What does compassion and global responsibility really mean to you?
To the Dalai Lama, they are inextricably bound to his life, his religion and his future legacy.
Consider this: Every morning at 4 a.m., the Dalai Lama rises in the pitch black and sits inside a sacred room to practice between four and five hours of meditation. Clothed only in humble red robes, he is completely alone, sitting cross-legged on the ground, contemplating the teaching and texts of Tibetan Buddhist masters.
For years, people have asked him exactly what he is meditating on. And for years, he has given them a one-word answer that is a primary tenet of Tibetan Buddhism: compassion
Yet the word “compassion” for the Dalai Lama has come to symbolize something more than mere altruism on a local scale, but rather, on a global scale.
After watching his country invaded, his monasteries destroyed and his culture dismantled by the Chinese, the Dalai Lama was forced to leave Tibet and enter the worldwide community, infusing the globe with his idealistic messages and Tibetan Buddhist ethics. This situation was summed up perfectly by famed journalist Pico Iyer, who said earlier this week at the Aspen Institute, “That Dalai Lama would always tell me, ‘I’ve lost my country, but I’ve gained the world.’”
And so it was only fitting that the Dalai Lama discussed his concept of global responsibility and compassion on Saturday morning at the Benedict Music Tent as the keynote address for the Aspen Institute’s symposium on Tibetan culture.
A century of dialogue
Capping off a week that included lectures by Tibetan scholars and practitioners, such as Bob Thurman and Sogyal Rinpoche, Saturday’s lecture began with a performance of traditional Tibetan chant and dance by Tibetan monks from the Drepung Monastery. The stage was decorated with colorful prayers flags designed by local children at the Anderson Ranch.
When the Dalai Lama walked onto the stage amid a booming standing ovation, he wore white Tibetan katak (scarf) that was also decorated by local children with red peace signs.
“I was very touched by this,” said the Dalai Lama, pointing to the scarf. “Young children’s minds are not yet spoiled. They still have a feeling of humanity.”
He then began to speak about his idea of global responsibility, which, he believes, begins not with laws or legislation, but with changing our fundamental view of the world.
“Our basic feeling of self and desire for happiness is the same,” he said. “If you look at the world from space, you see one globe. There are no real boundaries. There is too much emphasis on secondary differences — religion, nationality, ethnicity. On a basic level, we are the same. We forget basic humanity.”
This concept of universal similarities among humans, according to the Dalai Lama, must guide how we act on a global level. For example, he proposed the idea of the Americas joining together with a sense of unity, and the same for Europe.
“You have to consider your neighbor not foreign, but part of yourself,” he explained.
Moreover, the Dalai consistently harped on the importance of dialogue in terms of solving international disputes. This, of course, is a message that he has been preaching to Chinese for more than 50 years in terms of opening a discussion about the future of Tibet.
“The 21st century is a century of bloodshed,” he said. “This should be a century of dialogue.”
In terms of government, the Dalai Lama made it perfectly clear that he is a proponent of Marxism versus a totalitarian leadership or a capitalist system.
“I am attracted to the Marxist sense of lifting the lower classes,” he continued. “It is about the well being of working-class people that are normally exploited by the richer classes.”
The Chinese dilemma
Zach Ornitz/Aspen Daily NewsHis Holiness the Dalai Lama traditionally greets a capacity crowd a near-capacity crowd in the Benedict Music Tent on Saturday. The Dalai Lama's hour-long monologue marked the culmination of a weeklong symposium celebrating Tibetan culture, held at the Aspen Institute.
The Dalai Lama’s discussion of Marxism, however, was not a completely extraneous or hypothetical topic.
Throughout his lecture, he repeatedly pointed to and spoke to a group of Chinese professors sitting near the front of the music tent, at times castigating the current Chinese administration, which claims to rule with socialist principles.
In essence, the Dalai Lama opined that the original precepts of the Chinese communist regime had merit in the sense that they were designed to help the lower classes. However, he claimed that this original sense of political integrity has degenerated.
“The Chinese leaders have become corrupt,” he argued. “They only think of profit, and have lost a sense of purity in the original movement.” At one point, he also referred to the Chinese government as, “totalitarian and capitalist.”
