The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, the spiritual and secular leader of Tibet and recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize for Peace, told a University and community audience of 9,000 that the goal of humanity as it faces the 21st century is "to build a happier world."
The Buddhist leader also received from U-M President James J. Duderstadt the U-M's Raoul Wallenberg Medal, which the University established to honor Wallenberg and other champions of human rights. After graduating with a degree in architecture in 1935, Wallenberg returned to Europe. Working as a Swedish diplomat, he saved the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II.
Recalling a recent visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the Dalai Lama said that the exhibits showed the full picture of humanity. The "immeasurable suffering" of those victimized by human greed, hatred and violence was negated by the "compassion and inner strength" of persons like Wallenberg, who "showed how much humanity can achieve."
The great qualities of the human heart–compassion, love and forgiveness–must be conveyed to people in some fashion; they must be developed, he continued. "And as society becomes more secularized, perhaps some of these moral qualities are being neglected at the same time."
If the 21st century is to fulfill his dreams for it, the Dalai Lama said, the present generations, and especially young people, must act with the gentility, compassion and positive frame of mind that are the "basic qualities of human nature."
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. . . June 1994
Dalai Lama delivers
In delivering the fourth Wallenberg Lecture in Crisler Arena April 21, the Dalai Lama said that in the 20th century humankind "experimented with many things" that profoundly changed natural, political, economic and psychological conditions.