This week I attended a funeral. They usually make me pretty sad at the best of times, regardless of whether I know the person or not. But this one was different. This one was for a young man who had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, in front hundreds of people, he swallowed petrol, doused himself, and then struck a match. He diligently prepared the act, carefully packing his belongings into a suitcase for easy removal, arranging his finances and even writing a letter expressing his reasons for the selfless act. Graphic images of a burning man running the streets of Delhi have circulated the web and world news, you may have seen them. Horrific, graphic, detailed. They tell a story of desperation, and it depends on which way you look at it – extreme courage or maybe extreme stupidity. Thousands of people turned out to mourn the martyr Jamphel Yeshi, a 27 year old Tibetan man protesting the visit of the Chinese president to Delhi. There have been more than 30 self-immolations in the last 2 years, but this is one of the first outside of Tibet that resulted in a death. The funeral was sombre and you could sense the desperation of the mix of mourners, the coffin was placed in the centre of the main temple and with heads bowed and hands in prayer, the Tibetan community joined to celebrate the life of a young man they have painted a hero.
I have to admit I have struggled with the heroic portrayal of someone who takes their own life. But when you talk to the local people here, they have an interesting take on it, and as always, it makes me think, reflect, and I find I am once again filled with enormous respect for the beliefs of the Tibetans. The Buddha taught on how precious our human life is - each day we can be grateful for our existence and how truly precious this life really is. So when you ask a local person how they feel about self-immolation, they feel it is seen as the ultimate sacrifice a person can make, Jamphel Yeshi gave up his precious human life to make a point to the world about his country and his people – he is in their eyes a hero.
Whether you agree with act or not, it has been a stark reminder of how lucky we are. Even the Tibetans who live here in exile, with no country, no freedom, they are refugees’ with little or no contact with friends and family back home – they see that they are lucky, they have a precious human life. When I reflect on that, how precious our life is, it reminds me of how short it is, of how important it is to live each and every moment with meaning. To make the most of this short time we have in this lifetime, to not waist even a minute. Our life is too precious to spend it in a job that makes you miserable, in relationships that are not fulfilling or in front of a television like a mindless zombie for hours on end. Our life is too short to spend it fulfilling other people’s ideas of happiness, to keep putting off our dreams and to play the “I’ll be happy when....” game (Stole that from my great friend Bec Ordish from Mitrataa, I just love it)
For Jamphel Yeshi, he will no longer have the chance to sit with a dear friend and enjoy a good conversation; he will never know the embrace of a loved one or enjoy even a simple smile from a stranger. But he did make world news, he did make the world stop in this small community for a moment in time, he has made a clear point about his plight. I hope it does not trigger a flow on of copy cats, but I do hope that someone out there takes notice, that this young man did not give up his precious human life in vain. But for the rest of us, we can make sure that we don’t take for granted our precious human life, but rather we live it, each day, each moment, with meaning, with truth and with the beauty that it deserves.
