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I studied at a Kagyu-Nyingma monastery
Thats so cool, is there any ancient and forbidden knowledge you learned there which you’d want to share with us?
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Fascinating, thank you for the writeup!
So how do you prepare yourself mentally to contemplate death in front of a corpse?
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Yeah thats fair enough, did you learn/experience anything that changed the way you see reality on a fundamental level (other than what you mentioned about community)?
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But then I started falling asleep during lectures because they were being live translated from Tibetan into English and it’s hard to concentrate when someone is speaking a language you don’t know but you have to listen to them respectfully like you have a clue what it is they’re saying.
As far as I know, Tibetan is one of the hardest languages to learn, if not the hardest (with Polish being the other one). Its “orthographic depth” is all fucked because it’s kept the same spelling for most of its words since 620 AD, with some spelling reforms around 800 AD. It’s like if English had everything written in Latin, but pronounced like we already do (example: “finally” being spelled “ad ultimum”). So not only is it in a family already difficult for outsiders, there’s no way to learn the spelling except by memorizing specific words, which also makes looking up words difficult.
Arabic has a similar life story to Tibetan, where it was spread and kept alive through religious texts (the Koran). But unlike Tibetan, Arabic has localized and standard updates to its writing. Vowels, for example, weren’t originally written in the Arabic used in the Koran. Modern Arabic has vowels inserted to make it easier to read (that is what all those , ’ ` -looking things are in Arabic script, those are vowels). Tibetan hasn’t done this.
It’s one of the challenges of improving literacy among Tibetans. A lot of them are like “Have you seen this shit? It may as well be Greek.”
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Just a little quibble with your point about Tibetan writing - a better comparison would be Modern English written as it was during the Old English period. So like “lord” might be written as “hlafweard”, for example, because it is a direct descendent of that word put through hundreds of years of pronunciation change. English doesn’t come from Latin and “finally” doesn’t come from “ad ultimum”, whereas Tibetan does come from Old Tibetan, the language the script was originally fairly adequately adapted to.
The other day, after I claimed that china isn’t a historically expansionist or militarist country, I was told “what does the dalai lama have to say about that?”. Holy shit people are dumb. Like, ask the pope what he thinks about the genocide in Palestine instead, genius.
The idea of China invading the country at the request of the Tibetan Communist Party, crushing the Lamas, freeing the slaves, and iirc they had to do it twice because the Lamas tried to start shit again, would never penetrate, would it?
I remember a Chinese person slapping down some of this bullshit saying that 98% of Tibetans speak Tibetan and asking the American how many native americans spoke an indigenous language.
and asking the American how many native americans spoke an indigenous language
And this is why libs invented ‘that’s just whataboutism’
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There’s also just the fact that Tibet diplomatically rejoined with China right after the end of the Civil War and only decided to split a decade later, after much work had been done to improve conditions for the serfs and this lead to an outraged aristocratic class trying to breakaway to maintain power. It’s very roughly like calling the US expansionist for invading the Confederacy.
A question for them would be “what does the Dalai Lama have to say about Nepal having peasant slaves into the 20th century and why do all the Bhuddist Temples have to be gilded in gold?”
Isn’t Nepal governed by a communist party? Why would they allow that?
Sorry I know basically nothing about Nepal I am a little baby.
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As other posters have said yeah the communist uprising and now coalition state have outlawed slavery and sought restitution from the Monastery system for it, outlawed the monarchy, and additionally the quality of life significantly went up especially child and maternal health. Also don’t feel bad about asking questions leftists love answering questions
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Back when I used to make the mistake of browsing through quora, this was absolutely the kind of cope that was popular amongst americans.
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Didn’t he just tell some kid to suck on his tongue like a year ago?
Yup, and deprogram sub upvoted his defenders for that.
r/thedeprogram seems like the mirror universe version of r/chapotraphouse. Instead of the sub being more based than the showrunners, they’re less based.
It’s pretty easy to explain though, and not really chapo but GenZedong, that sub got harsh struggle sessions about imperialism and religion, and when it was banned, based people went to Lemmygrad while centrists and clerical socialists went to deprogram (good advice: don’t engage on deprogram about religion, while they are some people with correct takes there, you can more often read takes like the defence of tongue sucking or absolute nuclear takes that you can’t become marxist without religion or that religion is inherently materialist).
good advice: don’t engage on deprogram about religion, while they are some people with correct takes there, you can more often read takes like the defence of tongue sucking or absolute nuclear takes that you can’t become marxist without religion or that religion is inherently materialist
Oof. It doesn’t help that at least 2 of the 3 bois are religious. Hakim is Muslim and Yugopnik is Eastern Orthodox. I don’t know about JT.
