For today's post, I am going to be talking about a book that I've already read twice called, "The Land and My People". My father told me that I didn't understand and wanted me to read it for the third time which got me confused. I especially hated the first chapter of the book because it was 30 pages (by itself) while the rest of the chapters were around 10. I'm pretty sure he wants me to summarize the book even though I've already made about 5 posts on this book alone. Anyway, lets just dive ride into this summary! I am not going to start with the first paragraph because I read that yesterday so today I'll be talking about 2, 3, and 4. At the start of chapter 2, it is the continuation of the first chapter.
The Dalai Lama (when he is a kid) is finally starting his education at the age of six and talks about the way monks and teachers help their students improve their knowledge of Buddhism and the world around them. Okay, second thought, not "The world around them". Just Buddhism and stuff like Mathematics and scriptures of the Buddha's teachings. The reason they don't learn about the world around them is that at the time they were a very isolated country. The high officials and people in "government" thought this was the best way to attain peace, however, the Dalai Lama couldn't do anything about it at the time because he was still only 6 years old (too young).
This specific chapter describes the way he learned his education very vividly. That meaning I could visualize it, something else that also helps is that I've been to certain monasteries in India for Tibetan people and have seen the way they learn. The Dalai Lama (at the time) was going through a way of learning that many people these days would think is a bit too much, then again this was in the past. However, I strongly feel that to this day Tibetan monks go through the exact same procedure. At the time, Tibet was considered to be the most religious country in the world and the Dalai Lama didn't know what to think of that. Though I'm assuming a few Tibetans may have been very proud to hear that.
I don't want to go too in-depth with this chapter because there are another two that I need to get to. During chapter 3 it mainly talks about the government and what changes occurred once he was able to change certain laws. This is what goes on in the middle of the chapter but at the start, it mentions Tibet's isolation from many countries and the relationships they had. India was, of course, the main country since the Buddha's teachings were in Sanskrit and that is something that was only learned by Indians. That is until Indians were invited into Tibet so that we could understand the Sanskrit and transfer that in Tibetan. Fun Fact, a famous Tibetan philosopher by the name of "Rinchen Zangpo" was also a translator of Sanskrit Buddhist texts.
Now on to chapter 4 (dad came home), it says that before they never gave a single thought about their status as a country, until then. Apparently, in prehistoric times, Tibet was "an inland sea surrounded by forests and snow mountains which no humans claimed". After a while, the first king by the name of "Nya-Tri-Tsenpo" was made the king of Tibet. Later on, at the 28th king of Tibet, he got his hands on a volume full of the Buddha's teachings. By that time, Buddhism has become more and more popular throughout the country. Then, at the 33rd king, he brought Buddhism a step further and send a prime minister of his into India where he (prime minister) created the " Tibetan Alphabet". To sum it all up, Tibet is not considered a country and actually a part of China.
No comments:
Post a Comment