News
Dharamsala: The Dalai Lama’s 2006 speech to benefit animals
May 06, 2007, 12:0AM MT
By Joellen
The Dalai Lama advocated a vegetarian diet and spoke out against animal suffering in his speech last year.
The Dalai Lama advocated a vegetarian diet and spoke out against animal suffering in his speech last year.
By Joellen Secondo, Best Friends Network
Today the Dalai Lama finished a 12-day speaking tour in the U.S. that included visits to Hawaii, California, Texas, Wisconsin and Illinois.
As noted in a recent story on the International Friends community on the Best Friends Network, American Buddhists took the opportunity of the Dalai Lama’s visit to encourage Tibetan Buddhists to become vegetarians. This movement has the support of the Dalai Lama, who has instituted vegetarianism at his residence in Dharamsala, India.
At last year’s Kalachakra for World Peace, the Dalai Lama advocated a vegetarian. Lamenting the creation of modern cattle, pig, and fish farms to serve the “unjustified desires” of humans, the Dalai Lama noted that is it human greed that leads to the suffering of animals raised for food.
In his speech, he also spoke out for wildlife, remarking that much of Tibet’s wildlife, including the Tibetan antelope, wild sheep and wild yak, is declining in population and even in danger of extinction due to hunting.
The Dalai Lama pointed to Tibetans living in India, who are involved in wildlife smuggling, and the condemned the fashion of wearing animal skin.
In his talk, the Dalai Lama went on to offer support to Tibetan groups in India that are promoting a compassionate vegetarian diet. He also commended the many monasteries that have converted to vegetarian kitchens.
In conclusion, the Dalai Lama emphasized that if the human community is based on the principle of peace, it is not only humans who will benefit, but also animals and the environment.
In a similar vein, during the public Spring Teachings held this March in Dharmasala, the Dalai Lama spoke of the courage of people working to protect animals and referred to their convictions as an “inspiration.”
Visit the Tibetan Volunteers for Animals website to read a translation of the Dalai Lama’s Kalachakra speech.
Read a first-person account of last year’s Kalachakra by Eileen Weintraub of Seattle, Washington.
Thanks to Eileen Weintraub for providing the link to the translation of the Kalachakra speech.
Photo: from Wikimedia Commons under the GNU Free Documentation License.