[Buddha-l] Tibetan new year, meat dumplings and empowering women

[Dan Lusthaus]

Very interesting article from nytimes ostensibly about momos -- dumplings --  
but it delves into numerous other issues of Tibetans in exile.

Some highlights:

==

[...]
Losar is a holiday built around the comforts of food - and a dietary 
paradox: Though most Tibetans are Buddhists, who would avoid taking a life, 
they are also great lovers of meat, and sha momos are the unofficial 
national dish.

The sisters' East Village restaurant, Tsampa, is mostly vegetarian, and 
serves only vegetable and chicken momos, in deference to the many customers 
who do not eat red meat. But there are always sha momos lurking off the 
menu, she said, for the Tibetan regulars who would be aggrieved not to find 
them. "Here, beef momos are everyday food," she said. "They make Tibetans so 
happy."

The Dalai Lama himself has struggled with adopting a vegetarian diet, which 
is expected of Buddhist spiritual leaders; many Tibetans will tell you that 
doctors have advised him to eat meat for health reasons. (The official 
position is that the kitchens in his residence in Dharamsala, in northern 
India, are vegetarian, but that the Dalai Lama does eat meat elsewhere.)

The tradition of meat-eating is strong because without meat as a source of 
fat and protein, Tibetans simply could not have survived on their high, cold 
plateau for centuries, said Ganden Thurman, the executive director of Tibet 
House, a cultural center in New York City. Also, Mr. Thurman said, there is 
a practical, Buddhist reason for eating yak instead of, say, rabbit or fish.

"The karmic load of killing one rabbit and one yak are the same: one life," 
he said. "But you can feed a lot more people with a yak."
===

Time out. This "practical, Buddhist reason" is the equivalent of saying: I 
could mug some pedestrian walking down the street, but it would be more 
"practical" and "Buddhist" to exploit an entire country, since many more 
people on my end would share in the profits. Is this Buddhist ethics?

Back to the article:
===

Yak meat can be lean and tough; wise Tibetan cooks made their sha momos 
juicier by adding a bit of oil and water to the filling. The trick works in 
America, too, with chopped beef; yak meat is raised in Colorado and Wyoming 
and now served at some restaurants in New York, but most places use beef. As 
steam penetrates the dumplings, the juices, perfumed with onion, cilantro 
and ginger, liquefy into a hot, savory broth.

Momo skins are not very thin, the better to contain that  liquid, which 
surges out on first bite. (Momos can also be fried, but they are not as 
juicy and satisfying that way.) After sucking out the broth, Tibetans dab 
sepen, a brick-red chile paste, on a plate, and dip the momos in, holding 
them with fingertips. Momos can be the prelude to a meal, or the meal 
itself.

"Momos are one of the dishes that taste almost the same in exile as they did 
in Tibet," said Tsering Dolma, a restaurant worker in the San Francisco Bay 
area.

At first, most remained in India, but the draw of the United States is 
powerful, especially for women. "Life here is hard, but in India the 
competition for jobs is impossible," said Norbu L. Lama, a community leader 
who lives in Woodside, Queens. "One woman can support a whole family here," 
she added.

Traditionally, Tibetan women fed their families while the men tended the 
animals, but in just a few generations, that has changed. "Tibetan men here 
are doing a lot of cooking," said Lobsang Wangdu, who lives in the Bay Area 
and writes a blog about Tibetan food and culture at www.yowangdu.com. Mr. 
Wangdu said that in his family, momos are not eaten on the first day of 
Losar, because they look like purses for holding money - and the mind is 
supposed to focus on purification and family rather than work and financial 
worries.

Fifteen days ago, preparations began for the arrival of the year 2139 (a 
male water dragon year in Tibetan astrology). In Lhasa and in Delhi, in 
Minneapolis and in Brooklyn, Tibetans planted barley seeds so that the green 
shoots would be strong and bright by Wednesday. In Queens, the women began 
buying up canola oil, used for making deep-fried dough twists called khapse, 
and brewing beer from rice and barley.

"You can have sweet khapse or salty ones - the important thing is to pile 
them up high to make a magnificent offering," Mrs. Lama said. Khapse are 
stacked on special altars for the holiday, along with shiny sweets and dried 
fruit, candles made of butter, and the green barley shoots that represent 
both new life and the staple grain of Tibet.

When they lived as nomads on the high Tibetan plateau, almost one million 
square miles rimmed by the Himalaya, Kunlun and Qilian mountains, most 
Tibetans ate a sparse diet: grains and beans; cold-weather vegetables like 
onions, potatoes and turnips; and meat, butter and cheese from their yak 
herds. At the eastern border, where Tibet adjoins the Sichuan province of 
China, chiles and Sichuan peppercorns flavor the dishes; in the West, near 
India and Nepal, cumin and garam masala.

Butter, though, is Tibetans' favorite food, Mrs. Dolma said: "As long as 
there is butter and tea we can live anywhere." Po cha, a filling and 
stimulating brew of strong tea, rich butter, milk and salt, is sipped by 
Tibetans everywhere, at all hours and in all kinds of weather.

The New York area is home to the largest Tibetan community in the country, 
at least 7,000 people, according to the Office of Tibet, in New York. (The 
office represents the Central Tibetan Administration < http://tibet.net/ >, 
the self-proclaimed government in exile based in Dharamsala.)

Most young Tibetan-Americans here have never seen Tibet, or tasted tea made 
with dri butter (dri is the term for a female yak), or smelled the 
herb-scented soups that make up the daily diet in Tibet.

But food remains an important unifier for the ones who gather, many sporting 
signs of rebellion like platinum-bleached braids and skintight hoodies, for 
momos and Mountain Dew at small restaurants in Queens. (A photographic essay 
on the Tibetan community in New York, titled "Lhasa on the Hudson," will 
open on Sunday at the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art 
http://www.tibetanmuseum.org/ , on Staten Island.)

At many Tibetan Buddhist temples, this year's Losar celebrations will be 
sober and limited. About 20 people, most of them young monks and nuns, have 
burned themselves to death in Tibet in the last year, in resistance to 
Chinese authority. They are being honored with fasts, demonstrations and 
prayer vigils.

Many of New York's Tibetans live within one subway stop of Jackson Heights, 
a Queens neighborhood that has long absorbed, and fed, new arrivals to the 
city. Twenty years ago, Indian and Pakistani sweet shops and snack stalls 
dominated; then Ecuadorean bakeries and Colombian arepas arrived. Now, many 
streets are aflutter with Tibetan prayer flags and pictures of the Dalai 
Lama, the shop windows plastered with ads for necessities like momos, 
mustard pickle and phone cards for calling relatives dispersed in Nepal, 
Bhutan and India.

go to http://tinyurl.com/72ufyar
for the rest, photos and a slideshow
===

Dan Lusthaus