Surya Bhattacharya

Canada's newest honourary citizen and India's longest staying guest, as he calls himself spoke to a 16,000 strong-crowd on Thursday.

And about midway through his lecture called, The Art of Happiness, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama on a momentous visit to Toronto asked all the Indians in the stadium to raise their hands. About half a dozen clusters went up around the Rogers Arena — a gigantic open air space mostly dedicated to sports like baseball or rock concerts.

He chuckled as he looked around.

"I don't mean this as a flattery to India," he added about religious harmony.

"But India is a model for the world."

He could've been sarcastic, but it was hard to tell. After a fiery political visit to the US and Canada, at which point the Chinese government had lashed out at Canadian PM Stephen Harper, the Dalai Lama quoted Mao and took on the criticism.

But when talking to sports ground full of eager fans, he chose a more relaxed approach. In fact, as he is often known to do, he took off his sandals, and sat crossed legged on a sofa. Then followed it by donning a maroon visor to avoid the glare from the overhead stage lights.

A highly veiled political speech followed although the idea was to impart some form of spiritual advice: There is no deep truth to happiness, so use your common sense. During the Q&A when someone asked why they weren't happy in spite of a good job, a nice house and loving family and friends, he simply said: "I don't know."

And that Buddhism does not hold all the answers, so "please don't convert in a hurry." It was straight up and funny. He talked in metaphors about the motherland, addressed environmental concerns like all savvy world leaders of the day, thanked the Indian government, made rare mentions of China and steered clear of religious tenets.

Finally, he criticised America's policy in Iraq but said he liked George W Bush, who he'd met a few days ago. Either this was great compassion or Bush and the people of the sub continent had just been lumped into the same category by a Nobel Peace Laureate.

Surya Bhattacharya is a journalist with the Toronto Star in Canada

Source : DNA