Quotations of "Freedom in Exile- The autobiography of the Dalai Lama of Tibet"

Chapter Six Mr Nehru Regrets

P122
After my visit to China, and despite the many negtive impressions I have recieved, my attitue towards the Communists was still basically positive. Now, however, I began to see Chairman's words as being like a rainbow - beautiful, but without substance.

P123
It made me realized that the Chinese leadership was not truly Marxist, dedicated to a better world for all, but really highly nationalistic. Actually, these people were nothing but Chinese chauvinists posing as Communists: a collection of narrow-minded fanatics.

P128
One of my main discoveries about India at this point was that, although the banquets and receptions to which I was frequently invited were considerably less elaborate than those I had attended in China, the prevailing atomosphere of sincerity meant that there was an opportunity for genuine friendship to develop. This was in direct contrast to my experience in the People's Repulic, where the received opinion was that you can change people's minds by bullying them. I could now make comparisons and see for myself that this was faulty thinking. Only through the development of mutual respect, and in a spirit of truth, can friendship come about. By these means it is possible to move human minds, but never by force.

P133
"When men become desperate they consult the gods. And when god become desperate, they tell lies".


Chapter Seven Escape into Exile

P135
I laid great emphasis on the obligation of all Tibetans to deal honestly and justly with the Chinese authorities. I insisted that it was the duty of everyone to right wrongs whenever they saw them, no matter who had commited them. I also urged my people to adhere strictly to the principles of the Seventeen-Point 'Agreement'. I told them of my talks with Nehru and Chou En-lai and how, during the first week of Febrary that year, Chairman Mao himself had publicly acknowledged that Tibet was not yet ready for reform. Finally, I reminded them of the Chinese claim that they were in Tibet to help Tibetans. If any of the authorities failed to be co-operative, they were acting against Communist Party Policy. I added that others could be left to sing praises, but we, according to Chairman Mao's own directive, should be self-critical. At this, the Chinese present became clearly uncomfortable.


Chapter Nine 100,000 Refugees

P181
The results of these investigations were published in Geneva during August 1960. Once again, the Jurists entirely vindicated the Tibetans viewpoint: China, it reported, had violated sixteen articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and was guilty of genocide in Tibet.

P188
Instead, I told them that the future of Tibet depended on us refugees. If we wanted to preserve out cultures and way of life, the only way to do so was by building strong communities.


Chapter Ten A Wolf in Monk's Robe

P194
Otherwise, there is a danger of producing semi-educated children, who see the colourful opportunities of life but, because of their lack of education, are not equipped to grasp them. This can result in dissatisfaction and even greed.

P199
To me that was a wonderful example of democracy in action: though there was much conflict both within Parliament and without, when the moment came for her to leave(Indira Gandhi), she did so without fuss. I remember thinking the same about President Nixon.

The People's Republic of China presented a very different picture of domestic politices at this time. From the mid-1960s until Mao's death in 1976, the country, together with it colonies, endured a series of bloody and violent upheavals... It turned out that not only was this period of aimless madness(cultural revolution), but the behaviour of Chiang Ching, Mao's wife, resembled that of an Empress. At the same time, I realised that the Communist leaders, who at first I had thought of having a single mind inhabiting their different bodies, were all at each other's throat.

I became the focus of the Chinese Goverment's bile and was regularly denounced in Lhasa as someone who merely posed as a religious leader. In reality, the Chinese said, I was a thief, I murderer and a raptist. They also suggested that performed certain quite surprising sexual services for Mrs Gandhi!

P202
Today, I eat meat except on special occations required by my spiritual practice. The same is true for a number of Tibetans who followed my example and suffered a similar fate.

P206
One observation about animals I have is that, even as pets and despite having all facilities, they tend to run away, given the chance. This reinforces my belief that the desire for freedom is fundemental to all living beings.

P210
When the base finally became operational, the guerrillas harassed the Chinese on a number of occassions and once managed to destroy a convoy. It was this raid which captured the document recording the 87,000 deaths in Lhasa during the period March 1959-September 1960.

