Happy birthday, Your Holiness the Dalai Lama, on your 90th birtday! May you live long!

In tribute to this great master, here are some of his words about his relationship with His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa (as published in Radiant Compassion).

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
My friendship with the 16th Karmapa
His Holiness the Dalai Lama was, as his office explained, unable to give an interview for this book due to his age. Here we include extracts from interviews His Holiness gave to Jean Paul Ribes and Mick Brown (Ribes, Jean Paul: Karmapa, Fayard 2000 and Brown, Mick: Dance of 17 Lives, Bloomsbury 2004. Publication with kind permission of the authors. [1]

I had a good friendship with the 16th Karmapa. He visited me in Lhasa. He was also very close to my mother, who loved him a lot. Even though he was older than me, I transmitted the Kalachakra empowerment to him. We were very close.
Question: How were the relations between the former Dalai Lamas and the Karmapas?
Answer: Let’s say that it happened that the relations were not always an easy task. The relationship between the Karmapa and the first two Dalai Lamas was excellent and this was true for the third and fourth as well. The 5th Dalai Lama and the 10th Karmapa had difficulties due to different political alliances. [2] But between the 13th Dalai Lama and the previous Karmapa, who was then still very young, the relationship was excellent. The Dalai Lama was very nice with the little Karmapa Rinpoche; he invited him to stay at Norbulingka [3] and sent him small gifts. The messengers had also brought little bells, so that whenever he heard these bells, the young Karmapa believed that the Dalai Lama was coming and he jumped for joy!

Visit to Tsurphu 1956
One thing I remember quite clearly. He had a film projector and a generator, but the generator had broken down. My driver, who also repaired my generator in the Norbulingka Palace, had some experience with this and within one day he was able to repair the Karmapa’s generator. The Karmapa was very pleased! That night we were able to watch a film—a Hindi picture. Lots of fighting scenes! So through these things we became very close friends.
And, of course, he was a very nice person, and a very good human being. By nature and through his deep insights, his experience, there was some kind of special blessing, some kind of spiritual dignity there!


[1]      Ribes, Jean Paul: Karmapa, Fayard 2000, p. 237 ff and last two paragraphs from Brown, Mick: Dance of 17 Lives, Bloomsbury 2004. Publication with kind permission of the authors.
[2]      According to the renowned tibetologists David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson (in: A Cultural History of Tibet, Bangkok 2003, p. 195), the 10th Karmapa kept completely out of politics. The 5th Dalai Lama accepted the invitation of Mongolian troops to Tibet. They conquered a rival king and helped install him as “spiritual and temporal ruler of Tibet.”
[3]      The Dalai Lama’s summer palace on the riverbanks of the Brahmaputra, not far from Lhasa.