ARE WESTERNERS PRISONERS OF THEIR MYTHS CONCERNING TIBET AND TIBETAN BUDDHISM AS SHANGRI-LA?

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1998) ("The creation myth of this book began when I attended a conference on Tibet some years ago. The keynote speaker gave a public lecture that romanticized Tibetan history and demonized the Chinese. At the conclusion of the speech the audience rose as one in a standing ovation. It seemed clear that several hundred people had been converted to the cause of Tibetan independence. The question that the lecture raised for me was whether it was possible to make the case for Tibetan independence, which, one assumes, all people of good will (when presented with the facts) would support, without invoking the romantic view of Tibet as Shangri-La. Invoking the myth seems at times almost irresistible; without it the Chinese occupation and colonization of Tibet seems just one of many human rights violations that demand our attention. What sets the plight of Tibet apart from that of Palestine, Rwanda, Burma, Northern Ireland, East Timor, or Bosnia is the picture of Tibetans as a happy, peaceful people devoted to the practice of Buddhism, whose remote and ecologically enlightened land, ruled by a god-king, was invaded by the forces of evil. This is a compelling story, an enticing blends of the exotic, the spiritual, and the political. But I have become convinced that the continued idealization of Tibet--its history and its religion--may ultimately harm the cause of Tibetan independence. I set out to investigate some of the factors that have contributed to the formation and persistence of the romance of Tibet. This book is the result of those investigations." Id. at 11.).