P211
The should therefore lay down their arms and themselves settle peacefully. The Tibetan struggle needed a long-term approach.

Afterwards, P.T.Takla told me that many of the men(guerrillas) felt that they had been betrayed - a few of their leaders actually cut their own throats rather than leave. I was distraught to hear this. Natually, I had had mixed feelings about appealing to the freedom fighters. It seemed wrong in a way to challenge such courage, such loyalty and such love for Tibet, though I knew in my heart that it was the right thing to do.


Chapter Eleven From East to West

P218
One thing I have noticed is an inclination for people(westerners) to think in terms of 'black and white' and 'either, or', which ignores the facts of interdependence and relativity. They have a tendency to lose sight of the grey areas which inevitably exist between two points of view.

P219
Very often, I am also asked to address groups of people. When this happens, my approach is threefold. Firstly, as a human being, I talk about what I have termed Universal Responsibility...Secondly, as a Buddhist monk I try to contribute what I can towards better harmony and understanding between differents religions...Finally, as a Tibetan, and furthermore as the Dalai Lama, I talk about my own country, people and culture whenever anymore shows interest in these matters. I do not consider those who support out cause to be "pro-Tibet". Instead, I consider them to be "Pro-Justice".

P222
'Politicians need religion even more than a hermit on retreat. If a hermit acts out of had motivation, he harms on one but himself. But if someone who can directly influence the whole society acts with bad motivation, then a great number of people will be adversely affected'. ...As far as I am concerned, and deed done with good motivation is a religious act. On the other hand, a gathering of people in a temple or church who do not have good motivation are not performing a religious act when they pray together.

P223
...during which Mr Heath(former UK PM) expressed his enthusiasm for Chinese successes in agriculture. he also said that I should realise that many changes have taken place in my homeland - particularly with regard to support for the Dalai Lama. In his opinion, it is fast vanishing, especially amongst the younger generation.... I told him that as far as I was aware, support for Dalai Lama amongst young people in Tibet was at its highest level ever and that my exile had united the Tibetan people in a way that had never been possible before.... I am highly impressed at the effectiveness of Chinese disinformation and deception even on such an experience person as he is.

P225
To say "I want to have sex with this person" is to express a desire which is not intellectually directed in the way that "I want to eradicate poverty in the world" is an intellectually directed desire. Furthermore, the gratification of sexual desire can only ever give temporary satisfation.


Chapter Twelve Of "Magic and Mystery"

P242
Great vigilance must be maintained at all times when dealing in areas about which we do not have great understanding. This, of course, is where science can help. After all, we consider things to be mysterious only when we do not understand them.

Furthermore, I am aware that not finding something does not mean that it does not exist. It only proves that the experiment was incapable of fingding it. (If I have a non-metallic object in my pocket which is not picked up by a metal detector, it does not mean that my pocket is empty).

Through mental training, we have developed techniques to do things which science cannot yet adequately explain. This, then, is the basis of the supposed "magic and mystery" of Tibetan Buddhism.


Chaper Thirteen The News from Tibet

P248
Despite the concrete understanding of clause thirteen of the seventeen-Point "Agreement" that the Chinese would "not arbitrarily take a needle or thread" from the Tibetans, they had ransacked the whole country. On top of this, through countless atrocities, they had shown a total disrespect for human rights. It seemed that to be the Chinese mind, perhaps because of the huge size of their own population, human life is considered to be a cheap commodity - and Tibentan lives to be of still less value.

P255
Unfortunately, their impresstion of the 'new' Tibet had been strongly negative. At the same time as being mobbed by tearful Tibetans wherever they went, they saw abundant evidence of the way that the Chinese authorities had ruthlessly and systematically tried to destroy our ancient culture. Moreover, they were regaled with numberless accounts of years of famine, mass starvation, public execution and gross and disgusting violations of human rights, the least of which included the abduction of children either into forced labour gangs or for 'education' in China, the imprisonment of innocent citizens, and the deaths of thousands of monks and nuns in concentration camps. It was a horrific litany, graphically illuminated by dozens of photographs of monasteries and nunneries reduced to piles of rubble, or turned into grain stores or factories or cattle pens.

