Dalai Lama Stresses Science and Secularism in Jaipur

Courtesy of DSC Jaipur Literature Festival The Dalai Lama on the opening day of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2013.

As an eager audience settled into their seats on a chilly Thursday morning, the first day of the Jaipur Literary Festival, six monks from the Drepung Loseling monastery, clad in orange robes, sat on the stage with their legs crossed and hands pressed together as in prayer. A calm settled over the audience as the monks’ deep, throaty chants echoed across the front lawns.

The soothing voices set the stage for this year’s festival, whose theme is the influence of Buddhism on literature and philosophy, and for Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, wo was speaking later in the afternoon with the author Pico Iyer, his friend and biographer. Mr. Iyer, who has been speaking with the Dalai Lama over a period of 34 years, is the author of “The Open Road,” a book that draws on these conversations.

In the hours leading up to the Dalai Lama’s session, Tibetan people lined up outside the gate to the front lawns, holding red roses, hopeful to catch a glance of their exiled spiritual leader on his way in. Eager listeners packed the house, jostling for space â€" some keen spiritualists, some drawn to the celebrity of the charismatic Dalai Lama. When he finally began to speak, a hush of silence fell on the audience.

The conversation started with the influence of literature on the Dalai Lama’s life. “As a young boy, I was not much interested in philosophy,” he said. But “stories, like the Jataka stories, some of them are very moving.”

He enjoyed reading stories that showed the capacity of a human ! being or an animal to help another person, he said, but joked that he did not like stories about miracles because he did not believe in them.

Discussing the trajectory of his life as a young Buddhist, he said that when he was about 7 years old, he was not interested in his studies, but his fear of his tutor forced him to learn. Now, in his 77th year, the Dalai Lama still considers himself a student of Nalanda, an ancient center of higher learning in Bihar.

“Whenever I have time, I’m always reading the root texts of Buddhism I learned when I was 6 or 7 years old,” he said. He also stressed the importance of debate and investigation as a tool of learning, saying that it was impossible to reach truth without that.

For the Dalai Lama, whose interest in science took root 30 years ago, spiritualism and science are not incompatible. He recounted his conversations with modern scientists in which he said he had seen many ways in which Buddhism and modern science overlapped.

For example,he said, look at the Buddhist theory of impermanence, the idea that the physical world is changing by the second, which was later proved by quantum physics in the movement of atoms. “What modern science was proving, Bharat already found out 2,000 years ago,” he said, using the Hindi word for India.

The Dalai Lama stressed the importance of secular ethics as the basis of moral teachings, as he said that morality based on religious teaching cannot be universal.

“India’s constitution is based on secularism; secularism does not mean to disrespect religion,” he said. “Respect all religions but at the same time respect nonbelievers.

The Dalai Lama added, “You Indians are our gurus, we are the chela,” meaning “followers.” He said that while upheavals in India had caused centuries of knowledge to be lost, Buddhist monks have stored this knowledge and kept it safe in their minds.

Speaking with the press after the session, the Dalai Lama turned to more pressing world! ly matter! s, emphasizing the need to bring about international conciliation in a period strife with instability.

“The 20th century has been a century of bloodshed and violence,” he said. “The 21st century should be a century of dialogue.”