Examiner.com: On April 26, 2013, the Central Tibetan Administration reported, France Raises Tibet Issue with China. French President Francois Hollande has said he raised the issue of Tibet during his talks with the new leadership in China. The situation in Tibet has been becoming increasingly tragic as 117 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest against the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Tibet.

The Tibetan self-immolators have been calling for the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet and freedom for Tibetans. President Hollande, who has been on a visit to China, told a press conference that during his talks with …

Madhur Tankha, The Hindu: To give the people a better understanding of Buddhism and its link with Kashmir, art historian Benoy K. Behl has now made a special documentary titled “The Monasteries of Rinchen Zangpo” which will be screened at Tibet House on Lodhi Road here this coming Sunday.

Describing this film as an extraordinary one, Benoy says he had to make adventurous expeditions to the treacherous mountains of Tibet, Lahaul-Spiti, Kinnaur and Ladakh. He discovered not only mesmerising unexplored monasteries but also learnt about the artists from Kashmir whose paintings and sculptures are testimony to a great tradition of art…

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Harold Mandel, Examiner.com: It is a dream of the Tibetan people to see the Dalai Lama safely return home to Tibet someday. Gerry Moriarty has reported for The Irish Times on April 19, 2013, Dalai Lama says he expects to return to his native Tibet someday. While on a recent visit to Ireland the Dalai Lama said he hopes to return home to Tibet someday. The Tibet Sun has also covered this story, Dalai Lama says he expects to return to his native Tibet someday.

When Marian Shanleywest from Drumlin Media TV in Cavan told the Dalai Lama she had a list of …

Tsering Namgyal, Asia Central: Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa Lama, arrived in India in January 2000, literally moving from his 12th century headquarters in Tibet onto the front page of international papers. Now, imagine a setting where, as a 28-year old teacher, he holds a few thousand people from all over the world under a spell for a few weeks.

This is precisely what the Karmapa, the head of the Black Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibet’s second-most-powerful religious figure, after the Dalai Lama himself, has been doing every winter in Bodhgaya, India.

The size of the gathering at the place of Buddha’s…

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Xu Zhiyong, New York Times: Around noon on Feb. 19, an 18-year-old named Nangdrol set himself on fire near the Zamthang Monastery in the northeast Tibetan town of Barma. In a note left behind, he wrote, “I am going to set myself on fire for the benefit of all Tibetans.” Referring to China’s ethnic Han majority as “devils,” he added, “It is impossible to live under their evil law, impossible to bear this torture that leaves no scars.”

Over the last three years, close to 100 Tibetan monks and laypeople have set themselves on fire; 30 people did so between Nov. 4 and Dec. 3. The Chinese government …

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On a freezing Tuesday this week, dozens of special guests from China’s cultural, political and business elites gathered within the blood-red walls of the Forbidden City. They were there for the opening of the newly restored Hall of Rectitude, the center of Tibetan Buddhism during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing.

After a fire in 1923, the hall and about a half-dozen surrounding buildings that comprise the Buddhist architectural complex lay in ruin for nearly a century in the northwestern corner of the 8,000-room former imperial palace.

After six years of restoration funded by the Hong Kong-based China Heritage Fund, the Zhong Zheng Dian …

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At least four people set themselves on fire in ethnic Tibetan parts of China on Wednesday, a rights group and media reports say.

Three teenage monks set themselves alight in Aba county in Sichuan province, where many self-immolations have taken place in recent months.

One of the boys died and the other two were taken to hospital.

Later the same day a 23-year-old woman died after setting herself on fire in Qinghai province.

More than 60 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since early 2011, in what rights group say are acts of protest against Beijing’s rule.

Beijing says Tibetans have religious freedom and accuses …

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It sounds like an artifact from an Indiana Jones film; a 1000 year-old ancient Buddhist statue which was first recovered by a Nazi expedition in 1938 has been analysed by scientists and has been found to be carved from a meteorite. The findings, published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science, reveal the priceless statue to be a rare ataxite class of meteorite.

The statue, known as the Iron Man, weighs 10kg and is believed to represent a stylistic hybrid between the Buddhist and pre-Buddhist Bon culture that portrays the deity Vaiśravana, the Buddhist King of the North, also known as Kuberu, and as Jambhala in Tibet.

The statue was discovered in 1938 by an …

On CNN, we see two dramatically different views on the Dalai Lama’s position on the wave of self-immolations by Tibetans protesting the Chinese occupation of their country and the persecution of their religion and culture.

Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar, author of “The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation,” and regular CNN Belief Blog contributor, calls on the Dalai Lama to condemn the protesters.

Tenzin Dorjee, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, responds, saying that Prothero’s post is a “crass display of moral blindsight” that “blames the victim.”

Dorjee praises the courage of the self-immolators and compares them to past non-violent protestors:

How can the

…

Adam Yauch, one of the founders of the hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died of cancer at the age of 47.

Yauch, who went by the name MCA, had been battling cancer since 2009.

Yauch was a practicing Buddhist, who actively supported Tibetan causes.

In 1994, he established the Milarepa Fund — an organization dedicated to the promotion of nonviolence — and became a leader of the movement to liberate Tibet from Chinese occupation. The fund was named after the 11th century Tibetan singer-yogi Milarepa, and was originally intended to distribute royalties from Yauch’s Beastie Boys’ 1994 songs “Shambhala” and “Bodhisattva Vow,” which had sampled the chanting of Tibetan monks, to …