Someone asked me the question why it is that many people claim they have a lack of creativity or artistic impulse. I responded the following:

I believe creativity comes from somewhere inside ourselves - that same "inside" that people who meditate try to get into contact with.
Hence, to get better contact with our creativity, we need to get closer to ourselves, to the core of our being. The current rationalised society may well have had an influence in bringing people further away from that core.

Too much to do! I would:
- Meditate all day;
- Work in the garden;
- Finish translating my first book;
- Finish writing my second book;
- Pick up studying Indonesian again;
- Start playing the piano again;
- Go out and take lots of photographs;
- Be alone, for my partner still has to go to work :-(

 

I have just come back from three weeks in China and spent some of that period in provinces that are close to Tibet (e.g. Sichuan, Yunnan). In those provinces, there is the influence of Tibetans that live there and this fact sparked my renewed interest in Tibet and its history.

A must-read book about Tibet's history that I found is called "The Snow Leopard and the Dragon" by Melvyn C. Goldstein, Professor on Tibetan history. It opened my eyes for a series of facts that have gotten snowed under in the propaganda-wars of Tibetans living in exile and the Chinese government. So what follows are my conclusions after reading this book and others and having been in China myself.

In the first place, Tibet has a long history of being politically dependent by other nations: first it was the Mongols who had a strong say in the political ruling of the country, then it was the (Mongol-imposed) Chinese Qing dynasty that always had representatives in Tibet's political system. Only when the Qing dynasty fell in the early 20th century and there was an effective power-vacuum in China until the Communists under Mao took over, did the Tibetans have some time to decide on things themselves.

What struck me more was the fact that until the middle of the 20th century, Tibet's society was effectively a feudalistic state where an aristocratic elite ruled people that were effectively living in a form of serfdom or slavery. The Tibetan society was, for western standards, medieval, given that it was based on a traditional form of Buddhism that had remained the same for centuries.

When Mao took over China, he basically continued marching into Tibet in 1950 - in his words to "liberate" them from the remainders of the "reactionary" government that was there still from the Imperial times. The Tibetans had no army or defence strategy whatsoever to oppose the Chinese forces, so were basically overrun and obviously felt invaded. The international community was not very interested in opposing China at the time in order not to antagonise them, so Tibet was effectively left alone.

What followed afterwards in Tibet is very much in line with what happened everywhere in China: the Great Leap Forward mismanaged agriculture and led to famine in all of China. The Cultural Revolution destroyed all culture in China. These effects were not unique to Tibet, but led to disasters all over China. Only after Mao died, both in Tibet and in the rest of China, religious and cultural expressions were allowed again. Actually, nowadays there are lots and lots of temples in full function all over China and I have seen no obvious signs of restrictions in cultural or religious expression. In fact, China is a much more westernised country than I expected, with KFCs on every corner of the street and very good infrastructure.

So what is the issue with Tibet? There is a couple:

* Tibet is flooded with Chinese workers who have been introduced to modernise its society. Given the feudalistic state of it before 1950, modernisation was long overdue. However, due to the great number of Chinese working in Tibet, the Tibetans feel overwhelmed and outnumbered and fear for their culture and religion.

* Uprisings in Tibet, some of which were supported by the US, have been hit down by the Chinese police and army very brutally - this is, by the way, no different than what happened recently in Urumqi in Inner Mongolia. Claims of "genocide" by some are exaggerated, though.

* The Chinese government is never going to give up Tibet, not because there is anything to get there in an economic sense, but because it has become a prestige issue now.

* The Dalai Lama and other Tibetans in exile use a different definition of "Tibet" than the Chinese, the former including parts of e.g Sichuan that have in majority Tibetans living in it. This semantic issue needs to be overcome in order for negotiations about Tibet's future

* Both sides in the conflict have suggested various agreements in the past that were subsequently rejected by the other party. There seems to be little flexibility on either side to move to a consensus.

* Both sides in the conflict seem to be biding their time: the Chinese may just be waiting for the Dalai Lama to die, which starts a period of at least 15 years in which his reincarnation is to be found and accepted by the Tibetans as their leader. The Tibetans are supposedly waiting for Communism (or its current watered-down implementation) in China to disappear, which seems to be taking even longer.

