 Good morning and welcome to the United States Institute of Peace. We are very, very honored to have with us today His Holiness the 17th Guanyang Karmapa and the head of the Karmakagu School of Tibetan Buddhism. I also want to welcome and to acknowledge some of the many who have accompanied His Holiness, especially Zongzhen Panlap Rinpoche, with whom we've worked to organize this event and who's been a wonderful partner, very enthusiastic and wonderful to work with. This is an especially auspicious occasion for me as many years ago. I had the great honor of studying with Chokinima Rinpoche and in Kathmandu, who is a part of the same school. And so this is just wonderful to have your Holiness here with us today at the USIP. As many of you know, His Holiness has a truly dramatic story based on your escape from Tibet in 1999, where when you traveled and having lived in Nepal and I know the difficulty of that passage and over those mountains. And so it is truly wonderful that you were able to do that and now reside in Dharmsala next to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. We have had an important tradition here at USIP of trying to contribute to the ways in which faith leaders can be a part of the peace building process. We have with us David Smock, who was for many years the architect of that program. And I'm very pleased to have here Susan Hayward, who runs that program now. And this is an important part of how we understand conflict needs to be understood. And the voices of faith leaders and of religious leaders like His Holiness are in a special influential and important way for us to think about these critical issues of how to build peace, of how to use compassion and wisdom, especially as a foundation for understanding our way through the kind of conflicts that continue to rip our world apart. So His Holiness will make a few remarks and then we'll have an opportunity for people to ask some questions. And with that, thank you so much for joining us here today. Well, first of all, I want to thank everyone who's here, who's made it possible for me to have this opportunity to visit you at the USIP. And I'm very happy to be here. Nowadays, our world is so filled with conflict that everyone is thinking seriously about how we can find a solution and discover a way to become at peace. This has actually become an emergency and an ever-present danger for many people throughout the world. I think that one thing that would help in this regard is if religious leaders and political leaders were to meet together to share their skills and their thinking and help one another find a solution to this. I rejoice in the existence of the USIP, because this is after all a branch of the United States government, specifically formed for the purpose of and wholly devoted to the cause of peace. I think its existence is also a proof of the recognition by this government that peace is of great importance. Of course, the idea of peace and the understanding of the necessity of peace are not enough. To achieve peace will require a complete commitment, complete devotion. And even beyond that, it will require that we first achieve peace within our own hearts. We also need to be able to extend ourselves. We need to extend ourselves to others and to other societies. We need more love, more compassion, more kindness, and much deeper sense of our interconnectedness. Whether it be between different religions, between different nations, between different peoples, we need to come to a greater awareness of our interdependence and our interconnectedness. I don't have too much else to say, except again, I would want you to know how really delighted I am to be here and to have received an extremely warm welcome from your president and members of your board and all of you. Thank you. Thank you very much, your holiness, for your remarks. It's truly an honor to have you here. I am Susan Hayward, the interim director of the Religion and Peacebuilding Program here at the Institute. And we're going to open it up now for discussion. So if you have questions, please just indicate by raising your hand. And make sure that you push the speak button so that we can hear you and it gets recorded properly. And please identify yourself and your organization. But I'm going to take moderators prerogative here and ask the first question, if I could, to get us started. So your holiness, you have taken a, well, first of all, let me say that what you have to say about the interdependence of people around the world and the need for us to recognize, to have the wisdom to see that interconnectivity between people is so important to the cause of peace. At USIP, we recognize the ways in which multiple factors and drivers mutually feed one another and lead to the arising of violence and of suffering and in order to find effective and sustainable solutions to those problems, we have to see how these drivers feed one another and how we all have to play a role in helping to resolve them and transform them in peace. So understanding interdependence helps us understand the solutions to really addressing the factors that drive violent conflict. So I really appreciate that and connected with that. But I also wanted to ask you, you have spoken out recently in support of ordination for women within the Tibetan monastic order. And this is also something in the religion program that we've put a lot of attention on, the role of women within religious traditions and the role that they can play, particularly in supporting peace. And so I wonder if you could speak a little bit about how you see women's ordination within the Tibetan order as being an issue of peace. It's almost like we're in a community that has a lot of communication. And the many women in our country have a lot of passion for the indigenous women, people in other regions, people