Dalai Lama highlights situation in Tibet; calls for focus on compassion, wisdom at Global Buddhist Summit

Tibetan religious leader Dalai Lama on Friday called for a focus on wisdom and compassion as he highlighted the situation in Tibet by giving his own example and stressed upon looking at the current situation from a broader perspective. Addressing the gathering on day two at the Global Buddhist Summit 2023 in New Delhi, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama also stressed looking at the current situation from the broader perspective of courage to have a resilient mind.

“I can also share with you that by engaging in this kind of inner development and particularly focusing on Wisdom and compassion. It really can help increase our courage as well. For example: in the case of my dealing with the current struggle and situation of Tibet, if you think just only about it from a narrow-angle, you can lose your hope,” the Tibetan spiritual leader said.

“But if you look at this crisis and look at this current situation from the broader perspective of the courage that cultivation and compassion give you, then you can have a much more resilient mind. So, even in your daily life, there might be problems which may seem enormous and unbearable. Still, if you have the courage, you will be in a much stronger position to turn adversities into opportunities,” he added.

Highlighting the teachings of Buddha, the Tibetan leader also spoke about his teachings on dependent origination and how everything is dependent upon each other.

“Among all the great spiritual teachers of the world, one thing that really defines the Buddha as a unique teacher from the Buddhist point of view is his teaching on dependent origination and it really captures the essence of Buddhist insight and Buddha’s teaching. When we look at the term itself, Dependent origination is composed of two syllables, one is dependent and the second is origination. These two capture a powerful insight into the understanding of the nature of reality,” said the Dalai Lama.

“The first Word dependent really indicates the basic truth of how everything is dependent upon each other. Nothing is independent and it is through this dependence, which is the actual fundamental reality of everything the second element ‘origination’ points out how things come into being through this dependence. Understanding dependent origination as the heart of the Buddhist Teaching and the characteristic of Buddha is really important,” he added.

The leader, while sharing his personal experience, said further that if each one of us takes his teachings seriously, we will be able to see the real difference in our daily lives.

“Many of us are gathered here, followers of Buddha, we see ourselves as practitioners of Dharma, the reason why I shared some of my personal experience and practice is to really bring home the point that all of us, each one of us takes Buddhist Practice seriously through cultivation, meditation and the meditation needs to combine both resting and analytic meditation is really the way to go and you will see the real difference in your day to day life once you are able to cultivate a little bit of wisdom,” he said.

While giving an example of monastery tradition, the Dalai Lama highlighted that more attention should be given to inner development and cultivation.

“As part of our own tradition in the monasteries, there are also rituals that are part of the tradition, a ritual involves beating drums and all these kinds of musical instruments and of course, they are part of the tradition but it is important for us to remember that the performance of these rituals is not the most important one, because if you focus too much on ritual, the only thing you get is ‘noise’, that these instruments have, where we should pay more attention is the ‘inner development and inner cultivation,” he said.

Dalai Lama spoke at the Global Buddhist Summit, which is being organized by the Ministry of Culture and the International Buddhist Confederation.

The summit aims to bring together leading Buddhist figures and experts from around the world to discuss Buddhist and universal issues and generate policy recommendations to address them together.

On day one of the first Global Buddhist Summit here, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the Lord Buddha preached abandoning war, defeat and victory for eternal peace while inaugurating the summit.

During his address, PM Modi also said that the world was facing the most challenging times of the century due to war, economic crisis, terrorism and climate change, and all these contemporary global challenges can be addressed through the teachings of Lord Buddha.