We show the flag for Tibet
On March 10, 2025, over 400 German municipalities will once again show their colors for Tibet. This is an important signal of solidarity, of support for the right of self-determination of the Tibetan people and for the protection of human rights in Tibet.
March 10 marks the memory of the Tibetan people’s uprising in 1959, which was brutally and bloodily suppressed by the Chinese occupiers. The Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile estimate that since then, around 1.2 million Tibetans have died as a result of hunger and violence in this “cultural genocide”. Tibetans are no longer allowed to call their country Tibet; it must be called “Xizang” in Chinese. In the last 15 years, 169 Tibetans, mostly young monks, have burned themselves to death in protest against this megalomania. The world barely took notice. One of the oldest advanced civilizations in the world is threatened with extinction, writes the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” on March 10, 2025.
When a strong earthquake killed 126 people near Mount Everest in Tibet in January this year, Chancellor Scholz also expressed his “great concern at the severe earthquake in southwest China”; the word “Tibet” did not appear in his letter. Other Western leaders spoke of Tibet.
The Tibetan flag is used today by the Tibetan government-in-exile. The snow-covered mountain in the center under the sun is the “holy mountain” Kailash – a symbol of the Tibetan nation and its ancient culture and religion.
Just a few years ago, the Dalai Lama was present in half the world. He gave speeches to tens of thousands, gave interviews and was received by heads of state. But now, at the age of almost 90 and after Corona, he lives rather reclusively in his northern Indian exile, in Dharamsala on the edge of the Himalayas. Three times a week he receives visitors from all over the world there. All over the world, countless cars still bear the words “Free Tibet” on solidarity stickers. Hollywood has made two films about him, and his books are international bestsellers. But for fear of the Chinese, fewer and fewer Western politicians dare to receive him. Donald Trump has also cut off financial support for Tibetan aid organizations in recent days.
And that is why the story of the Dalai Lama seems tragic and sad to many. He has, as the German weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT recently wrote, won the spiritual world for himself, but lost his homeland Tibet long ago. Really?
In the West, the Dalai Lama was considered the “most likeable person in the world” in many surveys for many years. He has now been living in exile in India for 66 years. And he is one of the oldest refugees in the world. His beloved homeland, the roof of the world, is now more isolated from the world than ever before due to Chinese tyranny. For several years, Tibetan children from the age of four have also been separated from their parents and live in forced boarding schools run by the Chinese. This is another targeted attempt to destroy the cultural, religious and linguistic roots of Tibet. In these boarding schools, students are only allowed to speak Chinese.
In Tibet, the world can learn how an imperial great power is trying to wipe out a small people with a great, rich and long culture or, as the Chinese communists say, “modernize the backward Tibetans”. Putin probably had something similar in mind with the Ukrainians.
But this plan may not work out. For decades, the Dalai Lama has been in contact with scientific brain researchers around the world. The fact that today, everywhere, including in China, people are thinking about “mindfulness” and a “revolution of compassion” is largely thanks to the Dalai Lama. In China, about 400 million people are guided by Buddhism. Our joint book “Ethics is more important than religion – The Dalai Lama’s appeal to the world” is a world bestseller that has been translated into 25 languages. In it, he says: “I think some days that it would be better if we no longer had any religions at all. All religions and all holy scriptures contain a potential for violence. That is why we need a secular ethic beyond all religions”.
The Dalai Lama is not only concerned with the spiritual progress of individuals, but also with the progress of science and thus with a new world ethic. To this end, the Dalai Lama has been in contact with neurologists and other scientists from around the world for decades. In 40 encounters, I was able to witness up close how an idea gained new strength: our brain is plastic and changeable. We can transform and train it like a muscle – through meditation like Buddhist monks, but also through other mental and spiritual training exercises as known in all religions and wisdom teachings. The Dalai Lama (“Ocean of Wisdom”) formed his doctrine of the “world revolution of compassion” from this. A doctrine that in the long term can change the world more than all the classical theories of world revolutions, which so far have been largely based on violence. The fact that the search for “silence” and “meditation” has become a kind of mass culture in the last decades in all adult education centers around the world is largely due to the Dalai Lama.
We probably owe more to the soon-to-be-ninety-year-old Dalai Lama than we have so far realized. His consistent teaching of non-violence is based on his teaching of compassion. This is also assumed by his scientific friends at hundreds of scientific institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, Stanford, Zurich and Strasbourg – he repeatedly emphasizes the importance of science and religion working together. On climate change, he writes: “We humans are the only species that has the power to destroy our planet and its climate – or to save it.”
The Dalai Lama’s long-time secretary and negotiator in China, Kelsang Gyaltsen, who fled Tibet with his parents as a nine-year-old, considers the symbolic politics of flying the flag for Tibet to be ”essential for survival. The Tibetans should know that they have not been forgotten. “Showing the flag for Tibet” is more than just a political symbol.
The Dalai Lama has just described the “essence of his teaching” in his new book “The Stages of the Path to Awakening” (Herder 2024). A must for anyone who is really interested in world peace and a better world.
- An Appeal by the Dalai Lama to the World: Ethics Are More Important Than Religion | Benevento Publishing
- Der Appell des Dalai Lama an die Welt: Ethik ist wichtiger als Religion | Benevento Publishing
- Dalai Lama „Die Stufen des Pfades zum Erwachen | Die Essenz meiner Lehre“ | Herder Verlag 2024
