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Nazi’s Archives

 © Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.
© Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.

As an ethnic Jew and Tibetan Buddhist, I read with ardent interest your article “Hitler and the Himalayas.” The article focused on Dr. Schaefer, especially his expedition to Tibet in 1939. Alex McCay asserts that the letter from the Reting Regent of Tibet to Hitler speaks of “a lasting empire of peace based on racial grounds.” Furthermore, Reting supposedly assured Hitler that Tibet “shared that aim.” This is a serious distortion of history.

I have read the original text of this letter (National Archives) and there is no mention of racial attitudes. As a matter of fact, if this innocuous letter is compared to the correspondence that Reting had with President Roosevelt through the explorers Tolstoy and Dolan in this same period, it seems diplomatically relatively noncommital.

Seven hundred and fourteen visitors went to Lhasa in the first fifty years of the last century. The five-member Schaefer expedition had a relatively neutral reception by the government and a negative reception by the local populace.

Moke Mokotoff
New York, New York

Alex McKay responds:

The Regent of Tibet wrote to Adolf Hitler on at least two occasions. Mr. Mokotoff refers to the letter from the Regent of Tibet to Adolf Hitler dated January 26, 1939, which is preserved in the U.S. National Archives.

My article referred to an earlier letter, dated January 10, 1939, which is preserved in the German Dokumente des Bundesarchivs, Koblenz, R135/30, and quoted by Reinhard Greve in Lebenslust und Fremdenfurcht (ed. Th. Hauschild; Frankfurt, 1995), pp. 175-176.

No Matter What

 © Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.
© Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.

I enjoyed the section on making time for practice. My personal hero is my sister, a very determined daily meditator and mother of four. In order to sit while keeping an eye on her two youngest, Betsy would set up her cushion near the playpen where the children could see her. This proved only partially successful, as the kids protested noisily at being penned up. So she merely switched places—transferring the zafu to the playpen, she sat peacefully imprisoned while the kids played happily nearby!

Talk about “a deep-seated commitment to just practice, no matter what”!

Pat Beecher
Portland, Maine

Speak to Me

 © Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.
© Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.

I am not a Buddhist, but Tricycle consistently publishes articles that speak to me.

Ken McLeod’s article [“Buddhism in a Nutshell,” Spring 2001] was so helpful. He is right: the point is not to deny oneself pleasure, but to find the pleasure of being oneself. But I just didn’t “get it” until I read his article.

In an earlier issue, John Welwood’s article was equally inspiring. When I broke up with my first boyfriend in college, I told a friend, “He bastardizes Eastern religions to suit his own emotional limitations.” After reading Welwood’s article, I realized that, ten years later, I have done the same thing!

Lastly, thank you for the interview with Noah Levine. I enjoyed hearing from someone my age. I am thirty-one and have been a spiritual/psychological seeker for more than ten years. I live in a place known for its opportunities for spiritual growth, yet I am almost always the youngest person—by at least a decade—to show up at any sort of meditation group I attend. While I did eventually succeed in creating community among my peers, it was not easy. It was nice to have the difficulty I experienced addressed.

Melissa Chianta
Sante Fe, New Mexico

Reading Lessons

In contrast to the book review of Reginald Ray’s Indestructible Truth, I found this book to be remarkably clear, helpful, and inspiring. It gathered together a tremendous amount of material and wove together Tibetan Buddhist history and dharma in a way that illuminated both. With regard to one of the examples given in the review—the rather obscure (to most people) debate between the Rangtong and Shentong points of view—this is something I have been hearing about for the last ten years, and I’m grateful to Dr. Ray for finally making it clear. And it is an interesting dharma debate. Although some sections do require several passes in order to extract the juice, as Toni Morrison replied to someone who complained about the difficulty of her writing and having to read certain passages several times: “That’s called reading.” I rarely write letters to the editor, but having particularly enjoyed Indestructible Truth, I felt inspired to respond. With much appreciation for Tricycle.

Joseph Goldstein
Barre, Massachusetts

Bamiyan Buddhas

 © Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.
© Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.

This letter was written in response to mainstream media coverage of the Taliban’s destruction of the giant stone Buddhas in the valley of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. For Tricycle’s coverage of this story, click here.

It is easy—even natural—to be outraged over what the Taliban has done to the Buddha statue at Bamiyan. The ongoing wanton destruction of the Buddhist religious and artistic heritage in Afghanistan is almost universally viewed as a flagrant and violent demonstration of profound delusion. But is outrage the appropriate Buddhist response to these events?

