Buddhism, Asian Values, and Democracy

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people, fled Chinese-occupied Tibet into exile in India in 1959. One of the world’s great exponents of nonviolence, His Holiness was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. The following essay is based on a lecture that he delivered on 10 November 1998 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The lecture, one in a series entitled “The Democratic Invention,” was cosponsored by the Mário Soares Foundation, the Luso-American Development Foundation, and the International Forum for Democratic Studies.