Yeah every time you write something critical about religion they are like “Hakim is muslim” as if it didn’t led him to some outright wrong takes too including straight up proselitysm once.
I know he has some cringe takes on religion, but I didn’t know he proselitized once.
Something around last year. I searched it since i’m fairly sure i commented on it but reddit search is utter shit. I think it was in comments to one of his youtube videos and then it surfaced once or twice on reddit sub.
Op have screens in question, in second you can see how Hakim says Quran is his favourite book and he reccomend reading and even in-depth studying it to all visitors of his channel, which is basically proselitism especially since i very much doubt anyone coming to his channel regardless of option cames for hearing about his lord and saviour. On third you see him reccomending some fascist conversion story. Plus massively overestimating role islam plays in liberation of the people in the region and not mentioning how it even is on this position.
Thread below is also full of nuclear takes including the one about “materialist religion”
Imo Hakim deserves a pass on this matter. I don’t think he’s wrong at all when he comments about the role that Islam has played in the resistance of peoples in his region against empire, resistance against war that has been very up close to him personally.
Yugopnik is religious? I had no idea
I’ve seen his kindness and it shouldn’t be around kids
Didn’t this guy own slaves or some shit?
I doubt it, the pla stopped all that shit in the fifties. He’s old but not that old. Afaik he’s spent most of his life being trotted around as a mascot for anti-chinese propaganda. I don’t think he’s ever had much, if any, agency.
He was born in 1935 and became Dalai Lama in 1940.
Good to know, thank you.
Tenzin was born after the fall of the Tibetan feudal system so no he didn’t personally.
He would love it if he could tho, as do most of the lama class in exile
What? Serfdom was abolished in 1959 and he was born in 1935, and became Dalai Lama in 1940.
Plus if you believe him (no), he owned slaves multiple past lives
I mean if this is the same guy becoming Dalai Lama over and over again then he was put in his seat by Mongols and his title is direct parallel to the title Genghis Khan, since Genghis in Mongol have roughly same meaning as Dalai in Tibetan.
Yeah, that should be taken in to account.
Yeah my memory was a bit off. For some reason I thought he was born in the late 40s.
Yes, idk what people below say. He was born in 1935, became Dalai Lama in 1940 and serfdom was abolished ultimately and he was exiled in 1959
who needs a temple when they are on the CIA’s payroll
No need for temples coz you got booted out bro
Come listen to this banger instead https://yewtu.be/watch?v=b60_Vis2x24
The burning of the slave contracts gets me emotional ngl
CW: some historical footage of Tibetan serfdom that may be disturbing
Oof, yeah. Slavery and serfdom in pre-communist Tibet was bad. Maybe not as bad as American slavery in scope, but very very bad. Please exercise caution when you research it and be ready to take a break if it starts to be overwhelming.
“Your own mind, your own heart, and your child sex slaves are the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness and millions of dollars.”
Reminds me of a funny video I saw that talked about some of the most famous Japanese warlords and their depiction in media; one of the warlords is often depicted as a funny monkey man but he was a brutal war criminal who tried to invade Korea and killed tons and tons of people, and he mentioned something about the other two but I can’t recall what it was exactly (I think one of them was Nobunaga who I think he said was the least worst of the bunch but still bad).
You get this simple philosophy here but the history behind the group is actually quite horrific (if I recall correctly, wikipedia even has a page just for Tibetan torture methods).
I hate how Nobunaga gets venerated as a god-general-statesman in cultural exports when he was just a ruthless conqueror the same as anyone else. I wish one one-hundredth of the ink spilled for him was spilled for the Ikko-Ikki peasant revolt he crushed. Were that the case, I might be able to successfully research it.
The whole Samurai caste is romanticized, especially outside of Japan. They were the ruthless, opportunistic enforcers of the hierarchy, not honorable warrior-scholars. Bushido is what led Japan down the path of imperialism and resulted in WWII.
This doesn’t excuse them from being forces of reaction, but they did become much more scholarly after they stopped having wars to fight.
There is a thesis that one of the main reason Hideyoshi ordered invasion of Korea was to actually get rid of the dregs of Sengoku period, if they succeeded it would be a bonus But they failed on both fronts what ensued was three biggest and bloodiest civil wars campaigns in feudal Japan history, only then they settled up and became one of the most useless parasitic classes in history of mankind. And eventually they got outparasited by usurers and become prime source of imperialist lackeys.