There is already enough hatred and blame present in the world; there is enough attachment to images and symbols; enough righteous indignation over great and small human acts, to keep the wheel of samsara turning for a long time. Buddhist practice calls for the relinquishing of greed, hatred, and delusion at every opportunity—and these events, too, provide an opportunity for such practice.

Shakyamuni enjoined his followers to forebear in the face of anger, to show kindness to those who present hostility, to understand it is the nature of compounded things (even 120-foot-tall, 1,500-year-old things) to meet destruction, and to attend carefully to the quality of one’s own responses in the midst of any provocation. The legacy of his teaching lies not in the stone at Bamiyan, but in the hearts and minds of living people the world over. If we succumb to the impulse to rage at the Taliban (in thought, word, or deed), then are we not blowing off the face of the Buddha carved within?

Please do not misconstrue such nonreactivity as acquiescence. Indeed, Buddhism requires engagement; but will it be engagement with the process of perpetuating suffering in the world by meeting outrage with outrage, or with the process of reducing such suffering by understanding its causes and depriving it of its fuel?

I prefer to follow the guidance of the Simile of the Saw, where the Buddha is said to address the appropriate response to someone who seeks to reduce the earth to rubble with a hoe and a basket: “Herein, bhikkhus, you should train thus: Our minds will remain unaffected, and we shall utter no evil words; we shall abide compassionate for their welfare, with a mind of lovingkindness, without inner hate… abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill will.”

Andrew Olendzki
Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
Barre, Massachusetts

Beginner’s Mind

 © Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.
© Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.

I have been reading Tricycle for over two years. I am just a lay person who was fortunate to discover that dharma is truth. It has been a tremendous help in my personal life. I have been enjoying many of the articles. I have learned so much about Buddhism and I try to apply the principles and practices as much as possible. Unfortunately, I live so far away from Buddhist centers that it’s impossible for me to have an intensive course with a teacher who will lead me to follow the path appropriately. I am in south Louisiana, and there is no Zen center or any Vipassana center that I can attend. This becomes very frustrating for me.

Anyway, I enjoyed very much the article “Superscience” with S.N. Goenka. It was very straightforward. It was very enlightening. He made me feel that I can still have a chance to practice the Buddha’s teachings, even though I don’t have anyone knowledgeable enough around this area to teach me.

Tito Escobar
Houma, Louisiana

We Are the World

 © Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.
© Frank Olinsky, Neil Crosbie, and Mike Taylor.

Helena Norberg-Hodge’s article “Economics, Engagement, and the Exploitation in Ladakh” [Fall 2000] is typical of “white man’s burden” turned on its head. Its position is just as destructive.

It is true: the global economy is coming to a small village near you.

That same global economy that brings new images to the men and women of Ladakh also enables the spread of Buddhism throughout the West. The media have beamed the face of the Dalai Lama throughout the world, while web pages have allowed an unprecedented amount of information to change hands—and minds. The messenger is not the evil.

Those giant corporations allow me to have access to hundreds of Buddhist works and critiques. I can pick up Tricycle at a newsstand here in rural Vermont. It is the printers who, because of their size, can upgrade their machinery to lower costs; the publishers who can find markets to subsidize the publishing of less-than-best-selling works; and the Barnes & Noble megastores that can offer a selection no local bookstore can provide. I can read Ms. Norberg-Hodge’s article because of them.

She can probably thank the airline that flew her to Ladakh, the cars that get her from place to place, Microsoft for her word-processing program enabling her to write grants and this article, and Kodak for manufacturing the film. I am not sure, but the funds for her International Society for Ecology and Culture come from somewhere, and I suspect they, too, are connected to the global economy.

In addition, that same global economy allows me to spend more time in study and meditation. Thanks to the Maytag Corporation, I am not spending my days washing my clothes or working in the fields. Church is not a once-a-week experience, or a monthly retreat, but a daily, living experience. Instead of making ends meet, I can relax and read Ms. Norberg-Hodge’s piece and write this reaction.

It is easy to treat untouched lands like memories of our own cultural past, and the people in them like animals in a zoo. Buddha left his family’s compound because he needed to experience life. Can she describe women as “strong, outgoing” if access to media influences them so easily? Being strong in a vacuum is easy, and in the long run, useless.

I also control my place in this brave new economy. I buy my produce locally, avoid products produced in sweatshops, order books through a local bookstore, and have asked them to carry Tricycle. I buy few pieces of clothing so I save energy, pollute less, and slow consumerism. I also do not fly to Ladakh, but teach reading in my own backyard.

We all make choices. The first is to respect those made by others that we might not agree with. When we feel the need to “protect” others without respecting their opinions, we cross a dangerous line.                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                    Tom Darling
                                                                                                                                                                                    Bristol, Vermont