Two Poems Posted on March 10, 2011

Continuing with poetry for the month of March this week, High Peaks Pure Earth has translated two poems from TibetCul blogs that were both posted online on March 10, 2011. As reported previously, TibetCul was suddenly taken offline on March 16, 2011 and mysteriously came back online on March 25, 2011. Fortunately, these two poems are not back online for those who'd like to see the original posts.

The first poem is titled "The Year 2010" and was posted on a TibetCul blog called Denang Tashi Delek:

Screenshot of Denang Tashi Delek's TibetCul Blog

The second poem is titled "Let Your Spirit Fly Freely, Over This Physical Body" and was posted on Tashi Lhundrup's TibetCul blog.

Screenshot of Tashi Lhundrup's TibetCul Blog

 Let Your Spirit Fly Freely, Over This Physical Body
 
- Self-hypnosis for the first time



Please, slowly, close your eyes
Let the endless tender light wash over you
Carefully balanced, hold up both your hands

The merciful and graceful Buddha is inside your palms



You need to relax, and you need to be brave

Do not restrain yourself, let your heart be open

You need inner peace, and to contemplate
Do not hesitate, let your heart be free

Leave your body in its old place, don’t be reluctant to let go

Let your spirit fly freely, over this physical body

Carefully gaze back upon yourself

Your body is a platform, a special kind of clothing


Please relax, relax, and relax some more

Your heart is like a hungry, wild wolf

Towards your eyes, your physical body
Do not be scared, and swallow down those desires



Please come back, come back, and gently return
Your body is your home, where you belong

Have patience, patience, calming patience

You will slowly be bound to your body, this is your return



Please slowly open your eyes

Regardless of whether it is light or dark, please accept it

Tightly put both your hands together

The warm current of compassion will wash over your body, a calm pleasure

The Year 2008 "Field of Experiments" – A Poem by Gade Tsering

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a poem by young Tibetan poet from Amdo, Gade Tsering, that was originally posted on his blog in two parts on June 28 and June 30, 2010. The posts were removed on July 15, 2010.

Gade Tsering

Now that the turbulent month of March is coming to a close, it seemed like an appropriate time to post this translation. Readers may remember two poems by Gade Tsering that we translated last summer, "My Tibetanness" and "I Am Tibetan", follow this link to read the poems and a short introduction to Gade Tsering: http://www.highpeakspureearth.com/2010/07/i-am-tibetan-and-my-tibetanness-two.html

Although Gade Tsering's blog appears to be unavailable at the time of writing, Gade Tsering is very active on his Sina Microblog: http://t.sina.com.cn/tibetpoem



"Field of Experiments"
---I was born in sadness, but you make me strong!

1,

A stage broad enough
To warm the heart, when the twilight of dusk is grey
And dim.

Wingless birds fly at a high place of nothingness
But they are all men suffering from acrophobia;
Not for geographical reasons but
Because your vision escaped the danger of your prejudice
Before you wanted to come to this land

Therefore, you remember that one year
The whole of Lhasa was enveloped in a black coat of fog and smoke.
Certainly traceless is the sky at this moment, but my heart is
Weak and grief-stricken

And then, all of a sudden you say,
“This is religion!”

2,

Tibet is teetering
In the spring sun of March.

In the midst of the remaining ruins,
I am solely playing a nocturne.

3,

The word is, however,
That the light is bright and beautiful
But the small town against the light is quiet
When people in the streets become so weak

I turn to solely sing in a different direction
And this is it.

When you get up to leave
This maroon coloured land, When your eyes moisten and
Your heart softens

You must acknowledge
the hidden space or the secret of being without a lock to this room
Or at least,
The guilt and depression you feel when
The mistakes are so obvious

4,

"Buddha’s flowers
Have not blossomed for a long time
In a prayer hall gradually becoming desolate
My faith
is without meaning"

Said my friend with a smile on the face
His so saying
made me feel shocked

A time like this
When will it come to an end?

"I Remember, Therefore We Are" By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser written on January 16, 2011 for the Mandarin service of Radio Free Asia and published on their website on March 14, 2011. 

In this blogpost, Woeser reflects on the importance of collective memory for Tibetans and focuses on the autobiography of Naktsang Nulo which has been translated into Chinese and was published in Taiwan on March 10, 2011. 

The autobiography of Naktsang Nulo titled "The Joys & Sorrows of a Boy from Naktsang" was originally written in Tibetan and published in June 2007. The newsletter of Trace Foundation's Latse Library 2007-2008 Volume 5 contains some background information to Naktsang Nulo and his work. The newsletter tells us:

The book was not published by a formal publishing house, but was printed by the Siling (Xining) Tso-ngon (Qinghai) Printing House in a run of 3,000 copies. Generally, books of Tibetan literature in China are printed in runs of no more than 2,500 copies. Despite the fact that Naktsang Shilu Kyiduk was not published by a formal publishing house, and therefore had no established means of distribution, the first run of 3,000 copies sold out in six months, and the book had to be reprinted, an unusual occurrence for a work of Tibetan literature.

To read the full article and also an excerpt of the book translated into English by Lauran Hartley and Pema Bhum, download the Latse Newsletter (in pdf form) from this link: http://www.latse.org/newsletter/2007vol5num1/Latse_Newsletter_no5_web.pdf

Cover of Chinese language edition of Naktsang Nulo's autobiography

Eastern European author Milan Kundera once said: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting". This does not mean that "man" wants to forget, but rather that "power" or authority, is forcing "man" to forget, so that their constructed lies become the collective memory. The true memories of man are thus forfeited and destroyed.

