Soon: Dalai Lama In Boston

Mary Virginia DeAngelis, examiner.com, March 22

The Dalai Lama is coming to Boston for four days this spring. The revered 73-year-old spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism will make stops in Cambridge and Boston and also at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, according to a story in “Articles of Faith” the Boston Globe blog about religion, written by Michael Paulson. Tenzin Gyatso, the man who calls himself  “a simple Buddhist monk”, has a packed itinerary.

Dalai Lama’s Boston area schedule: April 30 to May 2, 2009

Dalai Lama

Public Talk in Boston, MA on April 30:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama will give a public talk to the Harvard University Community on Educating the Heart  at the Memorial Church. Contact Harvard Website for more information.

Inauguration of The Dalai Lama Center at MIT on April 30:

The Dalai Lama will inaugurate The Dalai Lama Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and will speak about Ethics and Enlightened Leadership. Read more »

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Press About The Benalmadena Enlightenment Stupa

The West’s largest Buddhist stupa in Benalmádena is a karmic surprise amid the Moorish minarets and ancient Christian steeples.

By Lee Lawrence, The Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 2009

Dressed in dark jeans and jacket, Dizi Btissam fingers a motorcycle helmet as she listens to a young man with thick eyelashes and wavy hair. Behind them, a gilded statue of Buddha looks benignly down at a row of poinsettias.

“He is not a god,” Ivan Baez explains, as a low tremolo of chants filters through the sound system. “For us he represents the natural qualities that we all possess but that are obscured by our emotions, personalities…”

He is interrupted by the jingle of a cellphone from Ms. Btissam’s pocket. She dashes outside to answer. Mr. Baez smiles. He wears a collarless cotton shirt dyed the deep red of uncooked saffron, and he gives the impression that life is equally good whether or not Btissam returns. She does come back, though, minutes later, to listen without further interruption as Baez speaks about enlightenment, about “resting fully in what is” and experiencing “our highest potential.”

Buddhism is not what I expected to learn about in Spain. As I drove along the coast south of Malaga, my mind filled with the sound of lapping waves and the imagined clack of castanets. I pictured the rhythmic arches of Cordoba’s mosque and the intricate floral carvings of the Alhambra. The last thing I expected to see, rising above the guardrail, was the gold spire of a stupa, a moundlike monument that commemorates Buddha. And it was huge, soaring 108 feet high and stretching 82 feet across at the base – the largest stupa in the West.

Granted, this is Andalucia, a region known for its history of religious diversity. In many towns, the church bell tower encases an older minaret. In Cordoba and Toledo, 14th-century synagogues feature intricate Moorish carvings. And ensconced among Cordoba’s grand 10th-century mosque is a Roman Catholic cathedral. These are the legacies of La Convivencia, the time between 711 and 1492 when Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived peaceably together in lively intellectual and artistic exchange.

But a Buddhist stupa? What is it doing here? Read more »

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Obama and Congress Urge China to Renew Talks With Dalai Lama

By Michael Heath,  March 13 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama urged China to renew talks with the Dalai Lama’s envoys on Tibet, shortly after Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi asked the U.S. to respect his country’s position on the Himalayan region.

“The president expressed his hope there would be progress in the dialogue between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama’s representatives,” the White House said in a statement after Obama met with Yang. “The promotion of human rights is an essential aspect of U.S. global foreign policy,” it said.

Earlier yesterday, Yang said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies that “Tibet is an inalienable part of China’s territory and Tibetan affairs are exclusively China’s internal affairs.”

The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, ended contacts with China last November after eight rounds of talks failed to produce results. China deployed armed police in Tibet, stepped up patrols on the border with India and cut mobile telephone and Internet connections in some areas ahead of the March 10 anniversary of a 1959 uprising that led to the Dalai Lama’s exile, according to Tibetan groups.

Last March, the largest Tibetan uprising in almost two decades broke out after Chinese security forces suppressed a protest by monks in Lhasa. At least 19 people were killed in rioting in the city, most of them ethnic Han Chinese, the government in Beijing said.

In the ensuing crackdown, more than 200 Tibetans were killed, according to Tibet’s government-in-exile, based in northern India.

‘Hell on Earth’

The Dalai Lama said in a speech marking the 50th anniversary that Tibetans have suffered “hell on earth” under Chinese rule. He accuses the government in Beijing of committing “cultural genocide” in the region and says mass migration of ethnic Han Chinese has made Tibetans a minority in their own land.

Tibet is stable and peaceful overall, China’s Premier Wen Jiabao said in a press briefing in Beijing today.

The U.S. Congress passed a resolution two days ago that urged China to “cease its repression of the Tibetan people, and to lift immediately the harsh policies imposed on Tibetans.”

In a statement issued late yesterday, the National Peoples’ Congress Foreign Affairs Committee called the U.S. resolution “a gross interference in China’s domestic affairs,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Tibet, a theocratic state ruled by the Buddhist clergy before Chinese rule, has made “remarkable progress” since the launch of democratic reform 50 years ago, Yang told the CSIS. Tibet’s traditional culture has been “well preserved” and people there enjoy all the rights prescribed by law, he said.

