Dalai Lama calls for dialogue, compassion in Prague »
Posted By gamahuche 7 months, 1 week ago in Religion
The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, 73, Nobel Peace Prize winner, called for compassion and support for dialogue in a public lecture on compassion as path to happiness in Prague today.
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gamahuche
"I would rather be a square peg than fit in a pigeon hole" -
an essay which won me the "Lamb Essay Prize" at the Religious ...
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 1 week ago
One would do well to listen.
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Gamahuche, are you attending anything related to the visit? -
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gamahuche7 months, 1 week ago
It was a great pleasure to see the Dalai Lama in Prague today and by an extreme paradox to travel from a tiny mountain village called Paradise, Raj in Czech, to see him.
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The last time I saw him was in VT in 1990, when he kissed my then 6-yr-old daughter Tara in Middlebury VT after she had, on her own initiative, given him a tiny cloth bag of miniature presents that she had collected for him.
That was such a free and easy sociable event, out-of-doors, in the summer; todays was in the largest conference hall in Prague, with a capacity of 2,764 people, which was completely sold out and when we arrived there were dozens of people holding signs, hoping to buy tickets.It was also beamed live on the internet
Security was thorough though, thankfully, astinishingly warm and good-natured, the translation into Czech fluent and brilliant, and the Dalai Lama in full flow amidst the love that the city and the nation bears him.
He has been a long-term friend of ex-President Havel's and this invitation came from the Vaclav Havel Foundation and Forum 2000, an initiative which VH initiated.For more info about these, here's the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_2000
To say that we are feeling blessed is an understatement! -
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 1 week ago
Fantastic! I can only imagine. Though I did attend a gathering at University of Penn to hear him many years ago, I still remember the "high" as if it were yesterday.
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gamahuche7 months, 1 week ago
For various unrelated reasons I was awake most of the night and many ideas were spinning through my brain - the Magnum Opus on which I should be working, for example.
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But I was also thinking about why the Dalai Lama is so popular here and why he so much likes to come here - these two facts perhaps not mutually exclusive!
We are technically the second most pagan country in Europe, after Lithuania - in terms of people who define themselves as subscribing to a particular religion or faith, yet spirit is highly valued and the special defining relationship between Vaclav Havel and the Dalai Lama seems based on human spirit and facing - in trumps - the oppression of an authoritarian Communist system. Havel's friends are very diverse - he has a special penchant for rock'n'rollers, including Lou Reed, Mick Jagger and domestically the Plastic People of the Universe. The Jazz section were also a hub of resistance during Communist days and Bill Clinton's playing at the Jazz Club Reduta during his 93 visit to Prague was the single most effective diplomatic action imaginable. (He also met with the author, the late Bohumil Hrabal for a beer at the latter's favourite Prague watering hole which put the icing on the cake..)
A regime which tries to stamp out unorthodoxy inevitably encourages it. The oppression of the unique Tibetan form of Buddhism is as unforgivable a crime as the Soviet persecution of the freedom loving people of Central and Eastern Europe and has created a brotherhood between the people who have experienced one or the other. -
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Spadecaller7 months, 1 week ago
I too had one opportunity to hear him speak in New York.
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The Dalai Lama's mere presence exudes love and compassion. To add to what Gamahuche so eloquently described, enduring the oppression and persecution of Tibetan Buddhists has enriched his spiritual connection to others and that kind of deep empathy is instantly felt among people who have experienced the same for various reasons. -
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