The truth is, until now Tibetan people have always persevered against this very struggle. For example, there are a lot of existing memoirs by exiled Tibetans, inside Tibet there are the memoirs of Naktsang Nulo about the people and Tibet, there are also His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s memoirs and documentation such as Dawa Tsering’s "Blood Sacrifice in the Land of Snows". I have also carried out research about Tibet during the Cultural Revolution in my books such as "Forbidden Memory" and "Memories of Tibet", as well as "The Roar of the Snow Lion in the Year of the Mouse", a book about the 2008 uprising, and many more.

The history of a nation should be made up of the individual histories of its people. Silent for so many decades, a witness and survivor of the time when "heaven and earth were overturned", what Naktsang Nulo finally penned was not just a memoir, but a page in the most important record that we have of the history of our culture. I wish that one day, we can build a museum exhibiting the individual histories of Tibetan people, and he will be the model for this project. Western philosophers have the phrase "I think, therefore I am", but in this Tibet museum we will have "I remember, therefore we are" written on the walls. It will be made up of the accounts and memories of all the “I”s that make up Tibet, of those who witnessed Tibet’s past, as well as the accounts of their children and the future generations.

Just as Naktsang Nulo said in the prologue to his book: "Perhaps because of my karma, or the changing times, I experienced and witnessed much suffering, and not only I, but many thousands of other people too. Each person’s mind contains their own account of these events, and each chiefdom and family will have its own long story or legend of the ups and downs of their particular chiefdom or family. Writing these stories in the form of a book has its disadvantages, but if they are not preserved in print, no-one in the future will know what happened. The stories will only remain true in the mind of one individual. If they want the next generation to know about what happened in their lifetime, the previous generation must write down the history of that period carefully and hand it on to the next one. This is especially important if you want your own children to pass on your story. So, I decided that my story could only be preserved by writing it in the form of a book, otherwise it would not survive. These things are true for a nationality and a family, just as they are for an individual."

Maybe people will have questions about this kind of early memoir, for example how can a child whose mother has passed away remember their family?  How can a child who accompanies their father on a pilgrimage to Lhasa remember the snowy mountains or lakes they pass along the way? I have also asked questions such as these to the author Naktsang Nulo but his answer was in fact very simple. Some things in life will always be carved into your heart. For many days and nights, he, his brother and his clansmen would all be remembering the past, so that in fact they were constantly reliving their childhood years of suffering. In fact, it would seem that their later experiences in life would appear vague in comparison to these early memories.

Without memory, there would be no Naktsang Nulo, nor his father who died under the gun of "liberation", nor the thousands upon thousands of our fellow brethren. His memories do not proliferate the lies by our aggressors, but are simply the personal recollections of an ordinary Tibetan survivor. In his own memories, in addition to the period of "heaven and earth overturning" which brought about the massacring of our people and the cultural extinction of our monasteries, there is also the everyday life of the nomadic people in the land of snows, which in fact was very rich and unique. The rays of Buddhism seemed to shine through this spiritual world, and whenever I read passages that describe these bygone times, I cannot help but shed a tear:

"The sunshine is here," one of the monks called out a little later. All the pilgrims ran over to the middle of the pass. When we got there, we saw the golden roofs of the monasteries and the cone-shaped golden roof of the Jokhang Temple shining in the sunlight. We prostrated and burned incense, and so did all the pilgrims. The crowd of people yelled with happiness. I was gripped by an excitement and joy I could not explain, and cried uncontrollably. "The Three Precious Jewels… Oh, the precious stone of the Buddha that fulfils all wishes. I have finally made it to Lhasa!".

January 16, 2011, Beijing

Photos from Art of Resistance: 3-Day Training for Tibet in Boston

From March 25th – March 27th, SFT’s “The Art of Resistance: 3-Day Activist Training for Tibet” is being held at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Participants from across the North-East are learning skills to become the next generation of leaders in the struggle for Tibet’s freedom.

More photos and updates to come…

Highlights from TibetCul on High Peaks Pure Earth

TibetCul's Logo

High Peaks Pure Earth is concerned about the most popular Tibetan web and blog-hosting site TibetCul.com which has been inaccessible for over a week now. As reported on Global Voices, TibetCul suddenly became inaccessible on March 16, 2011 and, according to China Digital Times, TibetCul had 80,000 registered users whose blogs and contributions have all disappeared now. Here at High Peaks Pure Earth we have monitored TibetCul closely over the last three years and have often translated blogposts and many more wonderful things that we were fortunate to fine. This blogpost is a compilation of our posts that originated from TibetCul. We hope you enjoy re-visiting these posts and we will report of any developments with TibetCul here - we hope to see it online again soon! *For those of you based in and around New York, the founder of TibetCul, Wangchuk Tseten, will be giving a talk at Columbia University on March 24, 2011 about his work. Details are here: http://d.pr/jVWT Music on TibetCul Who can forget our favourite music group from Amdo, Yudrug (Green Dragon) who stunned us with their hip-hop video "New Generation" and then followed up by celebrating the pioneer of modern Tibetan poetry, Dhondup Gyal? Their videos came to us via their TibetCul blog: http://qinglong.tibetcul.com (more...)