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lesbianchemicalplant · 5 years

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People who invoke Rose Luxemburg to dismiss Lenin, or even dismiss Leninism as a whole, are a weird bunch because

(1) She supported the Bolsheviks.....she wasn’t Anti-Bolshevik or Anti-Lenin....

(2) On the points on which Luxemburg and Lenin differed, Lenin’s position was often much closer to being correct than was hers

For example, regarding national liberation struggles, or National Self-Determination: anyone who recognizes the existence of oppressor and oppressed nations under capitalism, and who recognizes the progressive character of national liberation struggles against imperialism, has a closer position to Lenin than they do to her.

Quoting (much to my annoyance, and very ironically, but this particular analysis stands well on its own) from Tony Cliff:

Because of the criterion they used to judge national movements – their effect on the bourgeois democratic revolution in West and Central Europe – Marx and Engels naturally limited their conclusions regarding national questions to Europe (and North America) where capitalist development was more or less advanced. They did not, justifiably at that time, attribute the concept of revolutionary bourgeois nationalism to Asian, African or South American countries. Thus, for instance, Engels wrote,

“In my opinion the colonies proper, i.e. the countries occupied by a European population, Canada, the Cape, Australia, will all become independent; on the other hand the countries inhabited by a native population, which are simply subjugated, India, Algiers, and the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish possessions, must be taken over for the time being by the proletariat and led as rapidly as possible towards independence”. [58]

Engels thought it possible that India might emancipate itself through a revolution, but such an event would have only secondary importance for Europe. If India should liberate itself, “this will have to be given full scope ... as the proletariat emancipating itself cannot conduct any colonial wars”. But the idea that the emancipation of the colonies could precede the socialist revolutions in Europe, or even aid them considerably, was completely foreign to Engels (as to Marx). If India, Algeria or Egypt should free themselves, then this:

... would certainly be the best thing for us. We shall have enough to do at home. Once Europe is reorganised, and North America, that will furnish such colossal power and such an example that the semi-civilised countries will follow in their wake of their own accord. [59]

Rosa Luxemburg, in the footsteps of Marx and Engels, considered the national movement mainly European, attributing only small importance to the Asian and African national movements. Like Marx and Engels, she also rejected any absolute criterion for judging struggles for national independence. She was, however, no follower who merely repeated the words of the founders of scientific socialism.

Quite early in her political life she pointed out that the situation in Europe in general, and Russia in particular, had changed so much towards the end of the 19th century that the position of Marx and Engels towards national movements in Europe had become untenable.

In Western and Central Europe the period of bourgeois democratic revolutions had passed. The Prussian Junkers had managed to establish their rule so firmly that they were no more in need of aid from the Tsar. At the same time Tsarist rule ceased to be the impregnable bastion of reaction, deep cracks beginning to cleave its walls: the mass strikes of workers in Warsaw, Lodz, Petrograd, Moscow and elsewhere in the Russian Empire; the rebellious awakening of the peasants. Actually, whereas at the time of Marx and Engels the centre of revolution was in Western and Central Europe, now, towards the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th, it had passed east to Russia. Whereas at the time of Marx Tsarism was the main gendarme suppressing revolutionary uprisings elsewhere, now Tsarism itself came to need the help (mainly financial) of the Western capitalist powers. Instead of Russian bullets and roubles going westwards, now German, French, British and Belgian munitions and marks, francs and pounds flowed in a widening stream to Russia. Rosa Luxemburg pointed out further that basic changes had taken place as regards the national aspirations of her motherland, Poland. Whereas at the time of Marx and Engels the Polish nobles were leaders of the national movement, now, with the increasing capitalist developments of the country, they were losing ground socially and turning to Tsarism as an ally in the suppression of progressive movements in Poland. The result was that the Polish nobility cooled to aspirations toward national independence. The Polish bourgeoisie also became antagonistic to the desire for national independence, as it found the main markets for its industry in Russia. “Poland is bound to Russia with chains of gold,” Rosa Luxemburg said. “Not the national state but the state of rapine corresponds to capitalist development”. [60] The Polish working class too, according to Rosa Luxemburg, was not interested in the separation of Poland from Russia, as it saw in Moscow and Petrograd the allies of Warsaw and Lodz. Hence there were no social forces of any weight in Poland interested in fighting for national independence. Only the intelligentsia still cherished the idea, but they by themselves represented a small social force. Rosa Luxemburg concluded her analysis of the social forces in Poland and their attitude to the national question with the following words: “The recognisable direction of social development has made it clear to me that there is no social class in Poland that has at one and the same time both an interest in and ability to achieve the restoration of Poland”. [61]

