Lost in Translation: Eat My Tongue
The Tibetan Phrase “Che La Sa”
A key point missing: In Tibetan culture, it is common to see old grandparents not only give a kiss to small children, but to also give a small candy or piece of food to children from their mouths – directly from mouth to mouth. This may not be the norm of your culture, but this is commonly done.
After the Elder gives a kiss and a candy, since there is nothing left in their mouth, nothing left to give, they will say the phrase, “OK now eat my tongue,” (not suck, his Holiness misspoke due to his less than proficient English).
The Tibetan phrase is, “Che la sa,” They say that as in, “I've given you all my love and the candy so that's it – all that's left to do is, “eat my tongue.” It is a playful thing that the children know. This is not really done in the Lhasa region the capital of Tibet as much, but it is more common in the Amdo region where the Dalai Lama is from. However it is definitely a Tibetan custom.
If we are honest with ourselves, we know that when we form an opinion on any topic, without considering many aspects of the context, in any given situation, we are choosing to keep a significant degree of ignorance in our reasoning.
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On Perception
On the whole, we naturally tend to trust our everyday perceptions; we assume their validity without it even occurring to us to question them. We naïvely believe that the way we perceive things is identical with the way things are. And so, because events and things, including the self, appear to have objective reality, we conclude, tacitly and often without any reflection at all, that they do in fact have an objective reality. Only through the process of careful analysis can we see that this is not so, that our perceptions do not accurately reflect objective reality.
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso
from the book "Essence of the Heart Sutra"
Post Credit- Michael Gregory🙏🏻
From a friend in Ladakh.
