It’s based on several misunderstandings I think. First, Buddhism in Tibet originated in India which has practices such as laying the dead out to be eaten by vultures, hacking dead bodies into pieces to feed to the birds. It also had practices of meditators who meditate in charnel grounds and used skin and bones from the dead bodies as meditation aids to remind themselves of impermanence.

This may seem very extraordinary to us and also to the Chinese. But to people from Tibet and Mongolia, it is just part of their culture. Feeding bodies to birds and animals was also common place in ancient India at the time of the Buddha. For the Tibetan practice, Vultures and charnel grounds – East and West

These charnel grounds were common enough in ancient India for the Pali canon to describe impermanence meditations based on them.

"And, further, O bhikkhus, if a bhikkhu, in whatever way, sees, whilst it is being eaten by crows, hawks, vultures, dogs, jackals or by different kinds of worms, a body that had been thrown into the charnel ground, he thinks of his own body thus: 'This body of mine, too, is of the same nature as that body, is going to be like that body, and has not got past the condition of becoming like that body.'

The Satipatthana Sutta and Its Commentary

"Or again, as if he were to see a corpse cast away in a charnel ground, picked at by crows, vultures, & hawks, by dogs, hyenas, & various other creatures... a skeleton smeared with flesh & blood, connected with tendons... a fleshless skeleton smeared with blood, connected with tendons... a skeleton without flesh or blood, connected with tendons... bones detached from their tendons, scattered in all directions — here a hand bone, there a foot bone, here a shin bone, there a thigh bone, here a hip bone, there a back bone, here a rib, there a breast bone, here a shoulder bone, there a neck bone, here a jaw bone, there a tooth, here a skull... the bones whitened, somewhat like the color of shells... piled up, more than a year old... decomposed into a powder: He applies it to this very body, 'This body, too: Such is its nature, such is its future, such its unavoidable fate.'

The Great Frames of Reference

(these are amongst the oldest Buddhist scriptures, written down around 2000 years ago, before then they were passed down orally like the Vedas and some scholars think date back to the time of the Buddha himself) t

It is no longer common in India.

Details for modern India: Modern Hindus use cremation rather than “sky burial”. Sky burial is still however a practice of some contemporary religious sects in India, such as the Parsis (who are zaroastrians, only 100,000 world wide,50,000 in Mumbai), though for different reasons. Cultivating Vultures to Restore a Mumbai Ritual. The practice of meditating in charnel grounds is adopted by one sect of Hindus, the Hindu Aghoris in India. But they use partial cremation instead of sky burial.

The Chinese don’t have charnel grounds like this, as far as I know, even in their Buddhist traditions. Chinese Buddhism comes from India via a different route, traditionally Chan Buddhism was brought to China by Bodhidharma.

The reason Buddhists in Tibet do this is as a strong reminder of impermanence. The images shared in the other posts here are to remind the meditator that just as others have died, so they too will die. Chinese Buddhism of course has a strong element of impermanence too, but not the same traditions. The Zen Buddhist might meditate and see the changes in nature, the passing clouds, running water, and so on and realize that their body also changes. But not so much this meditation using dead bodies and bones and skin as a very direct reminder that they too will die.

But this does go right back to the Buddha and the Pali Canon, even the Therevadhan Buddhists do meditations on impermanence of the body, on how we grow old, die, become sick etc. It’s a very important part of Buddhist teaching. Not as a way to make yourself upset or depressed. Just as a way to relate very directly to the way things are, to not hide anything from yourself of the reality of your situation and the situation of everyone else. By doing that, you can see through it, learn to relate to things as they are.

Then another misunderstanding is that the Dalai Lama represents some kind of an elite government. A few things to be aware of here:

• Many Tibetans didn’t own land, that’s true. But many did, as small farmers, and a large proportion of the population consisted of nomads. They didn’t own land because they traveled around with their yaks, just as the Sami people people in northern Scandinavia (laplanders) traveled around with their reindeer, because they were nomads.

