THE WISDOM
OF
FORGIVENESS
of conference, she told me: till now, I always get the feeling, we Asian, of course we have rich tradition, but we have no capacity to do research. “We always feel that we are just objects of investigation by Westerners. Their scientific-minded people always observe us. We have no capacity to do the same thing. “After the Mind and Life Conference, then she got the feeling: We Asian, with our Asian tradition, also have the capacity to investigate reality more equal way. “So do you ever have this kind of feeling? Our own traditions rich, but something ancient. In modern times not much useful, not much catch the time. But West is something very, very high?” Most of us who grew up in third world countries invariably have this discussion at some point in our life. The West is so advanced; their citizens so rich and smart. We from the East suffer by comparison. “Well, I grew up in Hong Kong in the fifties and sixties,” I replied. “China was known then as the Sick Man of Asia and Hong Kong a cultural desert. Living under the British I had developed a sense of inferiority about Chinese culture—at least about Chinese culture as we knew it in Hong Kong. We were backward technologically, and the gap was widening fast. This was reinforced when I was a student doing physics research at the Enrico Fermi Institute in Chicago. I learned something about quantum theory and atom smashers, and I was in awe.” “So because your new knowledge of Tibet,” the Dalai 256