From this analysis she came to the conclusion that under capitalism the slogan of national independence had no progressive value, and could not be realised by the internal forces of the Polish nation; only the intervention of one or another imperialist power could bring it into being. Under socialism, argued Rosa Luxemburg, there would not be any place for the slogan of national independence, as national oppression would be no more and the international unity of humanity will have been realised. Thus under capitalism the real independence of Poland could not be realised, and any steps in that direction would not have any progressive value, while under socialism there would be no need for such a slogan. Hence the working class had no need for the struggle for national self-determination of Poland, and this struggle was in fact reactionary. The national slogans of the working class should be limited to the demand for national autonomy in cultural life.

In taking this position, Rosa Luxemburg and her party, the SDKPL, came into bitter conflict with the right-wing members of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) led by Pilsudski (the future military dictator of Poland). These were nationalists who paid lip service to socialism. Lacking a mass basis for their nationalism, they contrived adventures, plotting with foreign powers to the extent even of relying on a future world war as the midwife of national independence. In Galicia, the stronghold of the right-wing PPS, the Poles, under Austrian rule, received better treatment than those in the Russian Empire, mainly because the rulers of the Hapsburg Empire, a medley of nationalities, had to rely on the Polish ruling class to fortify their imperial rule. Hence the PPS leaders inclined to prefer the Hapsburg Empire to the Russian, and during the First World War they acted as recruiting agents for Vienna and Berlin. Earlier, during the 1905 Revolution, Daszynski, the leader of the PPS in Galicia, had gone so far as to condemn the mass strikes of Polish workers, because, according to him, they tended to identify the struggle of the Polish workers with that of the Russian, and thus undermine the national unity of the Poles. It is only when one has a clear view of Rosa Luxemburg’s opponents in the Polish labour movement that one can properly understand her position on the Polish national question.

The struggle that Rosa had to wage against the chauvinistic PPS coloured her entire attitude to the national question in general. In opposing the nationalism of the PPS she bent so far backwards that she opposed all reference to the right of self-determination in the programme of the party. It is because of this that her party, the SDKPL, split as early as 1903 from the Russian Social Democratic Party, and never subsequently joined the Bolsheviks organisationally.

Lenin agreed with Rosa Luxemburg in her opposition to the PPS, and, with her, argued that the duty of the Polish socialists was not to fight for national independence or secession from Russia, but for international unity of the Polish and Russian workers. However, as a member of an oppressing nation, Lenin, rightly, was wary lest a nihilistic attitude to the national question should bring grist to the mill of Great Russian chauvinism. Hence, while the Polish workers could, and should, avoid demanding the establishment of the national state, Russian socialists should fight for the right of the Poles to have their separate state if they so wished:

The great historical merit of our comrades, the Polish Social Democrats, is that they have advanced the slogan of internationalism, that they have said: “we treasure the fraternal alliance of the proletariat of all countries more than anything else and we shall never go to war for the liberation of Poland.” This is their great merit, and this is why we have always regarded only these Social-Democratic comrades in Poland as Socialists. The others are patriots, Polish Plekhanovs. But this unique situation, in which in order to safeguard socialism, it was found necessary to fight against rabid, morbid nationalism, has been productive of a strange phenomenon: comrades come to us and say that we must renounce the freedom of Poland, its right to secession.

Why should we, Great Russians, who have been oppressing a greater number of nations than any other people, why should we repudiate the right of secession for Poland, the Ukraine, Finland? ...the Polish Social Democrats argue that precisely because they find the union with the Russian workers advantageous, they are opposed to Poland’s secession. They have a perfect right to do so. But these people do not wish to understand that in order to strengthen internationalism there is no need to reiterate the same words; what we in Russia do is to stress the right of secession for the subject nations, while in Poland we must stress the right of such nations to unite. The right to unite implies the right to secede. We Russians must emphasise the right to secede, while the Poles must emphasise the right to unite. [62]

The difference between Lenin and Luxemburg on the national question may be summarised as follows: while Rosa Luxemburg, proceeding from the struggle against Polish nationalism, inclined to a nihilistic attitude to the national question, Lenin saw realistically that, the positions of oppressed and oppressor nations being different, their attitude to the same question must be different. Thus, starting from different and opposing situations, they proceed in opposite directions to reach the same point of international workers’ unity. Secondly, while Rosa Luxemburg disposed of the question of national self-determination as incompatible with the class struggle, Lenin subordinated it to the class struggle (in the same way as he took advantage of all other democratic strivings as weapons in the general revolutionary struggle). The fount of Lenin’s approach to the national question, missing in Rosa Luxemburg, is the dialectic: he saw the unity of opposites in national oppression, and the subordination of the part – the struggle for national independence – to the whole – the international struggle for socialism.

