The historic visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama |
by Prakash V. Joshi Much is written about the historic visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Who was joined Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa and Professor Shirin Ebadi from Iran, the three Peace Prize recipients. I was privileged to be present at the two Public events at Pacific National Exhibition (PNE), University of British Columbia and Anglican Christ Church Cathedral, plus at a media conference at UBC, representing The Link and joining the group of 400 journalists in an effort to capture on tape, film and words some highlights and wisdom expressed. Here are some of my impressions from theses encounters...
The first Public Event was held at PNE on April 18, 2004 to a capacity crowd of 13,000 people. His Holiness Dalai Lama spoke on Spirituality and elaborated on the nature of compassion, on the many ways of cultivating a good heart in order to help others and how to live a fulfilled life while serving, Good heart-Full Life. He commenced by recognizing Canada as a multi-racial country. A special mention was made about India where for thousands of years, people of different traditions/faiths (Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Zoroastrians, Jews, Buddhists, Christians, and Sikhs) lived alongside in harmony. In fact he mentioned Muslims in India were closer to other traditions/faiths than Muslims in Indonesia or Malaysia. Even though he kept on referring himself to be a ‘simple Buddhist monk’ and eventually launched into a detailed explanation of Buddhist values and analysing the spiritual and philosophical nature of ‘I / Self’, he was all the time conscious of the presence of large number of non-Buddhists in the audience and encouraged to keep their own faith and become better. He described the three poisons of the mind, attachment, hatred and dissolution and the importance of deep value for fellow beings and having an ethical mind. ‘Moreover let the conscious be your witness’. Mindfulness of the every day life to finally achieve an eternal transformation. In the afternoon, at PNE, it was again a complete sold out event. His Holiness Dalai Lama spoke on ‘ Universal Responsibility’. His long time friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu delivered a fantastic upbeat and a humorous introduction. He spoke of an incident in San Francisco where a young girl, all excited had come running to him and said, “Pleased to meet you President Mandela”. He added this kind of a mistake would never happen with His Holiness as he is so well known around the world due to the positive energy and warm heartedness with a bubbling laughter that he imparts. Even though his Holiness had been in exile for 45 years, living now in India and 80,000 Tibetans have followed him, he had still not shown any signs of bitterness towards China and would like to resolve all issues through a meaningful dialogue. His Holiness spoke on materialism, desire to want more and more at the cost of human exploitation and the environment. There is general agreement amongst all including the learned regarding the decline in family and cultural values. As people become more self-centred, selfish , greedy, children are neglected. It is scientifically proved that persons who are self-indulged, using ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘myself’ are more prone to get a heart attack. As there is greater interdependency between people and countries and if you destroy others than you might destroy yourself. This reality should be taught in schools, proper dialogue, compromising, environmental concerns are not restricted to boundaries. A sadhu in India might look deprived but he is calm and content. In order to get a happy life, calm mind is important and in turn to acquire this, jealousy/anger and strong attachment has to be removed in one’s life. Strong compassion towards others is again the answer. Questions which were asked by the audience and answered by His Holiness Dalai Lama Q. Do you want violence to be used to free Tibet.? Q. Do you know more than others? Q. Do you feel sad sometimes? Q. What do you think of terrorism? Q. Are you afraid of death, why or why not? Q. How can we stop worrying? Q. Why are they no women Dai Lama’s
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