I'm a Marxist, says Dalai Lama

New York: Tibetan religious leader the Dalai Lama has said he is a Marxist, yet credits capitalism for bringing new freedom to China.

“Still I am a Marxist,” said the Tibetan Buddhist leader in New York, where he arrived with an entourage of monks and a heavy security detail to give a series of paid public lectures.

Marxism has “moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits,” said the Dalai Lama (74) on Thursday.

However, he credited China's embrace of market economics. Capitalism “brought a lot of positive to China. Millions of people's living standards improved,” he said.

The Dalai Lama, giving a series of lectures at the Radio City Music Hall in central Manhattan until Sunday, struck a strikingly optimistic note in general, saying he believed the world is becoming a kinder, more unified place.

Clear signs

Anti-war movements, huge international aid efforts after Haiti's earthquake this year, and the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American President in a once deeply racist United States are “clear signs of human beings being more mature,” he said.

The Dalai Lama said he felt a “sense of the oneness of human beings,” jokingly adding: “If those thoughts are wrong, please let me know!”

Asked why tickets to his lectures are selling for as much as 100 dollars, the Dalai Lama said none of the money went to him personally. “You should ask the organiser. I have no connection.”

He said he was “always asking the organiser: tickets must be cheap. For myself, I've never accepted a single dollar like that”.

Some of the money goes to charities, such as hunger relief, he said. “Unfortunately,” he added, bursting into his trademark laughter, sometimes the “organisations are a little richer”. —AFP