ABSTRACT
The revitalization of Tibetan Buddhism in the political domain of China is not merely a local event but is in every way connected with globalization, the worldwide market system, global discourses on local humanitarian issues, and the emergence of modern Buddhism. In this kaleidoscopic scene of local Tibetan Buddhist revivals and global imaginations of Tibet, politics, economics, religion, and spirituality all mutually saturate and transform each other. In the midst of these dynamics, Tibetan Buddhism continues to be represented in a plural nature as it embodies the complexity of its local, national, and global nexuses. Likewise, the Sino-Tibetan ethnic and Buddhist relations are also expressed in the same degree of complexity. Global media, equipped with sophisticated information communication technology, are the primary vehicles for the unprecedented revitalizations of Tibetan Buddhism in China, and for transmitting the global concerns of the Tibet Question into China’s political domain. Global media are the “fast lane” of modern communication, which produce and disseminate images of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism through video footage, photographic depictions, cyber discussions, and ultimately, popular imagination. The immediacy of Tibetan Buddhist communities and landscapes in their actual geographic locations is being electronically transported elsewhere. In turn, globally circulated images and narratives concerning Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism stream back into the Tibetan and non-Tibetan regions of China. In this sense, although Tibetan Buddhism is reviving, it is still subject to the whims of various social, economic, and political forces. In other words, Tibetan Buddhism is simultaneously a vehicle of Buddhist enlightenment, a commercial tool, and a political instrument.