* The international community has been lame trying to find a solution, given that China is economically interesting, so needs to be befriended and Tibet in economically uninteresting, hence the West does not care.

So what is a way forward for Tibet?

It seems unavoidable to me that Tibet will remain part of China for the foreseeable future. Not only because China is never going to agree to split it off, but also because I have not seen any plans from the Tibetan side to build a modern society that does not fall back into the medieval social practices from before 1950. Furthermore, I believe theocratic politics is not the way forward: a Buddhist theocracy cannot fulfil contemporary demands of society, similarly to how Islamic theocracies cannot meet demands of modern society. The one good thing China has done is modernise Tibet's society to bring it into the 20th/21st century and I cannot imagine that the people of Tibet want to go back to the middle ages. What needs to be ensured if Tibet remains part of China, though, is that the Tibetans get fuller authority to express their religion, culture and use their language at schools and elsewhere. This is already partially the case, but the influx of Chinese people into Tibet risks marginalising the original Tibetan people and their culture.

So I believe it is a matter of give-and-take: an independent Tibet is a dream that has historically hardly ever been reality, so seems futile to pursue. Instead, a generous form of autonomy within the overall Chinese political system, with guarantees from China with respect to preservation of language, religion and culture, is the best Tibetans can hope for. At the same time, Tibet should embrace modern times and find a place for those cultural aspects in a society that is part of the 21st century. Propaganda wars are not going to help there, but making concrete plans and reopening realistic negotiations with the other party in the conflict are.

Enlightenment is nothing but the realisation of our true nature: that fact that all that we are and all that exists is pure consciousness.
It is out of that realisation that we need to learn to act, by letting the light of consciousness illuminate others through Love.

All over the world, the news about Iran is hitting the headlines. The tragedies of protesters being killed every day are being spread foremost across the Internet, in the absence of foreign reporters in the country itself. Among Iranians abroad, there is a mixture of shock and hope: shock about the regime's brutal reaction to peaceful protests, hope for the possibility of a change in the country's regime.
It is thirty years ago now that the Islamic revolution made an end to a different despotic regime in Iran, that of the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The excesses of that regime became too much to carry for the people and they found a strong movement for change in Khomeini's Islamic organisation. However, once the dust of the revolution settled, this turned out to be an equally oppressive regime that turned the people into prisoners of extremely fundamentalist values.
Now, thirty years later, there is a whole generation that does not know what freedom was like, except for the sparse information that they can grab from the Internet, as far as it is not blocked by the government. What they do know is that they are sick of being oppressed, being forced into a way of living that is not theirs, being cheated at supposedly democratic elections.
So here is another uprising, similar to a couple of years ago, but again with more force. Would the people succeed this time in their struggle for freedom or is a real strong movement still missing, so that the uprising will eventually be smothered again? Time will tell. May the sacrifices needed for change not become too high a toll to pay for freedom.

Please sign the following petition to the UN and support the Iranian people in their fight for freedom!

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/protest-against-the-june-2009-coup-detat-in-iran.html

I have written a blog entry last year (http://vanderhaven.net/blog/20080311.html) with the title "Freedom of Speech is Overrated" and I think that one still summarises my thoughts about freedom.
Freedom is a great good, of course, and one that is sadly unavailable to many people around the world. It is therefore a good thing to strife for.
However, freedom can have its excesses as well in the case where one person's freedom limits another person's freedom. When would such a thing happen? Foremost in the case where, in the name of freedom, people with a certain habit or culture are forced to adapt to another culture that is dominant in the country they are living in and which is assumed to be "superior" to the other culture.
I am indeed referring to integration of immigrants in their host country. There is a lot of talk about the lack of integration of immigrants and a lot of, mostly unfounded, fear for their religions or cultures, specifically when Islam is involved. The discussions often result in blunt statements being made with gross generalisations that do nothing to solve the perceived problem.
I believe that different cultures can easily live side-by-side, provided that some level of integration has taken place. That integration should at least involve learning the language and adapting to the local laws. What integration does not have to involve is laying off one's own religion, culture, values or habits, insofar as they do not conflict with the host country's ones. As much as the original inhabitants of a country differ from each other in those aspects, the newcomers may equally differ from them.
A step to take for people is to get genuinely interested in other people's cultures and values and not see them as a threat anymore. Once this step has been taken, real freedom can be created by allowing other people to live in the same freedom that is desired by ourselves.

