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.
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
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘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
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
RSS