The Dalai Lama Foundation-Canada

Ann Whitcher-Gentzke
UB Reporter
21 September 2006

“I’m extremely happy to share some of my thoughts and experiences with this large audience,” the Dalai Lama said, addressing a sellout crowd of 30,000 gathered in the University at Buffalo Stadium as part of the university’s Distinguished Speakers Series.

In a brief ceremony preceding the address, the Dalai Lama accepted “with deepest appreciation” an honorary doctorate in humane letters conferred by SUNY Chancellor John R. Ryan and three SUNY trustees. Introduced by President John B. Simpson as “one of the most important figures in the world,” the Dalai Lama said simply, “I have nothing to offer. I am just a human being.”

Throughout the afternoon, the Dalai Lama advocated a compassion “that is not based on the positive attitude of others toward you,” but rather on the conviction that others are human beings and thus have every right to compassionate treatment, even if they are strangers.

“That kind of compassion can extend toward your enemy,” the Dalai Lama said. It also is markedly different from the “usual kind of compassion one feels toward a loved one, a loving kindness that is very much mixed with attachment.”

Moreover, compassion, as conventionally understood, can turn to hatred when some slight disturbance occurs in the relationship. Anger, he said, can destroy friendships. Even a close friendship usually cannot withstand the raised voice or shouts of anger on a continuous basis. A perhaps unexpected effect is that “your bad mood serves your enemy,” he said.

On the other hand, with “warm-heartedness there is no room to exploit or to bully others.” He spoke of warm-heartedness as synonymous with “unbiased compassion” and likened it to the immune system, the health of which can withstand even the most pernicious of influences. The Dalai Lama also contrasted “genuine satisfaction” with a “false satisfaction,” that is, being overly reliant on material possessions or comforts.

Reinforcing the theme of compassion, he described how a monk of his acquaintance, who had spent more than 18 years in the Chinese gulag, spoke of the dangers experienced there. What were these dangers, the Dalai Lama asked his colleague? The monk replied that he perceived the danger not to be one of personal vulnerability, but rather in not being able to feel sufficient compassion for his captors. With compassion, the Dalai Lama argued, the mind acquires perspective, even if the problems one faces are serious. “The mental outlook is very, very crucial to sustaining peace of mind,” he said. “I believe the most important element for peace of mind is human compassion.”

Giving additional examples from his own life, the Dalai Lama recounted how he had seen poor children in India with no shoes and running barefoot, and also an elderly individual, apparently ill, but left alone and utterly uncared for. That very day, His Holiness developed a serious intestinal infection, and while enduring pain during the night, he was able to divert his attention from the pain by thinking of the people he had seen earlier in so much distress.

His Holiness noted that small children never care about their playmates’ religious background, nor are they aware of each other’s economic status.

Furthermore, an unbiased compassion has nothing to do with pity or the lack of respect for others that can accompany this particular emotion.

The Dalai Lama described how the basis for this kind of compassionate understanding is biological, although the world’s religious traditions reinforce such fundamental human values. He traced his mother’s innate nurturing role beginning at birth and how the memory or experience of such nurturing can be cultivated through all the stages of one’s life.

The Dalai Lama noted, too, how physical comfort cannot subdue mental stress, as when reclining on a comfortable bed won’t bring true repose if one is wracked with worry or concern.

He described how he approaches the people he meets “one on one,” “as brothers and sisters,” and always with a ready smile. He maintains this smile even in more reserved cultures, say in Western Europe, joking that some have appeared “stunned” at his easy affability.

Turning to more specific comments, the Dalai Lama talked about the importance of ecological protection (“This blue planet is our only home”) and also urged parents to extend compassion to their own children if divorce is looming or under discussion.

And to audience applause, he said the solution to violence can never be more violence. “Peaceful resolution is the only alternative.”

In modern education, we are not paying sufficient attention to inculcating values of the heart, he maintained. Citing declining church influences and even family values that are “suffering little disturbances,” the Dalai Lama said it falls upon the educational institutions to develop warm-heartedness among the young, “from kindergarten to the university level.”

And while the world has emerged from what he called “the century of bloodshed,” the 21st century can be a “century of dialogue.”

