Reportage – 2005

Dalai Lama registers on the World Wide Web

MCLEOD GANJ, India, 10 December 2005

If you have a question for the Dalai Lama, you can now send email directly to him, or even enquire through telephone. Embracing the wonder of the Internet, the Dalai Lama today launched his personal site: www.dalailama.com/ on the occasion of International Human Rights Day and the 16th anniversary of the conferment of the Nobel Peace Prize to him.

The site is beautifully and professionally designed with every care taken, even in choice of colours that match with his charisma and personality.

"The website is not to promote the Dalai Lama himself. It is to reach the wider world with his message for love, peace and compassion and universal responsibility," says a member of the team who made the site, who did not wish to be named.

The home page has a simple text header that rolls with a quote in English and Tibetan of Buddhist master Shanti Deva: "For as long as space endures, and for as long as living being remains, Until then may I too abide, to dispel the misery of the world."

The Dalai Lama, whom some even dub: "The eighth wonder of the world", has stated that he has three main commitments in life. Firstly, as a human being, he is committed to promoting human values such as compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment and self-discipline. "All human beings are the same. We all want happiness and do not want suffering." He refers these human values as secular ethics.

As a religious person, his second commitment is the promotion of religious harmony and understanding among the world's major religious traditions. Despite philosophical differences, all major world religions have the same potential to create good human beings. It is therefore important for all religious traditions to respect one another and recognize the value of each other's respective traditions.

Thirdly, as a Tibetan and as bearing the name of the "Dalai Lama", he wants to act as the free spokesperson of the Tibetans in their struggle for justice. This third commitment, he says, will cease to exist once a mutually beneficial solution is reached between the Tibetans and Chinese.

In all, the site has everything about the Dalai Lama — his biography — from birth in Tibet to life in exile, Awards and Honours, dignitaries he has met, and talks on such things as neuroscience, the environment, and buddhism.