P256
Another positive event for the first delegation was its meeting, in Peking, with Panchen Lama. He had been treated with great cruelty by the Chinese authorities and showed his five compatriots permanent marks on his body that had been inflicted during torture.

P257
True, the country's economy had been transformed and there was more of everything. Yet this was of zero benefit to the Tibetans...For example, there were now factories where there had been none before, but all that they produced went to China... The same was true of the hydro-electric power stations... As to agriculture, the Chinese had insisted that winter wheat be sown in place of the traditional barley crop. This was because the Chinese eat wheat wheat rather than barley. Consequently, thanks to new intensive farming methods, one or two bumper crops were produced - followed by years of famine... Regarding health care, it now became clear that there were indeed a considerable number of hospitals, just as the Chinese had said. But these practised open discrimination on behalf of the immigrant population. And whenever a Chinese required blood in a transfusion, this would be taken from Tibetan 'volunteers'... The only ones who really received proper schooling were the fifteen hundred or so most intellectually promising ones, who were forcibly sent to establishments in China, on the grounds that it would be foster 'unity'... For ordinary Tibetans, however, movement was impossible without permission. Granted, the rules had recently been relaxed somewhat, but very few could afford to take advantage of this... All in all, China's econimic programme for Tibet was itself a form of torture.

...the only songs allowed were political paeans sung to Chinese tunes。 Religion was banned. Thousands of monasteries and nunneries had been desecrated.

Indeed, many women were involuntarily forced into using birth control, as we now know form recent arrivals from Tibet who were discovered to have been fitted with crude copper intra-uterine devices.


Chapter Fourteen Initiatives for Peace

P273
Five-Point Peace Plan
1 The transformation of the whole of Tibet into a zone of peace
2 Abandonment of China's population transfer policy which threatens the very existence of the Tibetans as a people
3 Respect for the Tibetan peoples's fundamental human rights and democratic freedom
4 Restoration and protection of Tibet's natural environment and the abandonment of China's use of Tibet for the production of nuclear weapons and dumping of nuclear waste
5 Commencement of earnest negotiations on the future status of Tibet and of relations between Tibetan and Chines peoples.


Chapter Fifteen Universal Responsibility

P286
I felt that Tibet had lost a true freedom fighter(Panchen Lama). It cannot be denied that some Tibetans see him as a controversial character. Indeed, during the early 1950s, when he was still very young, I have a suspicion that, by siding with the Chinese, he thought he could use the situation to his own advantage. But his patriotism was real, I believe. And even though the Chinese used him as a puppet after releasing him from jail in 1978, he continued to oppose them until the end. Just before he died, he made a speech, reported by Xinhua, that was highly critical of the 'many mistakes' made in Tibet by the Chinese authorities. It was a courageous last act.

Chairman Mao once said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. He was only partly right: power that comes from the barrel of a gun can be effective only for a short time. In the end, people's love for truth, justice, freedom and democracy will triumph. No matter what governments do, the human spirit will always prevail.

The truth remails that, since the Chinese invasion, over a million Tibetans have died as a direct result of Peking's policies. When adopting its resolution on Tibet in 1965, the United Nations stated plainly that China's occupation of my homeland has been characterised by 'acts of murder, rape and arbitrary imprisonment; torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Tibetans on a large scale'.

Yet the persuit of Communism has been one of the greatest human experiments of all time, and I do not deny that I myself was very impressed with its ideology at first. The trouble was, as I soon discovered, that although Communism claims to serve 'the people' - for whom there are 'people's hotels', 'people's hospitals', and so on- 'the people' does not mean everyone, only those who hold views that are held by a mimority to be 'the people's views'.

To some people this may sound naive, but I would remind them that, no matter waht part of the world we come from, fundamentally we are all the same human beings. We all seek happiness and try to avoid suffering.


Chapter Sixteen Return to a Free Tibet?

For as long as space endures,
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I, too, abide
To dispel the misery of the world.