The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama

Although he never sets surface to explicitly reason a definition of drawing cardship, we are quite commensurate to take hold of his time period of view by considering the two places in the text where the Dalai genus genus Lama specific tot tout ensembleyy praises a person as a strong leader. The first of these is his hold sister. In the course of his discussion of the humannessy difficulties managing the groups of destitute refugees who had fled into India, her contri preciselyion was invaluable. As an explanation of why, he tells us that, She had an enormous capacity for hard work. This, mate with her rather fierce nature, make her an excellent leader.By itself, this description does not quite bring out the focus of his compliment but that focus is make somewhat more than clear when he tells us, a few pages ulterior, approximately(predicate) Mr. Luthi, a worker with the Swiss Red Cross. He was, a man of tremendous zeal and energy, a real leader, who drove the commonw ealth chthonic him extremely hard. For the Dalai Lama, then, in that location retardm to be two elements to leaders, iodin is the king to bring a tremendous amount of effort to the task in question, and the second is an ability to get a similar effort out of the people you are leading.At first glance, this appears to be somewhat at odds with this holy mans compassionate, peaceful nature. However, such an appearance is excuse when we consider the numerous places throughout the book where we see that he holds himself to only if now the same rigorous standard. A particularly good representative of this is when his musing of the struggles of his people made his responsibility fully tangible, even given his copulation youth. sensation social function my journey down had convinced me of was the need to theater hard and learn as much as I could.I owed it to the religion of my people to be the outperform person I could be. What was/is their leadership ism? As we mogul ex pect from the discussion above, the core of the Dalai Lamas leadership philosophical system is to lead by example. In addition to the passages above, this intellect to a fault runs throughout the course of the text in the form of his accordant focus on creating opportunities for personal, one-on-one contact with the people he is nerve-wracking to lead and/or persuadewhether the citizens of Tibet, or the governmental leaders of china and India.In talking about the autocratic degree changes he was able to bring about in goernment, for instance, we learn that he was, determined to be entirely open, to set up everything and not to hide behind etiquette. In this way I hoped that people would relate to me as one human beingness to another. Even more telling is his narrative account concerning the fighting by Tibetan guerrilla commits operating from oer the border in Nepal. He feared that their attacks against the Chinese occupying forces would alone end in more bloodshed, an d he recognise, that the only way I could hope to make an impression on them was by making a personal appeal. As the Dalai Lama, any discussion of this mans philosophy (of anything) must be placed in the context of his religious job to bring compassion and an end of suffering to all sentient beings. We see this underlying motivation suggested in the passages already quoted, but we see it shine to the fore in the form of leaders that he himself admired. Perhaps none of the examples he gives is more familiar and understandable to us than that of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he considered to be the ultimate politician because he was able to be such a great example to his people of the difficult ideals he expected of themnamely, altruism and non-violence.How did they learn to lead? With characteristic humility, our author shows us that his near important, and close lasting, lessons in leadership were learned from his various large and small mistakes over the years. In one anecdote, we hear the story of the younger Dalai Lama tough a pet parrot because it did not respond to him with the desired affection. erst he had beaten it with a stick, it in that respectafter fled at the sight of me. This was a very good lesson in how to make friends not by force but by compassion. The same lesson was shaped by his religious studies as a monk, and we see it reflected in mature form years later in his contract to deal with repeat acts of deception by chairperson Mao. Besides, the Dalai Lama tells us, as far as I was concerned, a positive approach was the only sensible one to take. There was no capitulum in being negative, that only makes a bad situation worse. Did they argufy the process? Not only has he repugnd the process for the last forty-plus years, but the Dalai Lama is still challenging the process.In areas from promoting the role of women in Tibetan governance to working for U. N. resolutions and intervention in the case of Tibets occupation by China, it is not unfair to theorize that his whole career has been an attempt to challenge the way international politics is conducted. Would you consider them inspirational? If so, why? The thing that is probably the most inspiring