’s interface with the outside world is hardly of religious nature but political and entertainment—like road shows.¹⁵ That is a bow down to substantial illusions—show business. What substance is the footing of Ceremonies he performed—the mockery incarnation, which was torn out of context of the original painstaking Buddhist scripture? Furthermore, all other ethnics in China are much more productive people. One thing that is clear is that all other ethnics are practicing Buddhism without any likeness of hang-ups of the Bon religion as well as having religious freedom to choose other religions and not incorporating their primordial religious beliefs into Buddhism. Lama’s dogmatic political forces are particularly outstanding; its importance was asserted through the religious organization’s political power, the fusion of organized religion (church) and the state, for example, the historical Dalai Lama Branch (or Sect). A reminder of the traditional role Bon religion played out in the Tibetan society. It is a ridiculous situation forced upon perceptions of people, like Chinese Mongolian and Manchurian emperors, through political maneuvering. Through political theater, facts could be misled and distorted through make-believe.

The main figures, who first drew Westerners to be more seriously interesting in Tibet by launching and propelling the Independent Greater Tibet issue, were two overzealous imperialist journalistically military men in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the Great Britain. These two very late coming reporters for Tibetology, Charles Bell and Joseph Youngblood, were essentially in the business of seeking political advancement through journalism and notoriety rather than doing scholarly research for the sake of advancement of knowledge. They were under the influence of their blind political ambition. Consequently, they wronged China through their intermingling dirty politics with clear scholarships. Naturally, their expertise on Tibet, which was the name Westerners unknowingly derived from its old derogative Chinese name