Dalai Lama Initiates 200,000 Buddhists Into a Ritual of Meditation

About 200,000 Buddhists, including many monks wearing orange and purple robes, gathered Wednesday in their holy town of Bodhgaya in India’s eastern state of Bihar to be initiated by the Dalai Lama.

The exiled Tibetan religious figure began three days of prayers in the town Tuesday to initiate followers into the Kalachakra (Wheel of Time) form of Buddhist meditation.

Bodhgaya is revered by Buddhists as the place where the founder of their religion, Siddhartha Gautama, received enlightenment.

About 100,000 Tibetan refugees led by the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule of the vast Himalayan territory. Peking turned the one-time independent theocracy into a province.

The Dalai Lama spoke from a platform draped with colorful Tibetan tangkhas, religious scrolls made of silk. A tapestry of the Kalachakra meditational deity hung behind him.

He read from ancient Buddhist texts written on parchment and paid homage to the Kalachakra mandala, a circular geometrical design drawn on the floor with colored powder that observant Buddhists believe helps in meditation.

A spokesman for the Dalai Lama noted that Kalachakra meditation had been passed on to the 50-year-old spiritual leader by a line of masters dating from the 13th Century.

A pamphlet handed out to the faithful at Bodhgaya said they must have the “highest motivation” for the initiation.

“You must go to an initiation, then, with (the) attitude of wishing to attain enlightenment as quickly as possible through Tantric meditational practice in order to be able to bring ultimate happiness to all living beings,” it said.

Hundreds of Buddhists wearing earphones listened to a simultaneous English translation of the Dalai Lama’s speech on transistor radios.

As dusk fell, groups of gaily dressed Tibetan refugees performed a folk dance in a floodlit square.