Let’s Declare Peace!
As Hessel admits, this text differs from his essays, because through it he turned to the spirit for the first time. Conversely, what is striking in the words of the Dalai Lama, is his will to emphasize the importance of "secular ethics", the one that can be universal and which connects representatives of the East and the West. It is interesting for us to hear Stephane Hessel speaking of "spiritual democracy", and the Dalai Lama - of drawing a "map of the spirit" with his friends in the field of neuroscience. But the great charm of the dialogue between the two is due to the way these two prominent figures lean their thoughts on extraordinary years of experience.
Dalai Lama
Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (born Lhamo Döndrub), the 14th Dalai Lama, is a practicing member of the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism and is influential as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the world's most famous Buddhist monk, and the leader of the exiled Tibetan government in India.
Tenzin Gyatso was the fifth of sixteen children born to a farming family. He was proclaimed the tulku (an Enlightened lama who has consciously decided to take rebirth) of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of two.
On 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, he was enthroned as Tibet's ruler. Thus he became Tibet's most important political ruler just one month after the People's Republic of China's invasion of Tibet on 7 October 1950. In 1954, he went to Beijing to attempt peace talks with Mao Zedong and other leaders of the PRC. These talks ultimately failed.
After a failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959, the Dalai Lama left for India, where he was active in establishing the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan Government in Exile) and in seeking to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who accompanied him.
Tenzin Gyatso is a charismatic figure and noted public speaker. This Dalai Lama is the first to travel to the West. There, he has helped to spread Buddhism and to promote the concepts of universal responsibility, secular ethics, and religious harmony.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal on 17 October 2007.
Stéphane Hessel
Stéphane Frédéric Hessel (born 20 October 1917) is a diplomat, ambassador, writer, concentration camp survivor, former French Resistance fighter and BCRA agent. Born German, he became a naturalised French citizen in 1939. He participated in the editing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.
In October 2010, his essay, Time for Outrage! (original French title: Indignez-vous!), was published in an edition of 6,000 copies. It has sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into Basque, Catalan, Italian, German. Greek, Portuguese, Slovenian, Spanish, Croatian, and Hebrew. Translations into Korean, Japanese, Hungarian, Swedish and other languages are planned. In the United States, The Nation magazine's March 7–14, 2011 issue published the entire essay in English.
Hessel's booklet argues that the French need to again become outraged, as were those who participated in the Resistance during World War II. Hessel's reasons for personal outrage include the growing gap between the very rich and the very poor, France's treatment of its illegal immigrants, the need to re-establish a free press, the need to protect the environment, importance of protecting the French welfare system, and the plight of Palestinians, recommending that people read the September 2009 Goldstone Report. He calls for peaceful and non-violent insurrection.
In 2011, one of the names given to the Spanish protests against corruption and bipartisan politics was Los Indignados (the outraged), taken from the title of the book's translation there (¡Indignaos!). These protests, in conjunction with the Arab Spring, later helped to inspire other protests in many countries, including Greece, Israel, and Occupy Wall Street which began in New York's financial district, but has now spread across the United States and numerous other countries.
