The Dalai Lama speaks

In this exclusive interview for Heart and Soul, the Dalai Lama speaks to Mark Tully about the tensions between his spiritual primacy and his political role in the shadow cast by the events of 2008 in Tibet.

The Dalai Lama is an extraordinary figure on the international scene. The temporal leader of Tibet in exile, he is also revered as a spiritual leader, not only by his own countrymen, but by Buddhists all over the world.

He is the first of the Dalai Lamas to travel to the West. Leader of the Tibetan Gelug School of Buddhism, he fled his homeland in 1959 following the failed uprising of the Tibetan resistance movement and he established the Tibetan government in exile at Dharamsala in India.

What is arguably most intriguing about him as an international figure is his ability to balance his role as a spiritual and as a political leader.

Balance

How does a man, dedicated to a life of withdrawal manage a relentlessly public life in which he travels the world promoting the cause of Tibetan independence?

And how does he marry this political stance with his travels as a spiritual leader? Is it contradictory to maintain a consistent campaign against the Chinese State, while uncompromisingly adhering to Buddhist principles of non-violence?

And how does he survive the pressure that he has described to Mark Tully in conversation in the past from young Tibetan radicals in favour of force? His position during the recent riots threw this dilemma into stark relief: he publicly censured the rioters for fighting for the cause he himself believes in so deeply.

This programme focuses upon the way the Dalai Lama manages to match the temporal with the spiritual in his personal and his public life.

First broadcast on 05 July 2009