The most important person alive today

I was asked: who do you think is the most important person alive today?

            For me, it’s His Holiness, the 14^thDalai Lama. And the reason he is the most important is the same reason that you—very likely not a Buddhist nor a Tibetan—know the name of the spiritual leader of a tiny, once-isolated nation at the top of the Himalayas, about as remote a place as there is on Earth. Because this self-effacing man came from absolute obscurity and a tiny country and, at 16 years old, had to grapple with the might of the People’s Republic of China and the evil genius of the legendary Mao Zedong, a world class geopolitical bully.

            Think of any 16 year old you know and you’ll realize immediately how extraordinary was that cloistered youth who had never been out of his tiny country when, at Mao's command, he went to China in 1954 to meet The Great Helmsman……..and then went on to defy Mao and China and has done so—lovingly—for 57 years since, under the most excruciating kind of pressure and terror.

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            My mother went to hear His Holiness speak in about 1972 in Vancouver, and he filled a modest room at the University of British Columbia. Nowadays it’s hard to find a stadium large enough to accommodate all the people who want to hear him, probably 1%  of whom are Buddhists.

            So why is he so important? Because he has demonstrated that he knows how to oppose the absolute worst kind of tyranny without violence. And amazingly—with love.

            An obscure “simple monk” (as he characterizes himself) has shown us how we could, if we chose, do things in peace, with what he calls “loving kindness.”

            The other so-called important men of this age—who has done anything comparable? Barrack Obama? The Georges Bush? Tony Blair or David Cameron? Angela Merkel? Nicholas Sarkozy? the late Ayatollah Khomeini? Donald Trump or Bill Gates?  Pope Benedict XVI or even Queen Elizabeth II?

Who has done as much as The Dalai Lama to give us a living blueprint for how hard it is, but how it is done?

One guy in a wraparound robe and a pair of sandals.  He’s my nominee.

Sad, sad, sad...Tibetan culture struggling to survive

I went to the Tibetan Cultural Festival this afternoon. It was put on to raise money for the earthquake victims (many of them ethnic Tibetans) in Jyekundo, also known as Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China where a devastating magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck April 14th, 2010. 


The theme of the festival was "Celebrating Survival."

It was sad, though, to watch minuscule numbers of young Tibetans performing -- part of an increasingly desperate attempt by Tibetans to preserve their culture in the face of what often seems like insurmountable odds - and the very negative energy of the might and not entirely good will of China.

Today I saw a handful of Tibetan performers where you would much prefer there would be hundreds.

As a Canadian, I feel a poignant kinship with Tibetans. We Canadians, too, live adjacent to a huge superpower -- one that at any time could decide it wants our resources, as China did with Tibet, and could just roll over the border and help themselves.

As much as we have trouble defining just what Canadian culture is, I know that we would suffer and mourn it just as much as the Tibetans do if it was taken away from us.  (I'm not quite sure where we could possibly go to in exile to preserve it though - at least the Tibetans had India).

It is awful to watch the remnants of a once-magnificent culture being bullied out of existence.

Namaste.

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