Tibet

Beijing was plastered with Olympic fervor – billboards everywhere with the "One World One Dream" slogan, plants and flowers trimmed perfectly to represent the Olympic rings, gigantic athlete statues, big screens to watch the games and red banners wherever you turned that contained Chinese characters and their strangely translated propaganda-like sayings into English.

This fairy tale begins with a giant silver purse. Visualize that purse being carried in a taxi through Beijing. Oh no, it did not glow. Despite all the brightness inside, the purse perfectly contained the light we were about to unfurl.

But wait, let me back track, just for a moment.

On Sunday, during the 2008 Olympic games’ closing ceremonies, the Chinese government deported 10 Tibet supporters. By 8pm Sunday night these ten citizen journalists and activists were on their way home. They had been sentenced to 10 days of prison; six of them were held for over five days. 

Is it a nursery rhyme going through my head? Or just a saying? When I was little and we had spent a long evening out and about and were just pulling up to the front of our house, my mom would always say, “home again, home again, jiggity jig.”

That’s where I am now: back at my house in Oakland, California. After pulling a banner full of blue lights out of a silver bag at 11:30pm in front of the Olympic bird’s nest stadium in Beijing, getting arrested, being detained through the night in a smoky room, put on a 12 hour flight to New York city, waiting at the JFK airport for another 4, sitting through a flight to Oakland for 5 hours, waiting at the airport to be picked up, I finally arrived home at about 10:30pm last night. After 50 hours of no beds, no showers, lots of waiting, a bit of fear, excitement, not knowing what was next, boredom and exhiliration: here I am. Not sure what to do with myself. Not sure what to say.

8/19/08 in BeijingShortly before midnight this evening in Beijing, China, at the Olympic Park, five U.S. human rights activists were detained for holding an impromptu and unauthorized gathering in support of Tibet. One of the five individuals was Liza Smith, the national organizer for the Fellowship of Reconciliation's Colombia program.

The nexus of the coming summer Olympic Games and the weather catastrophes of recent months in China and Burma have opened a new window of curiosity and interest to the issues of Buddhism, Democracy, Globalization, Compassion and Spiritual leadership. Few are bettered positioned to provide insights than Iyer who met the Dalai Lama through visits with his father when a child and whose curiosity about the “East” has sustained him as a writer for decades, include frequent circlings through the presence of the Dalai Lama and Dharmasala.

Tibet protest on the Golden Gate BridgeThis week, two peace actions in the San Francisco Bay Area are showcasing the ability of peace activists to organize creative and highly-visible symbolic events -- even at a time when some people claim that activism (esp

How maddening to see yet another case of brutal repression of Buddhists in Asia. And yet how uplifting to see that the people of Tibet bravely continue to speak out for democracy and self-determination! The international activist group AVAAZ has started a petition to Chienese President Hu Jintao, calling for "restraint and respect for human rights" and supporting dialog with the Dalai Lama. Sign it now.

The Buddhist Peace Fellowship has issued a strong statement in solidarity of the people of Tibet. Here's an excerpt...