 

Last week, I went to a friend of mine who is a colleague-therapist and specializes in the EMDR procedure. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) basically consists of stimulating as much of the brain as possible through eye movements or, in my case, ticking sounds that alternate between the left and the right ear. The effect of the procedure is that the brain functions are enhanced, so that a therapeutic goals becomes easier to reach.

That goal was in my case the issues I am having with my mother's death last December. You may have read about it in previous blog entries. I basically found that the last image I have of her alive, just before she died, was blocking all my other memories of her.

So I agreed with my friend to do an EMDR session to see what we could do about that.

And then began in incredible journey. Based on my feelings about that last image, a string of associations started to unfold before me, ranging from anger about her death, feelings about our mother-child relationship in the past, my fear of getting cancer as well, images of me actually dying in the same way and having to leave behind my loved ones, etc. This all gradually became lighter, though, as though things were getting resolved. Images became more positive - at some point I was sitting with a radiant white sheep in my lap, just after having had feelings of true formlessness and preceding feelings of being levitated by the love between myself and my mother and between other people and me. In the end, the image that we started out with became more positive, with my mother smiling about being relieved from her suffering. It was at that point that I could finally start accepting her death and the fact that this relieve was liberation for her and that, as far as she was concerned, life after death would be infinitely more positive than her life before death.

So what did this result in for me? In the first place, I made a start accepting my mother's death as something positive as well, not only as a loss, but more as liberation for her. I realise that the love between me and her will never end and that it is love that unites people and supports everyone who needs it. My feelings got milder, less regretful. My love for other people, such as my partner, has gotten stronger and more allowing. In general, the sun has started shining again, without my having illusions that my mourning is done - that will continue for a long time. I do believe, though, that a major step has been taken to have a look at a more positive side of what happened back in December.

Thank you Barbara for making this happen!

It is Mother's Day today and it bothers me.
Last Friday I heard someone refer to it and it bothered me more than I thought. I never looked forward to Mother's Day in the past, but now that my mother is not there anymore, I do miss it.
So Mother's Day needs to transform into something different now - a celebration of my mother for what she was, for what good she did, for the wonderful times we have been sharing.
This year it's still too early, though, for the images of eight months of suffering and her untimely death are still blocking my memories of all those years before that.
This year, we bought an Acer that we are going to plant on her grave. Hopefully next year is going to bring back the positive memories from the past so that Mother's Day can become a day of celebration again.

Yesterday, a colleague in the office asked me where he would be tomorrow. I answered that he would be "here" tomorrow, even though I knew tomorrow would be Saturday. He initially interpreted that as meaning that he would be "in the office" tomorrow until the moment that I told him that he would always be "here" no matter where he was. I said that the "here" and the "now" are the only things one can always be certain of. He asked me if I had studied psychology, which incidentally I have, although my remark was probably more a philosophical one.
In any case, thinking more about the remark that the "here and now are the only certainties you have," I realised that indeed notions like "past" and "future" or "there" and "nowhere" are all just relative things that in fact do not exist. The past is not here anymore, the future is not here yet, so all we have is the present, the "now." At the same time, wherever we are, we can only be "here" as in the place where our consciousness is centred. Where we are physically (as in where our body is located) is irrelevant because our body is just part of our consciousness and not necessarily the same as the location of the consciousness. Also, that tree over there is part of our awareness or consciousness, otherwise we would not be able to perceive it. Hence, the tree over there is also "here" in our consciousness and nowhere else.
Finally, to be fully aware is to be focussing on what happens here and now only as that is the only reality that exists. It is that awareness that brings us closer to ourselves.