about him is that in spite of all that he and his people have been through, he still responds by see and hoping for the best in people. Near the end of the book he says, .. . for there are more than a billion Chinese, and whilst maybe several green are participating in acts of cruelty at any one moment, I believe there must be several one thousand thousand performing acts of kindness. How did they build a team and strengthen others? This is, perhaps, best shown in the account of his discussion with Prime Minister Nehru over the treatment and reproduction of the Tibetan refugees who had come to India. His main approach is to appeal to the very best part of human nature in each of the people just about him.In the case of Nehru, the Dalai Lama had laid out his case an d, as hoped, Nehrus humanitarian instincts won out in the end. The same idea is repeated in other places in the book, though not so succinctly. In general we see the application of his faith in leadership by example. In this case by the moral example he presents. By making sure that people can deal with him one-on-one, they are able to see his honesty and sincerity, and, thereby, be inspired by that side of themselves. Did they employment what they preached?In order to answer this question, let us first attempt to encapsulate what the Dalai Lama preached (and preaches). In relation to leadership, it would be fair to say that his sermon consists in Hold yourself and the people you lead to high standards the highest of which is to be selfless, altruistic, to put the welfare of others ahead of your own. In looking back over his struggles, there are a lot of examples of this on his part. One of the most pivotal instances was when he had to make the hard decision to leave Tibet.He reali zed that only if he left would the gathered crowd protesting against the Chinese, and protecting their leader from the Chinese disperse, thereby saving them all from deadly Chinese military reprisals. In one decisive moment he gave up his sexual love homeland of Tibet in order to save hundreds and hundreds of lives. How did they handle mistakes? Perhaps owe to his lifelong academic training as a Buddhist monk, the Dalai Lama sees each mistake as a learning situation. We have already seen a good example of this in the story of the parrot, in which he made the mistake of beating it to change its behavior.In looking for an example where he made a significant mistake as the leader of Tibet, there is the gradual realization that he had been wrong to believe in the good intentions of Chairman Mao. In contrast to earlier periods where he had been uplifted by his faith in Maos underlying goodness, and, in fact, had oftentimes appealed to him concerning the conduct of occupying soldiers in Tibet, later in the story we hear the Dalai Lama say, I began to see that Chairman Maos words were desire a rainbow beautiful, but without substance. In response to this realization, the Dalai Lama comes remote with a better understanding of how China has worked to create a misleading PR campaign to undermine the appeals of the Tibetan leadership among the world community, and he comes away with a different strategy for moving forward based on getting accurate observers into and out of Tibet to provide objective information on the condition and treatment of the Tibetan people at the hands of the Chinese. How did they experience the accomplishments of others?Given his varied, persistent needs in trying to keep the Tibetan culture safe and thriving, as well as the managing directorial tasks of the refugee population, and the political tasks of building international support for his cause, the primary effect of someone demo great leadership or achievement has been to give the m more leadership responsibility. We see this talked about in regard to his tutors, his close associates, and even his own family. By way of illustration, we need only point back to the example given earlier concerning his sister.Because of her ability and demonstrated energy as the manager of the household, he created a situation where the entire refugee population was part of her household. What could we all learn from this person that would make us better leaders? One of the recurrent elements throughout the story is his sincere desire to connect with people, we see him constantly working to meet people whether they be Tibetan or foreign, wealthy or poor, politician or scientist. In fact, he made it a personal goal to try and meet with every refugee coming into India from Tibet and with other religious leaders whenever he went abroad.He repeatedly mentions these opportunities as being the most valuable part of his life in exile. More than just the intrinsic value of these conn ections and interactions with people from all different walks of life, though, he also helps us to see that there is a secondary benefit in terms of making someone an effective leader. One of the many positive side effects to come from his interactions, especially with the Tibetan masses, is that by rest close to the common people, a leader avoids being, misled by advisors and others around you who, for reasons of their own, might wish to prevent you from seeing things clearly.