The Multiple Texts > Tibeten Lamaism
2 Sepertember 2009
By Admin

Are They Climbing Broken Back Hill?

A Member of old Tibetan ruling class, headed by a compassionate Dalai Lama who allegedly regards to comfort the poor and suffering as his moral obligation, comfortably climbs Broken Back Hill on his slave's back that is about to be broken.

旧西藏实行着一种残酷的奴隶制度－“人背人”的差役。

The Dalai Lama's older brother Thubten Jigme Norbu claims that in the lamaist social order, "There is no class system and the mobility from class to class makes any class prejudice impossible." But the whole existence of this religious order was based on a rigid and brutal class system.

Serfs were treated like despised "inferiors" - the way Black people were treated in the Jim Crow South. Serfs could not use the same seats, vocabulary or eating utensils as serf owners. Even touching one of the master's belongings could be punished by whipping. The masters and serfs were so distant from each other that in much of Tibet they spoke different languages.

It was the custom for a serf to kneel on all fours so his master could step on his back to mount a horse. Tibet scholar A. Tom Grunfeld describes how one ruling class girl routinely had servants carry her up and down stairs just because she was lazy. Masters often rode on their serfs' backs across streams.

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