November 2, 2009

Tibet: The Roof of the World


Prayer Flags by Japanese Photographer Tarabagani
 


For the past few months, I have been reading several books about Tibet or situated in Tibet, fiction and non fiction. The adventures of disgraced Chinese inspector Shan Tao Yum, depicted in The Skull Mantra, Bone Mountain and Beautiful Ghosts by Eliot Pattison, first capture my attention. These three novels detailing the multi-layered world of modern Tibet, reveals a land and a people oppressed by the Chinese authorities, who, in their claim of liberating Tibet, have systematically tried to eradicate the beautiful landscapes, the ancient history and the spirituality of the Tibetan Culture. It opens the door to develop an understanding of the Tibetan spiritual rituals and Tibetan Buddhism.

The other book that I would recommend is the memoir Seven Years In Tibet by Heinrich Harrer.
It is the true story of this German man imprisoned in a British internment camp in India during World War II. He escaped and trekked throughout Tibet as penniless fugitive, and arrived to the forbidden city of Lhasa. 


Lhasa by Japanese Photographer Tarabagani

At that time, he was one of the first European to enter Isolated and mysterious Tibet. He became through extraordinary encounters and the acceptance of the Tibetan Upper-Class, the tutor of young Dalai Lama. This book depicted the life in Tibet before the Chinese Invasion in 1950.

Few things came to mind as I was reading these books:
  • All living beings have a right to seek their own "deity" and in order to do that, they have to be free. Freedom is a physical state but mostly a state of mind. It has nothing to do with political ideology nor religious dogma. It is just a principle of Life.
  • Happiness is an inner journey. It is the process of understanding the origin of one's suffering.
  • Peace and non-violence should always be the first choice.
The world has been indifferent to the fate of peaceful Tibet...

October 13, 2009

Timeless Quotes from the Buddha



We all sometimes need to be inspired!
This does the trick for me...
 

August 21, 2009

The City and the City by China Mieville

My son recommended this book to me as well as Perdido Street Station by the same author. I love the unusual story and the dynamic writing. It is an astonishing book, very well written.

Book Review from Mysteries You Might Have Missed Along the Way by Nancy Pearl, NPR:
"China Mieville's The City and the City is a police procedural set in neighboring, nearly identical fictional cities. The catch is, these cities — Beszel and Ul Qoma — co-exist in the same physical space, and their separation ultimately depends on how well each city's citizens do in ignoring the existence of the other. Sound a little complicated? Leave it to Mieville to make it work superbly.

Police Inspector Tyador Borlu is assigned to find the murderer of student Mahalia Geary. She was a member of an extremist group who believed that there is actually a third city — Orciny — that exists in the interstices of the first two. As more murders occur, Borlu is reluctantly forced to consider that the outlandish views Geary held might actually contain some truth. But with Mieville, weird as the plots of his novels might sound, it's actually the setting that seems to matter most to him, and, ultimately, the reader. While I was engrossed in this quite compelling mystery, I found myself thinking of the many parallels that Mieville's notion of separate cities (each with a different currency, economic level, religion, governmental structure and ways of life) that are separated only by a longstanding habit of belief, have in the modern world. One could (and perhaps should) read this as a parable of segregation reduced to its most elemental form. You might have to work a bit harder with a book like this — maybe read it more than once — but it's totally worth it."

If you want to read an excerpt from this book , click on