RUSHES: Dalai Lama speech at Royal Albert Hall

Dalai Lama speech at Royal Albert Hall; Part 8 of 12ENGLAND: London: Royal Albert Hall:INTHis Holiness, the Dalai Lama (Tibetan Spiritual Leader) speech SOT- But underneath, on a more emotional level, it seemed quite okay. Usually I sleep for at least eight or nine hours. What do you think, is that too much? Fortunately, in spite of a lot of disturbances at the intelligence level, my sleep is never disturbed. So, underneath, there seems to be some calmness. The main factor is my training, and daily meditation. One particular sort of meditation is “take and give”, give and take”—the Tibetan word is Tonglen. I usually meditate on that, on altruism. Of course, my day starts at 3.30am every morning, when I do at least four hours’ meditation, mainly analytical meditation. One part of my meditation is to visualise those individuals who take decisions, and develop altruism. It is very important to make a distinction between the action and the person. As far as action is concerned, we have to oppose, to make a response. But the person who carried out the wrongdoing really deserves our compassion, our concern. It was their wrongdoing, so from the Buddhist viewpoint, from the non-theistic religious viewpoint according to the law of causality, they have to face the consequences. So there is more reason to feel concern about that troublemaker than about their victims. Visualise those things and then take their anger, hatred and suspicion and give them compassion, a spirit of forgiveness and patience. That kind of meditation practice looks silly because it is just imagination. Yes, it has no actual effect. But the practitioner’s emotional level gets immense benefit from it. That is my experience, but it is nothing special.In the past I have also told the story of a Tibetan monk I knew well before 1959, who spent 18 years in a Chinese gulag. In the early 80s, the Chinese Government adopted a new policy allowing Tibetans to go to India, and allowing Tibetans outsi...