陳真
發佈日期: 2011.05.09
發佈時間:
上午 3:47
(續)
我們不該根據某人的某些言語來判斷其思維,因為語言無法賦予自身任何意義;重要的不是話語,而是話語跟說話者之間的關係.
光是話語本身是無法理解的,就好像我們無法理解一塊木頭上面寫個 "炮" 是什麼東西一樣. 這東西,唯有當它屬於一種棋局時,它才能被理解為一個 "棋子",否則 "炮" 這東西不過就是一塊小木頭,不可能憑空翻山越嶺.
我前兩篇留言對達賴的批評,當然也不是因為他針對賓拉登之事講了一些傻話而來. 我不用聽他說,大約事先就能猜到他會講些什麼.
應該是去年吧,達賴來台灣,我還跑去聆聽教誨,其實我只是想近距離看看 "活佛" 眉宇之間的神色模樣究竟如何.至於他說些什麼,我早已不怎麼在意. 一來是因為對其人其思太過熟悉,二來是因為他這幾年來的一些表現,讓我對他的 "宗教性" 大大打了折扣.
至於打折的原因,並不只是像底下Guardian這篇文章所批評,而是許許多多的事例讓我相信,達賴並沒有忠於其信念. 比方說,老是和美國眉來眼去,不但接受其頒獎,甚至互相標榜一些與事實完全相反的東西,彷彿美國是什麼純潔的白雪公主似的,為了什麼自由人權而奮鬥;對於美國所發動的各項侵略戰爭以及殺害數百萬人性命的各項嚴重違反人道罪行,卻從來沒有一句批評;對於所謂恐怖份子倒是批評一堆,雖然最後都會掛上幾句慈悲憐憫.
底下這文章提到,達賴於1992年應邀充當據說有 "時尚聖經" 之稱的 法國Vogue雜誌的客座編輯. 我不知道一個和尚跟一堆奢華無度的名人明星或有錢大爺拍照搞時髦編時髦雜誌,是不是屬於一種我還無法參透的最新佛法?
至於文章中提到,1950-1974年之間,達賴每年定期接受美國 CIA 情治單位的供養. 此事真相如何,我不知道. 雖屬歷史往事,或有其苦衷不得而知,但連續拿了二十幾年的錢也未免太誇張.
更重要的是,如果那只是一種非常時期互相利用的權宜之計倒也罷了(就好像賓拉登也曾經是美國打擊蘇俄的重要馬前卒),可是,一直到現在2011年5月9日,達賴依然十分樂於充當美國或西方列強攻擊中國的一個工具.
今天,如果他也以同樣的普世價值來批評或甚至對抗美國與西方列強之遠甚於中國的侵害人權行為,那麼,我們不會說他是西方的工具,也不致失去對其言行話語原有的崇高敬意.
陳真
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Down with the Dalai Lama
Why do western commentators idolise a celebrity monk who hangs out with Sharon Stone and once guest-edited French Vogue?
Brendan O'Neill
guardian.co.uk, Thursday
29 May 2008 20.00
Has there ever been a political figure more ridiculous than the Dalai Lama? This is the "humble monk" who forswears worldly goods in favour of living a simple life dressed in maroon robes. Yet in 1992 he guest-edited French Vogue, the bible of the decadent high-fashion classes, which is packed with pictures of the half-starved daughters of the aristocracy modelling skirts and shirts that most of us could never afford.
He claims to be the current incarnation of the Tulkus line of Buddhist masters, who are "exempt from the wheel of death and rebirth". Yet he's best known for hanging out with clueless western celebs like Richard Gere and Sharon Stone (who is still most famous for showing her vagina on the big screen). Stone once introduced the Dalai Lama at a glittering fundraising ball as "Mr Please, Please, Please Let Me Back Into China!"
The Dalai Lama says he wants Tibetan autonomy and political independence. Yet he allows himself to be used as a tool by western powers keen to humiliate China. Between the late 1950s and 1974, he is alleged to have received around $15,000 a month, or $180,000 a year, from the CIA. He has also been, according to the same reporter, "remarkably nepotistic", promoting his brothers and their wives to positions of extraordinary power in his fiefdom-in-exile in Dharamsala, northern India.
He poses as the quirky, giggly, modern monk who once auctioned his Land Rover on eBay for $80,000 and has even done an advert for Apple (quite what skinny white computers have got to do with Buddhism is anybody's guess). Yet in truth he is a product of the crushing feudalism of archaic, pre-modern Tibet, where an elite of Buddhist monks treated the masses as serfs and ruthlessly punished them if they stepped out of line.
The Dalai Lama demands religious freedom. Yet he persecutes a Buddhist sect that worships a deity called Dorje Shugden. He outlawed praying to Dorje Shugden in 1996, and those who defied his writ were thrown out of their jobs, mocked in the streets and even had their homes smashed up by heavy-handed officials from his government-in-exile. When worshippers complained about their treatment, they were told by representatives of the Dalai Lama that "concepts like democracy and freedom of religion are empty when it comes to the wellbeing of the Dalai Lama".
As the Dalai Lama tours Britain, lots of people are asking: why won't Brown receive him at Downing Street? I have a different question: why should Brown, who for all his troubles is still the head of an elected political party, meet with an authoritarian, fame-chasing, Apple-loving monk?
The Dalai Lama has effectively been turned into a cartoon good guy. In America and western Europe, where backward anti-modern sentiments are widespread amongst self-loathing sections of the educated and the elite, the Dalai Lama has been embraced as a living, breathing representative of unsullied goodness. Despite the fact that he advertises Apple, guest-edits Vogue and drives a Land Rover, he is held up as evidence that living the simple eastern life is preferable to, in the words of Philip Rawson, westerners' "gradually more pointless pursuit of material satisfactions". Just as earlier generations of disillusioned aristocrats fell in love with a fictional version of Tibet (Shangri-La), so contemporary un-progressives idolise a fictional image of the Dalai Lama.
Most strikingly, the Dalai Lama is used as a battering ram by western governments in their culture war with China. The reason he is flattered by world leaders and bankrolled by the CIA is not because these institutions care very much for liberty in Tibet, but rather because they want to ratchet up international pressure on their new competitors in world politics: the Chinese. You don't have to be a defender of the authoritarian regime in Beijing (and I most certainly am not) to see that such global sabre-rattling is more likely to entrench tensions between the Tibetan people and China, and increase instability in world affairs, rather than herald anything like a new era of freedom in the east.
Far from "helping Tibet", the slavish western worshippers of the Dalai Lama are helping to stifle the development of a real, lively movement for liberty and democracy in the Tibetan regions. One author on the Tibetan independence movement argues that "the Dalai Lama's role as ultimate spiritual authority is holding back the political process of democratisation", since "the assumption that he occupies the correct moral ground from a spiritual perspective means that any challenge to his political authority may be interpreted as anti-religious".
At least one reason why the Dalai Lama can pose as "the ultimate spiritual authority" and all-round supreme leader of Tibetans and their future is because influential elements in the west have empowered him to p1ay that role. In doing so, they have been complicit in the infantilisation of the Tibetan people. Tibetans now suffer the double horror of being ruled by undemocratic Chinese officials on one hand, and demeaned by the Dalai Lama and his western supporters on the other.
