Dalai Lama Participates in Harvard Medical School's Conference
Published: Saturday, 2 May, 2009
Cambridge, MA, USA, 2 May 2009 (tibet.net) - On
May 1, 2009 His
Holiness the Dalai Lama participated in several panel discussions at a
conference organized by the
Harvard
Medical
School and Cambridge Health Alliance. During the first morning session on Paths to
Compassion, his fellow panelists included Dr. Richard Davidson, Professor of Psychology
at the
University of
Wisconsin;
Dr. Christopher K. Germer from the Department of
Psychiatry at the
Harvard
Medical
School;
Dr. Judith V Jordan, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the
Harvard
Medical
School;
and Dr. George E. Vaillant, Senior Psychiatrist at Brigham and Women’s
Hospital.
His Holiness responded to questions from the panelists on
how compassion impacted mental attitude and talked about Buddhist experience.
In the second morning session, four individuals with
experience in working with trauma victims shared them with His Holiness and
sought his comments on some of them.
In the afternoon session, His Holiness participated in a
discussion on wisdom.
After departing from the conference venue, His Holiness
spent nearly two hours with a select group of people, mostly Chinese students.
In his opening remarks His Holiness gave a history of his initiative in urging
the Tibetan people to reach out to the Chinese community. He also informed them about the situation in
Tibet
and the status of the dialogue process with the Chinese leadership. He said if the conditions in
Tibet
were good or if the Tibetan problem is due to a handful of people, there is no
reason for the Chinese Government not to allow tourists and journalists to
visit there without any hindrances. He said he had appealed to the international
community to visit
Tibet
and see things for themselves. He said if we are proved wrong then we will
apologize.
His Holiness said today
China
is aspiring to be a superpower and said he prayed for it to become one. Any
country wanting to be a superpower need to have population (which
China
has), Military power (which
China
has), economy (which
China
has). However, another important condition
is moral authority, which
China
lacks.
Referring to President Hu Jintao’s harmonious society theme,
His Holiness said that trust was essential for such a society to come into being. He said the current Chinese policy was counterproductive
to the creation of a harmonious society.
He then answered several questions from the people, many of
which were about the memorandum for genuine autonomy for Tibetan people.
