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Book Review: Tibet on Fire

BY ROBERT THURMAN| MAY 11, 2016

Robert Thurman reviews Tsering
Woeser’s book “Tibet on Fire,” which explores immolations in Tibet
and includes cover art by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

The first recent self-immolation I know of occurred in 1997 in New
Delhi—the elderly Tibetan ex-monk Thupten Ngodrup immolated his body in protest after the Indian police broke up his hunger strike by dragging
him and other strikers off to receive intravenous force-feeding in a
hospital. His Holiness the Dalai Lama was on his way to the U.S. at the
time, but he got to the hospital where the bandage-mummified Ngodrup was
lying, barely conscious, in the process of dying from the burns. His
Holiness told me he whispered to Ngodrup, “Alright! You’ve made
your appeal for freedom, which we wish you hadn’t, but it’s done
now. But please, do not die now holding any hatred in your heart for
the Chinese. Focus on your compassion for all beings!” His Holiness
said that the dying man somehow made a nod of agreement and soon passed
away. The Dalai Lama went on to say that he was very worried about the
act. Again, when the more recent wave of immolations began in Tibet, the
Dalai Lama deplored them, saying they were tragic and not effective. But
he said he couldn’t condemn those who had done it but rather only pray
that the intentions behind their acts were based on compassion, not anger
and hatred.

Tibet on Fire

Self Immolations Against Chinese Rule

By Tsering Woeser; Cover art by Ai Weiwei Verso 2016, 128 pp., $16.95

In Tibet on Fire, Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan–Chinese resident of
Beijing, offers trenchant analysis of the phenomenon of self-immolation
as protest. The author, who has worked tirelessly on behalf of the
Tibetan people, is a being of great hope whose love encompasses the
suffering people on the Tibetan plateau. Her writing is itself an act of heroism, as she risks retaliation from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),
which is futilely attempting the ethnicide of the Tibetan “minority nationality.”

Woeser is helped in this book by the great artist Ai Weiwei, who
created the cover. In the acknowledgements, she quotes his strong
Twitter statement: “Tibet is the most serious test for today’s
China and for the international community’s standards of human rights
and justice. There is no dodging this test, and there is no getting
around it. And thus far, everyone should be disgraced and ashamed at
the results.”

Woeser’s main thesis in Tibet on Fire is that self-immolations are extraordinary acts of political protest—powerful, self-sacrificing
outcries to call the world’s attention to the unbearable level of
oppression crushing down on the Tibetan people by the CCP dictatorship. She defends the immolators against the spurious charges by CCP propagandists
that they are “terrorists” or neurotic fanatics manipulated into
their horrific acts by the “Dalai clique” to make negative propaganda against China. She refutes conclusively the CCP propaganda that China “liberated” Tibet, beneficially “developed” Tibet, and has made Tibetans happy members of the Chinese “motherland.” She vividly
describes the overwhelming oppression of the Chinese military occupation, industrial-strength colonial exploitation, environmental degradation,
cultural suppression, and virtual imprisonment of what the CCP leadership labels the “backward,” “seditious,” and “ungrateful” Tibetan people.

In the opening chapter, “Why Are Tibetans Self-Immolating?” Woeser
quotes Kirti Rinpoche, abbot in exile of the Kirti Monastery in Amdo
Province, in testimony before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of
the U.S. Congress: “There is no greater expression of their desperate opposition to the Chinese government than by resorting to the most powerful method of a nonviolent movement, which is by refraining from causing any
harm to the Chinese people and appealing to the Chinese government,
than by setting themselves on fire.” Woeser further elaborates
that “self-immolation is not suicide, and it is not a gesture of
despair. Rather, self-immolation is sacrifice for a greater cause and an attempt to press for change.”

Woeser offers insights that for many may be surprising. Tibetans in Tibet
are not, she points out, primarily seeking international support; rather,
these protests are intended to reinforce national identity and unity and express the spiritual strength of the Tibetan people. Tibetan independence
and preservation of the Tibetan language are central concerns. She also
makes clear that while self-immolation is certainly a form of protest
against the state, it is more than that—it is also meant to be understood
as a religious offering.

Woeser also chronicles in rich and moving detail the outrageous activities
of the CCP organs of propaganda media and police state enforcement,
showing how the party hard-line bureaucrats, some of whom she mentions by
name, are using the immolations as an excuse to crack down even harder
on Tibetans while also trying to prevent news of the “human freedom torches” from reaching the people of Tibet, China, and the larger world.

