After lunch His Holiness held a meeting with about 1000 Tibetans. 270 were from Vancouver, while the rest came mostly from Calgary, Seattle and Portland. A traditional song was followed by a reading of the local representative’s report. This mentioned the fundraising support the local community are trying to give Tibetans newly arriving from Arunachal Pradesh as part of the latest wave of Tibetan resettlement in Canada. The report also stated how appalled Vancouver Tibetans are by the demonstrations by Shugden supporters against His Holiness. They called them a source of hurt for Tibetans all over the world. In his response, His Holiness said how happy he was that they all had this opportunity to meet. “It’s 55 years since we came into exile, and new generations are raising their own children. We remain dedicated to our religion and culture, while if anything the Tibetan spirit has grown stronger. The Tibetan cause remains fresh and attracts interest because of our religion and culture. As I explained earlier, our Buddhist tradition is the only one to employ logic and reasoning. And it is still true that the Nalanda tradition is most accurately explained in the Tibetan language. While Nalanda University lies in ruins in India, the tradition it gave rise to is alive amongst Tibetans. This is significant since there are estimated to be 4-500 million Buddhists in China today, many of whom have a growing interest in these things.” Taking up remarks about the Dolgyal / Shugden issue, His Holiness said it began at the time of the 5th Dalai Lama, who wrote about it in his autobiography, mentioning the harm the spirit was doing the Dharma and sentient beings. He said the 5th and 13th Dalai Lamas had restricted the practice, but even during the time of the 7th prominent masters had opposed it. In this context, he said it was a mistake that he took up the practice, but when he saw it was a mistake he stopped. “I feel sorry for these demonstrators,” he said, “because they are misinformed. For example, in Hamburg they displayed pictures of me wearing a Muslim skull-cap and said I was a Muslim instead of a Buddhist. I’m not worried, the truth will out. Some of the demonstrators are Tibetans. I feel sorry for them; don’t feel anger towards them.” dalailama/news/post/1178-eight-verses-of-training-the-mind--avalokiteshvara-empowerment
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 13:08:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015