Rosa Luxemburg’s analysis of the national question was relatively chauvinist and eurocentric -- committing a similar mistake as Marx and Engels themselves, from a similar over-extrapolation from local events -- while Lenin’s position was relatively progressive and supportive of the struggles of oppressed peoples against national oppression, because of his opposition to capitalism.

Which is among the reasons why Lenin, as an individual communist, has been more widely upheld around the world, and his theory more widely-cited, than Luxemburg.

For example, in Mao’s On New Democracy:

A change, however, occurred in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution after the outbreak of the first imperialist world war in 1914 and the founding of a socialist state on one-sixth of the globe as a result of the Russian October Revolution of 1917.

Before these events, the Chinese bourgeois-democratic revolution came within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, of which it was a part.

Since these events, the Chinese bourgeois-democratic revolution has changed, it has come within the new category of bourgeois-democratic revolutions and, as far as the alignment of revolutionary forces is concerned, forms part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution.

Why? Because the first imperialist world war and the first victorious socialist revolution, the October Revolution, have changed the whole course of world history and ushered in a new era.

It is an era in which the world capitalist front has collapsed in one part of the globe (one-sixth of the world) and has fully revealed its decadence everywhere else, in which the remaining capitalist parts cannot survive without relying more than ever on the colonies and Semi-colonies, in which a socialist state has been established and has proclaimed its readiness to give active support to the liberation movement of all colonies and semi-colonies, and in which the proletariat of the capitalist countries is steadily freeing itself from the social-imperialist influence of the social-democratic parties and has proclaimed its support for the liberation movement in the colonies and semi-colonies. In this era, any revolution in a colony or semi-colony that is directed against imperialism, i.e., against the international bourgeoisie or international capitalism, no longer comes within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, but within the new category. It is no longer part of the old bourgeois, or capitalist, world revolution, but is part of the new world revolution, the proletarian-socialist world revolution. Such revolutionary colonies and semi-colonies can no longer be regarded as allies of the counter revolutionary front of world capitalism; they have become allies of the revolutionary front of world socialism.

Although such a revolution in a colonial and semi-colonial country is still fundamentally bourgeois-democratic in its social character during its first stage or first step, and although its objective mission is to clear the path for the development of capitalism, it is no longer a revolution of the old type led by the bourgeoisie with the aim of establishing a capitalist society and a state under bourgeois dictatorship. It belongs to the new type of revolution led by the proletariat with the aim, in the first stage, of establishing a new-democratic society and a state under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes. Thus this revolution actually serves the purpose of clearing a still wider path for the development of socialism. In the course of its progress, there may be a number of further sub-stages, because of changes on the enemy's side and within the ranks of our allies, but the fundamental character of the revolution remains unchanged.

Such a revolution attacks imperialism at its very roots, and is therefore not tolerated but opposed by imperialism. However, it is favoured by socialism and supported by the land of socialism and the socialist international proletariat.

Therefore, such a revolution inevitably becomes part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution.

The correct thesis that "the Chinese revolution is part of the world revolution" was put forward as early as 1924-27 during the period of China's First Great Revolution. It was put forward by the Chinese Communists and endorsed by all those taking part in the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle of the time. However, the significance of this thesis was not fully expounded in those days, and consequently it was only vaguely understood.

The "world revolution" no longer refers to the old world revolution, for the old bourgeois world revolution has long been a thing of the past, it refers to the new world revolution, the socialist world revolution. Similarly, to form "part of" means to form part not of the old bourgeois but of the new socialist revolution. This is a tremendous change unparalleled in the history of China and of the world.

This correct thesis advanced by the Chinese Communists is based on Stalin's theory.

