Butter tea remains a favorite drink to Tibetan lamas when Coca Cola and coffee have become popular among city youngsters on the "world's roof," but they make it in a different way.

At six o'clock in the morning, Lama Wangdui began a big day with preparing morning butter tea for more than 100 lamas in the Jokhang Monastery in Lhasa, capital of Tibet in southwest China. But the strenuous job, which used to take at least two hours, has become a one-hour exciting experience after a electric boiler and beater replace the heavy copper boiler and wooden beater.

"The ascetic life has gradually disappeared from the monasteries with the rapid economic and social development in Tibet," said Ceba, an official with the Tibet Regional Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission.

"Instead, more and more lamas use watches, listen to radio, watch TV, even use cell phone," said Ceba, who predicted that more than 20 percent of the lamas in Lhasa's major three monasteries of Daipung, Sera and Gandan have owned cell phones.

In Zhaxilhunbo Monastery, the newly-bought TV sets are warmly welcome by some lamas though some old lamas think watching TV is a profane entertainment, which is contradictory to the monasteries' tradition that calls for a simple life and few desires.

"We think watching TV is helpful for lamas to know more about this world and enlarge their scope of knowledge. But we definitely say 'No' to pornography and violence," said lama Punla, deputy director of the monastery's democratic administration commission.

Punla said that the monasteries, which have struggled to keep traditional customs in the country's great tide of "opening-up," should be more open to the modern facilities that are helpful for religious study and practice.

Punla's opinion is applauded by Chinlai Rabgyai, director of the Gandan Monastery's democratic administration commission. But he also insists that to adhere austere religious self-discipline is the truth of being a real lama and any action runs counter to the commandments of Tibetan Buddhism is prohibited.

In the Gandan Monastery live more than 300 lamas and young lamas accounts for about 80 percent. At the busy season for farming, young lamas go back home to help their family in holidays, mostly by bike with a few by motorcycle.

Chubakang Tubdain Kaizhub, a "living Buddha" and chairman of the Tibetan branch of China Buddhist Association, said that no religious canon is invariable and to accept and make use of the useful fruits of modern civilization is helpful to spread Buddha's teachings.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 18, 2003)