A Sami indigenous northern European family in Norway around 1900. Many Tibetans in old Tibet had a similar way of life. They were nomads andmoved with their reindeer and lived in tents, similarly many Tibetans in old Tibet were nomads, moved with their yaks from one place to another, had no permanent homes, and lived in tents. Saami Family 1900

• The Chinese government has forcibly resettled many of the nomads in a controversial program, taking away their animals. This may seem progress because they live in modern houses, and before didn’t own houses, but it is not what they wished for.
• Their medicine was primitive - but so was the medicine in China too at the time, lives were short, but so were lives in China. It is true that the revolution in China brought modern medicine (as well as many deaths from fighting) to much of China and Tibet. But modern medicine has been brought to all parts of the world by other methods that don’t involve communism or fighting
• The present Dalai Lama left Tibet when he was still young, barely come of age. He didn’t have an opportunity to work on reforming Tibet. I think there are many indications that he would have been a strong figure for reform.
• Dalai Lamas are picked according to a system that doesn’t make much sense unless you believe in reincarnation. The previous Dalai Lama gives instructions about how to find his next rebirth before he dies. The next Dalai Lama doesn’t even exist at that point, is not yet conceived. The next Dalai Lama is conceived after the previous Dalai Lama dies. They start the search for the next Dalai Lama five or six years after his death, looking for a young child, following the instructions of the previous Dalai Lama. And the present Dalai Lama was just a child of a small farmer in Tibet before he became Dalai Lama - the monks who found him had no previous connection with the family. So it is not any kind of a dynasty or political lineage or monarchy in the usual sense.
• The Dalai Lama is not anti communist. Buddhist teachings are politically neutral. You can have a Buddhist democracy, or a Buddhist monarchy or indeed a Buddhist communist country. The Dalai Lama has said he is very interested in communism, though not so much so Maoism. He is not trying to get the Tibetan people to leave China’s influence or to stop being a communist country, but he is working for religious freedom and the right also to make decisions about education, prisons, the environment, and so on
• The present Dalai Lama has renounced all political power. What’s more he oversaw a change of constitution of the government in exile to make sure that no reincarnate Lama can ever hold high political office in any future Tibetan government of exile. So he is not at all trying to continue the system that lead to him having this political power. He has completely dismantled it. He did this around 2012, removed all vestiges of his own political power, and made sure nobody else in the future can ever have such power through reincarnation.
• I’ve read that there was a small amount of slavery in old Tibet, apparently but remember this is long ago. Tibet was a large country with many different districts with different ideas and customs. I think this was mainly in regions next to India and the “slaves” could easily escape to India if they so wished. Whatever, this is no longer the situation and nobody would say that modern Tibet should have slaves!!
• Old Tibet did have mutilation such as cutting off hands as punishment. But this was already phased out by the time of the invasion. And on the flip side, they didn’t have capital punishment. It was one of the first countries to stop captial punishment - which is still prevalent in modern China (as well as the US of course). Again this is looking back to a past when the world has moved on and there is no way modern Tibetans would want to go back to this.
• Generally, modern Tibetans are not the same as the Tibetans of Tibet before the Communist takeover - or whatever you call it. They’ve moved on. As have the people in many other countries also. The Chinese government is continually looking back at Tibet as it was before the invasion and comparing that with modern China and using it to interpret the actions of modern Tibetans. It would help a lot with dialog if they were to look instead at modern Tibetan ideas.
• It’s true that a fair proportion of the Tibetan population consisted of monks. But what’s wrong with that? A fair proportion of our population consists of artists, and poets, and musicians, and others that do nothing to produce food or clothes or necessities of life. Easily as many or more than the proportion that were monks in Tibet, and this is one of the things that distinguishes us from animals and permits us to do great things, that we are not just pre-occupied with staying alive.
• Anyone in Tibet could become a monk or a nun,and often one child in the family would join the monastery. A small community would have a proportionally small monastery which they supported and the monks there (less often, nuns) would be their relatives. They were from their own people, not distant aristrocats. When they made gifts to the monastery to support the monks and nuns there, often they were supporting their own relatives and friends who had gone into the monastery to become monks or nuns.
• Sometimes Tibetan Lamas dress up in elaborate ceremonial costumes. You get news stories in China showing the Dalai Lama wearing these costumes, with the implication that this is his costume to show his power as the Dalia Lama. But no - these are costumes to show particular qualities of the awakened mind. The same costume would be used for any Buddhist teacher who is giving the same transmission, say of compassion, or wisdom - and there are some very elaborate transmissions with very elaborate costumes involved. And it is not their own quality that they are transmitting there. Rather, it’s something present in everyone, which they dress up like this to show that we all have this connection to this quality that they are presenting in ceremonial form. It’s meant as a way for those who take part in the ceremony to find that same quality in themselves. The Dalai Lama, as a Buddhist monk, has a monk’s robes, same as for any other Tibetan Buddhist monk, as his only personal “costume”.
• Tibet did have its aristocracy as well. But you shouldn’t confuse them with the monks and nuns. Even the Dalai Lama didn’t own the Potala palace and couldn’t for instance give it to anyone else or anyone else inherit it from him.

