selenak

First of all, I didn't have the chance for an actual conversation, as he couldn't attend the reception afterwards, but I did sit in the second row during the speech and discussion he was in Passau for to begin with, which was pretty nifty and a great surprise present by a thoughtful person. Also the weather was nice, and I was there early, so I strolled through the city a bit. Haven't been in Passau for years, and it's pretty.

Passau is famous for being the three-rivers-town; the (blue, for you Waltz friends) Danube, the Inn and a smaller river called the Ilz meet here. It makes for some beautiful sights, along with all the general baroque.

St. Paul's, if I recall correctly.

The old city hall

Around the cathedral, those narrow Passau streets

Same place from different directions:

and now for more river prettyness:

But the sight seeing was just a bonus, as I was mainly here because of the Dalai Lama. Who was there to a receive an award, give a speech and participate in a discussion with, of all the people, Roland Koch, ex governor of Hessen. What completely surprised me, especially since I've heard Koch give the same bland speeches at the Frankfurt Book Fair for years, was how passionate and articulate he was by contrast. Clearly being out of office becomes him. (Or maybe it's simpler: i.e. he really cares about the Dalai Lama and the plight of the Tibetans, and didn't about book fair related-issues.) Seriously, I blinked several times and wondered whether this is the same person who was your avarage slick politico all the other times I had seen him. My first moment of blinking came when the journalist moderating the discussion asked him whether he thought politicians meeting with the Dalai Lama (or not) actually has any effect or results as far as the Chinese were concerned. He replied: "Well, the French president met the Dalai Lama when he was still leading the opposition but not as a head of state, and of course the Chinese notice. Whereas the chancellor met him both when she was still opposition leader and when she was in office, and the Chinese very much noticed. It does matter. It shows the respective countries still paying attention to Tibet, or not, and how many do it, or not, leaves an impression." He also gave the concluding speech, in which he said that the Tibetans were unique in having kept up a non-violent resistance (most of them, that is) for decades now despite all that's being done to them, and the worst message the world could send is that this is rewarded by them failing, by them being ignored, because that means that resistance really only ever is rewarded if it's violent, you bomb and kill as many people as possible. Bear in mind here, non-Germans, that Roland Koch before his unexpected withdrawal earlier this year was one of the most high ranking politicians of the currently ruling party, the CDU.

Other than Koch, the people not the Dalai Lama who got the most attention were two children who played some folk music for him at the beginning and the end of the event. They were absolutely adorable and the Dalai Lama was smitten. Pictorial proof:

In conclusion, aw. The Dalai Lama's speech was in English, and his speech rythm and accent reminded me very much of my Indian friends; baritone voice, easy to understand (especially if you're sitting in the second row, I admit), and he just exudes immense warmth, humour and charisma. The speech started with some reflections on the Heinrich Harrer, who was his teacher and later his friend until Harrer's death in 2006, which were very touching, and then, because the entire event was sponsored by the Passauer Neue Presse (= local newspaper publishing company), led to what the media can do. He said that while it is important to report about disasters and the monstrous things people can do to each other, it should be equally important to report about people helping each other, to show what they can do, to remind them of the positive things they can do to counter phlegma. He brought up the contrast between traditional German-French enmity and the last few decades of strong alliance, and said that one of his hopes for the future is an Asian equivalent of the EU, an Asian Federation, with India, China, Tibet, Afghanistan and Pakistan in it, working together. Said he knows the odds against it, but if you want to change the world you have to aim high.

Re: Tibet and China, this was more dealt with during the discussion than in the speech; in the discussion he said it's not about independence, they know this is impossible. But the acceptance of Tibetan culture within a Chinese state instead of the ongoing attempt at erasion. The journalist asked him: "Do you think you'll ever see your palace in Lhasa again?" He replied that first of all, it's not about him, it's about the six million other Tibetans. Secondly, he joked that he doesn't want the palace back because it might have been beautiful to look at but he remembers it as deeply uncomfortable to live in, especially as a child. Growing more serious again, he says he'll see Tibet again, if not in this body, then in the next, but what he most wants to see again are the mountains with plants and woods once more instead of being shorn like monks' skulls which is how current refugees describing them now.

Speaking of the refugees, this is something Roland Koch brought up as well: when he visited Dharamsala, they were shown the villages where children found a new home, and these were children with living parents, parents who had sent them out of Tibet, risking even those passages across the Himalaya that lead so high you can breathe there only for a few hours before collapsing, so they can live in freedom, with the awareness they might not ever see those children again, and how desperate you have to be to do this. Like I said, Koch did basically everything but unroll a "Free Tibet!" poster.

Asked by the moderator whether he has flaws, the Dalai Lama said of course he does, that he has a temper which he loses occasionally and confessed that after being asked by a New York Times journalist the same question three times in a row ("What do you see as your legacy?"), he lost it after the third time. He also joked that he likes honey so much that he might get reincarnated as a bee.

Also touched upon: the importance of ethic guidelines in science. He says you can have those in a secular state; it's not important that they be tied to a religion. But you need ethics, considering what we're doing to the planet already, and that the pace of invention becomes ever faster. Emphathized again that this isn't about denying or holding back progress - he remembers Harrer showing him how to use a Leika and how amazing that was, and how Carl Friedrich von Weizzäcker explained quantum physics to him, which fascinated him ("but later I forgot the explanation again, so I was a bad pupil") - but combining it with ethics.

By the end, when Koch had made his concluding speech, the children came to play again and got another hug from the Dalai Lama, I was flabbergasted to notice the time, that it had been more than three hours, because it seemed to much shorter than that. Definitely a day in my life I'll always remember.