Published by: World Tibet Network News Saturday, December 13, 1997

Source: New York Times

Date: December 12, 1997

By: A.M. Rosenthal

Tibet has no army, no weapons. Tibet has no money. In all the world no nation speaks a word for its freedom from captivity.

Tibet cannot speak for itself; its representatives are not even allowed to enter the United Nations.

For 48 years, longer than many members of the U.N. have existed, Tibet has endured the most beastly occupation since Nazism.

Its people have been bombed, shot, imprisoned, tortured by the Chinese invaders. At least a million Tibetans died. Their country was carved up, two-thirds of the land and people incorporated into China, vanishing even as statistics. The rest of Tibet has become a colony run by Chinese police terrorism.

Monasteries and temples were burned, monks slaughtered. China understands that only if it could kill Tibetan Buddhism could it kill Tibet.

But Tibet survived -- as a nation and as a religion, both woven into the daily life of the people.

And this happened: No matter how the other governments tried to forget Tibet, it grew in the consciousness of the world.

Tibet lives because of the inner strength of the people, who could not conceive of surrendering their religion and nation. It lives too because a great man was born among them who fulfilled their prayers and beliefs by embodying the courage through compassion that is the essence of their Buddhism. That is what the Dalai Lama teaches around the world, in his exile.

And it survived because in many nations, particularly America, citizens did what their governments refused to do -- take Tibet into their consciences and hearts.

They gave Tibet the gifts of their energies, talents, voices and some money, to help those thousands who had escaped and make the world remember the six million who remain.

Now Martin Scorsese has given Tibet his own enduring gift -- a great river of creativity and succor, the motion picture "Kundun"

-- The Presence, as Tibetans call their Dalai Lamas.

For Tibetans, this picture is the gift of a flower that will never cease blooming. They will not see it until freedom comes. But in the ways political prisoners find out, they will know all about it and understand that as long as it shown, wherever it is shown, Tibetans cannot be silenced.

For non-Tibetans, "Kundun" is three gifts -- knowledge, intimacy and friendship.

The knowledge is of a hellish brutalization of a people, a nation and a civilization. We think we know, but usually abstractly.

Mr. Scorsese, Melissa Mathison, who wrote the screenplay, the composer Philip Glass, the producer Barbara De Fina and the cast give us Tibet as beauty, Tibet as faith -- and Tibet as Tiananmen, not for a day but for a half-century.

The intimacy is with a whole people and with one man. In all their prayers, all during the day, Tibetans pray for the well-being of all living creatures. This does not make them saints. But I think their ways of life and faith make so many of them good people that there is a goodness in the nation.

The intimacy comes in large part from the cast. Except for a few Chinese roles it is Tibetan -- exiles or their children, living mostly in India, Nepal and America.

None ever acted before. In the movie they do not seem to be acting -- just living, with themselves, with their relatives, God, their country, Kundun and the audience.

Four Tibetans live as the Dalai Lama from early childhood, when the saucy 2-year old named Tenzen Gyatso is identified by holy men as the Buddha of Compassion, the incarnation of the 13 Dalai Lamas before him. He becomes a boy reared by strict monks and bureaucrats. He grows not only in knowledge but humility. At 16 he has to take on the terrifying responsibility of heading the Government and facing China.

The four Tibetans become our friends, and so does the man whose story they are living. That is one of Mr. Scorsese's great achievements, making a child become The Presence and The Presence somebody we know would accept and give friendship.

"Kundun" ends in 1959, when his people begged him to leave Tibet, to keep his country alive. "Kundun" opens Christmas Day. When an advance screening was over, I felt that at least for a bit I would not lessen its affect on me by seeing another movie. One day I will see "Kundun" again, in Lhasa with our friends.