The Dalai Lama expressed concern over human rights and their standing in the Chinese constitution, which are not provided for in reality. In the case of Tibet, he claimed there is both “human rights violation and violation of religious freedom.”
As such, the Dalai Lama pleaded that the media have a “long nose,” in order to smell the truth of what exists both in front of them and behind them.
“They must inform the public clearly and openly,” he said. “Transparency is very important.”
The issue of transparency within the media has been a central in discussions about Tibet.
During last spring’s uprisings on the Tibetan plateau, foreign journalists were expelled from the country and only state-sponsored media were allowed. The government also set up a series of media tours in which they hand selected Western journalists and gave them limited access to Tibet.
Most recently, many western media outlets, such as NBC, are beginning worry about having autonomy at the Beijing summer Olympics to cover projected demonstrations that the Chinese government would rather not be televised internationally.
The essence of compassion
Towards the end of his lecture, the Dalai Lama returned to the theme that he has spent his life preaching — compassion.
According the Dalai Lama, compassion exists on two levels.
The first is on the biological level, which he said was necessary for survival, like the way a mother cares for her children.
The second level relates to training and reason, which is something that needs to be habituated, practiced and extended to on a universal level, instead just to one’s own family.
“According to science [practicing compassion] makes the body better and the immune system stronger. So many people spend their money on medicine and sleeping pills. People that have compassion don’t need these.”
The Dalai Lama’s scientific arguments in this passage are not unfounded. Throughout the week, a world-renowned professor from Stanford University spoke about a new project, “Project Compassion,” in which scientists are currently measuring the direct correlation between a compassionate mind and its positive effects on the body.
It is also important to note that in the past decade, the Dalai Lama has taken a serious interest in the connection between Buddhism and science, even saying that if certain Buddhist principles are overturned by scientific truths, they should be discarded.
Returning again to this topic of compassion, at the end of his lecture, the Dalai Lama was asked by an audience member how it can be that in such a beautiful place like Aspen, people can be so rude and cantankerous. And moreover, can the Dalai Lama teach how to resolve this issue?
Fittingly, the Dalai Lama reminded the audience that change, compassion and global responsibility begin with individuals, not just with the Dalai Lama.
“I don’t know,” he laughed. “This is your responsibility, not mine.”
bastian@aspendailynews.com
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THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND OF A RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
The Dalai Lama’s success comes no doubt from his constant talk about compassion and religious tolerance. It’s quite a feat to sustain such success merely with words while simultaneously promoting for years a witch hunt in the Tibetan community against a group of religious practitioners.
This practitioners, contrary to what people under his influence are saying, do not constitute a cult or some kind of split sect. They are the most mainstream among the Tibetan Buddhists of the Gelug tradition, the one to which the Dalai Lama used to belong to.
It would be fair to assume that most people reading about him are aware of the religious persecution the Dalai Lama has instituted against these people, because the demonstrations that culminated in Madison, Wisconsin, have been loud and clear enough.
For all of those, who must be numerous, who are wondering what is this all about, here is some information, that of course they should check and investigate on their own.
Although the Dorje Shugden issue has the appearance of a religious issue, it's considered by the Tibetans themselves as a political issue, and with good reason.
THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND OF THE PERSECUTION INSTITUTED BY THE DALAI LAMA AGAINST HIS FELLOW BUDDHISTS
SEVENTIES- The first moves against the practitioners of the Protector Deity Dorje Shugden had an internal political reason. These were the sixties and seventies. The Dalai Lama thought that he had to strengthten his authority over the Tibetan community to better face the world while in exile, and that a good way of doing this was to mix the beliefs and practices of the 4 schools of Tibetan Buddhism and create an only school with him at its head –a political move without religious basis, because while he was the political leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama had never been its religious leader.
