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The Dalai Lama has launched a fierce attack on Chinese rule in his Tibetan homeland, describing its people’s lives as “hell on Earth”.

Five decades of Chinese rule had caused “untold suffering”, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader said, accusing Beijing of creating a climate of fear.

He also repeated his demand for Tibet’s “legitimate and meaningful autonomy”.

His words came on the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese troops which led to his exile.

China says its troops freed Tibetans from effective slavery in a feudal society. It is planning to mark 28 March – the day in 1959 on which the Communist Party dissolved the existing local government in Tibet – as Serfs’ Emancipation Day.

Thousands of Chinese troops and paramilitary police are said to have been deployed in Tibetan-populated regions amid fears of fresh violence on the sensitive anniversary.

Campaign groups have already reported some unrest in areas around Tibet. China does not allow foreign journalists unrestricted access to Tibet or restive areas surrounding it, making it extremely difficult to verify these reports.

Beijing says it has tightened its border controls in preparation for “expected sabotage activities by the Dalai Lama clique”.

On Monday, in a sign that the Chinese government’s stance on Tibet is unlikely to soften, President Hu Jintao called for a “Great Wall” against Tibetan separatism.

“We must build up a Great Wall in our fight against separatism and safeguard the unity of the motherland, and push Tibet’s basic stability toward long-term security,” state television quoted him as saying.

‘Mutual benefit’

The Dalai Lama said hundreds of thousands of Tibetans had been killed, and thousands of places of worship destroyed.

But the two sides needed to work for “mutual benefit”.

“We Tibetans are looking for legitimate and meaningful autonomy, an arrangement that would enable Tibetans to live within the framework of the People’s Republic of China,” the exiled leader said.

“I have no doubt that the justice of Tibet’s cause will prevail.”

The Dalai Lama paid tribute to all those who had died since 1959, including victims of last year’s deadly protests in Lhasa that spilled over into other ethnic Tibetan regions.

TIBET DIVIDE China says Tibet was always part of its territory Tibet enjoyed long periods of autonomy before the 20th Century China launched a military assault in 1950 Opposition to Chinese rule led to a bloody uprising which began on 10 March 1959 Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled days later and crossed into India on 31 March 1959 The Tibet issue: China’s view The Tibet issue: Tibetan view

Successive Chinese campaigns – class struggle, the Cultural Revolution and “patriotic re-education” – had “thrust Tibetans into such depths of suffering and hardship that they literally experienced hell on earth”, he said from his seat in exile in India’s Dharamsala.

“Even today Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear and the Chinese authorities remain constantly suspicious of them.”

Tibet’s religion, culture, language and identity were “nearing extinction”, he said, and Chinese development was devastating the Tibetan environment and way of life.

He repeated an accusation that China has killed “hundreds of thousands of his people”.

“Many infrastructural developments… which seem to have brought progress to Tibetan areas were really done with the political objective of Sinicising Tibet,” he added.

China has always denied any mass killings of Tibetans.

Referring to his “Middle Way approach” – offering to accept Chinese sovereignty in Tibet in return for genuine autonomy – the 73-year-old leader expressed disappointment that China had “not responded appropriately to our sincere efforts”.

But he said the two sides should “look to the future and work for our mutual benefit”.

“Fulfilling the aspirations of the Tibetan people will enable China to achieve stability and unity,” he added.

The latest round of stop-start talks with Beijing last November concluded with China condemning the Tibetans’ proposals as a bid for “disguised independence”.

And the BBC’s James Reynolds in Beijing says it is very difficult to see where progress can happen at the moment.

In a separate statement, the Tibetan government-in-exile pledged to continue to push the “Middle Way approach” but said the continuation of contact depended solely on China

from bbc.com/news

By Richard Rosen

Mantras, sacred chants, come in all shapes and sizes. They can be composed of sentences, single words, or even single syllables; they can be perfectly intelligible or completely mystifying (at least to the uninitiated).

Single-syllable mantras, known as bija (seed) mantras, are the easiest to remember and recite; they’re also the most powerful. It’s believed that, just as a tiny seed contains a majestic tree, each bija contains vast amounts of spiritual wisdom and creative force. One of the oldest and most widely known of these seeds is om.

Om is frequently called the pranava, literally “humming,” a word that derives from pranu, “to reverberate,” and ultimately from the root nu, “to praise or command” but also “to sound or shout.” It is the audible expression of the transcendental, attributeless ground of reality.

Om is the “primordial seed” of the universe–this whole world, says one ancient text, “is nothing but om.” It is also considered to be the root mantra from which all other mantras emerge and to encapsulate the essence of the many thousands of verses of Hinduism’s holiest texts, the Vedas. According to the Katha Upanishad (2.15), om is the “word which all the Vedas rehearse.”

As such, om is the meditative seed par excellence. Patanjali–who wrote the Yoga Sutra and is considered to be the father of classical yoga–taught that when we chant this sacred syllable and simultaneously contemplate the meaning of it, our consciousness becomes “one-pointed: and prepared for meditation. In a commentary on the Yoga Sutra, the ancient sage Vyasa noted that through chanting om, “the supreme soul is revealed.” In a similar vein, Tibetan scholar Lama Govinda wrote that om expresses and leads to the “experience of the infinite within us.” Thus, chanting om may be the easiest way to touch the Divine within your very self.

Yogis often meditate on the four “measures,” or parts, of om. Though commonly spelled om, the mantra actually consists of three letters, a, u, and m. (In Sanskrit, whenever an initial a is followed by a u, they coalesce into a long o sound.) Each of these three parts has numerous metaphysical associations, which themselves serve as meditative seeds. For example, a (pronounced “ah”) represents our waking state, which is also the subjective consciousness of the outer world; u (pronounced “ooh”) is the dreaming state, or the consciousness of our inner world of thoughts, dreams, memories, and so on; and m is the dreamless state of deep sleep and the experience of ultimate unity.

By contemplating the meaning of each of these letters as we chant them, we are led through the three states of our ordinary consciousness to the mantra’s fourth part, the anusvara (after-sound): om. The vibration slowly dissolves into silence, symbolic of the transcendent state of consciousness, equated with Brahman (the Absolute). This silence is the crown of the mantra; it is described in the Maitri Upanishad as “tranquil, soundless, fearless, sorrowless, blissful, satisfied, steadfast, immovable, immortal, unshaken, enduring.”

First Published in the Yoga Journal

The Islamic authorities have issued a ruling, known as a fatwa, instructing the country’s Muslims to avoid yoga because of its Hindu roots.

Ubudiah Mosque

To most people yoga is simply a sport – a stress-busting start to the day.

Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council said it goes further than that and that elements of the Indian religion are inherent in yoga.

Masjid Putra in, Putrajaya

“The yoga masters repeat that it actually can be quite compatible with religion,” he said. “It makes you a better person.”

Yoga comes in many forms. For some it is a stress-busting sport. For others a serious bit of soul searching.

What Adam does once a week is the serious stuff. The class I sat in on was two hours long.

Spiritual experience

It included breathing exercises, with the help of the tick-tock of a metronome.

There was meditation, then half an hour of darkness for intense relaxation.

Before that some of the class managed a very stable headstand. Others could touch the back of their head with their foot.

“It can go with any religion,” instructor Mani Sekaran told me.

“Or it can go with those who don’t believe in any religion, because it’s purely sports,” he added.

He is also founder of the Malaysian Yoga Society. A bald and very fit man, he once did martial arts.

“If I want to train for an Olympic gold medal… whether I believe in a religion or not doesn’t matter. I just keep on training.”

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7743312.stm