in other regions of the country. And so the need for them to get in touch with the indigenous women, to receive their support, It was very difficult. The next day we were going to organize a full-automation ceremony. We were going to organize a full-automation ceremony. The stage is very different from the first stage. And the indians are not We take over the Devil on you so much in the yard And the I don't know So the They're going to send out Full organization to get some And she's a Rulima And then I'm telling you I don't know I'm going to tell you I was able to go to the university and get a full-ordination. I was able to study for two years, and I was able to get to the university. I was able to attend the college. In India, I was able to get a full-ordination. I was able to go to the university. I was able to go to the university. There are thousand areas in our country, lots of resources, and we have to give it to communities to make the government better safe for their needs. We are not going to run for government and go back to our country and raise our provisions. But that's the only way to make the government better safe for them and stop doing work. We will stop working I'm just saying that I think that this is going to be a big deal for the industry. Now, I think that my career will be done by the government, not by the government, but by the state. I think that it will be a big deal for the government, not by the state, but by the state. Well, first of all, the establishment of a supportive community is a, can you hear me? I guess you can, no. The establishment of a supportive community is of great importance. During the Buddha's lifetime, many women who had experienced great challenges in their lives were able to gather together and form a supportive community, a sangha of ordained women, female monastics. But the issue of the re-establishment of full ordination for women in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition goes beyond simply the establishment of the full ordination itself. Because it is an important stepping stone in the restoration of women's rights in using the religious or spiritual tradition of Tibetan Buddhism to do that. For this reason, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has over the last 20 or even 30 years been discussing how we can actually restore the bhikshuni or the full monastic ordination for women in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. And His Holiness's work on this and devotion to this cause has inspired me and caused me over time to begin to really understand and appreciate the great importance of the re-establishment of this ordination. The reason we've been waiting so long to do it is we wanted to put enough research into the matter so that when it is done it will be done in an undisputably valid way so that all lineages of Tibetan Buddhism accept it. However, at this point, 20 or 30 years into the discussion, it's evident that it would still take a long time to get everyone on board. So I feel that if one lineage begins, then the others will follow. That is my hope. So therefore I will begin this. It's important, however, to understand that the purpose of this is to establish not only the right to full ordination but equal rights in all aspects of Tibetan religious culture, education, status and rank, fully equal to that of male monastics. Another reason why this is so important is that women innately have a little more wisdom and a little more kindness than men do. To put it bluntly, women are a lot wiser and a lot kinder than men and therefore giving them the authority to use their innate wisdom and kindness will do the Buddhist tradition a great deal of good. I'd like to open up the conversation. Is there anybody who has a question? Bill. Your Holiness, thank you very much. My question is a personal one and I actually have two if I could be greedy about this. I'd like to know about your personal, in your personal journey, your relationship with your teacher. If you could talk a little bit about that, what your teacher has meant to you. And I think if connected with that and connected with your last statement about the fact that women have so much to teach us, one of the things that I look at with some concern sometimes is that process of taking a young child from their mother at a very early point in life and just surrounded by these men who I'm sure can share many teachings and many empowerment but I think there's also challenges involved in that process and I wonder if you could reflect on that a little bit for us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, when you become a monk or nun, especially if you become a monk, which can happen really in somewhat early childhood, you are separated from your parents. I was separated from my parents at the age of seven when I became the kamapa or was recognized as the kamapa. And after that I was surrounded by tutors and other old people. Of course, we all know that in general women are more affectionate than men. They are more skillful, I don't know how detail would fit in there. Women are more affectionate than men. Men in general have a hard time showing or displaying affection. Most of my tutors and most tutors in my tradition are pretty tough but gradually students come to an appreciation of how kind and their tutors are and what a tremendous contribution their tutors have made, their teachers have made to their lives. Although usually we come to this appreciation after we've grown up and we have the perspective to realize what we gained under their guidance and teaching. So in a sense our teachers become even more kind to us and even more influential in some ways than our parents. Another thing is that there are different ways of showing love and in general I would say that the way Tibetans show love is less expressly