The Dalai Lama made his first appearance at Glastonbury on Sunday, spending an hour in the rain addressing festivalgoers on how the world could be a happier place.
The Tibetan spiritual leader called for a more “holistic education” from kindergarten to university, which “should bring a sense of care” and help “promote human love.”
“Everyone has the right to achieve a happy life,” he told hundreds of people gathered at the Greenfield site, an area of calm away from the madness of the main music stages.
Photo: Reuters
The elderly Buddhist monk hailed the “full joy” of the revelers present, and got into the spirit himself by wearing a Glastonbury T-shirt on his head against the rain.
He was treated to a rendition of Happy Birthday by the crowd in honor of his 80th year, and urged them to “think seriously about how to create a happy world, a happy 21st century — that is the best gift for me.”
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate expressed dismay at ongoing violence in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria and elsewhere, saying it was “our own creation” and adding: “The killing of human beings by human beings is the worse thing.”
Arriving at London Heathrow Airport on Saturday, he had expressed horror at the previous day’s attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait and France.
“All major world religious traditions are actually, I think, the source of the practice of love, forgiveness, tolerance. That very factor is now becoming the source of violence, it is unthinkable,” he said.
China has criticized Glastonbury organizers for inviting the Dalai Lama to speak, saying they were offering him a platform for what it calls his “separatist activities.”
The Dalai Lama has said he supports “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet rather than outright independence, but Beijing often denounces officials who meet him.
The elderly monk was also to speak to supporters yesterday in the southern English army base town of Aldershot, which has a large Nepalese Buddhist community made up mainly of serving and retired Gurkha soldiers.
A small protest is planned by members of the International Shugden Community, a branch of Tibetan Buddhism that reveres a deity denounced by the Dalai Lama since 1996.
The Glastonbury music festival drew to a close on Sunday.
British band The Who, who famously played Woodstock in 1969, closed the festival with a vintage rock performance on the Pyramid Stage.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS