[Reader-list] Dalai Lama and Tibet

[Asthana, Rahul]

Hi all,
The Dalai Lama is now in Canada, and everyone is fascinated by his
teachings(look at the news item below).He has also won the Nobel Peace
Prize,as you all might know. He seems to be a wonderful person to have as a
grandfather, no doubt about it.But as a representative of the people of a
nation? 
I wonder if he is giving peace a good name by acquiescing to the Chinese
invasion of Tibet.He says he does not want independence, but more autonomy
within the state of China.He wants to conserve the spiritualism and
traditions of Tibet. All noble thoughts, as the Chinese are continuing with
the physical and cultural invasion of Tibet.While the Lama is preaching
compassion all over the world,more and more Chinese are settling down in
Tibet..The Lama himself can't return to Tibet , taking refuge in
DharamShala. Perhaps it is not his fault, he  says that he is 80 % spiritual
and 20% political. Perhaps, if the Tibetan people, driven from their
homeland , and taking refuge all over India, still look up to him, they
deserve none better.
The non-violence of Mahatma Gandhi was accompanied by civil-disobedience ,
non-coperation and the cry of "Quit India"., which are not to be seen in
case of Dalai Lama.
I wonder how long the Tibetans would endure the Dalai Lama brand of
tolerance.

Thanks
Rahul

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040426/DALA
I26/TPNational/Toronto

Dalai Lama wows them at SkyDome

	

TORONTO -- The Dalai Lama drew 25,000 people to Toronto's SkyDome on a
blustery, wet afternoon yesterday for a grandfatherly chat on the happiness
of showing compassion and the peace of mind that comes from being with
children, friends and neighbours not talking about complicated things.

Seated in a white armchair on a flower-bedecked stage, the 69-year-old
Buddhist monk and exiled Tibetan leader was repeatedly applauded as he urged
the world's political leaders to embrace compassion rather than conflict and
violence. 

"War is outdated," he said, his deep voice echoing through the sports
stadium. "The 20th century was the century of violence, [and] violence
solved nothing. The 21st century should be the century of dialogue."

Moments later, a dropped pin could have been heard as his audience hung on
his description of the source of his buoyant energy: "Good sleep -- seven,
nine, even 10 hours . . . and no solid food after lunch. And a certain
amount of peace of mind. Sometimes I feel like the ocean. A wave comes, a
wave goes. But underneath the ocean is always calm."

He urged the audience to cultivate the habit of watching one's thought
processes from a distance, not becoming immersed in them. "When sadness
happens, try to look at it separately from the [emotion of] sadness. Some
sense? What do you think?" The audience applauded.

He was animated, waving his arms as he spoke, his hands fluttering like
butterflies. He frequently chuckled at humanity's foibles, including his
own. He jabbed the air with an index finger to make his points. He
frequently needed assistance from a translator. "As I get older, my English
gets older," he explained.

After Justin Trudeau introduced him as a man "who gets along with just about
everyone" in a world of violence, mistrust and hatred, the bespectacled monk
in his saffron and claret robes put his arms around the son of the former
prime minister and, for a long moment, pressed his cheek against his.

His public talk, called The Power of Compassion, began nearly an hour late
in the bustling heart of Canada's largest city because of the unexpected
time needed to security-screen people coming into the stadium. As the
audience took their seats, the words "greed," "envy" and "selfishness"
flashed on two giant screens as a soft mellifluous voice announced that the
Dalai Lama would speak about harmony and peace of mind.

Six uniformed police officers took up positions around the stage when he
appeared.

He defined compassion as respect -- not pity -- for others. He termed it
something more than ordinary love, which he said is too often based on
others' attitudes toward oneself.

He said it could best be called a developed sense of concern for others, and
it was an inner quality -- "a deep value necessary for being a human being"
-- as necessary for parents to possess as for political leaders. As an
innate quality, he said, it was a natural extension of human beings'
dependence upon the compassion of others in the first years of life. 

He defined true peace as not merely the absence of violence but as an
expression of peace with compassion.

Asked in the question period at the end of his talk what he considered the
world's greatest problem, he replied: "Population . . . and the growing gulf
between rich and poor." He referred to poor blacks in the capital of the
world's richest nation, America, and aboriginal people "lagging behind" in
rich Canada.

"The huge gap between rich and poor is not only morally wrong but
practically wrong," he said.

He said he was optimistic that negotiations would soon begin between his
Tibetan government in exile and the Chinese government, whose troops
occupied Tibet in 1959. 

His listeners left the SkyDome with rave reviews. 

Halina Bregman, who lives on the Toronto Islands, said: "I think we need
more Dalai Lamas in the world, appreciating the basic human goodness we all
possess." 

Sarah Gingrich, a Toronto environmental scientist, said: "I was really
pleased to hear one person expressing so many positive ideas."

Her friend, Judy from Kitchener -- she would not give her last name -- said:
"It was so wonderful to hear someone so positive. He expressed complex ideas
in very simple terms. It was smashing . . . and he's cute. I wish he were my
neighbour."

Minnesota resident Tashi Dorjee, 21, one of 16 people -- two of them
Canadians -- who cycled nearly 1,000 kilometres from Washington to Toronto
to raise public awareness of Tibetans' struggle for autonomy, called the
event "very emotional. It's very, very touching." He said most of the
cyclists were students, one of them the Dalai Lama's nephew.

Pennsylvania university student Jillian Winschel called it "amazing." A
friend, Bradford Burgess, in his second year of medicine in the state, said
he came to Toronto to hear the Dalai Lama "out of desire for enlightenment."
And his reaction? "I found it rather enlightening."

"This was fabulous, on all levels," said Jane Damude-Empey of Toronto, who
practises Tibetan Buddhism.

"I think the Dalai Lama is what they call in Buddhism a precious jewel in
the sense that he truly lives and is what he talks about," she said. "He's
one of the few leaders in the world who is everything that he says.

"The most touching thing about him is that he is so human and that he is so
humble," she said, adding that the only thing that could have made it better
was a more intimate setting.

Her only complaint: "I'd like to be closer. I mean, 25,000 people is a lot
of people."