From the day of His Holiness’ arrival on May 29th, His Holiness had 8 days of very tight schedules in Brussels and will return to Dharamsala, India on June 6th.
On June 2nd His Holiness began teachings on Nagarjuna’s Treaties on the Middle Way to a hall packed of 4000 attendees and concluded the teachings on June 4th. On this day, in honour of His Holiness’ visit to Belgium, the Organizing Committee Yeunten Ling Tibetan Institute, hosted a High Patronage Lunch at Conrad Hotel for 300 VIPs with His Holiness as the chief guest. After a very warm welcome speech by Lama Karta, His Holiness addressed the gathering on promotion of human value, religious harmony among the different religious traditions and importance of modern education to meet the challenging needs of the younger generation in the 21st century.
In the morning of June 5th, His Holiness gave Initiation of Buddha Amitayu to 6000 attendees, granted interview to a Flemish National Television VRT as the Chinese Ambassador to Belgium issued a routine criticism against His Holiness’ visit in VRT Radio. Thereafter the Committee Members of the Belgium TSG had an audience with His Holiness during which His Holiness emphasized the need of outside help to resolve the issue of Tibet through dialogues and negotiations. His Holiness specially asked the Committee members to look into the environmental issue of Tibet as due to deforestation in Tibet and also global warming, there has been enormous flood in China, India and other South Asian countries which caused tremendous problems to the livelihood of millions of people.
In the afternoon, His Holiness gave a public talk on Inter-relations to 12000 people in Antwerpen. His Holiness dealt with different aspects related to the topic and also spoke on the need of a kind hearted person with numerous examples including the need of kindness and tenderness of a mother for a just new born baby. After the talk the audience got opportunity to pose numerous questions to His Holiness for 40 minutes and one of the questions was when will Tibet be free? To this, His Holiness told that He and the Tibetans are not seeking independence but seeking freedom to preserve & promote Tibetan culture, religion, language and environment. The audience greatly appreciated His Holiness’ talk and gave a standing ovation at the end.
Reported by Bureau du Tibet, Brussels on June 5, 2006