Respect China’s Position

“I hope that people from various sectors of the United States will appreciate these facts, and understand and respect the Chinese people’s position of upholding state sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the foreign minister said.

The Chinese Communist army fought its way onto the 3.2- kilometer (2-mile) high Tibetan Plateau in 1950 and 1951, easily defeating Tibet’s horse-borne troops. The Dalai Lama, then a teenager, accepted Chinese control to save his people from war, he wrote in his 1977 book, “My Land and My People.”

In 1959, with the Chinese troops’ presence straining Tibet’s economy, citizens of Lhasa grew alarmed when a Chinese army commander summoned the Dalai Lama, without his usual bodyguard, to the army’s camp in the city. Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama’s palace and forced a standoff with troops.

“A vast multitude of excited, angry people” had “armed themselves with sticks, spades or knives” and a few guns, the Dalai Lama wrote in his memoir. To avoid a battle, he slipped out, disguised as a Tibetan soldier, and fled to India.

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Dalai Lama Reincarnation Must Have China Approval

BEIJING (AFP) — China’s communist government will decide on the reincarnated successor of the Dalai Lama when Tibetan Buddhism’s highest spiritual leader passes away, state press said Thursday.

“Besides religious rites and historical conventions, there is also a very important condition for the reincarnation of the Dalai and that is the approval of the central government,” top Tibetan legislator Legqoq told Xinhua news agency.

Legqoq, who goes by only one name, was speaking on the sidelines of China’s ongoing annual session of parliament which coincided with this month’s 50th anniversary of a Tibetan uprising that led to the exile of the current Dalai Lama.

Legqoq said China’s State Religious Affairs Commission issued regulations in 2007 that mandate government approval for all reincarnated “Living Buddhas,” or lamas.

The rules were widely seen as an effort to bring Tibetan Buddhism more firmly under China’s control, after decades of unrest over religious freedom and the plight of the Dalai Lama.

Living Buddhas are an important element in Tibetan Buddhism, forming a clergy of influential religious figures who are believed to be continuously reincarnated to take up their positions anew.

Often there is more than one candidate competing to be recognised as the actual reincarnation, and the authority to decide who is the true claimant carries significant power.

This is especially true in the case of the Panchen Lama, the second-most influential figure in Tibetan Buddhism behind the Dalai Lama.

Chinese authorities detained the Dalai Lama’s choice of the Panchen Lama in 1995 when the boy was six years old, and he has not been seen in public since.

The Chinese government’s choice as the Panchen Lama has meanwhile been paraded around the country in recent years to promote China’s rule over Tibet.

He will also likely oversee the reincarnation of the next Dalai Lama, after the 73-year-old incumbent passes away.

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Chinese Premier Calls Dalai Lama a Political Exile

By Stephanie Ho, VOANews
Beijing, 13 March 2009

China has issued its strongest recent criticism of Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama - calling him a political exile who directly heads an illegal theocratic government. The comments came Friday in Premier Wen Jiabao’s press conference at the end of the annual session of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao discussed a host of issues in a news conference that stretched for more than two hours.

These topics ranged from the global economic crisis, to the Central Asia-focused Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to debt relief for developing nations in Africa.

The issue that the Chinese Premier spoke about most forcefully, though, was Tibet, which he stressed was an inalienable part of China’s territory.

Wen says Tibet-related issues are completely China’s internal affairs and that Beijing will accept no foreign interference on the matter.

The Chinese leader also had strongly critical words for Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in his homeland.

The premier said Beijing considers the Dalai Lama a political exile, not a religious figure.

Wen pointed to the Tibetan government in exile, which is based in Dharamsala, India. He called that government theocratic and illegal, and said it is under the direct leadership of the Dalai Lama.

This comment preceded his recitation of what has become a standard phrase - Beijing wants to see what the Dalai Lama does, not what he says.

Premier Wen accused the Dalai Lama of misleading political figures around the world, but added that some western leaders are also trying to use him for their own purposes.

The Chinese leader had a much different approach to Taiwan, a separately-governed island Beijing considers a renegade province and has been trying to woo.

Mr. Wen called Taiwan a “treasure island” and said he has a long-cherished hope of going to visit it someday.

In the only comments that elicited apparently spontaneous applause, Mr. Wen said he is already 67 years old, and even if he could no longer walk, he would crawl to get to the island.

On other issues, the premier said he is, in his words, “a little bit worried” about China’s “huge amount” of U.S debt, which totals about $1 trillion. He urged the United States to continue to be what he called “a credible nation” that can “ensure the safety of Chinese assets.”

Meanwhile, he said China is working very hard to cope with the negative effects of the global economic downturn. He said China is aware that no country can overcome these economic difficulties alone. But at the same time, he said his country’s view is that, in his words, “we would rather dig a well for ourselves than beg for water from others.”

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