Dalai Lama arriving for Scots tour

Jun 21 2012

The Dalai Lama is to arrive in Scotland ahead of a two-day tour that will see him visit three cities delivering public talks.

The Tibetan spiritual leader will travel to Edinburgh, Dundee and Inverness to promote his message of non-violence, compassion and universal responsibility.

His visit to Scotland comes as part of a nine-day tour of the UK, which has already seen him visit Leeds, Manchester and London, where he gave an address at Westminster Abbey.

The Dalai Lama arrives in Edinburgh this afternoon before holding a private viewing of archive material about Tibet during a private visit to the National Library of Scotland on Friday morning.

The tour aims to spread the 76-year-old Buddhist's teachings and he will later hold a public talk at the Usher Hall with the theme Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World.

He will then visit Dundee in the afternoon, where he will give the Margaret Harris Lecture on Religion at the city's Caird Hall.

On Saturday, he will visit Inverness and give a public talk at Eden Court Theatre with the theme "Be the change".

The Dalai Lama, one of the world's most revered leaders, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and was awarded the £1.1 million Templeton Prize last month at St Paul's Cathedral in London for his engagement with science and people beyond his religious traditions.

He has lived in exile in Dharamsala in northern India since 1959.

He passed the political leadership of exiled Tibetans on to an elected prime minister last year but remains the spiritual leader of the Tibetan community.