Sometimes, what works and not work depends on how we view at life and things.
No Buddhas can undo our karma. Let alone the karma of a whole nation.
Some things might take a lot of purification processes. While other things may require the right conditions to bear fruit.
In samsara, it seems to be very natural to develop delusions or deluded views. Because something did not happen according to how we may like or have prayed hard for, and so, we would deem it as bad or useless. we may even abandon the whole practice due to such deluded thoughts.
I remember reading a passage from Liberation In the Palm of Your Hand - "You lose both what you possess and have yet to acquire, and you gain great suffering."
Who is to say that the great number of prayers have not bore fruit? It might just be that the result is really for the best interest of the greater whole, even if it does not resemble it at that moment.
Who is to say that there could have been a fate much worse if the high lamas, the Regent, Dalai Lama did not pray at all?
If we should start to doubt the Three Jewels, then nothing the Buddha has said and taught is correct.
For how can the Three Jewels be right about some things and wrong about another. Perhaps we need to check deeper into our own minds.
Another of my favourite lines from the Lamrim -
Save me from doubt, that terrible ghost,
That cruel one who flies in a sky of utter blindness,
Who harms my yearning for conviction,
Who murders my liberation.
I shall quote from another beautiful paragraph from the Lamrim -
Our Tibet, the Land of Snows, has features not generally found in other countries; and the only root of our immediate and longterm happiness is Buddha's teachings. Whether or not these teachings still flourish is not due to our houses, population, or our colourful offerings; it depends on the ethics of the pratimoksha vows - the root of the teachings. If we do not have these ethics purely, it shows that our ethics have died out in our own mindstreams and our own share of the teachings have died out, even though externally the teachings may be widespread as the rocks and ground itself.
Whenever I read these lines, I am reminded to look at the bigger picture of life and people - beyond what I like or want to see.
And when I think further, I can't help but think that all the High Lamas' prayers worked - they did keep the Chinese Red Army out. Because Buddhism is not destroyed. In fact, it has flourished and gone out to the rest of the world.
Here, I see that Tibet is Buddhism and Buddhism is Tibet. As long as Buddhism lives on, Tibet lives on. Where there is Buddhism, there is Tibet.
In this respect, to me, Tibet is everywhere - not confined by the Himalayans, the great rivers and the skies or clouds. It is really free.