To view the complete article please go to [http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol38/vol38n4/articles/HHDL_DSS.html]

Michael Scott
Vancouver Sun
9 September 2006

Strictly speaking, Michael Kedge should have been at his school desk Friday morning. But the 11-year-old from Sooke and his family decided it would be better to spend the first week of Grade 5 in a different kind of classroom.

Kedge and his father, Peter, are in Vancouver for events surrounding the visit of the 14th Dalai Lama. On Friday, they attended a youth-oriented session at the Orpheum, during which a number of B.C. school students shared stories about courage and compassion, and posed questions to the Dalai Lama in front of a capacity audience of 2,800 students and teachers.

A few minutes before the event wrapped up, Michael and Peter slipped out of their places in the theatre and moved to the sidewalk near the Orpheum’s Seymour Street stage door. Peter helped Michael, who uses a wheelchair, find a place at the front of the group of people gathered there to watch the Dalai Lama leave in his limousine.

The Dalai Lama emerged from the stage door, and was clearly surprised and happy to see Peter, who he recognized. He walked over to tap him affectionately on the cheek, and then inquired about the health of Michael, who sat quietly there, wide-eyed.

After a few moments of quiet conversation with the father, the Dalai Lama bent low over the lad to administer a deep blessing. It was an act of unstaged, unplanned compassion that sent a ripple of sighs and nods through the small audience.

If the previous three hours in the Orpheum had been a theoretical exploration of the Dalai Lama’s concept of compassion, this unscripted encounter made it clear that the Dalai Lama has a deep commitment to practicing what he preaches. Many of the people present, including members of the Dalai Lama’s own security staff and entourage, were clearly moved by the moment.

“You can’t imagine what this means to us, to Michael,” Peter explained after the motorcade had moved off. “I have had the honour of meeting the Dalai Lama several times, and have received teaching from him several times over the past 30 years. But this was very, very important to Michael.”

His son nodded a vigorous agreement, and summed it up in one word: “Amazing.”

The morning session was built around three British Columbia high school students, who each brought a videotaped story illustrating some aspect of compassion, and then posed one question to the Dalai Lama.

Lucy Wang, 17, of Point Grey secondary in Vancouver, told a story about her summertime trip to visit relatives in China, and how an impoverished cousin, who barely had enough for herself, decided to donate her hard-earned savings to a medical fund for a village elder. “Those things [I wanted for myself] can wait,” the Chinese cousin told Wang, “but the sickness cannot.”

“It changed my perspective,” Wang said. “The people in my story have little education, but so much compassion. I wonder, does that mean education is unrelated to compassion?”

The Dalai Lama said he believed that compassion is sometimes more available to poorer people and among the uneducated, but didn’t know the reason. Wang’s question allowed him to repeat a message he had given the day before at city hall: that the bond between mother and newborn child is the fundamental building block of compassion throughout our lives.

Even Hitler and Stalin sprang “from mother’s milk, from mother’s compassion,” he said. Only later did their lives turn to fear and hatred.

Kit Sauder, 17, of Earl Marriott secondary school in Surrey, spoke about an encounter he had with a middle-aged woman, who was weeping. “People should never sit alone for too long when they’re crying,” he said. He encouraged the woman to try to enjoy the day, and the childhood memories that had led her back to that particular neighborhood.

The Dalai Lama delivered a consistent message on several fronts, including the failure of what he calls modern education to move beyond its preoccupation with filling the brain with facts. “There is not enough concentration on the inner side of life,” he said. “On mental functions and emotions.”

“We must cultivate compassion, not through religion, not through prayer, but through modern education.”

Later he talked about a scientist who had done a study of people who make heavy use of the first person singular – “all the time me, mine, I,” the Dalai Lama explained.

“These people have a greater possibility of heart attack,” the Dalai Lama reported.

The messages were simple and abundant: there is no need to be introduced to strangers because we are all brothers and sisters in humanity; selfishness leads to unhappiness; some aspects of modern culture lead people toward negative actions; exploiting others will result in loneliness; we are part of the cosmos and the cosmos is part of us.

The earnestness of the questions and the Dalai Lama’s careful, deeply considered answers were not tailor-made to keep a theatre full of teenagers still and quiet, and yet, surprisingly, there was very little fidgeting or doodling, even up in the furthest balconies.

