Fellow Nobel Peace Price laureates on Sunday joined thousands of supporters of the Dalai Lama to celebrate the Tibetan spiritual leader’s 80th birthday, commencing a three-day honorary bash in California.
A string of minor celebrities also paid tribute to the crimson-robed 14th Dalai Lama ahead of his birthday yesterday, although protesters also gathered outside the event held south of Los Angeles.
“He always says he is just a simple Buddhist monk,” said Jodi Williams, a campaigner against landmines who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 and who sang a snippet of Happy Birthday.
Photo: AFP
“He might be a simple Buddhist monk, but he is the most rocking, compassionate simple Buddhist monk I know,” she added.
The Dalai Lama was guest of honor at the Global Compassion Summit at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, speaking on “awakening compassion” and the “transformative power of creativity and art.”
About 18,000 supporters packed into the conference center gave him a standing ovation during the three-hour event, in which he was presented with a 2.4m-high birthday cake.
Photo: Reuters
“The Dalai Lama does not want any physical gifts. For him, this birthday is just like any other day,” said Lama Tenzin Dhonden, founder of Friends of the Dalai Lama.
Other speakers included rapper MC Hammer, veteran talk show host Larry King and online entrepreneur Arianna Huffington, as well as TV actors Josh Radnor and Wilmer Valderrama.
However, not everyone was celebrating his birthday in California.
Protests were staged outside by Shugden Buddhists, who revere a deity denounced since 1996 by the Dalai Lama — whom they accuse of religious persecution.
Several hundred demonstrators gathered outside the Honda Center, with some holding placards that read: “Stop lying!” and “Hypocrisy.”
“The false Dalai Lama... changes Buddhism into political gain through lying,” one leaflet handed out by protesters said.
The Chinese Communist Party accuses the Dalai Lama of trying to split Tibet from the rest of China and has called him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
However, he remains the most powerful rallying point for Tibetans, both in exile and in their homeland.
The Dalai Lama marked his official 80th birthday last month — on June 21 according to the Tibetan lunar calendar — in Dharamsala, his hometown in exile in India.
The 80-year-old, whose English is sometimes disjointed, said that everyone had the potential for compassion, including extremists.
“We all come from our mother. We all have the deep experience; we all appreciate the mother’s reaction. Some, also including the so-called terrorists ... they also have the potential to develop compassion,” he said.
“Some of the people who utilize hatred... If we express [a] message of love, message of compassion, then these people... they realize peace is the only way for [the] survival of humanity,” he added.
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