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Dalai Lama returns after two-week US tour

By Lobsang Wangyal | Tibet Sun

The Dalai Lama greets well-wishers at the Gaggal Airport, near Dharamshala, India, on 9 May 2009, after a two-week tour of the US.Tibet Sun/Lobsang Wangyal/India

The Dalai Lama returned to Dharamshala after spending two weeks in the US. He was welcomed by the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile Samdhong Rinpoche, minister of security Dongchung Ngodup Tsering, Dalai Lama’s secretary Tenzin Taklha, Tibetan Youth Congress president Tsewang Rigzin and a group of American students at the Gaggal Airport.

Tibetans, locals and tourists made a long line in Mcleod Ganj to welcome him.

The Dalai Lama arrived in the United States on 23 April for teachings and public talks as Beijing pressured President Barack Obama to shun him. The Nobel Peace laureate started his visit in California giving lectures on ethics and the nature of the mind at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 6,000, the Dalai Lama said, “People who use (the words) — I, my and mine — have a greater risk of a heart attack.

Think of others, then your health will become better. That’s my medicine.”

He said the ailing global economy is the result of “too much greed, and lies and hypocrisy.

These are some of the factors behind the global crisis,” he said at a news conference at UC Santa Barbara. “Those people who feel that money is the most important thing in life, when economic crisis hits, learn that it is only one way to be happy. There is also family, friends and peace of mind.

Therefore, this crisis is good, because it reminds people who only want to see money grow and grow that there are limitations.”

In San Francisco, the Dalai Lama visited a soup kitchen for homeless people where he said, “I’m homeless too”.

He then went to New England, north eastern US, for programmes at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He planted a birch tree at Harvard University on 30 April.

He dedicated a new ethics centre, named after him — The Dalai Lama Centre for Ethics and Transformative Values — at MIT on the same day.

During a talk at the Harvard University on ‘Educating the Heart’ he said: Being smart doesn’t make you happy. “There are very smart scholars, professors.. full of feelings of competition, full of jealousy, full of anger.. I don’t mean disrespect.”

In Cambridge, the Dalai Lama met more than 100 Chinese scholars on 5 May. The Dalai Lama told the Chinese academics that he welcome the material progress China had brought Tibet, but also that his people were suffering nonetheless because they lacked freedom of expression, religious freedom, and freedom from fear.

He made clear to the Chinese about his stand of autonomy for Tibet, consistent with those promised to national minorities in China’s constitution, especially the right to preserve Tibetan language, culture, and religion, rather than seeking independence.

The Dalai Lama attended a function — Thank you India — organised by the Office of Tibet New York, also on 5 May. Over 100 invited representatives of the Indian community in the New York area took part in the event, which was to thank the Indian assistance and hospitality to the Tibetan people.

He advised the Tibetan communities in the US to have closer ties with the Indian communities, just as the Tibetans in India have with the Indian people.

The Dalai Lama is scheduled to visit the US again in October. He hopes, but is not certain, that he will meet the president Barack Obama.

Copyright © 2009 Tibet Sun

Published in Tibet Sun