The new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, passed on March 12 and due to take full effect on July 1, brings this tension into sharper focus. Beijing presents it as a step toward national cohesion and “Chinese-style modernization.” For those who live inside the tradition, it feels heavier—like another formal step in the slow thinning of something essential.
fredag 8. mai 2026
Language, Lineage and the Survival of Tibetan Buddhism Under China’s Assimilationist Policies
There’s a quiet philosophical tension at the heart of all this. Tibetan Buddhism, as far as I could understand, has always understood that truth isn’t something abstract or fixed in ink—it lives in the fragile, ongoing conversation between teacher and student, in the precise words that point beyond words and in the unbroken human thread stretching back more than a thousand years. Language here isn’t just a tool; it’s the very medium through which the mind learns to see its own nature. When that medium is steadily squeezed, when transmission itself is politicized, you’re not merely changing education policy. You’re pulling at the conditions that allow insight to arise at all.
The new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, passed on March 12 and due to take full effect on July 1, brings this tension into sharper focus. Beijing presents it as a step toward national cohesion and “Chinese-style modernization.” For those who live inside the tradition, it feels heavier—like another formal step in the slow thinning of something essential.
The new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, passed on March 12 and due to take full effect on July 1, brings this tension into sharper focus. Beijing presents it as a step toward national cohesion and “Chinese-style modernization.” For those who live inside the tradition, it feels heavier—like another formal step in the slow thinning of something essential.