demonstrative than is true in the West. Westerners not all but typically tend to be more openly demonstrative. They demonstrate their love for others in their facial expressions, gestures and so forth. Tibetans do this too of course but it's far more common for Tibetans to demonstrate their love for you by scolding you and trying to help you in that way. So as I gradually came to understand this it wasn't really too hard for me. For the first year after being separated from my parents at the age of seven it was difficult but then I became used to it and I've not suffered too much from it. We know you remain and the cognizant that you remain separated from your family. They're still back in Tibet except for your sister who's with us here today. Other questions? Hi, my name is Ariana Barth. I work here at the US Institute of Peace and like everyone here I'm very grateful that you were able to join us. So there are probably 40, 45 people in this room and 40 or 45 opinions but I'm really curious what you think about why people choose violence to achieve what they want and what we can do about that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. He was the youngest in the five nations, the first in the top 5 nations in the world. The others were the third, the fourth and the sixth nations. They're sure that mm. In some ways, the man, in some ways, the man, In some ways, the man, and we're. I don't think and and and and I'm not sure what that means, but I think it's very important to move forward and to have our way back to our roots. I've sort of been thinking about a lot of things. I think it's a good thing that we have a lot of people in the country who come to see us. I think it's a good thing that we have a lot of people who come to see us. I don't think that we can find out about that today. I don't think that people are born terrorists. They become terrorists through the influence of environmental factors, education and training, peer pressure, and all sorts of social, other social influences. And I think that people are changed into terrorists by those conditions. Nowadays a principal factor in a violence, acts of violence and terrorism is ignorance. The people are misled, intentionally misled by leaders or teachers who don't tell them the truth, deceive them with distortions or one-sided explanations of complex situations, and by doing so repeatedly convince their followers who subsequently become fanatics willing to engage in acts of violence and terrorism. Also many terrorists are living in a state of desperation. Their hopes have been dashed and they conceive of the idea that the only way to get what they want or get what they want done is through violence. They conceive of the common misconception that violence is more powerful than peace. And so I think these are the major factors and especially ignorance and prejudgment, prejudice and the one-sided knowledge of a complex situation. From that I don't have much more to say about that. Hello, I'm Susan Lawrence with the Congressional Research Service. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit more about your plans for the full ordination of women in your lineage. What's the timeline for this? Do you have a timeline and what steps have you taken already and what do you anticipate you will need to do to make that happen? Thank you. Thank you. I'm not sure. The timeline is this. The. That's another story. You don't do it. Long or. in the full ordination in the full ordination The organization is a organization. In India, the organization is a community of families. The community is represented by families forちら. We can feel left behind. We can do things that Well, this year, to give you the time, there is a definite timeline. I'm sorry. Who asked that? Where are you? I'd like to see that. Okay. There is a definite timeline for this. We're going to begin by creating a committee to oversee and record the all proceedings in this, because since the first time we do it, we'll establish a precedent that will be, to some, will it influence if not actually be binding for the future? We have to do it very carefully. Specifically in the year 2016, probably in March or April, we will begin. Now the full ordination for women has two steps. There's the post-novitiate but pre-full ordination, which is done first. And then those women who have received that and lived according to it for two years, then become eligible for the final full ordination. Then so we'll do the first step of this in 2016 and the second step therefore in 2018. Women will have to wait 10 years after which those women who received the full ordination in 2018 will become what are called elders and authorized to bestow that ordination on other women. Because what we want to establish is a community of Tibetan women fully ordained who can bestow the ordination that they themselves have received on other women. Up to now what has happened is some women have received the full ordination in the Chinese Buddhist tradition, but it has not yet been reestablished in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Now if you do the math, I'll be 40 by the time these women can bestow the ordination on other women, which is another reason why I feel we can't wait any longer. Otherwise I would wait until then I'd be 50 or 60 and so I want to get it done now. I noticed people started getting less shy and we had a number of hands go up. And so I'm going to collect a few questions now and then His Holiness can answer it. And we'll hopefully have time for one more round after that. So I saw Mateo, Audrey, James. We'll do those three now and then we'll come back for Jackie and Lausang and anyone else. Good morning, Your Holiness. The first time I saw you or met you actually was at your monastery in Tibet more than 15 years ago. And that sort of gets to my