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Panelists highlight the universality of the four commitments of His Holiness. Screengrab image
Dharamshala: Rajiv Mehrotra, Secretary and Trustee of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (FURHHDL), Dr. Anthony Goedhals, author and lecturer at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, Tony Steel, former President, Dalai Lama in Australia Organising Committee and Bob Thurman, American Buddhist author and academician were among the keynote speakers for the English panel of the fourth day of the weeklong virtual talk series on the four principal commitments of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Rajiv Mehrotra, Secretary and Trustee of FURHHDL shared his learnings on human values from His Holiness. He said the true essence of a happy life as His Holiness espouses is ‘to understand, respond to and accept the true nature of reality and the universal values and conditions that underline the human situation’.
Recollecting instances from an interfaith pilgrimage that His Holiness undertook on the 50th anniversary of Tibetan exile, he said His Holiness goes beyond just syncretically talking about another faith, and engages in rituals to get an experiential glimpse of that particular faith and see what he could learn from it.
Highlighting the importance of His Holiness’ fourth commitment of reviving the Nalanda traditions, Mr Mehrota said, His Holiness’ goal is not to promote it “as an aspect of particular faith,or something that could be practised from the basis of spiritual knowledge but as a system that draws on the shared wisdom of all human experience and learning”.
India’s tradition he said, provides “both the wisdom-intellectual knowledge, insights and concept but equally the methods we could use to internalize wisdom so that it impacted our deepest reflexive responses.”
Mr Mehrotra further shared that His Holiness is “deeply inspired as has the Buddhist tradition, by the articulations of quantum physics which tells us that the very presence of the observer impacts not just the perception but the nature of reality itself and the minute we recognize that whether through celebrating diversity and going to places of worship or different traditions and experiencing the reality of different people’s experience of their tradition or the wisdom of modern science, we begin to realize there is no single reality and each one of us perceives reality differently.”
Dr Anthony Goedhals, Author, and Lecturer at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, spoke about how His Holiness defines religion as “a greater concept of religion as a system of secular ethics that serves humanity.”
As a teacher and liberal humanist, he pointed similarities between Buddhism and the humanist perspective, both seeking to understand the human situation. He saw His Holiness’ promotion of secular ethics as a “religion beyond religion”, “independent from a religious framework, a natural response to our humanity and the common human condition which His Holiness calls basic human spirituality.
He further noted that promotion of attitude of kindness, compassion and mutual understanding, could effectively liberate people from extreme sects, institutionalized and fanatical religion, allowing people of any religion or an atheist to be more realized and humane.
He concluded by offering reading as an ethical activity to understand the complexity of experience, “We should teach our children and students to read deeply and become aware of the power of language in shaping their own realities in the world for better or for worse. In this way, they will learn to liberate themselves from the rhetoric and systems that exist in the world to entrap them and they are more likely to become kinder, more compassionate people, better people generally, better Christians, better Muslims, Hindus.”
Tony Steel, Former President, Dalai Lama in Australia Organizing Committee, shared his own personal reflections on the four commitments, asserting that His Holiness’ ability to convey complex issues like the meaning of life to just simple messages that attracts hundreds of thousands of people.
“His first commitment of fostering core human value of love and compassion and tolerance, that captures the wider public attention and what drives people to come and attend these massive events His Holiness has- some of these events have tens of thousands of attendees- people are coming because of what His Holiness has to say about the basic human values, how to be happy, feel compassion and how to love one another.”
Observing His Holiness’ scientific attitude, he said the promotion of the Nalanda approach to the analytical enquiry of the mind and emotions has brought academic interest and opened the dialogue with the scientific community, one of the greatest achievements.
He noted the strong ties that Tibetans and His Holiness share, “Wherever His Holiness travels in the West, there is always a small but very vocal and adoring group of Tibetans that are just outside the venue or inside, they are always there. And no matter how busy His Holiness is on tour and no matter how packed the schedule is, he has not a minute to spare, no matter how exhausted he must feel, at various points within these trips, His Holiness always makes time to have meetings, some of those, quite large meetings with the local Tibetan community in that city. It is wonderful to be at those meetings and see the real faith that Tibetans still have in His Holiness.”
Besides the four commitments, His Holiness’ interest extends to other social causes, from his concern for the welfare of aboriginal people in Australia which the speaker warmly recalled from a visit to Australia to climate change.
Professor Emeritus Bob Thurman, American Buddhist author and academic, speaking on the fourth commitment – the revival of ancient Nalanda tradition, said “As the son of India, His Holiness’ fourth aim is to bring back the elements of Indian mind science that were exported through translation into Tibet, not only into the scriptures of Tibetan Kagyur and Tengyur but also into the Tibetan culture, the way it functions, into its educational institutions, into social, cultural patterns and font and bring back to India, which was the main culture of India from around the Buddha’s times, and the time of the ancient Upanishads and the founding of the Jainism right up until the Islamic invasions from Persia and Tajikistan and so forth, through the European dominations of India where they kind of lost that aspect of their culture and so to bring it back into reinforce and re-encourage them .”
He noted His Holiness’ ongoing efforts to revive the Nalanda tradition which is already underway, particularly, in coordination with the GOI in Bodhgaya along with the establishment of Tibetan monasteries in the settlements and the presence of ethnic Buddhist Tibetan population in the Himalayan region.
“I was asked by His Holiness himself and my old Mongolian teacher to set up institution to translate the entire canon of Tibetan works that was originally translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan 1300 years ago up until 900 years ago and bring it all back into Sanskrit, into Hindi, into Telegu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, all the Indian languages, and also Russian and Chinese.”
He concluded determinedly speaking of the generations-spanning task, “I will be doing this aligned with the four aims of His Holiness, especially, emphasizing the fourth one, not ignoring the first three ones, they are my aims as well” that he was committed as a student, disciple, devotee, colleague and friend of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”
On Tuesday, Tibet TV premiered the 5th panel at 6pm featuring speakers- Dr Lobsang Tenzin Negi, Executive Director of the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics at Emory University and Geshe Lharampa; Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, Founder and Director of Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery and President of Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women; Gabriel Lafitte Scholar and Researcher on Tibet’s Environment; Prof. John Powers Professor of Asian Studies and Buddhism, ANU and Author.