The most important point Woeser makes is that the blame for these tragic outcomes—150-plus human lives freely and painfully given away for
their cause—rests squarely on the oppressive policies and practices
of the CCP-controlled occupation apparatus. Buddhism is not causing it,
the Dalai Lama is not causing it, no clique or group is organizing it,
neurotic delusions are not causing it—the CCP-directed ecocide and
ethnicide, now even escalated into a classic colonialist genocide, is
the sole cause of these immolations.

In her conclusion, Woeser questions the very term “self-immolation,”
saying it makes people think of it as suicide, an act against the
self. She brilliantly articulates the point from which our understanding
of self-immolation must begin:

Self-immolators employ an extreme form of suffering, unbearable for the
average person, so as to embody the most powerful form of protest and
recapture their human dignity. …It is a pain that most cannot even bear
to imagine, much less experience. And while I certainly do not encourage
anyone to self-immolate, I do ask that we be brave enough to face the
reality of this act directly when it occurs. In doing so, we can see
the simultaneous heroism and tragedy of these acts, as protestors employ
their own bodies in their struggle against a colossal, tyrannical machine.

Within the Buddhist world, there are mixed reactions to the acts of these Tibetan heroes. Many, in shock, think such thoughts as It is just plain
awful, insane, un-Buddhist, a form of suicide, and even It is irreparably harmful to the Tibetan cause. Woeser indirectly responds to this way
of mentally looking away from the “reality of the act” by citing
the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, who defended the self-immolation of the Vietnamese monks in the sixties:

What the monks said in the letters they left before burning themselves
[was that they] aimed only at alarming, at moving the hearts of the
oppressors, and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering
endured then by the Vietnamese. To burn oneself by fire is to prove that
what one is saying is of the utmost importance… To express will by
burning oneself, therefore, is not to commit an act of destruction but
to perform an act of construction, i.e., to suffer and to die for the
sake of one’s people. This is not suicide.

Woeser doesn’t take this Buddhist appreciation of the heroic act
of self-immolation further, as her focus is on the element of protest
involved in the unprecedented Tibetan cases. In a way, she is constrained
from doing so, the same way His Holiness the Dalai Lama is.

In Buddhist history, there have been immolations resulting from both
sadness and joy. When Shakyamuni Buddha left his body in the act
of “total nirvana” (parinirvana), a number of the fully attained arhat–saints spontaneously combusted themselves in their grief at the
loss of the presence of the Buddha. Mahakashyapa had to exercise his
authority as successor head of the sangha to forbid others from doing
the same, as they were needed to collect the teachings and to help the
ongoing community. Then, in the Mahayana White Lotus Sutra, there is the
story of the mythic bodhisattva Bhaishajya Raja, who burned his body as a
lamp of offering to the Buddha who was his teacher, an act of pure joy and self-transcendence from which act he gains extraordinary accomplishments.

The Tibetan Buddhists, monks, nuns, lay men and women who have offered
their bodies to the flames are fully aware of these traditions. From
their perspective, they are not committing “suicide” (literally, “self-killing”) because they consider their “selves” to be more
than their bodies; by committing such heroic acts of generosity, they
are taking a huge evolutionary step of sending their subtle mindstream, samtana, (not their coarse personality mind) into a space of exalted
freedom, whence they can assume another, better body. In fact, the Tibetan expression for the act is, literally, “burning one’s body with fire”
or “offering one’s body in fire,” not “burning one’s self.”
This is of course very hard for materialists, communist or capitalist,
to understand; if one is convinced that the “self” is nothing but
the body, then voluntarily giving up the body in extreme pain can only
be considered masochistic suicide.

Kirti Rinpoche called such immolation “the most powerful method of a nonviolent movement.” Woeser’s book calls on us to realize just that
and not to hide from its power by clinging to some mental notion that deprecates the courage of these yogis and yoginis of fierce freedom.
In a world so given over to violence and destructive consumption, these immolators are the heroes and heroines who offer to us all the vision of
their determination that no one can conquer others, that harming another
is harming oneself, that domination of others is self-enslavement, and
that their loving nonviolence is ultimately more powerful than lethal
violence. Woeser’s marvelous book honors them beautifully—as does Ai Weiwei’s elegant cover, black with embossed names of the immolators in Tibetan letters and Tibetan thangka-style flames emerging from the word
Tibet. The physical book itself imparts a powerful experience.

In her conclusion to Tibet on Fire, Woeser leaves us with this: “Memories
are intertwined with these flames. The heroes who have sacrificed
themselves to the flames will remain with us as long as we cherish their memory. I join my hands in prayer for my compatriots who have committed
these painful acts of sacrifice. I hold them, their memories, and their aspirations in the deepest and most profound respect, now and forever.”

http://www.lionsroar.com/book-review-tibet-on-fire-2/

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