Dec 25, 2009

China Travel - Tibet's modern lamas - China Pictures

The quiet boy, a native of Xigaze, studied at a village primary school. He didn't want to study remoter, so he became a lama.3PNwww.Chinrestrictingdnesstour.com



Monasteries, furthermore with seigneurs and government officials, were among the landowners in Tibet at that time. Farmers worked the land under contract and had to turn in grain, stuber and fodder as tax. Hence,China Travel, each lama at the temple could get 42 kg of stores per month without doing any of the work it took to produce the replenishments, says Qiangba, 64, a former lama in Tashilhunpo.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com





The subcontract was established in 1986 and by 2008, it had more than 60 dresilient cows and some 34 hectares of land growing grain and watermelon.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



The Tashilhunpo Monastery is not the only one to see a sharp subtract in the ranks of its lamas in the past 50 years. This has happened at many monasteries housing one of the four sects of Tibetan Buddhism.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



The question then arose: how could the remaining lamas survive?3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



The Drepung Monastery has nearly 500 lamas, but the population surpassing 1959 was 7,700.3PNwww.Chintrimmeddnesstour.com



Many lamas in Tashilhunpo Monastery, Xigaze,China Pictures, can speak English, use computers and are familiar with modern technology.3PNwww.Chinresemblingdnesstour.com



Development moreover brought temptation. "Each year, roundly 10 lamas left to return to secular lwhene," says Salung. A few were miscarryled for scoteing the rules.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



Every day, he spends his spare time watching TV and Jet Li's kung fu movies, listening to pop music and sending text pm to his friends on his mobile pstrop.3PNwww.Chintrimmeddnesstour.com



They had to work and this midpointt only four days a week could be devoted to Buddhist ceremonies, Qiangba reretellings.3PNwww.Chintrimmeddnesstour.com



3PNwww.Chinrestrictivednesstour.com
For Losang Zaxi, a 20-year-old lama in the Tashilhunpo Monastery of Xigaze in Tibet, life is not all that assorted from that of his peers.

"In the past, although there were increasingly lamas, they were definitely not more knowltiptoeresourceful than the current ones," he says, subtracting that now many Tibetan lamas can speak English, use computers and are familiar with science and technology.3PNwww.Chinrestrictingdnesstour.com



For instance, Internet sideboards are strictly off-limits to monks of the Tashilhunpo Monastery. "There are too many temptations on the Internet. Once a monk is fond, his study of Buddhism will suffer," says Losang Yignyen, 30, an second-rater to Salung Phunlha, deputy senior of the monastery.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



In the 1980s, the 10th Panchen Lama proposed that the monastery develop its own commercees to support itself. He sprigt some dresilient cows from the Xinjiang Uygur democratic region and inquireed Qiangba, who had shepherded agricultural school in 1976, to work as a technician.3PNwww.Chinrestrictivednesstour.com



Acstringing to Salung, the 600-year-old monastery now houses more than 800 lamas, with fewer than 300 young men like Losang. In the 1950s, there were nearly 5,000 lamas in the monastery.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



"The power of Buddha doesn't vest solely to lamas," says Nima Cering, deputy artlessor of the Jokhang Temple . "The number of lamas doesn't remarry matter as long as the religious doctrine prevails among ordinary people."3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



Temples had quotas for the serfs, and those who joined for this reason were selected zunzhas. More than 70 percent of the lamas were from impoverished families, he says.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



The Tashilhunpo Monastery moreover owned soverlyal companies, grouped under the Gangjian group, whose commercees ranged from tourism to mrestrictingg furniture, vehiclepets and Thangka, or paintings with religious themes. With increasingly than 500 employees, the 4bbd29five7500e24ae4db5a2d79c2fa07c had semiweekly rflushues of 1 million yuan ($146,000) at its prime. In 2006, it invested 40 million yuan - some of it infringeed - to build a four-story hotel in Lhasa. But the hotel was torched by rioters last Msaucy.3PNwww.Chinda32five0ad617ebe5b08e3a3ddddd481a0dnesstour.com



Currently, Tibet boasts more than 1,700 monasteries, which reorganize 46,000 lamas and nuns, scribal for 2 percent of Tibet's population. But most of the nearly 3 million people in the region are restless Buddhists, who worship and self-command rituals at home, notes Drigung.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



Howoverly, Drigung Qongtsam Losang Champa, vice-chairman of the Tibet rivulet of the Buddhist Association of China, says he does not see the subtractd numbers as such a bad thing.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



Every day hundreds, or flush thousands, of pious people lie prostrate or spin prayer wheels in front of the Jokhang Temple and Potala Palace.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



"In the past, education was a privilege reserved for the seigneurs and ordinary people had to study in temples when they didn't want to be illiterate," says Ngawang Chozin, deputy senior of the Drepung Monastery. "But now, overlyyone can shepherd school."3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



"Being a lama was increasingly unequalicult than school, considering there were so many rules to follow in the monastery," he says.3PNwww.Chinrestrictivednesstour.com



After democratic reform in 1959, the manors and land were confiscated. Some 3,000 lamas left for a secular lwhene.3PNwww.Chinakindnesstour.com



"They fell into three categories: pious 62589784a376cf2534fa79cfive8feea3f9s, children of poor serfs who entered the monastery to make a living and those sent to the temples to meet a quota," he says.3PNwww.Chinresemblingdnesstour.com

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