July 6, 2006 South India: July 6 is a very important and auspicious occasion for all Tibetans because it is the birthday of our beloved temporal and spiritual leader, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. Every year, we celebrate this special day with great pomp and show. Speeches, cultural shows, and parties are organized in every part of the world where people who have faith in him gather to make this day a truly memorable one.
In one way, it is a source of great pride, privilege and honor for all of us to wholeheartedly participate the birthday celebration of one of the greatest saints, Nobel laureates, scholars, masters, peacemakers, intellectuals and above all a noble soul the world has ever produced. Unfortunately on the other hand, in the name of celebrating His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s birthday, the precious lives of many innocent and speechless animals are lost due to large-scale consumption of meat on this day to meet the demands of the non-vegetarian Tibetans. This is a very sad and unfortunate situation since it puts a very big question over the famous and accepted identity of the peace loving and non-violent nature of Tibetans.
Even though we unhesitatingly say that we have a lot of faith and respect in His Holiness, by eating meat, we go against his advice. The large scale eating of meat not only goes against the compassionate nature of human beings and the very basic principles of Buddhist teachings but it is also a source of various life-threatening illnesses, ecological imbalance, and long term negative consequences to the individual as well as the society as a whole.
Through applying our basic commonsense, we ought to know that if we are not able to give life, we do not have the right to take the lives of other beings. Moreover the law of cause and effect also known as Karma takes its course leading us to shorten our life span in this life and the lives to come. Seeing the short and long term harmful impacts of meat eating, we, the members of Tibetan Volunteers for Animals have bravely come forward in creating awareness within the Tibetan Community in India, Nepal and Bhutan through various campaigns such as showing videos, distributing pamphlets, raising slogans, making demonstrations, publishing magazines, giving lectures, organizing seminars, conducting essay competitions regarding the disadvantages of meat eating and merits of vegetarianism.
We are deeply touched and encouraged by the overall positive responses from individuals, governmental and non-governmental organizations. The continuous support and feedback from those who really feel the need to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle has always helped us take a step further in strengthening our commitment to this just cause and reach out to more people and make ourselves heard of in the Tibetan community.
As a part of our various campaigns, we want to mark 6th July 2006, the 71st birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama as a GREEN BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION. We are using the term "green" here because it symbolizes our mother nature, which provides all the needs for our survival.
We would like to remind our friends about Mahatma Gandhiji’s priceless words that nature could provide for all our needs but not our greed.
We have two main objectives in carrying out this campaign.
1. To live in harmony with the nature that consists not only of living and non-living things and not to take the life of any innocent animals. We should adopt a life free of harm to all forms of life. We would like to request all our Tibetan brothers and sisters to embrace vegetarianism and avoid meat eating on this particular year’s birthday of H.H. the Dalai Lama if not for life. By doing so, innumerable lives of speechless animals will be saved which will definitely serve as a favorable cause and condition for the long life of H.H. the Dalai Lama and also accumulate a lot of merit for ourselves as he has instructed us to abandon meat consumption on many occasions. We deeply feel that its high time we work united for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama since the very survival of the people of Tibet and our rich cultural tradition depend upon him.
2. We also call upon all our fellow countrymen to engage in saving the lives of innocent animals in an extensive way, which is the immediate cause of H.H. the Dalai Lama’s long life. Therefore we once again request all to actively participate in this campaign for the good of one and all and make this GREEN BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION a huge success which can make the campaign worthy enough to be inscribed with golden letters in the history of Tibet. Let us make the coming 71st Birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama a completely vegetarian one Let us make 6th July 2006, the 71st Birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a completely Green celebration.