The morning session was summarized by Marc Kielburger, a 29-year-old Harvard grad, Rhodes Scholar, and international child rights advocate. Having just returned from a field project in East Africa with his multinational children’s aid network, Free the Children, Kielburger was passionate and succinct about the day’s events.

The youth present had learned four things, he said. First: that the world can change. Second: that change can take only few minutes a day if enough people are involved. Third: no one is too young to help create change.

And finally: “[What we've learned here today] is not to be an idealist. But to be a shameless idealist.”

To view the complete article, please go to
[http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.
html?id=fb8acd7a-fa97-4bc0-a0e5-1b057cecd218]

Vancouver Sun
8 September 2006

Question:
Welcome back to Vancouver, Your Holiness. I wanted to ask you about how you feel about being an honourary Canadian – only the third person to be given such an honour.

Dalai Lama:
I’ve been a few occasions here, so I’m very very happy once more to come to this place. As the Mayor stated [in our private conversation], it is a young city, but a multi-culture and a multi-ethnic one. I always have the strong feeling that the whole world, the whole planet, is becoming just one entity, one polity. So in that respect a multi-cultural world. I think those towns that already have multi-culture, multi-racial society, they live harmoniously, and consider common interests first. Then, in the meantime, they preserve individual identities. I think that’s a good pattern for the future of the world. That’s my feeling and often I express this.

Then, to your question, I come from a snowy land. Canada is also similar. So I feel great honour to become an honourary citizen.

And then of course a few thousand Tibetans settle in this country, very happily. So I will also become one of them. So I really feel very happy. In any case you’re [treating] me as a brother. Actually, entire six billion human beings are brothers, sisters. You have to live together. You have to share our common world, our one world.

I think the time has come. We must educate in that respect. These quarrels here and there, in the name of religion, in the name of different races, different countries, different political system, economic system. Fighting: useless. Suicide.

Question:
Why did you decide to come to Canada as one of your destinations.

Dalai Lama:
Quite simple. There was an invitation. I’m always happy to accept an invitation.

And then, of course, this time, some serious discussions about human value.

Number one, my commitment is promotion of “human value.” What is human value? I think those things, mainly our inner quality, which is supporting our life, and sustaining our life. That is what I consider human value. What is that? After birth, our first experience is mother’s affection. Mother’s care. The child at that time, just after birth, may not have the idea ‘This is my mother.’ But [will have a connection] because of the biological system or need, feeding, relying on that person. And on the mother’s side there is also that sort of tremendous feeling of care, and with [mother's] milk also comes [the connection]. This is not due to religious faith, but because of the biological factor. That is the basis of our life breath, how our life started.

So I think that tremendous sort of affection gives us deep satisfaction. Actually that, [throughout our entire] life, deep down, that experience is still the foundation. I am now 71 years old. I feel that, still, deep in my mind, that my first experience, my mother’s care. I can still feel it there. So when I think more about human affection, that immediately gives me inner peace, inner calmness.

And with that feeling, other human beings – and also other sentient beings, other animals, these things – from that angle, I see that all have the same potential. But the problem is when we grow up, when our brain develops, then our intelligence causes shortsightedness. And I think also the influence of the environment, then aggressiveness, fear, jealousy, anger, frustration. Now these things arise. So these [cause our potential to] become submerged.

So, now the time has come, I feel, that as a result of discussion, of exchange, different ideas, different views, and as a result of listening to others’ problems, and noticing the global level problems, including terrorism, I feel, if we make more effort to sustain our basic value, I think humanity may become more peaceful. More compassionate. As a result, differences can be easily solved through dialogue. Through talk. Through mutual understanding. So that is my number one commitment – the promotion of human value.

My number two commitment is the promotion of religious harmony. So in these two fields you media people also have an important role. This is not just news, this is the basis of our future. So it is in everybody’s interest.

A free media is very important and I am often telling – half joke, half serious – that
media people should have a long nose like an elephant’s nose, and [use it to] smell everywhere. Sometimes there is a gap between appearance and reality. So we must, the public must, know the reality. And that is the media’s responsibility – to make clear good things, bad things, neutral things. Providing it is honest, truthful.

Since some time back my friend, Victor Chang, as a result of our discussions, and eventually through him the University, they are also showing some interest about these ideas, about the Dalai Lama Centre in the nature of [academic] work, more serious research – how to make modern education more complete. Up to now, it seems that modern education is focused mainly on brain development – and it should be about warm-heartedness.