For the Gelugpa Lamas this constituted a serious religious mistake, and they refused to comply. The Dalai Lama didn’t have any authority to impose his ideas to them. In Mahayana Buddhism it is accepted that Lord Buddha taught many different Dharmas for many different levels of practitioners. So the notion of heresy does not exist, let alone the idea of persecuting other Buddhists. Probably due to his lack of doctrinary basis to impose his ideas, the Dalai Lama decided to destroy the Protector of the Gelugpa lineage as a way to destroy those Lamas, his own teachers, the most influential among Tibetans. Remember this, because today the Dalai Lama wants the world to believe that the Dorje Shugden people are a kind of cult. This is untrue. They were the most mainstream of Tibetan Buddhism. In those years, though, even if the Dalai Lama tried as much as he could, he was not very successful in his attempts to vilify the Protector of the Dharma called Dorje Shugden.
NINETIES -More than 20 years later all the sudden the Tibetan leader decided to bring this inner tension with the Gelugpas to the whole of the Tibetan community. He proclaimed a ban on Dorje Shugden, and a tremendous persecution started then, with and inquisitorial destruction of books and images, the interdiction of holding civil jobs for the practitioners and much more.
Why all the sudden had he done that? Very simple, but unknown by the public. He needed the creation of a great red herring to cover the fact that just before his Nobel Prize, in 1988, he had given up the independence of Tibet –offering to China “autonomy” instead of independence– without ever consulting the Tibetans, all alone on his own.
This political move practically remained unnoticed by the general Tibetan public, and the few who became aware of it didn’t have time to oppose him because soon after that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Tibetans thought the independence of Tibet was almost there. The “autonomy” thesis of the Dalai Lama remained largely ignored.
In fact, the first important political opposition against his "autonomy" theory –a nice word for accepting that Tibet is part of China– erupted at the end of 1995, when the hopes that the Nobel Prize had brought had vanished. The opposition was lead by his brother Norbu, residing in Indiana, USA. He created the Walks for Independence, openly defying his brother the Dalai Lama.
To avoid the spread of this opposition among Tibetans, who are fiercely in love with their Motherland, the Dalai Lama invented that the Protector Deity Dorje Shugden harmed his own health and the cause of Tibet and proclaimed the famous ban.
So at the end of the year 1995 began the opposition against his “autonomy” aim, and the declared the ban against the deity in March 1996. This dates are not to be forgotten.
Unhappily, this red herring was a success. The persecution took inquisitorial tones, not only with the burning of sacred books and statues and even of houses of practitioners but with the prohibition for these to hold civil jobs, to attend ceremonies, and many other sad destruction of their human rights. The draft Constitution of the Tibetans was changed to bar the practitioners of the deity from having civic responsibilities.
Unfortunately the world protected automatically the Dalai Lama's fame, never believing that he was persecuting his own people.
YEAR 2008 -Finally the Dalai Lama chose 2008, the year of the Olympics in China, to try to force China into accepting him back, in his own terms. The riots in Tibet are believed to have taken place under his instigation, to put China against the wall.
But he needed again peace at home while proclaiming –now very loud– his solution of handing Tibet to China –and the exile Tibetans hate this idea.
So to distract them, again, he restarted and intensified the persecution against the Dorje Shugden practitioners. And it worked. The opposition to independence exists, but the people are too involved in implementing this new witch hunt and also they don’t dare oppose their leader. They’ve seen a clear mirror of the danger of opposing him: the Dorje Shugden devotees, treated as traitors sold to the Chinese.
The last great chapter of this religious persecution started last January and the main victims were the great monastic universities, the Southern India monasteries of Ganden, Drepung and Sera. There were initiated the oaths in front of deities against the practitioners, the ostracism, the segregation, the creation of an outcast group of persecuted people that Tibetans cannot even talk to, let alone share any other human relation.
At least a thousand monks have been expelled from their monasteries. Such forced schism is huge. But the lay people suffer too, defenseless in the midst of fanaticized communities.
So this is the truth behind the issue. A deity has been prohibited and its practitioners are being persecuted to further the autocratic rule of the Tibetan leader, distracting people's attention and avoiding opposition.
The suffering in the fractured Tibetan community and the destroyed Buddhist Sangha is difficult to describe.
May the world open its eyes and stop the Dalai Lama.
Thank you
Thank you for that comment explaining the suffering that the Dalai Lama is causing in Tibetan and Buddhist communities around the world. The world is opening its eyes. More and more people are investigating these injustices done to his own people and wondering what kind of man he really is.