Director, Tom Vendetti met Dalai Lama during his visit to Maui in 2007 (57 min)
The new documentary focuses on three subjects: China’s impact on the preservation of Tibetan culture, Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash and how we can all best cultivate happiness in our lives.
The Maui filmmaker was also curious about Mount Kailash, a holy peak which is considered sacred to Buddhists, Hindus and Jains, as the spiritual center of the universe. He had traveled there twice, first with the late legendary flute player Paul Horn, and then later with Lama Gyaltsen of the Maui Dharma Center in Paia.
It opens with some fascinating historical newsreel footage from the 1950s depicting China’s early reign of terror in Tibet, suppressing religious freedom, destroying monasteries and enforcing slave labor, which led to the Dalai Lama’s exile to India in 1959.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was asked in a new Rolling Stone magazine interview about any advice he could offer about coping with coronavirus anxiety.
“This pandemic is very serious,” he said. “We’re just so afraid. That’s not useful.”
And then, quoting the 8th century Indian sage Shantideva, he continued, “If the problem can be overcome, then no need to worry; make effort to overcome. If no way to overcome the problem, there’s no use to much worry.”