As early as 1918, in an article commemorating the first anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin wrote:

The great world-wide significance of the October Revolution chiefly consists in the fact that:

1) It has widened the scope of the national question and converted it from the particular question of combating national oppression in Europe into the general question of emancipating the oppressed peoples, colonies and semi-colonies from imperialism;

2) It has opened up wide possibilities for their emancipation and the right paths towards it, has thereby greatly facilitated the cause of the emancipation of the oppressed peoples of the West and the East, and has drawn them into the common current of the victorious struggle against imperialism;

3) It has thereby erected a bridge between the socialist West and the enslaved East, having created a new front of revolutions against world imperialism, extending from the proletarians of the West, through the Russian Revolution, to the oppressed peoples of the East.[5]

Since writing this article, Stalin has again and again expounded the theory that revolutions in the colonies and semi-colonies have broken away from the old category and become part of the proletarian-socialist revolution. The clearest and most precise explanation is given in an article published on June 30, 1925, in which Stalin carried on a controversy with the Yugoslav nationalists of the time. Entitled "The National Question Once Again", it is included in a book translated by Chang Chung-shih and published under the title Stalin on the National Question....

Of course he’s citing Lenin and Stalin here and not Luxemburg. Luxemburg’s position on the national question was completely dismissive of the kind of anti-colonial struggle being waged in China, and entirely at odds with the work of the Chinese communists who were struggling for national liberation and communism at the same time.

And Mao was not uncritical of Stalin, at that time or at any other time! In fact, in 1945, Stalin himself committed the chauvinist error of telling Mao to meet with the reactionary nationalists to make peace, for the sake of Stability and development of productive forces:

[Excerpt from Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War quoting Mao’s private reaction to the first of two telegrams Stalin sent him urging him to personally go to Chongqing (Chungking) for negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek.]

“In the first cable (dated August 22 [1945]), Stalin said that China must hold to the road of peaceful development, that he believed the Nationalists and the Communists should reach a peace accord because a civil war would destroy the Chinese nation, and that, accordingly, he thought both Zhou [Enlai] and Mao should go to Chongqing. After receiving Stalin’s cable, an angry Mao remarked, ‘I simply don’t believe that the nation will perish if the people stand up and struggle [against the Nationalist government].’”

—UP, p. 7. Ed. note: Later on (in early 1948) Stalin admitted that he was wrong in initially opposing the Chinese revolution in the period after World War II. Milovan Djilas reports him as saying: “True, we, too, can make a mistake! Here, when the war with Japan ended, we invited the Chinese comrades to reach an agreement as to how a modus vivendi with Chiang Kai-shek might be found. They agreed with us in word, but in deed they did it their own way when they got home: they mustered their forces and struck. It has been shown that they were right, and not we.” [Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, p. 182.] Later still, on July 27, 1949, as the Chinese revolution was on the verge of complete victory, the authors of Uncertain Partners say that while speaking to a CPC delegation in Moscow Stalin “admitted that he was not ‘too well versed’ in Chinese affairs and may have caused obstacles in the Chinese revolution.” [UP, p. 73.]

(From Mao’s Evaluations of Stalin on massline.org)

So neither was Mao committing some kind of Rightist Nationalist Deviation, nor did Mao and other Chinese communists uphold Leninist writings on the national question because of “Lenin/Stalin Worship”. They took the position they did because that position was useful to their struggle, because it could be picked up and adapted and advanced by communists struggling against feudalism/colonialism and for communism at the same time: the same is not true of Rosa Luxemburg’s position.

So like....when we’re talking about Luxemburg sometimes not being held up the way Lenin is, let’s keep in mind that there are genuine reasons for that

#communism #socialism #lenin #rosa luxemburg #history #my posts #mao #stalin #national liberation #anti imperialism #anti colonialism #theory

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garywonghc · 7 years

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Thupten Jinpa, Voice for Compassion

by Lindsay Kyte

“It’s in the teachings of my own Tibetan Buddhist tradition where I find many of the tools that help me navigate the challenges of everyday living in the contemporary world,” says scholar and translator Thupten Jinpa.

Ironically, the Buddhist tradition he finds so helpful in the modern world was developed during hundreds of years of self-imposed isolation inside Tibet, scrupulously avoiding contact with outside influences. That changed dramatically in 1958, when a failed revolt against Chinese occupiers drove hundreds of thousands of Tibetans, including major Buddhist figures such as the Dalai Lama, into exile.

Thupten Jinpa Langri was one of that first generation of Tibetans who grew up in exile. Now fifty-eight, he has been a pioneer in helping the Tibetan Buddhist tradition find its place in the world. The bridge he’s found between modern society and his ancient religious tradition is compassion.

