Contact is taking a holiday!

(From Left to Right – Richard Sui, Former Envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama Lodi Gyari Rinpoche, Dr. Paul Zwier, Tsewang Rigzin)

By Tsewang Rigzin, Emory University

Emory kicked off the 15th annual Tibet Week with a live Mandala art painting exhibition by the monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery at the Michael C. Carlos Museum on Monday.

On Monday evening, panel titled: The China-Tibet Dialogue and its Implication for International Conflict Resolution: A Conversation with Lodi Gyari Rinpoche and Dr. Paul Zwier. Gyari Rinpoche was the former principle envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama who conducted nine rounds of high level talks with Chinese Leadership (2002-2010) and led an extensive behind the scene diplomatic effort to sustain the process, expand the Channels of communication, build trust with Chinese leadership and maintain broad international interest in the dialogue process. He resigned from the post of lead negotiator on May 2012. Dr. Paul Zwier is professor of Law at Emory Law School. He is one of the leading experts on International conflict resolution and advocacy.

As a representative of future generation of China and Tibet, the Panel also comprised of Emory Chinese student Richard Sui, the Co-chair and Co-founder of Student association called China-Tibet Initiative at Emory University and Tsewang Rigzin, a Tibetan Fulbright Scholar and a graduate student of Development Practice.

On the panel, the two hosts, in addition to two Emory student speakers, discussed about the complexity of China-Tibet conflict and the past, present, and future of ongoing negotiation between Tibetan representatives and Chinese leaders.

Despite fallouts in negotiations between China and Tibet, Gyari Rinpoche said he believed that ultimately, “there will certainly be a major breakthrough.” However, the issue, he added, is not about the Dalai Lama’s relationship with China, but rather about the Tibetan people’s relationship with China.

“The Tibet struggle is much more than slogans,” the keynote speaker Lodi Gyari Rinpoche said. “[It’s about the] preservation of the distinctive cultural heritage of Tibetan people, that actually defines us as Tibetan.”

Professor Paul proposed finding commonality between the concerns of Chinese Government and Tibetan people to re initiate the stalemate dialogue process before addressing the differences on part of execution of institutional process.

The two student speakers — Richard Sui, a College senior and the co-founder of the China-Tibet Initiative at Emory and Tsewang Rigzin, an Emory graduate student of Development Practice discussed their personal perspectives to the China-Tibet conflict and its dialogue process.

Sui, a Chinese student studying at Emory, said he initially learned about hostility between Tibet and China while he lived in China. He said that he was subject to the ubiquitous idea that Tibetans are unfriendly. There has been a lot of tension between China and Tibet as the Chinese claim rule over this region while Tibetans believe in the right to autonomy.

Sui described a hesitant dinner he shared with some Tibetan monks studying at Emory. He said the meal, which a friend took him to, transformed his outlook on China-Tibetan relations. There was a huge difference, he said, between what he learned in China, and what the monks were like.

Sui said he saw that Tibetans were normal everyday people who even watched Netflix. Not long after this dinner in 2011, he created the China-Tibet Initiative, through which, he said, “we [Chinese students] can find [an importance in Tibet] greater than politics.”

Rigzin, the other student speaker —said “as a student of International law and International conflict resolution, I believe that the failure on part of international community to give due attention on peaceful conflict resolution set a very negative example and very soon people might very well cite an example of Tibet by saying look at Tibet, they tried to resolve their conflict in peaceful means through dialogue process for over fifty years and got nothing out of that. It also implicitly encourages parties involved in any conflict to be more violent to garner more international attention”

Rigzin also described how Middle Way Policy, formulated by the Dalai Lama to resolve China-Tibet conflict, could be a win-win proposal for both China and Tibet. In-spite of this great compromised proposal, Rigzin said, Chinese side failed to appreciate this idea and that saddens him as a Tibetan.

Rigzin also described how this conflict affects him at personal level, as he is not able to see his family for many years since he left Tibet in 1992.

“…However there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Rigzin said. Eventually, he added, he is optimistic that the Dalai Lama will be able to return to Tibet, and all these separated families will be reunited and Tibet will soon see this new light of freedom.

Yucheng Lu, a College freshman who attended the talk, said that the talk was “very enlightening.” “It was great to see experts in the field [and] to be able to ask questions,” Lu said.

For the Mandala painting Monday afternoon, the Drepung Loseling Monastery monks drew designs with chalk and white pencil and filled them with colored sand across a table to create Mandala paintings. The monks memorized and repeated the steps of creating the mandala through the construction of geometric objects and shapes within the design, according to Geshe Phende, one of the monks. The technique used in the creation of the mandala is known as “circling,” and the category is known as a “Mandala of compassion,” Geshi Phende said.

Geshi Phende added that the painting closely resembled the Palace of Mandala, a Buddhist palace occupied by Gods and Buddhas. Geshi Phende further said that everything had to be correctly aligned geometrically, because “if you miss one area [of the painting] then it will mess up all [of] the map.”

College freshman Julia Mulliez said the painting was an awe-inspiring experience.

“[It] sounded like a lot of patience and concentration,” she said. “When I tried doing it myself, it was hard to control the sand’s movement and required an immense amount of focus.”

Emory held the first Tibet Week in 2001 to improve the relationship between the University and Tibet.

The Emory-Tibet Partnership, which was established in 1998, stemmed from the formal academic affiliation between Emory University and the Drepung Loseling Monastery, according to Jim Wynn, the Emory-Tibet Partnership’s project coordinator. Geshi Lobsang Tenzin Negi is the director of Emory-Tibet Partnership since its inception.

“The Emory-Tibet Partnership has grown tremendously,” Wynn wrote in an email to the Wheel. The events throughout the week include a discussion titled “A Legacy of Compassion: Why Tibetan Monastics Matter in the 21st Century” on Tuesday, a forum called “The Healing Power of Compassion: Insights for Patients, Caregivers and Healthcare Practitioners” on Wednesday, a talk titled “The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Secular Ethics — Cultivating an Education of Heart and Mind” on Thursday along with daily guided Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) meditations from 5 to 6 p.m.