There’s fun (and actually non bloody or horrible for once) example of the real Samurai ethos i read in book. I think it was in XVIII century, when a small and pretty isolated garrison of 200 men in mountains of central Japan got denounced to bakufu, and inspection turned out that basically nobody there was doing any samurai things, most of them even sold their swords and entire garrison just said “fuck this” and they were working in nearby pottery. Normally this would be horrible scandal ending up in the mass suicide order (bakufu did such things), but this particular pottery was famous for producing very high quality tea sets for arsitocrats so entire case was hushed.
There definitely needs to be more media featuring the Ikko-Ikki. So many fascinating stories to tell.
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Iirc at some point in Sengoku era they controlled entire Kaga province for years, but fell later as daimyos consolidated the power.
There was also armed buddhists temples, like Mount Hiei or temple at Osaka had few thousands armed monks at some points, and they were better armed than all feudal armies since some temples in Japan were for some reason arm producing centers and that included firearms. Unfortunately the usual organised and armed religion thing ticked off for them and unlike most ikko-ikki they were scourge of nearby territories, once even almost completely torched Kyoto in probably biggest and most violent monachomachia in history of mankind. Wiping them out was really best thing Nobunaga did.
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Always fun to play as in total war
Even when you fight Nobunaga in media you’re usually doing it as the stooge of some other warlord
Were the Ikko-Ikki peasants the ones who became ninjas?
No, ikko-ikki were the local self-defence groups made of petty samurai, armed monks and peasantry in the Sengoku era, they were reaction to feudal warlords doing usual warlordy things.
Ninjas, more properly called shinobi, were just medieval kind of intelligence operatives working on behalf of usual feudal lords. They mainly did spying and occasional assassination or sabotage, and didn’t dressed funny.
“Ninja” were mainly samurai doing spy shit. They might disguise themselves as peasants, but usually they were from the warrior caste acting on behalf of their lord. The whole “sneaky guys in black pajamas” was something that came from plays where people playing ninjas would dress in black to hide in the background of a scene. Then they would enter the stage and it would look like they appeared out of nowhere.
Not to my knowledge, but as I said I have mostly failed at successfully researching them. I think ninjas were mostly peasants and samurai working on behalf of warlords, whereas the Ikko-Ikki was more of a grassroots movement.
lol, was it this guy, Hideyoshi Toyotomi? He was in every Onimusha game too as Nobunaga’s sidekick before becoming the ruler of Japan between the third and fourth games. The final Onimusha game is actually all about his atrocities- invading “the continent”(the country is never specified), massacring civilians, outlawing Christianity and killing all Western missionaries (though that last one doesn’t sound too bad)
The funny thing is that he ends up completely exonerated in Onimusha lore- he was just a smol bean who became possessed by demons and he feels real bad about it
Yesssssss, that’s the guy! He did so much monstrous stuff but he’s usually depicted in a goofy manner!
outlawing Christianity and killing all Western missionaries (though that last one doesn’t sound too bad)
Most of work here was done later by Tokugawas: Ieyasu, Hidetada and Iemitsu, but despite brutality it was a W (most of said brutality happened really during Iemitsu reign). Hideyoshi observed in real time how christianity served as softener for colonialism and it’s clear he wanted to avoid it, though preferably keeping trade with Europeans. Interesting fact is that christianity was pretty thin in Japan as in case of both Sekigahara campaign and later sieges of Osaka, overwhelming most of Japanese christians supported Hideyoshi’s heir Hideyori.
Nobunaga seems to be portrayed as a literally demonic monster in a lot of Japanese games and media. Same as Muramasa being reduced to a stock villain whose swords are magical and evil.
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I don’t think he was even a competitor. Apparently Masamune was like 300 years prior. Supposedly Murmasa’s school made swords for many of Tokugawa’s troops and retainers so when the Tokugawa’s had disasters playwrights would spice things up by attributing it to Masamune’s demon swords or something.
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That seems to be how they’re frequently depicted in media. And also lol “oh no my sword is too good at cutting! It’s evil cutting!” playwrights lol.
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(if I recall correctly, wikipedia even has a page just for Tibetan torture methods)
Would you happen to have a link handy? A cursory google search yields nothing but the expected anti-Maoist trash
Sorry, forgot to reply; I believe the info was here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy
I can excuse being an anti-communist relic of a fallen feudal slave state, but I draw the line at anti-gooning stances.
The CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is his temple.
So why does he and his cronies even whine about losing temples, land and slaves? China did them a favour!
Met(t)apost: Communism is taking the philosophy of kindness and applying it to political economy