In the past, religious institutions took care of ethics and spirituality. In modern time, the influence of the church has a little bit declined. And family value also declining. So now education institution should take full responsibility, not only for brain development, but also for morals and ethics. Now here, like multi-culture, multi-religions. If your emphasis on the development of ethics relies on religious teaching – then the further question is what religion? Mmm. Difficulties. And also, frankly speaking, there is quite a substantial numbers of non-believers. So I think the mistake is that those people who have not much interest in religion are also negligent about the value of spiritual qualities, such as love, compassion, forgiveness, these things.

So we must now find a different way, on the basis of scientific findings and our common experiences. I think that on this basis we can educate, brain development very important. Meantime [also] warm-heartedness is extremely important. Otherwise [you will find] a very educated, very brilliant person, but deep inside a very unhappy person. And also billionaires, or leaders, big power, big money, good education, big fame. But as an individual person, very unhappy. Why? Sufficient money, sufficient power, sufficient affairs, sufficient friends, but still unhappy. Why? Something wrong here.

These are the main reasons for coming here. I’m just one contributor. More people, particularly among the scientists and the educators, we have to discuss and carry [out] some serious research work [on the subject] of how to develop a happy society, a happy family, without touching on religious faith. So that I usually call secular ethics.

Question:
Are you describing something like a university of warm-heartedness? And will
the centre make Vancouver a new home for you.

Dalai Lama:
So that’s why I always emphasize that there are people, there are institutions who are already showing some interest. But now I think we need more coordination and then make, I hope, some kind of concrete proposal for future education. How do we develop a better human being, more peaceful human being, more compassionate human being? Now that is our aim. So this not a unique centre. Not that way. But [a way] to work together with those individuals, with those institutions that have some interest. Work together. More discussion. More research work.

To view the complete interview, please go to [http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
news/story.html?id=cd715af7-8fff-4bb9-9025-7cf80e5df344]

The Dalai Lama, who will make his fourth visit to Vancouver on Friday to establish the world’s first educational centre in his name, has an affinity for British Columbia and Canada that goes back to the early 1960s. Now, the Dalai Lama, 71, is coming to Vancouver to take part in a series of dialogues with noted mental health specialists and educators, corporate executives and spiritual leaders. “He has developed a very strong rapport with the people of Vancouver. He has always thought that Canada and Norway were middle-power countries that could be a very significant force for doing good,” said Victor Chan, key organizer of the Dalai Lama’s visit and co-author of a book with him titled The Wisdom of Forgiveness.

The Dalai Lama is in Vancouver from Friday to Sunday to formally announce the $60 million Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education. “Vancouver is perfect for the Dalai Lama’s educational centre because it is such a confluence of Eastern and Western wisdom traditions. As a result of the centre, he is committed to coming back to Vancouver on a regular basis,” said Chan, who has been friends with the Dalai Lama for thirty years.

Almost one-third of the Greater Vancouver population is ethnic Asian and many British Columbians are Buddhist. However, Chan emphasizes the Dalai Lama’s appeal in Canada and the world goes far beyond Buddhism. By stressing spiritual goals, such as happiness and peace, the Dalai Lama has transcended religious categorization. A Vancouver Sun poll in 2004 found the Dalai Lama the most admired spiritual leader among British Columbians.

The Dalai Lama’s brother, Tendzin Choegyal, also has close ties with B.C. In addition to frequently visiting Greater Vancouver to give talks and teach, Choegyal is on the advisory board of Vancouver’s proposed Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education. Choegyal is joined on the advisory board by three Nobel Peace Prize winners, including Iranian civil rights activist Shirin Ebadi, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

In the Friday morning session at the Orpheum, the Dalai Lama will engage with high school students and Canadian human rights activist Mark Kielburger, head of Free the Children. The Dalai Lama’s Friday afternoon forum at the Orpheum features Canadian and international specialists on how to combat aggression and raise strong citizens through ethical education. In addition to taking part in private, invitation-only conferences with prominent business and social leaders during the weekend, the Dalai Lama will be the key speaker at a late afternoon gathering at GM Place on Saturday.

To view the complete article, please go to [http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=
77cf7f65-56df-4dfe-88e5-6d53dcbd762b].

For more information on the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education, please go to [http://www.dalailamacenter.org].