| San Francisco, USA 2 May 2007 (By Passang Dhonden, Voice of Tibet Radio) - Spreading the message of love, peace and compassion, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, 'We all want a happy life. Mentally we have the capacity to keep ourselves calmer and relaxed despite the different surrounding situations.' 'With the help of human intelligence we have the capacity to create a certain mental attitude with which we can keep peace of mind.' He was speaking to an audience of over 4000 people at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in downtown San Francisco, where he arrived on 27 April for a three-day teaching and public talk. On the first two days he gave teachings on Lama Tsonga kha pa's text 'In praise of dependent origination' and Nagarjuna's text 'Hymn to [the Buddha] the world Transcendent.' Both of the texts are considered to be among the most profound in all of Tibetan Buddhism. They address in a systematic and clear way the relationship between emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality and its independence from other factors, such as causes and conditions. He stressed that we must keep faith in one's own religion, but at the same time we must respect other religions. Irrespective of whether we are believer or non-believer in a faith, whether Buddhist or non Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish or any other religion, basically all the traditions are meant for peace of mind. 'All the major religions teach us the importance of love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance and so on,' he said. The two-day teachings were hosted by the Gyuto Vajrayana Centre, which was founded in San Jose in 2001. It is home to four to five rotating ordained monks, including one highly-qualified teacher. The Dalai Lama gave a special audience to Tibetan people in Northern California and also gave a public talk on 'Creating positive changes' on the 29 April, which were organized by Tibetan Association of Northern California, San Francisco Bay Area and The American Himalayan Foundation respectively. |