“Compassion turns out to be the common ground where the ethical teachings of all major traditions, religious and humanistic, come together,” says Jinpa, who is the author of A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Change Our Lives. “Even in the contested political arena, compassion is one value that both sides of the spectrum are eager to claim.”

Jinpa defines compassion as “a sense of concern that arises when we are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to see that suffering relieved. Compassion is a response to the inevitable reality of our human condition — our experiences of pain and sorrow — and offers the possibility of responding with understanding, patience, and kindness.”

It’s no coincidence that his words echo those of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, since he is best-known as His Holiness’ principal English translator since 1985. This former monk is now a family man living in a modest townhouse in Montreal. I sipped coffee with him on his backyard patio as he talked about how compassion permeates his personal life and his work as a scholar, author, translator, and leader in the dialogue between Buddhism and science.

Thupten Jinpa was just one year old when his family fled to India in 1959 in the wake of the Dalai Lama’s escape. At a school for refugee children, he had a traditional Tibetan Buddhist education. “Every Sunday afternoon, a monastic teacher would give a dharma teaching,” Jinpa remembers. “He told stories about Buddhism coming to Tibet, the sacrifices great translators made, and the invention of the Tibetan language system. The traditional culture was being preserved with the children.”

When he was six years old, Jinpa was chosen to walk alongside the Dalai Lama when His Holiness visited the school. “I remember holding his hand and trying to keep up with his pace,” he says. Jinpa asked His Holiness if he could become a monk, to which His Holiness replied, “Study well and you can become a monk anytime you wish.”

When Jinpa was nine, his mother passed away and his father became a monk, which was not uncommon upon the death of a spouse. Two years later, Jinpa decided he wanted to become a monk too. He joined his father’s monastery in southern India, but soon became frustrated with its lack of academic exploration. “The main education consisted of memorising and chanting liturgical texts without knowing their meaning,” he says. “I felt intellectually restless and increasingly uncomfortable.”

Jinpa realised that learning English was the key to exploring new ideas. “I had a basic ability to read English but my conversational skills were almost nonexistent,” he says. “I made do with comic books and a cheap used transistor radio. The Voice of America had a unique programme broadcasting in English, in which the presenter spoke slowly and repeated every sentence twice. This was immensely helpful.”

The early 1970s were the height of the hippie movement in India. Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama’s home and seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, was a favourite spot to hang out, smoke some chillums, and explore Buddhism. His Holiness’ teachings attracted spiritual seekers from across the globe, with whom Jinpa would practice his English, read Western literature, try exotic new foods like pancakes, and learn to use a knife and fork.

“Through English, I learned to read a globe,” Jinpa says. “That made the news of great countries come to life — England, America, Russia, and our beloved Tibet, which had tragically fallen to Communist China.”

At the same time, Jinpa deepened his knowledge of Buddhism and the Tibetan language with a teacher named Zemey Rinpoche, who recognised the young monk’s restless intellect. In 1978, Jinpa moved to Ganden, a large monastery in southern India renowned for its intellectual rigour. On completing his studies there, he was awarded the degree of Geshé Lharampa, the highest level of academic achievement in Tibetan Buddhism.

Then in 1985, twenty years after he had held the Dalai Lama’s hand as a small boy, Thupten Jinpa got a surprise call. His Holiness was scheduled to teach in Dharamasala but his English translator was not going to arrive in time. Jinpa had been recommended.

At first, he tried to refuse. “I said, ‘No, no. I’ve never done this before,’” he remembers. Though nervous, Jinpa eventually agreed to do it. The audience responded well to his style of translation, and when the official translator arrived, the audience requested that Jinpa continue.

Afterwards, the Dalai Lama asked to see Jinpa in his office, where he said, “I know you. You’re a good debater. You’re a good scholar. But I never knew you spoke English. How come I never knew?” Jinpa sheepishly explained to His Holiness that he’d kept a low profile because if others in the monastery knew how well he spoke English, he’d be inundated with tasks. His Holiness said, “People tell me that you have a very easy English to listen to. Would you come with me when I need you to interpret, and on my travels?”

Jinpa was in tears. “In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would have the honour of serving the Dalai Lama so closely,” he says. “For a Tibetan who grew up as a refugee in India, serving the Dalai Lama was also a way to honour the sacrifices our parents had to make in their early years of exile.”

Jinpa began translating for the Dalai Lama in India, and two years later travelled to the West for the first time. “The first country we stopped in was West Germany. I had never seen a supermarket or motorways with two lanes. The colours were very muted, even the houses and clothes. There were very few people, whereas in India there are people everywhere. It felt too neat and too clean. On the same trip, we went to the United States. Even the air smelled different.”

