I had the extreme good fortune to meet some of the monks from one of the monasteries in India (Gaden and Drepung). I asked them what it was like to lose their country. We frequently hear all the uproar, and the politics and even the anger, resentment, hatred and great pain suffered by so many over these few decades so it came as somewhat of a shock to me to hear them speak very calmly about it. Most of them told me that it is okay, it was a collective karma that Tibetans had to suffer, but that the monasteries in India are doing just fine and are still practising the way they always did.
I have to agree with wisdom being there - Buddhism belongs to the world. And the monks that I met prove that. They are not attached to where they are or to nationalistic pride or whatever. Yes, they are Tibetan now, but they may not be tibetan again in their next life. Those of us who are not Tibetan now may be reborn back as Tibetans in our next life, right in the heat of all the Tibetan politics. It doesn't matter if we want to practise Dharma - there is crap and problems wherever we are born into, every country has its own nightmare!!
To those monks, a real home is wherever they can practise Dharma, Tibetan or not. And that, I think is the truest and most beautiful reflection of a tibet that we a love and would like to remember / be remembered by. Because when we meet these people and talk to them you think "this is what it means to be Tibetan, to be Buddhist". Ironically, by them not grasping onto their "tibetan-ness" I think of Tibetans as all the greater and respect tibet all the more.
