Dalai Lama Launches Peace, Education Center in Canada
Published: Monday, 11 September, 2006
Vancouver, Canada 9 September 2006 (TurkishPress.com) - Despite
China's outspoken displeasure, several senior Canadian politicians came to this
western Canadian city to meet with the Dalai Lama as the Nobel peace laureate
launched a peace and education center here.
The Tibetan Buddhist leader and Nobel peace laureate said Vancouver
was chosen as the location for the international Dalai Lama Center for Peace
and Education because of the multiethnic and harmonious nature of the city.
The institute, run by a board of international leaders including former US
president Jimmy Carter; Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer who
became the first female Nobel peace laureate; former Czech president Vaclav
Havel; and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is scheduled to open in three
years.
The Dalai Lama, in addition to meeting privately with federal and provincial
politicians, talked on Friday with hundreds of students who packed a downtown
theatre for a session on compassion and education.
"The elder generation, like myself, who belong to the 20th century, we are
ready to say goodbye," he told the group.
The Dalai Lama, wearing saffron robes, donned a red sun visor that read "CANADA"
across the brim, a gift from the students.
Smiling and laughing constantly on stage, he appeared fit and healthy despite
an unspecified illness that had caused him to cancel a European tour earlier
this summer.
In June, the Canadian parliament unanimously voted to award the Dalai Lama
honorary Canadian citizenship, a move that angered China,
which views him as a threat because China
claims that the Dalai Lama wants independence for Tibet.
This week, Chinese officials in Canada
objected that several Canadian politicians were meeting with the Dalai Lama and
attending the Vancouver dialogue
sessions linked to the launch of the peace center.
The Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India
since China
took over Tibet
in 1959, is widely known as Tibet's
spiritual leader.
He has repeatedly said he is not seeking Tibetan independence but wants a
solution, within the Chinese constitution, to what he calls Tibet's
"cultural genocide" by China.
While the controversy did not come up during the public dialogues Friday, the
Dalai Lama earlier told reporters, with a chuckle: "It seems whenever I
travel somewhere, it always creates some inconvenience... So, I am very sorry.
But hopefully, it is not my mistake."
During Friday's sessions, the Dalai Lama said that every
human is born naturally compassionate, from having a loving first relationship
with their mothers.
But, using Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin as examples, he said basic human
values like compassion can become lost in "certain environments, then
(they) develop anger, hatred, and fear ... and become tormented."
Student Kit Sauder asked the Buddhist leader for advice on spreading wealth to
poor countries.
"Material development alone is not the answer for humanity ... or the
world," said the Dalai Lama, urging spiritual as well as economic
progress. "The world needs equally important inner wealth. Just the
material development (can lead to) a lack of moral responsibility and a lack of
contentment."
The Dalai Lama said that in recent centuries Europeans have been "really
trouble makers," inventing weapons technology and responsible for
colonialism, mass murder of millions of North America
aboriginals and exploitation in Asia, Africa
and the Americas.
"But eventually Western people through their own experience, and I think
democracy, (adopted values of) religious freedom, freedom of speech, and
freedom of equality ... I think eventually Western values, these values, will
(spread) in other countries," he said.
