Holiness

Here's the last bit from an excellent interview in the latest Newsweek with His Holiness the Dalai Lama:

Some images of the recent casualties have been graphic and disturbing. Have you seen them? What was your reaction? We heard you wept.

Yes, I cried once. One advantage of belonging to the Tibetan Buddhist culture is that at the intellectual level there is a lot of turmoil, a lot of anxiety and worries, but at the deeper, emotional level there is calm. Every night in my Buddhist practice I give and take. I take in Chinese suspicion. I give back trust and compassion. I take their negative feeling and give them positive feeling. I do that every day. This practice helps tremendously in keeping the emotional level stable and steady. So during the last few days, despite a lot of worries and anxiety, there is no disturbance in my sleep. [Laughs]

This is why the world at large, myself included, is so in love with the Dalai Lama. For the life of me, I can't understand why the Chinese leadership doesn't take in that playing to their peoples' worst nationalistic feelings by vilifying the Dalai Lama (especially the horrid bile spewing out of Tibet's Communist overlord Zhang Qingli -- that guy is really not going to be happy in his next life) backfires every time. If they lost their fear of him and took a more conciliatory approach, they would have fewer headaches, fewer detainees in torture chambers, fewer corpses in morgues. These guys have been doing politics for, what? 6000 years? Why do they not get this? My bet is that they're trying to run out the clock, waiting for him to die. May His Holiness the Dalai Lama live to 108!

By the way, the Dalai Lama was referring to the ancient meditation practice of tonglen.

Comments

[Ganbat]

Gonchig lam,
Here is statement of press spokesperson of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Just thought that you would be interested to know.

Ganbat, Mongolian freelance journalist

"Mongolia supports "One China" Policy and consider that Tibet is an inseparable part of People's Republic of China. Mongolia is sorry that recently in Tibet, social disorderly event broke out and caused loss of human lives as well as material property. Mongolia trusts that the situation will be solved in harmonious way."

[Konchog]

Thank you, Ganbat. While I understand your Foreign Ministry's need to repeat its powerful southern neighbor's historical point of view, from the point of view of the spiritual kinship between Mongolia and Tibet, it's very sad.