tutorial on dalai lama
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Reading reputation
Crawley, 21 April 2012
Aims of the Session
• Determine what we are being asked to do• Think about primary source materials• Close textual analysis – of a non-literary variety
Analysing the question• What do you think TMA03 is asking you to do?
– keywords– must have content– skills to demonstrate– boundaries (in scope/out of scope?)
• Why do you think this?• How do you feel about this task?
Argument: what does it tell us?
• Overview: what is the author communicating?
• What is the explicit point of the article?
• How is the argument constructed?
– itemise the individual points which make the whole
• Evaluate: how convincing is that argument?
Evidence: how does it tell us?• What supports the author’s argument?• Is the evidence convincing?• Does the evidence support the implicit assumptions?• Does the evidence allow alternative interpretations –
how is this conflict managed?
Perspective/bias/propaganda?
• What doesn’t it tell us?• What does it tell us without making it explicit that that is
what it’s telling us? What can be inferred?• What is assumed?• What perspective does the author have?• Does the author assume that we share their
perspective?• How does the explicit argument fit with the implicit
argument?
What aspects of reputation are assumed here?
Tibetan Questioner: Your Holiness, as the recognized reincarnation of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama… perhaps you could explain for what purpose you, as a realised being,1 had to go through various schools of training and take examinations, and so on, when your knowledge of these things could be likened to a skilled mechanic learning basic car maintenance again!
Dalai Lama: I could not have acquired my present level of knowledge without engaging in serious study, so I had to study. This is a reality, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Perhaps there were a few occasions when I found I could understand, without much effort and hardship, certain philosophical points that are normally considered difficult. In relatively little time and with little effort I am usually able to understand difficult subjects. This indicates that perhaps in my past lives I may have pursued some studies. Otherwise I am just an ordinary person, like you – so that is that!
The Dalai Lama (1995) The World of Tibetan Buddhism, Boston, Wisdom Publications, p. 51.
What makes a source reliable?
Defiant people yearn for the ‘political monk in Gucci shoes’, Jane Macartney Photographs of the Dalai Lama have been banned for years in Tibet. And yet this
weekend house-to-house searches began across Lhasa to confiscate images concealed in their homes by Tibetans who revere their exiled god-king.
Vilification of the monk, said to be the 14th reincarnation in a line identified in the 16th century, has been state policy in China for more than a decade. For Tibetans, however, government condemnation of the monk regarded as the incarnation of the Buddha’s body has failed to erode their faith. Even government officials yearn privately for his return. The searches this weekend began in the homes of party cadres and state employees.
In a recent visit to the Jokhang Temple, the holiest of shrines in the heart of Lhasa, thumbnail-size photographs of the Dalai Lama could be glimpsed in the dormitories of some monks. Ordinary Tibetans and young monks may sidle up to foreigners and request a picture of their temporal leader who fled into exile 49 years ago during a failed uprising against Chinese rule. Time has failed to diminish his influence among Tibetans. Many have prospered from Chinese rule but while they may say they want to keep the system that has brought them a more comfortable life, they want the return of the Dalai Lama, too.
Beijing condemns him regularly as a secessionist bent on dividing the Himalayan region from China. The Dalai Lama says that he wants only autonomy and not independence.
Among Tibetans his word remains law. Speaking in his native language, he can be severe, even prescriptive, about behaviour and beliefs. In English, he has developed a more genial style. It is a charismatic combination that has transformed him into a figure of veneration, and even of worship, around the world.
When he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 he described himself as ‘a simple monk from faraway Tibet’. His existence as a symbol of the struggle for freedom have won him a huge following in the West. But his position is complicated; he has been described as ‘a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes’. (The Times, 17 March 2008.)
So Maria Meneghini Callas is an actress but not much of a singer? You have heard the rumor since the onetime pride and joy of Chicago’s Lyric came to sing at the Metropolitan? Take it with a large grain of salt. The beautiful Maria is still an actress, to be sure. Still a singer, too. A singer in trouble, even more last night than in Vienna last spring where some less critical notes of Donizetti’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ died in her throat. But essentially a singer of such superlative quality that even her ‘flawed’ Lucia is incomparable in our time.
[…] The trouble is that a treacherous dryness seems to be plaguing her throat. Her top notes are not what they
were because of it, her singing line is sometimes unsteady, and last night a ‘Mad Scene’ marvelously sung ended in anticlimax because she amputated the climactic note before it could utterly betray her.
The finer the singer the more terrifying this kind of thing can be. I am told by a source that doesn’t give me alibis that Callas had such a bad throat at the dress rehearsal they weren’t even sure she could go on. […] Callas went on, and most of the time she was radiantly herself.
In a red wig this time, the same red wig she wore in Vienna […] Even more slender, I think, with a handspan waistline, those great myopic eyes, those long, lovely hands, that drifting serenity on stage and, that one of the kind Callas voice.
It still sounds like an oboe to me – that strange, lovely voice that can command an ensemble but because of the mystery never drowns other voices out. She sang the first act beautifully, though her top notes were almost as insecure as her tenor, Giuseppe Campora […]
She sang the ‘Sextette’ as well as I have ever heard her do it, with that muted oboe luster at its warmest and most beautiful. And up to that unfortunate curtain her ‘Mad Scene’ was magnificent. I don’t know where else you can hope to hear such exquisite coloratura,1 such spun silk fioriture,2 such gossamer chromatic scales.
Yes, she can still sing, this Callas who is unique in the world of opera, and that throat is a hazard to be cured at all costs. For even in trouble she was the whole reason for the performance […]
Cassidy, C. (1956) review of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Chicago Tribune, 3 December; available online at http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/frame.htm (Accessed 21 July 2010).
Myth or History?
What makes a reputation?