“My relationship with Sophie involved a bit of a learning curve,” says Thupten Jinpa about life as a married man. “It’s funny how the things that become so important in your life tend to happen accidentally.”

Though he was now the Dalai Lama’s principal English translator, Jinpa continued to develop a life independent of this role. He went to Cambridge University to pursue a B.A. in Western philosophy, and eventually got his PhD in religious studies.

Away for the first time, he began to think that his future might not be in the monastery, because remaining a monk meant he would eventually become a teacher. “Right from the beginning, I recognised that in serving His Holiness, I was also serving the world,” says Jinpa. “Whereas, if I tried to be a teacher in my own right, I may be successful, but my reach would always be limited.” He began to see he was in a unique position: “The strange karma I had of being a monk, yet knowing English, was pushing me to be a medium between the two cultures.”

Jinpa also had to face what his heart was telling him — he wanted a family of his own. “I’d had a yearning for family since my early twenties. The yearning was even stronger after my undergraduate time at Cambridge. So I made the decision to give back my vows.”

Jinpa wrote the Dalai Lama a long letter to apologise if he had disappointed him. A couple of months later, Jinpa got a call that His Holiness wanted him to translate in Switzerland. He explained that he was no longer a monk, but the Dalai Lama’s secretary said that His Holiness had personally requested him.

When he saw His Holiness, Jinpa remembers, “I said, ‘I’m so sorry to turn up like this in trousers instead of robes.’ The Dalai Lama laughed and said, ‘You always had a big head. But now, with hair, it looks even more impressive.’ His Holiness told me, ‘I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed and saddened by your leaving the monastic life, but I know you have not taken this decision lightly. I respect your judgement.’”

Then the Dalai Lama gave Jinpa this advice: “I have no experience in family life. But I have seen enough broken relationships to know that you shouldn’t have children before you’ve found the right partner. There are so many broken families with small children caught in the middle and parents expending so much energy trying to resolve conflicts.”

Jinpa says His Holiness’ reaction to his decision taught him a lot about compassion. “He could have scolded me. But he got to my level, understood me, and looked at the situation from my perspective. That changed everything.”

A year later, when His Holiness couldn’t make a scheduled radio interview in Montreal, he sent Jinpa in his place. Because Jinpa did not speak French, Sophie Boyer, a volunteer for the Canada Tibet Committee, went to the studio to help.

“The first time we spoke was on the radio,” he says. “Later she told me she was planning to go to India to learn Tibetan.” Jinpa arranged for Sophie to stay in his former monastery and he went back to Cambridge, where he was working as a research fellow in Eastern religion. The two stayed in touch and eventually married. Thupten Jinpa now smiles as he remembers the learning curve that being in a romantic relationship entailed.

“In the Tibetan community, once you grow up, there’s not much physical contact,” says Jinpa. “And having been a monk, physical intimacy was not part of my life, nor was the sharing of emotions. My wife, she’s French-Canadian, which is a culture that expects that intimacy. So learning that took a little while.”

Jinpa and Sophie have two daughters, now both at university, and Jinpa says becoming a father changed his perspective on compassion, which had been a little theoretical. “It helped me make real many of the sentiments around compassion that we, as monks, visualise and imagine. In the face of an infant’s immediate need, a loving parent is completely there for that child. That unconditionality, that total presence, is the quality of mind and heart that compassion and meditation tries to cultivate for all beings.”

Jinpa’s youngest daughter, Tara, taught him many lessons. “Between ages two and four, she was completely unmanageable sometimes,” he says. “I remember getting caught being very angry and frustrated. In relationships you have with colleagues or teachers, you’re not completely exposed from the personal side, whereas in the context of family life, you are as bare as you can be.”

Being a family man has allowed Jinpa to act as a bridge between the Dalai Lama and lay audiences. “Sometimes a question does not fully capture what an audience member wants to ask,” says Jinpa. “As a lay person with a family, I may be able to translate those unwritten assumptions. Conversely, I may also be able to explain certain points of His Holiness’ to the audience in a way that is more understandable because of my life situation.”

“I’ve always been interested in ideas, but I was never that interested in science,” Thupten Jinpa acknowledges. That changed in 1987, when he translated for the Dalai Lama at the first Mind and Life conference. For the first time, contemplative practitioners and leading scientists came together for a dialogue about how the inner research of meditation and the outer research of science could work together.

