Page 25 - Unlikely Stories 2

Asian Games

of a joke nowadays—but no rules exist against exploitation of
spiritual powers. Don’t laugh. Here’s what happened in that
marathon in 2008, and you had better not tell it to anyone else if you
want to remain credible in journalism.
You know that Tibet is a nation forcibly controlled by China,
right? And that the Chinese do everything they can to suppress any
and all attempts by the Tibetans to achieve independence? It’s the
same old story: cobbled-together incompatible population creating a
barely-united modern country. USSR, USA, UK, half the countries in
the United Nations, probably. But they don’t all exert the kind of
totalitarian grip that China does. So Tibetans try to make their case
internationally, to put pressure on the Chinese government and stay
in public view. Thus, politics; for sports, we have the Olympics, the
biggest stage in the world on which to project national identity. No
Tibetan team; Tibetans have to compete under the flag of China. But
athletic programs are thin on the ground in Tibet, and ethnic Chinese
get preference all the way along the path of training and
development.
Enter the Tibetan religion, officially prohibited by the Chinese as
primitive superstition and contrary to the supposed egalitarianism
preached by the allegedly atheist, communist regime in Beijing. In
fact, it has functioned as the locus of political power in Tibet. That is
why the Dalai Lama is such a target of Chinese opprobrium. Tibetan
Buddhism has enjoyed a certain vogue in the West, owing to its
association with Shangri La and the mysteries of its arcane temples
and rituals. But in the twelfth century, one of its monks, Milarepa,
became known for the physical abilities he developed through
spiritual discipline. Yes, I’ve seen the movie about the Shaolin
monks. In fact, all these demonstrations of amazing strength, stamina
and endurance of pain—sitting on a block of ice, being buried alive,
shooting arrows blindfold, and so on—are part of an ancient
tradition found throughout the East. Even in the West, saints
perform miracles involving their own physiology. The point is that all
these talents are the result of religious merit or self-denial, and
indicate the spiritual power conferred upon or obtained by the
person demonstrating them. That is how the third kind of power
comes into this bizarre occurrence.

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