Cultural Genocide In Tibet

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Cultural Genocide was coined in 1944 by a lawyer named Raphael Lemkin. It means destroying a people’s whole life including: religion, history, customs, and overall way of life. From the late 1930’s to today, this has been commonplace around the world. When thinking of situations like this, the Holocaust usually comes to mind, but around the same time as that event, many other cultural genocides were taking place. One of the instances is the Tibetan Buddhists being destroyed by the Chinese. To understand that, you must know what Tibet is, what the buddhist religion is, and how the chinese acted and why. With these main points anyone could understand how the Chinese destroyed the way of life of the Tibetan Buddhists. Tibet is located in Central …show more content…
Tibetans mostly worship the branch of Mahayana Buddhism, which removes around the idea of reincarnation and helping others become “awakened.” The people of Tibet follow the 8th century Indians version, Buddhahood or rainbow body. Rainbow body is focused around obtaining Rigpa or a third person perspective of seeing someone else gain complete knowledge. Only a handful of people have attained the rainbow body, including the most recent Khenpo A-chos (1998). Buddhism became very popular in Asia around the 11 century A.D. It spread to the people of Mongolia and Manchuria. It was even the main religion of China in the Ming Dynasty, the ones who would try to stamp it out in the …show more content…
The Dalai Lama has even said, “ Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place.” He is very correct in his statement. Like I said before, cultural genocide is destroying all ideas of that person's life or country's way of life. The chinese took away their language, ideas, and religion, trying to stamp them out in a way that no one could remember. But all over the world, tibetan buddhists fight to keep their memory alive. It could not have been said better than what Pico Iyer said about this sad truth, “One of the happier ironies of recent history is that even as Tibet is being wiped off the map in Tibet itself, here it is in California, in Switzerland, in Japan. All over the world, Tibetan Buddhism is now part of the neighborhood. In 1968, there were two Tibetan Buddhist centers in the West. By 2000, there were 40 in New York
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