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http://louisproyect.org/2007/02/28/the-angry-monk/
For most people, including me, Tibetan politics consisted exclusively of
two radically opposed camps.
On one hand, there is the traditional Buddhist leadership of the Dalai
Lama that is highly visible in the West and that enjoys a reputation as
spiritually enlightened and politically progressive. With celebrities
like Richard Gere spreading the word and a Nobel Peace prize belt under
his belt, the Dalai Lama is lionized everywhere he goes. There is
occasional grumbling about his adherence to traditional Buddhist
teachings that homosexuality is impure (but not for non-Buddhists, bless
his heart) but nothing sufficient to drag him down to the level of
ordinary mortals.
On the other hand, there is the perspective of the Chinese government,
especially when it had some kind of leftwing credentials, that the
Buddhist priests were a kind of a parasitical feudal growth that needed
weeding. When the Red Army poured into Tibet in the early 1950s, this
was interpreted by Maoist-leaning radicals as something like the Union
army taking control of the South during Reconstruction.
It is to the enormous credit of Swiss director Luc Schaedler to reveal
another player in Tibetan politics in “The Angry Monk,” his excellent
documentary now available from First Run/Icarus Films. This is a
portrait of Gendun Choephel (1903-1951), a legendary figure in Tibet,
who was opposed to both the religious elite and to forced Chinese
assimilation. The film not only sheds light on a most unique
personality. It also is an excellent introduction to Tibetan culture and
politics.
Choephel began life as a Buddhist monk but evolved into a scholar of
Tibetan history and a political activist during his extended visit to
India in the 1930s, where he became inspired by Gandhi’s revolt. He
decided to travel to India after coming into contact with Rahul
Sankrityayan, an Indian researcher of ancient Buddhist texts in Tibet.
Surprisingly, Sankrityayan was also a Marxist revolutionary who fought
for Indian independence. (It should be mentioned that many of these
texts were burned in huge bonfires during the Chinese Cultural
Revolution, a barbaric act that rivals the Taliban’s destruction of
ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan.)
When in India, Choephel not only politicized, he left behind the kind of
Puritanism expressed in the Dalai Lama’s strictures against
homosexuality. He was proud of his ability to sleep with 4 or 5
prostitutes in an evening and to get roaring drunk in the process, as
Golok Jigme, a 85 old monk and former traveling companion of Choepel,
reveals in an interview. In addition to writing the very first history
of Tibet, Choepel translated the Kama Sutra into Tibetan! In the
introduction to this classic work on sexual techniques, he wrote:
As for me — I have little shame I love women. Every man has a woman.
Every woman has a man. Both in their mind desire sexual union. What
chance is the for clean behaviour? If natural passions are openly
banned, unnatural passions will grow in secrecy. No law of religion — no
law of morality can supress the natural passion of mankind.
Choephel was the quintessential modernizer. Like Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal,
he wanted to reduce the power of the clergy. In a 1946 poem, he wrote:
In Tibet, everything that is old
Is a work of Buddha
And everything that is new
Is a work of the Devil
This is the sad tradition of our country
In 1946 Gendun Choephel took up residence in Kalimpong, a town that sat
on the India-Tibet border, where he joined the Tibetan Revolutionary
Party, which was founded 7 years earlier. He designed (he was a gifted
artist as well as a scholar) their logo: a sickle crossed by a sword.
The Tibetan Revolutionary Party sought to overthrow the tyrannical
regime in Lhasa. When Gendun Choephels arrived in Lhasa, the capital
city, he was arrested by the Tibetan government, which had learned about
his activity from British operatives working out of India. He was
accused of insurrection and thrown in jail for three years.
Two years after his release, the Red army overran Tibetan troops in
eastern Tibet and took control of the country. A physically ailing and
psychologically broken Gendun Choephel characterized the invasion in his
characteristically blunt manner: “Now we’re fucked!”
“The Angry Monk” is also an excellent introduction to some of the more
sophisticated thinkers in today’s Tibet, who are interviewed throughout
the film. I especially appreciated the comments of journalist Jamyang
Norbu, who derided the Western obsession with Tibetan
