On the 74th death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, holy leader Dalai Lama paid his tributes to the father of the nation, and said had he been alive today, he would have touched Gandhi’s feet and asked a solution to the ‘China problem’.
In an interview to the Dainik Bhaskar, Dalai Lama said even after many years to Gandhi’s death, his ideas can still be used to solve many modern-day problems, including the dispute with China.
Dalai Lama is the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or “Yellow Hat” school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of Tibetan Buddhism’s four major schools. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th and current Dalai Lama, is currently a refugee in India.
“Mahatma Gandhi is the personification of nonviolence and compassion in my opinion. In his life, Gandhiji exemplified both the principles of nonviolence and compassion. I consider him to be my mentor, and I consider myself to be a small follower of his,” Dalai Lama said in the report.
“We were taught about Mahatma Gandhi as children. During my stay at Potala Palace, I had a dream in which I met Mahatma Gandhi and smiled at him. I didn’t talk to him in my dream; I just saw him,” the holy leader further said.
Dalai Lama recalled his first visit to India in 1956, when he also visited Delhi’s Raj Ghat on the banks of the Yamuna River, where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated. “When I stood there in prayer, I was deeply sorry for not being able to meet him in person. I wished that if I met him, I would touch his feet and bow down to him and ask the solution how to deal with China. While accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1989, I paid tribute to Gandhi, saying, ‘Gandhi’s life taught and inspired me,'” he said.
Dalai Lama said Gandhi was the most influential person in the twentieth century in terms of nonviolence. He took the three-thousand-year-old Indian tradition of nonviolence and compassion and brought it to life and relevance by fighting for India’s independence, he said. “Some may have thought Gandhi’s nonviolence was a sign of weakness at the time, but in difficult situations, nonviolence is a strength, not a weakness,” the leader said.
According to Dalai Lama, if the mind is full of fear, anger, hatred and vengeance then it is impossible to find real non-violence, that is, non-violence is the reflection of our inner peace. “Gandhiji set a living example of this through his behavior. Gandhiji is to me the ideal statesman who placed his belief in altruism above all personal considerations and maintained a consistent respect for all great spiritual traditions,” he said.
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