question is what do you think are the prospects for you actually returning to Tibet, either to visit or possibly to relocate? And I suppose that that brings into question the various circumstances that you see that needed to happen for a peaceful resolution between Tibet and China. Good morning, Your Holiness. In a speech that you did at Boston, you talked about cultivating compassion. And even amongst the Buddhist community and the world in general, you know, oftentimes we really struggle with how do we cultivate that in our lives. So what can you share that may be insightful that we can, how do we cultivate this compassion in our lives, in our personal lives, in our organizations, and how we interact with the world in general? Good morning. It's a pleasure to meet you and members of your community, sir. I'm just curious when you speak about the full equality of women within the hierarchy, how will that affect the search for reincarnation? Before I left Tibet, I left behind a letter in which I wrote, if it will help Tibetan people, I will soon return. So it was not my intention when I left and has never been my intention to never return to Tibet. It's not been my intention to leave my homeland permanently. It would be a problem for me to return certainly under the current circumstances, but I was born in Tibet and I feel great responsibility for supporting both Tibetan spiritual and secular culture and I've never been separated from them. It has been many years since His Holiness the Dalai Lama left Tibet and since, and in that time over the last several generations, he has been joined in exile by many Tibetans. All of us who live in exile want to return, but what prevents us from returning is the issue between China and Tibet. The Chinese government sees this as a political issue and an internal issue, but in fact it is a human issue because it concerns the plight or well-being of an entire nationality and entire people. And if the Chinese government can come to recognize that this is an issue that in various ways impacts and concerns all humanity, and if on that basis a dialogue happens between Dharamsala and Beijing, then that might be the beginning of our being able to return. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next question dealt with compassion. First of all, I would say that compassion is much more than sympathy or the mere understanding of other's suffering. Compassion is much more dedicated, much more involved, excuse me, much more active. So the differences are the degree of dedication, involvement, and action. In particular, compassion has no subject and object. There's no sense in true compassion, I, the feeler of compassion, and feeling compassion for you or them, the objects of my compassion. There's no distinction made, no difference felt. One sees oneself in true compassion as part of others. And one is able to put oneself in the position of others and feel their suffering. In this world, we are all interconnected. Each one of us depends upon, relies upon, and is connected to all others. This connection is so profound, so central to the very value of our lives that it is not, it goes far beyond from being a philosophical concept, it actually is the central factor in our whole way of life. So self and others are not as separate as we think they are. We are each part of others. It is by understanding this that we will become willing, or that we can become willing to undertake responsibility for others' well-being. And furthermore undertake that responsibility with enthusiasm and courage. I think that enthusiastic courage, that inspiration to undertake responsibility for others is the basis of true compassion. We need to break down the wall of selfishness that usually surrounds us. And we need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. We need to change in that way, because without doing so, true compassion will not arise within us. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition will have an effect on the tulkus system, the reborn or reincarnated lama recognition system. There actually already are female tulkus or reincarnated lamas, but proportionally they are so few compared to the number of male tulkus that you could almost say there aren't any. There actually are some, but they're so few. But this is primarily, I think, for social reasons, and therefore as women are more empowered, given more respect, more authority, more empowerment, they will naturally have a much greater opportunity to become religious leaders, including the recognition of them as tulkus. There has never been a rule in Tibetan Buddhism that women could not be tulkus, but because the outlook of the society toward women in general was not especially positive, there have been very few. Nevertheless, as you indicated in your question, once women are afforded a full support for leadership roles, there will be more. Jackie Lo Song and the others, I'm sorry, but I'm cognizant of the time and of the DC traffic, and I want to make sure that we honor his holiness's schedule and the need for them to depart shortly. But Nancy, if you could take us away. I just want to thank you again, your holiness, for joining us today. We're deeply grateful for the words that you have brought to us, the opportunity for all of us to come together and really reflect, again, on the importance of compassion and of how we might, both as individuals and in our various organizations, contribute to bring greater peace to the world and ending violent conflict. Thank you especially for your leadership and real inspiration on bringing women into full ordination. This is the kind of inclusion that globally will have enormous impact. So thank you very much, and on behalf of all of us, we wish you peaceful and wonderful journeys for the rest of your time here in the United States. Thank you.