Despite their public persona the
Beastie Boys have long been active in political events. Yauch, in particular was
deeply interested in Buddhism and the Free Tibet Movement. I love the complexity
of this guy, a walking talking crazy party one moment, and the next he was thinking
deeply and talking about the cause of religious freedom and non-violence. He
was a deep thinker and a clown. I like to think deeply about stuff. I wish I
had more of the clown in me. In my mind the courage to do each is about the same.
So In my book Yauch is a pretty brave guy. He was a rapper, a director who
directed several of the videos, an activist in many ways, and a Buddhist. Following
is from a PBS interview in 1997 from a show called Dreams of Tibet. Safe
travels, Adam…
q: There seems to be a
ground swell of interest happening around Tibet. Why is there so much interest
in Tibet?
yauch: I think it
goes to a lot of different levels but the two main ways that I look at it is
that on the one hand, we're able to help the Tibetans to gain their freedom--in
a sense we're obligated to do that in a sense since we have the ability to help
the Tibetans. But I think the really significant part of it for us for the
western world is we have a lot to gain from the Tibetans--there are certain
lessons that are within Tibetan culture. I mean understandings of compassion
and of nonviolence that are things that we really lack in our society.
Also, the contrast is so huge between the compassion and
nonviolence that's coming from the Tibetans and the unimaginably brutal
oppression that's coming from the Chinese, the forced abortions and forced
sterilization and the torture of monks and nuns ... for just trying to practice
their own religion.
q: Tell me about your
concerts and what you hope to achieve....
a: I feel like I've
gained a huge amount from being exposed to Tibetan culture. From being in Tibet
and being around Tibetans I feel like I've learned so much more about what
brings a person happiness, about what actually brings myself happiness.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions in society in
general about what actually brings happiness, we're caught up in all these
ideas that having a lot of money or having somebody beautiful to have sex with
or having some cool objects, having a cool car, cool stereo or whatever is
gonna make us happy. And those things actually don't bring us happiness. I've
learned a tremendous amount about how compassion or altruism actually brings a
person happiness and I think that's a lot of what's trying to be put forward
through the concerts and it seems like the optimum way to put those ideas
forward is through helping the Tibetans gain their freedom because those values
are so inherent within Tibetan culture.
q: Tell me -- how do
you effect change?
a: I think every
person has the ability to effect change. I think we're often led to believe
that it's just celebrities have some ability to effect change but I think that
what's important for us to realize is that everyone of us affects the world
constantly through our actions, through our every smallest action, through our
every thought, our every word, the way that we interact with other people we're
constantly affecting the world.
q: What are you
trying to do for Tibet in in the music and the concerts you give?
a: We're trying to
just raise awareness/with the concerts, what we're really trying to do is
create more of a forum for the Tibetans themselves to be able to speak, I know
that like if I turn on the TV and I just see some movie star or rock star
talking about some cause a lot of times I get really turned off to it so I
guess the idea is -- creating some kind of forum where the -- the Tibetans
themselves can speak and Tibetan culture can be there itself.
I bet there are a lot of Tibetans walking around at the
concerts, there were hundreds of Tibetans walking around with petitions to be
signed and there was monastery tent there and we did our best to come as close
to having Tibetan culture exist naturally in a giant rock concert
q: What impact do you
think the concerts and films can have?
a: I think concerts
and films and and CD and things like that can bring the stuff into the
mainstream. .... I think the films and CDs and what not, can really have an
effect because I think that our government and our corporations are definitely
affected by public perception. And so the more that we can raise this
awareness, the more chance there is that our corporations and government will
be forced to act in the interest of humanity.
q: And what is going
to on? I mean what do you see happening?
a: I think the main
focus in America is is basically greed. I think that that's the number
motivator in our society and it goes to all levels, it goes to our government
and our corporations and us as individuals and I think we have to recognize our
own involvement as individuals in that greed that we're the ones that go out
and and buy all these things that empower the corporations.
q: What does Tibet
have to offer us in America, in the West?
a: Well some people
have described it this way -- while the West has been outwardly modernizing
ourselves, while we've been building better machines and cameras and faster
trains and planes and faster telephones and computers, while we've been
outwardly modernizing ourselves for the last few hundred years the Tibetans
have isolated themselves from the rest of the world and have been inwardly
modernizing themselves.
They've been spending the last thousand years learning about
mind and what actually brings a person happiness and what brings a person
unhappiness. What creates jealousy and what creates hatred and what actually
creates true lasting happiness. So in a sense it seems like it's no accident
that when we've come to this point where our technology has put the world on
the edge of destruction. We've stockpiled so many nuclear weapons and dumping
nuclear waste and creating materials that don't biodegrade and on and on. And
just as we've put the earth on the edge of destruction here-- Tibetan culture
has been forced to infiltrate into the rest of the world and expose itself in
order for itself to survive. And, it almost seems like no accident-- that this
has happened at that time, that they're, as Bob Thurman calls it, their inner
modernity has been forced to be exposed to our out modernity .
q: What is your dream
scenario for the impact that your concerts and music and CD can have?
a: I would hope that
the concerts and the CD and the films that are coming out would help Tibet to
gain their freedom. But on the other side of it, I'm really hoping that some of
those values are going to infiltrate into American culture and in particular
into youth culture uh because obviously that's the future of what this world is
going to be come and what human it is going to become.
q: And do you think
that things like popular culture, like movies and concerts can ultimately have
some effect on things like government policy?
a: I think that
movies and CDs-- they affect the way people think. I know they've radically
affected the way I think. And so they definitely will have some effect on the
world and in turn that will affect our government because I really don't think
that Clinton wants to be remembered as a president that could have done
something to benefit the people in Tibet. That could have helped with human
rights and just didn't do that for reasons of greed or having America be a
powerful country at the expense of other people. I don't think that Clinton
that wants to be remembered that way. And so I think that the more that
awareness is raised, that more that Clinton is gonna really go out of his way
to make sure that Tibetan culture is preserved.
q: Why is there an
urgency suddenly about Tibet's predicament and dilemma?
a: The thing with the
Tibet cause is that there is very little time left with it because of the rate
of the population transfer that the Chinese are pushing for right now and the
sterilization and forced abortions that are going on with the women. And the
religious oppression. There is very little time left that Tibetan culture will
actually survive. Probably a few more years if a radical change doesn't come
about. So I think that's part of what the uproar is that people are really
coming together on this issue.
q: Do you have a
feeling the government has sort of abandoned this issue?
a: I think it's scary
that that our elected officials aren't operating under the principles of human
rights, under the principles that this government and this country was founded
on. I think that that if anyone should be holding those principles dear to
their heart and and as the most important values there are then it should be
our elected officials and the idea that our country is being run by a bunch of
selfish egomaniacs is pretty terrifying.
q: What's your hope
for a kid who comes to a concert that you're putting on for Tibet?
a: I guess the best
way for me to put that answer is more in terms of my own experience. I was
traveling in the Himalayas and I met some Tibetan people and then I began to
really learn about a lot of much deeper ideas about mind and what actually
brings a person happiness and the patterns of thinking the traps that we get
ourselves into through our different lines of thinking. And so what I hope is
that somebody might come to one of these concerts and run across some of that
same information that I did-- that benefited me. And that they would also gain
something from that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny997LNZ9zw
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