DHARAMSALA, July 6 – Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama spent his 69th birthday resting after his doctors advised him to slow down his gruelling schedule, aides said.
Tibetans packed the Dalai Lama’s main temple Tuesday in the Indian hill station of Dharamsala for a birthday celebration, but the spiritual leader did not attend after being told by doctors in New Delhi to rest.
The Dalai Lama’s office said last week that while the Buddhist monk was not in danger, he would stay out of the spotlight until mid-July and cancel a visit to Spain after developing a cough from his constant travel.
Before going to rest, the Dalai Lama paid courtesy calls Saturday on India’s new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, the Tibetan leader’s spokesman Tenzin Takla told AFP.
India has hosted the Dalai Lama since he fled Tibet in 1959 amid a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
The Dalai Lama has since built an international support network through a rigorous schedule of speeches and meetings. This year alone the Nobel laureate has visited Britain, Canada, France and the United States.
Tibetans were forced to contemplate a scenario without their affable public face in 2001 when the Dalai Lama spent nearly a week in a Bombay hospital after being treated for a bowel infection.
The birthday celebration in Dharamsala was led by Tibet’s prime minister in exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, who said the Dalai Lama was looking for “genuine friendship, mutual understanding and respect between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples.”
The Dalai Lama calls for greater Tibetan autonomy within China, but Beijing in a May 23 white paper demanded the exiled leader “truly relinquish his stand for ‘Tibet independence.'”
Rinpoche said the white paper “contains much ultra-leftist rhetoric and obviously there are a number of issues where we disagree with the views presented in it.
“Periodic white papers on Tibet cannot hide the true sad state of affairs in Tibet. Instead it undermines the efforts to promote mutual confidence and trust,” Rinpoche said.