I’m not saying old Tibet was perfect, it certainly wasn’t and there were many things that needed to be changed. But neither was it evil, as the Chinese seem to think.

I think the main thing here is that old Tibet as a country of nomads, and also with the Buddhist religion, which especially in its Tibetan form is so pervasive and influencing how everything was done - that the Chinese had many natural misunderstandings of what was going on.

I think it probably didn’t help that the Chinese for the most part didn’t understand Tibetan, and that the Chinese pictographic script is not used in Tibet. Although the Tibetan language is closely related to Chinese, I understand, it is not close enough for Chinese to understand spoken Tibetan. And China is unified by its pictographs which lets Chinese with different languages to communicate in written form. But they couldn’t read the Tibetan script either, and the Tibetans couldn’t read Chinese.

The iconography of some of the Tankas (paintings often in hanging scroll form) also can be confusing if you don’t have it explained to you, also you may get similar things in vivid poetic form in the writings. The Tankas may show things like living people being torn apart. But again this may be a vivid depiction of impermanence.You need to have the images explained before you can come to conclusions about what they mean for Tibetan Buddhists.

In other cases, it’s a vivid imagery which is to do with recognizing how we can get stuck in habitual tendencies and sometimes need to break out of them, that you need to be open to fresh points of views. It’s the awakened mind, your own awakened mind that does the rending here, it’s like - sometimes ideas just have to be left behind. Some irrevocable thing happens and you need to move on. Things can happen like that, accidents, events that are irreversible. You may have resisted but it happens, and once it is done, you can’t undo it. When that happens, you have to relate to the new situation, you have to recognize that the past has changed through the present into the future.

Again this is something you get rather more in Tibetan Buddhism than in other forms of Buddhism. The idea is there everywhere, but the most vivid depictions of it in the iconography are mainly Tibetan.

So there were many opportunities for misunderstandings to arise. And these have been propagated to this day. I think the way forward has to be to somehow foster more mutual understanding between the Chinese and the Tibetans.

For as long as the Chinese think of Tibetan Buddhism as a form of serfdom, and think of the aim of the Tibetans in exile to resume this, how can we make progress? You can see from the way Tibetans behave in exile that they don’t have slaves or serfs, they don’t kill people for their skins and bones as the Chinese seem to think they used to do in Tibet (this is surely a misunderstanding of the process of hacking up dead bodies to feed to the birds), and so on.

Can we somehow find a way to move forward from these views about old Tibet? To realize that there have been misunderstandings, that there were many things in old Tibet that did need to be changed, but it no longer exists, it’s the past, and that many of these things are not true even of old Tibet and not true today?