Alison Spiegel, Amanda Lim Patton, and Daniel Ilan Cohen Thin
Chinese government officials said last week that Tibetan monasteries and study centers must begin translating classroom texts into Mandarin. The policy, made public at a three-day conference held at Tso-Ngon Buddhist University in Xining, also instructs monastics to learn Chinese and use it to speak to each other instead of speaking in their native languages. As of yet, it is unclear whether this new policy will extend to include the translation of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. “There is no good intention behind this plan,” said Geshe Lhakdor, Director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, India. “Rather, it is aimed at China’s sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism, and even though a few Tibetan scholars and researchers participated in this meeting, they were forced to do so in spite of their reluctance.”
BUDDHIST JUROR LET GO FROM ELIZABETH HOLMES TRIAL
The trial for Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of blood-testing company Theranos who faces 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, started five weeks ago. This week, a Buddhist juror, identified only as Juror No. 4, was removed from the trial for expressing hesitation about separating her religious views from the case, and specifically that she didn’t feel comfortable weighing in on a decision that could lead to a prison sentence of up to 20 years, Bloomberg reports. According to ABC News, Juror No. 4 told US District Judge Edward Davila, ”I am a Buddhist, and so I practice for compassion, you know, for loving and forgiveness.” The replacement juror also expressed misgivings about contributing to a decision about Holmes’s sentence, but the judge convinced her to stay on after he explained that jurors are fact finders and not even allowed to consider a defendant’s punishment.
Source: https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/tibetan-monastics-mandarin/
