Singing Bowls

 

Once more I ventured into the town centre and into the Guildhall for the annual Tibetan flag raising ceremony. The numbers of people there seem to increase every year.

This year I sat right at the back which I guess was a mistake as the guest speaker this year Mr Thubten Samdup had a very soft gentle voice. I caught like floating fragments perhaps only every tenth word and I closed my eyes trying to piece the pieces together. I was left with a feeling that this was actually the message, that the Free Tibet movement was fragmentary and as ineffective as fragments of paper being blown by stronger winds. The speaker sighed as if he was disillusioned and tired. Peaceful protest, supportive words our very presence in that hall had amounted to nothing. Though again I have to say I could not clearly hear his words so perhaps I was mistaken.

I also got the impression that there was a fragility about the Dalai Lama and a heard the warning that he would not be there forever. This I can now see was a warning precursor for the announcement today that the Dalai Lama is to set aside his political role and concentrate upon the spiritual. Mr Thubten Samdup had obviously known that this announcement would be made and had been preparing the ground.

What it does mean though is a frightful experience for a child perhaps as yet unborn in Tibet when he is declared the new Dalai Lama after the present one dies. What incredible stresses he will be placed under. I can only hope that by that time China will have become a truly gracious country and will have ceded autonomy to Tibet.

The highlight for me as always were the singing bowls. Though, again by sitting at the back I could not fully appreciate their long sounds nor see how they were made. I always get the sensation of high mountains, snow, sky burials and great birds wheeling overhead when I hear these sounds that seem to come from a primordial primitive past and stretch into a future devoid of entropy and flat-lining into eternity.

The problems besetting Tibetans was highlighted yet again as they struggled to raise the flag giving time for the poem we had heard to resonate even more about how a mother struggling to flee Tibet over the mountains left behind a daughter in the snow who had waved her goodbyes. This as the flag finally waved in the air.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9420000/9420775.stm