{"id":261,"date":"2006-05-25T00:44:07","date_gmt":"2006-05-25T04:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=261"},"modified":"2018-08-22T18:02:32","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T22:02:32","slug":"14668-%c2%a0%c2%a0-martin-brauen-dreamworld-tibet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=261","title":{"rendered":"14668. (Martin Brauen) Dreamworld Tibet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of all places in the world, Tibet has attract\u00aded the most fan\u00adtas\u00adtic mys\u00adti\u00adfi\u00adca\u00adtion. Mar\u00adtin Brauen\u2019s book is a study of the bizarre images, dreams, and super\u00adnat\u00adur\u00adal fan\u00adtasies that peo\u00adple have pro\u00adject\u00aded on this land. He explores the var\u00adi\u00adous themes, start\u00ading with Renais\u00adsance spec\u00adu\u00adla\u00adtion about a hid\u00adden Chris\u00adt\u00adian king\u00addom in the Himalayas, and pro\u00adceed\u00ading through the fan\u00adtasies of Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophists; the fic\u00adtion\u00adal Shangri-la of James Hilton\u2019s Lost Hori\u00adzon<\/em> (and the won\u00adder\u00adful Frank Capra film made from it); the racist pseu\u00addo-sci\u00adence of the Nazis, who were fas\u00adci\u00adnat\u00aded with Tibet; the absur\u00addi\u00adties in the immense\u00adly pop\u00adu\u00adlar books by \u201cLob\u00adsang Ram\u00adpa\u201d; to mod\u00adern adver\u00adtiz\u00ading that exploits the image of the Dalai Lama, and cur\u00adrent movies that still insist on see\u00ading only the reli\u00adgious and \u201cspir\u00adi\u00adtu\u00adal\u201d side of Tibetan life.<\/span><\/p>\n

The author is not actu\u00adal\u00adly angry about all this non\u00adsense, but he is painful\u00adly aware that few peo\u00adple are inter\u00adest\u00aded in the real\u00adi\u00adty of Tibet, or the peo\u00adple of Tibet. <\/span><\/p>\n

Tibetans, espe\u00adcial\u00adly the Tibetan exile com\u00admu\u00adni\u00adty, must walk a vibrat\u00ading tight-rope because of all these fan\u00adtas\u00adtic images. They know that, with\u00adout the mys\u00adti\u00adfi\u00adca\u00adtion they pro\u00advide, the out\u00adside world will have no inter\u00adest in them at all, and a cul\u00adture that is con\u00adstant\u00adly threat\u00adened with exter\u00admi\u00adna\u00adtion by an immense\u00adly pow\u00ader\u00adful and ruth\u00adless empire needs all the friends it can get. If the Tibetans were per\u00adceived as ordi\u00adnary human beings, in an ordi\u00adnary human cul\u00adture with a his\u00adto\u00adry, weak\u00adness\u00ades and strengths, achieve\u00adments and fail\u00adures, good and bad\u2026 then they would be sim\u00adply aban\u00addoned by the world to a very, very nasty fate. Nobody is much inter\u00adest\u00aded in defend\u00ading the help\u00adless and oppressed if they are just peo\u00adple<\/em>. They will only pay atten\u00adtion to you if you rep\u00adre\u00adsent some kind of spir\u00adi\u00adtu\u00adal spooky-ooky non\u00adsense. I\u2019m famil\u00adiar with this process in Canada\u2019s north, where the only bar\u00adgain\u00ading chip that most peo\u00adple on native reserves pos\u00adsess is a very sim\u00adi\u00adlar kind of mystification.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fash\u00adion for what places and peo\u00adples are endowed with this kind of mys\u00adtique changes with time, but Tibet has always had it. Why some peo\u00adple get it and oth\u00aders don\u2019t isn\u2019t very clear. Peo\u00adple in Day\u00adton, Ohio, or Toron\u00adto, Ontario, appar\u00adent\u00adly nev\u00ader had it, and prob\u00ada\u00adbly nev\u00ader will have it. Nobody imag\u00adines that Toron\u00adto\u00adni\u00adans can lev\u00adi\u00adtate, pos\u00adsess super\u00adnat\u00adur\u00adal wis\u00addom, are clair\u00advoy\u00adant, or hold the secrets of the uni\u00adverse in caves under\u00adneath the CN<\/span> tow\u00ader. There will nev\u00ader be a Lob\u00adsang Ram\u00adpa sell\u00ading books attribut\u00ading such mir\u00ada\u00adcles to Toronto. <\/span><\/p>\n

[Lob\u00adsang Ram\u00adpa, by the way, whose books of \u201cTibetan wis\u00addom\u201d sold in the mil\u00adlions, was real\u00adly Cyril Hoskins, the son of a plumber in Devon, Eng\u00adland, who migrat\u00aded to Cana\u00adda and is now buried in Cal\u00adgary, Alber\u00adta. He nev\u00ader got any\u00adwhere near Tibet, and his books dis\u00adplay no knowl\u00adedge of Tibet or of Buddhism.]<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all places in the world, Tibet has attract\u00aded the most fan\u00adtas\u00adtic mys\u00adti\u00adfi\u00adca\u00adtion. Mar\u00adtin Brauen\u2019s book is a study of the bizarre images, dreams, and super\u00adnat\u00adur\u00adal fan\u00adtasies that peo\u00adple have pro\u00adject\u00aded on this land. He explores the var\u00adi\u00adous themes, start\u00ading with Renaissance \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bu-reading-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9598,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/9598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}