A couple of weeks ago, when my parents were in town, we visited a market with different stalls selling different foods from different countries. One was selling Tibetan dumplings. Naturally, our curiosity was piqued, and as my mom held the table, my dad and I went to order. I asked the man if he was in fact from Tibet, and he said yes. I told him my dad had been to Tibet and in doing so immediately won him over. We began to chat. My dad mentioned that when he was in Tibet in 2007, he noticed how China was shipping its people into Tibet, building highways, railways, shopping centers, and apartment complexes that were foreign to the original Tibetan landscape. The man confirmed this, as we knew he would. It is well known that China has been colonizing Tibet and that the colonization is now largely complete. This is, of course, a travesty for a number of reasons.
But at this point, after a brief complaint, the man turned the conversation to spiritual matters. He told us how Tibet before China did not have impressive buildings, concert halls, stadiums, train stations, and so on. The reason why, he explained, was not that the Tibetan people lacked the know-how, but because they focused on the mind and not the material world. He explained that while most countries value material wealth and comfort, the Tibetans value above all an enlightened mind. Rather than go to shopping malls, they meditate. Instead of seeking to break the next scientific frontier, they seek to bring more of their thoughts and emotions under control. He lamented that this was being lost by the Chinafication of the country, which, like Americanization elsewhere, is really code for creating a market to sell more goods so the powerful country can make more money at the expense of the indigenous culture.
Sadly, at that point our dumplings finished frying and we paid and, after a warm goodbye, parted ways. But I did not forget what he said. A number of things struck me about his observation: First, I noted that we as Christians are also called to “seek the things that are above… not things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:1-2) and while that means different things to a Christian and a Tibetan, the comparison is clear enough. We are to focus on the spiritual more than the material. Second, I realized that our cultural artifacts reveal a lot about what really matters to us. Tibet is (or, used to be) filled with shrines, temples, and monasteries, much like Europe was in the Middle Ages. Religion is visible. You cannot walk a mile without finding a place to pray or meditate. Objects of religious devotion are everywhere. The smell of incense permeates the air. This suggests the Tibetans place religious devotion at the center of their lives. What are our cultural artifacts? What do we see when driving around? Sports and advertisements are probably the biggest two. Our materialistic and entertainment-driven pastimes are in fact the two things that matter most to us as a society. And third, I perceived that true religion is incompatible with materialism. The trend toward digitizing and monetizing everything is detrimental to the spiritual life. It is impossible to be spiritually minded and always be looking at a cellphone. It is impossible to be spiritually minded and think of everything in terms of dollars. The spiritual man or woman is not thinking about how to make everything faster, better, and cheaper, but how to make his own soul purer.
As the great classical Chinese poet Wang Wei wrote of his friend Li Yi, “Out walking, he carries sage books. / His mind and mine, they’re the same: / Content in poverty, we both savor the Way.”