“For His Holiness,” says Jinpa, “what science offers is a very empirical way of grounding many aspects of Buddhism — the importance of self-discipline, having mastery of your emotions, having awareness of your own eternal mind. If you’re able to explain these ideas in scientific language and cite scientific findings, it’s a much more accessible way of conveying them to Western minds.”

There was more skepticism on the scientific side. “When the first Mind and Life Dialogues began, compassion wasn’t a major field in science,” says Jinpa. “But more and more research indicated evidence of empathy in animals, so you could no longer say altruism has been put upon us by culture. Until then, that was what a lot of scientists took morality and religion to be — a human invention to keep a lid on this brute nature. Otherwise, we’d be at each other’s throats.”

Jinpa’s role was more than translating mere words. “At the time, the conceptual framework wasn’t there for scientists to understand Buddhist philosophy,” Jinpa says. “If you started using Buddhist jargon, they had no way of appreciating the insights.” To build a foundation for productive dialogue, Jinpa and His Holiness had to create connections beyond the technical language of both worlds.

His Holiness’ message about the importance of compassion began to attract greater interest in the scientific world. Jinpa says that the Mind and Life conference at MIT in 2003 was a milestone. “That represented, from a mainstream scientific community’s point of view, a begrudging acceptance of the role Buddhism has had in shaping science.”

Compassion and the benefits of meditation practice are now considered legitimate subjects of scientific study. In 2005, His Holiness was a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Since its first dialogue in 1987, the Mind and Life Institute has held more than thirty events on a wide range of subjects, including ethics, neuroplasticity, altruism, economics, and more. Thupten Jinpa is the chair of its board.

Another organisation studying and promoting compassion is the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, which Jinpa helped found with neurosurgeon James Doty. There Jinpa developed the Compassion Cultivation Training program (CCT), combining mindfulness practice, compassion meditation techniques, and Western psychological insights. Free of religious terminology and with testable results, this eight-week training in empathy and compassion has been taught to thousands of people from Stanford students to Google engineers. Many of its principles and practices are found in Jinpa’s book, A Fearless Heart.

Thupten Jinpa says that over time he came to recognise that his destiny is to integrate classical Tibetan Buddhism into the contemporary world. He therefore turned his attention to preserving the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, in particular the extensive philosophical teachings that the Dalai Lama refers to as the Nalanda tradition, named after the famed Mahayana Buddhist university of ancient India.

Fearing that this knowledge might be lost as the Tibetan monastic system weakens, Jinpa decided to “translate, reformat, and recreate these Tibetan texts for better and more efficient use, and to make them part of the global literary tradition.” The Library of Tibetan Classics is an enormous project, a thirty-two volume set of translations of key texts. Nine have been published so far by Wisdom Publications, with the others in progress.

Jinpa also has what he calls a “hobby” — reforming classical Tibetan grammar to a more modern system to make it easier for future generations of Tibetans to retain their language. “Between the spoken and the written, there’s a big gap. I did a lot of research and wrote a book to help bridge this gap, and it’s now being used in some of the monasteries.”

A true Renaissance man, Thupten Jinpa says there is a drive that unifies the work he does in so many different fields: “It’s my belief that the preservation and dissemination of classical Buddhist knowledge and its practices, including compassion, is good for the world.” As Jinpa reflects on this, he pats the family dog, who has been sleeping at his feet. The dog wags its tail happily. This makes Thupten Jinpa smile. “Also, you know, I think I’ve just been plain lucky,” he adds, with a characteristic laugh.

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britishdeepstate · 7 years

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Abdul Hamid II's Gift to Britain: Cyprus

A British officer, Captain J. M. Kinneir wrote about the importance of Cyprus for Britain after he paid a visit to the island in 1814:

The possession of Cyprus would give to England a preponderating influence in the Mediterranean, and place at her disposal the future destinies of the Levant. Egypt and Syria would soon become her tributaries, and she would acquire an overawing position in respect to Asia Minor, by which the Porte might at all times be kept in check, and the encroachments of Russia, in this quarter, retarded if not prevented. It would increase her commerce in a very considerable degree; give her the distribution of the rich wines, silks and other produce of that fine island; the rice and sugar of Egypt, and the cotton, opium and tobacco of Anatolia.(George Francis Hill, The History of Cyprus, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010, p. 270)

Benjamin Disraeli

Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli voiced similar thoughts and said Cyprus was “the Key of Western Asia” and continued saying that any state that wished to control the Middle East should have controlled Cyprus. ((Ed Rooksby, “Cyprus and the West”, Beyond a Divided Cyprus: A State and Society in Transformation, Edited by Nicos Trimikliniotis and Umut Bozkurt, p. 85))

The British deep state has always wanted Cyprus, an island with a significant strategic position, and waited for the decline era of the Ottoman Empire to take action. It was sure that Abdul Hamid II, a sultan that it kept under pressure, would give in to its demands. So when the right time came, it put its devious gradual plans into action.

