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Feature: Tibetan Buddhist Seclusion in Roaring Downtown
Wearing a yellow cassock and prayer beads around his neck, Danzhub Rompa, a living Buddha and associate research fellow at the Beijing-based High-Level Tibetan Buddhism College of China, speaks softly.
"Students here are devoted to studying Buddhist doctrines. The only thing secular in their curricula is the study of state laws and regulations on religion," he says.
While city life rages on outside the red walls of the 350-year- old monastery, the hush of serenity resonates within. Hallways are decorated in the colorful Tibetan style. A white Pagoda used to store the scriptures and clothes of the Sixth Panchen Lama stands majestic, and the golden Sanskrit inscriptions above the gate of the main hall are dazzling.
The Buddhism College, the top academy of its kind, was initiated by the Tenth Panchen Lama. Set up in 1987, it is designed to train reincarnated living Buddhas and high-level Buddhist scholars for teaching and research, international Buddhism exchanges and temple management.
In reference to the Dalai Lama clique's recent remarks about the "extinction of Tibetan culture," living Buddha Danzhub said, " Dalai simply turns a blind eye to the remarkable progress of Tibet in the past 40 years, including the inheritance and development of Buddhist cultural heritage."
He noted that by reforming its traditional teaching methods, in which students were tutored only in a particular field of knowledge, the college now uses modern teaching and management approaches.
The unprecedented move has drawn together living Buddhas from different sects of Tibetan Buddhism to carry out joint studies in Buddhism. This has improved their mutual understanding, and centuries-old sect conflicts have disappeared.
"This is a pioneering undertaking in the teaching of the Tibetan Buddhism, and marks a great achievement in Tibetan Buddhism," he said.
"Nevertheless, Dalai still keeps on rumoring that Tibetan Buddhism in China is under threat, but actually, his ultimate goal is to fawn on the foreign anti-China forces in pursuit of Tibet's independence," he said.
Seventy percent of the courses at the college are Buddhism- related, and all the lecturers are well-educated lamas especially invited from leading Tibetan temples.
The living Buddha admitted that Tibetan Buddhism is faced with the problem common to all religions across the globe: the younger generation of disciples tend to be more secularized. This is the inevitable result of social and economic development, he said.
"In old Tibet, when the feudal serf system prevailed, the only alternative for the children from poverty-stricken families to making a living was to become a lama. Nowadays, the improvement of living standards offers them more choices. Dalai Lama's attempt to reverse the trends and resume the feudal serf system in Tibet is doomed to fail," the living Buddha said.
Dalai Lama also labels the increase of economic and cultural exchanges between Tibetans and the Han people as an assimilation of Tibetan ethnic people. He even says that Tibetans' option to learn Chinese is endangering the unique Tibetan cultural tradition.
"But if you require your followers in exile learn English and you yourself deliver speeches and sermons in English, aren't you casting away the Tibetan culture?" the living Buddha Danzhub asked.
During summer vacation, the absence of students makes the temple all the more tranquil. But another monastery nearby, the Yonghe Gong Lamasery, is filled with pilgrims and tourists.
Losang Soidan, a 35-year-old lama, said that Yonghe Gong Lamasery is the biggest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Beijing, where 100 lamas strictly practice the same Buddhist rites, sermons and preaching as lamas in Tibet do.
"Every year the government allocates funds for the protection of the cultural relics here. The cultural heritage of Tibetan Buddhism is not damaged here, and on the contrary, it is fully protected, inherited and developed," he said.
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