Dalai Lama begins 3-day birthday celebration in Southland

“It’s a tremendous honour to celebrate the 80th birthday and legacy of the Dalai Lama who has done this his entire life”.

Several events have been planned to take place during the three-day summit at Anaheim’s Honda Center and the University of California, Irvine.

Letters between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese commander in Tibet, broadcast by Peking radio and reprinted in the Manchester Guardian, reveal a leader treading the fine line of diplomacy; China, for their part, initially accused a “reactionary, traitorous clique” of abducting him. “The Dalai Lama was probably the best of them… but even he was naive and incalculable”.

With his peaceful, meditative message and boyish humor, the Dalai Lama has won a major following in Western countries including among celebrities such as actor Richard Gere and the late Adam Yauch of hip-hop pioneers the Beastie Boys.

But ironically, it is the “atheistic” government in Beijing which now calls for the Dalai Lama’s rebirth. He (Dalai Lama) gets into our hearts as if he is one of us.

The issue of the Dalai Lama’s succession is not just religious; it is also highly political.

That album was released amid high tensions in Tibet, where an uprising against China’s iron-fisted rule broke out ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

It chronicles how the last surviving Buddhocracy of the world with the Dalai Lama at the helm continues its fight.

Saran said the Dalai Lama – who birthday is on July 6 – “has become one of us”, and while he represents the ancient heritage of Tibet, the spiritual leader has “always said he is only bringing back to India what India has given (Buddhism)”.

On Sunday, the Dalai Lama appeared at Glastonbury to encourage fans at the festival to seek inner happiness. In the aforementioned BBC interview, he said that he expected to live for at least another “fifteen to twenty years”.