A delegation from Mongolia, which visited several Buddhist pilgrim sites in India has praised India for promoting peace through spiritualism that can help resolve ongoing wars and conflicts in the world.
Headed by 7th Naro Banchen Rinpoche, head of Naro Banchen Trust and founder of Naropa Monastery, the delegation met with Indian Buddhist scholars and officials of the International Buddhist Confederation (IBC) in New Delhi. The 40-member Mongolian delegation comprises artists, journalists, businessmen, anthropologist, historian and others.
Naropa Rinpoche told ANI, “We have so many things to learn from India. It’s peaceful, calm and very tolerant to one another. These good qualities inspire us”.
He added, “Mongolians appreciate India’s ancient wisdom and India is a country where from ancient times people come to learn how to train a mind, how to analyse and how to train our mind from a logical perspective using concrete methodologies. And this is our inspiration. We take spiritual inspiration from our Indian brothers and sisters. This ancient Buddhist knowledge offers very comprehensive methodologies that can be used to solve the problems in current days humanity is facing, war and conflicts”.
This delegation from Mongolia will also participate in the upcoming Global Buddhist Conference in New Delhi.
Naropa Rinpoche added, “The upcoming Global Buddhist Conference, I am expecting to be very beneficial because Buddhism teaches us that happiness should come from within ourselves. Although we have many materialistic progresses that make our life very comfortable but they cannot guarantee a happy life. That’s why this symposium is going to discuss about the wellbeing of the world and how Buddhist knowledge and tradition can help us to solve conflicts and problems we have been facing.”
Deputy General Secretary of IBC, Jangchup Choedon Rinpoche said, “India and Mongolia have had strong relations for a long time. Naropa Rinpoche has come to India with a delegation and visited several Buddhist spiritual sites in the country. They met His Holiness the Dalai Lama also”.
He added, “We are organising Global Buddhist Summit in which a delegation from Mongolia is also participating along with delegates from 32 countries. They will discuss about global issues and will implement them for the wellbeing of the global community”.
Odzaya Deremchimed, a news anchor from Mongolia, praised India and said, “Indian people are very kind and nice. It was a nice experience visiting Dharamshala and meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama”.
Prof Ranjana Mukhopadhyaya, a member of the Indian delegation said, “It is important to have these kinds of interactions because Buddhism is one of the strongest links that India has with the rest of Asia. And it is one of the longest, oldest and one of the most enduring links”.
She added, “I think we should use these ties to re-establish and reaffirm our relationship with Buddhist countries such as Mongolia because we should realise that although Mongolia is so far from India, Buddhism at that age had travelled there so obviously this was the medium through which people of rest of the world came to know about India. So, it is very important for India that we should capitalise on this goodwill that we have about India and further strengthen it.”