Tag: Dalai Lama

This is just… embarrassing.

The Tibetan spiritual leader also briefly addressed the Tiger Woods scandal and the golf star’s public comments Friday about straying from his Buddhist faith. Woods said he was raised Buddhist but needed to focus anew on finding balance between his faith and professional life.

The Dalai Lama said he did not know who Woods was, but said self-discipline is among Buddhism’s highest values.

When it comes to adultery, he said, “all religions have the same idea.”

“I think mainly whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that’s important,” he said. “Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.”  

AP/yahoo story here

larger here

First, please take a moment to reflect on the cyclone in Burma, which the AP estimates has killed over 14,000 people. The military junta in Burma has been roundly criticized for failing to enact an early warning system that could have saved lives:

The government had apparently taken few efforts to prepare for the storm, which came bearing down on the country from the Bay of Bengal late Friday. Weather warnings broadcast on television would have been largely useless for the worst-hit rural areas where electricity supply is spotty and television a rarity.

“The government misled people,” said Thin Thin, a grocery story owner in Yangon. “They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared.”

snip

Some in Yangon complained that the 400,000-strong military was only clearing streets where the ruling elite resided but leaving residents, including Buddhist monks, to cope on their own in most other areas.

link: http://ap.google.com/article/A…

The AP reports that the UN and aid organizations are mobilizing supplies, and that the EU has committed $3 million in humanitarian aid, the Chinese government stands ready with $1 million in cash and supplies, and the US is giving an intial $250,000 in aid with more to come if a disaster team is allowed inside the country.

UPDATE  The BBC is now reporting that the death toll has reached 22,000:

The death toll from Burma’s devastating cyclone has now risen to more than 22,000, state media say.

Some 41,000 people were also missing, three days after Cyclone Nargis hit the country on Saturday, state radio said.

link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asi…

There is a BIG difference between a protester and a separatist. A protester is a white man, holding a Tibetan flag, yelling, screaming and cussing at Chinese, a man ill-informed and stubborn. A separatist is a Tibetan man holding a Tibetan flag, yelling, screaming and cussing at Chinese, with the intent of separating the People’s Republic of China. In total, about 30 “protesters” came, and 2 “separatists” came. That’s right, only 2 Tibetans, and two or so dozens of ill-informed westerners.

Quote from text accompanying this pro-China YouTube of the protests surrounding the Olympic torch relay in Australia today:

Non-cooperation is directed not against men but against measures. It is not directed against the Governors, but against the system they administer. The roots of non-cooperation lie not in hatred but in justice, if not in love.  —Mahatma Gandhi

Two thousand protesters staged a rival torch relay to protest the arrival of the Olympic torch in New Delhi:

Lost in the daily headlines surrounding the events in China, Tibet and the Olympic Games is the Dalai Lama’s message of compassion. He has been in Seattle these past few days to speak about this message at the Seeds of Compassion conference.

This local broadcast gives a flavor of the goals of the conference:

The Dalai Lama addressed thousands today.  I narrowly missed getting a free ticket but did manage to run into an old friend I hadn’t seen in a decade as I left Qwest Field.  The area was ultra-high security but there was a steady rush to get inside to hear him.  I did manage to get a free poster (like in the photo above) from the public library.

He said:

“Many problem essentially are own creation; therefore logically, we must have the ability to eliminate this problem.  It is our own interest and responsibility to make this century should be century of dialogue.”

He said the 20th century has become like “century of bloodshed,” and suggested the elimination all nuclear weapons.

“So firstly, on action level, whenever we face problem, different interest, disagreement, the realistic method is nonviolent dialogue. That’s the only way. If you use force in order to solve one problem, it often create lots of unexpected side effect … Nonviolence not just mere absence of violence, nonviolence means facing problem with real determination, vision, wider perspective.”