As a child found rigorous student a burden: Dalai Lama

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama today said that as a child he had no idea what his position "was all about and found the rigorous studies associated with it as a burden".
"When the search party to find the Dalai Lama reached my village, I was about three or four years old and was very excited about their arrival", the 14th Dalai Lama said at an interactive session at the 'Namami Brahmaputra' River festival organised by the Assam government here.
He claimed that he recognised some of the members and rushed towards them.
"The main Lama was carrying a rosary and I immediately recognised it as that of the 13th Dalai Lama. This is something mysterious and I cannot explain this", he said.

The rigorous study that he had to undertake at the age of seven and memorise the traditional texts was "really a burden for me and I didn't like it".
"I was a very lazy student and I did not like to study but later I realised the importance of study and how it can transform the society", he added.

Winning the Nobel Prize also opened new horizons for him as it gave him an opportunity to meet people, exchange ideas and share knowledge.
"It is very important to sit with scholars and scientists and have serious discussions with them on varied topics", he said.

The Dalai Lama pointed out that somebody had once told him that science is a killer for religion but even "Buddha had said not to accept his teachings without investigations and analysis and many of his teachings were rejected by the Nalanda masters".
Science and religion are mutually beneficial with the former helping "us to understand cosmology, physics, neurobiology better and Buddhism has helped in the field of Quantum Physics particularly", he said.
The Dalai Lama, who earlier visited the banks of the Brahmaputra to pay his obeisance to the mighty river, said that the river originates in Tibet and is a source of life.

"The river is very clean in Tibet but when I came to India, people keep saying not to drink water from rivers and I realised that environmental issues were very serious.
"This is a matter of concern", he said.
He said that when he escaped from the Summer Palace in 1959, he had to cross the Brahmaputra and always felt some "connection with the river and it reminds me of the importance of the sacredness of all rivers".
The Dalai Lama's interactive session was earlier scheduled to be held on the banks of the Brahmaputra but had to be shifted to an auditorium due to heavy rainfall in the city.