On May 10, 1878, Lord Salisbury, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, instructed Ambassador Austen Henry Layard in Istanbul to start the process for Cyprus. Layard, in response, met Grand Vizier Mehmed Rushdi Pasha on May 23 and assured him that Britain would ignore the Treaty of San Stefano and a new treaty would be prepared in favor of Turkish interests where British would prevent any new Russian attempts to invade any places other than Kars, Ardahan and Batum. However, there was a catch: British wanted to be in charge of Cyprus’ administration. Ambassador Layard met Abdul Hamid II on May 25 and claimed that the Treaty of San Stefano was against the interests of the Ottoman Empire, that Britain wanted to help the Porte but had to send supplies to the Navy from Malta and London, for which Cyprus should be temporarily left to the British. The persistence proved useful for British deep state and on June 4, 1878, before the Treaty of Berlin was signed, the Cyprus Convention was signed between the British and the Ottomans. According to the agreement, Great Britain would occupy the island and control it on behalf of the Sultan. Revenues -after the costs incurred by the British were deducted- would be annually sent to the Ottoman treasury, while the Ottoman authorities would continue to be in charge of justice, religion and educational institutes. This agreement allowed Britain to obtain the control of the island, which could be compared to a battleship in its quest to secure the Suez Canal and the vital route to India.

Abdul Hamid II allowed the British Army to invade the island and rule it during that period. However, over time three more additions were made to the agreement. The first additional agreement dated July 1, 1878 gave the Sultan the right to sell the lands on the island he owned, and obligated the British to buy them if the lands were nationalized. This way, the money for the lands sold was sent directly to Abdul Hamid II. The subsequent additions required the British to send the taxes collected in Cyprus to the Ottoman Empire, after necessary administrational costs were deducted. Many historians interpret this practice as the rental of Cyprus by Abdul Hamid II. However, British never paid the money and said they were offset against the Ottoman debts to Britain.

When WWI broke out, Britain declared that it officially annexed Cyprus. At the Conference of Lausanne, Turkey had to officially accept the situation on Cyprus. In other words, the Cyprus ‘gift‘ of Sultan Abdul Hamid II to the British could be considered the first step in the British plan to physically invade the Ottoman Empire.

South Cyprus

Interestingly, before and after the failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, the British deep state heavily increased its military presence at its South Cyprus base. When asked, the British explained their reasons for sending warplanes, helicopters, landing ships and special forces to the region as ‘rescuing British citizens if Turkey suffers a second coup attempt’. The British authorities also claimed that ‘if found necessary’ the British forces entering the Turkish land would also be authorized to fire. Both the Turkish public and the Turkish media considered this as ‘an invasion plan’.

As this example also shows, the usual tactic of the British deep state is first instigating unrest in a country through coup attempts, riots or civil wars in a bid to financially, politically and militarily weaken the country. The second stage is a military campaign with the pretense of ‘protecting its citizens’, ‘humanitarian aid’, ‘humanitarian intervention or ‘peacemaking’. A quick look at the historical events will clearly reveal examples of this British deep state strategy.

Strangely enough, one hundred years later Cyprus was once again the central point of the British deep state’s plans to invade Turkey. This is more reason to suspect that the next stages of their secret plans will be similar to those of the past. Indeed, this is exactly what happened when the British deep state took over first Cyprus and then Egypt in 1882.

By the grace of God, on July 15, the President of the Turkish Republic, the government, security forces and most importantly the Turkish people have effectively blocked this sinister British deep state plan. However, this doesn’t mean that the danger is gone and the plan is no longer there. The British deep state is seeking new ways to carry out its nefarious plans. For this reason, it is crucial that we are aware the threat still exists and are on our guard at all times. By God’s leave, the British deep state will never be able to achieve its dark plans for Turkey.

Abdul Hamid II's Gift to Britain: Cyprus BritishDeepState.net

#abdulhamid 2 cyprus #abdulhamid cyprus #britain cyprus 1878

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