TIBETAN BUDDHISM (Tibet / China, 2005-2007)

Buddhism originally came from India. The first traces of this spiritual current in Tibet date from the 7th century, after which the country developed its own variant of the religion. The Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1949 and the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s had a destructive effect on Tibetan Buddhism. The Chinese government resettled many Tibetans in the surrounding provinces of Quinghai, Gansu, Szechuan, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan and Sinkiang. An unintended consequence of this has been that Tibetan Buddhism in these areas, although also suppressed there by the Chinese regime, has begun to exercise a serious influence on the daily lives of the Tibetans and Chinese who live there.