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On request by a large group of South Asians, His Holiness the Dalai Lama delivered a three day spiritual teaching to his Buddhists devotees at the Tsuglakhang temple in McLeod Ganj. The teachings began on the morning of August 30 and went on till afternoon of September 1. The topic of the teaching was  Shantideva’s “Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life”.
At the outset His Holiness said “The purpose of this sort of gathering is to achieve happy life, a successful life, that’s what I believe is the main purpose or main goal. The proper way to achieve happy life successful life is not only money, power material but ultimately much depends on mental state.”
The specific south Asian group consisted of over 500 members collectively from Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, Spain, Hong Kong and a over a dozen members from mainland China. Over 5,000 registered visitors from 54 countries along with thousands of local Tibetan monks, nuns and lay people attended the three day teachings.
His Holiness spoke at length stressing the importance of ‘inner values’ and ‘compassion’ as he began the teaching. He spoke to the audience in English for over an hour, cracking a few jokes in between about mosquitoes, noting that he let mosquitoes have his blood out of compassion and they did not show any appreciation in return and just flew off.
On the last day of the teaching during the second half, visitors from South Asia got a special opportunity to ask questions to His Holiness. The questions were mostly related to doubts the devotees had regarding the text and were mostly religious in nature. His Holiness was also asked a question on “how fundamental is human rights and do we have to achieve something else before we can pursue protection of human rights?” He responded “I think human rights is quite a big subject I am no expert…if there is too much emphasis on human right then other animals have no less right, every living thing has their right to survive. I think the Chinese Communist leaders’ main concern is feeding properly, sufficiently, then give shelter, that they consider basic human right, then critics say including myself, we human beings are not like animals, animals you feed and give shelter, no immediate disturbance then OK, they get complete satisfaction. But we human beings we have this intelligence so we have a lot of ideas, lot of visions, so therefore without freedom of thought, freedom of speech, human right cannot be complete, that’s my view. So religious faith, for animals there is no connection of religious freedom, but we human being because of this brain, among humanity something which we call religious faith and different philosophies, so human level, rights are much more vast not just existence or survival much more there.”
Criticizing the Chinese regime, he spoke on the importance of transparency, “1.3 billion Chinese people have every right to know the reality, that’s a basic human right. Communist people cannot say that that Chinese people have no right to know the reality… so therefore censorship is immoral so censorship must stop.” In spite of five intense sessions of over two hours each, His Holiness could not finish teaching the whole text and stopped at chapter 5, asking the devotees to return next year.
The teachings were webcasted live with English translations on www.dalailama.com. At the end of the last question and answer session with the south Asians, the groups were pleased to have an opportunity to have a group photo session with His Holiness.