Dalai Lama wins first Grammy Award for audiobook recording

The Dalai Lama won his first Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration and Storytelling Recording for “Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama”, with the Nobel laureate saying the honour reflects shared universal responsibility.

Dharamsala: Globally acclaimed spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, 90, has won his first Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording. The Nobel Peace Laureate competed against Milli Vanilli’s Fab Morvan, US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, show host Trevor Noah, and actress Kathy Garver.

Rufus Wainwright accepted the award on the Dalai Lama’s behalf during the ceremony streamed on YouTube.

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“Meditations: The Reflections Of His Holiness The Dalai Lama” is the entry from the world’s foremost Tibetan Buddhist, an album of innovative collaborations with Hindustani classical influences.

Atop the music are collages of his remarks on themes like mindfulness, harmony, and health, captured over the last few years. Responding to the award, His Holiness said, “I receive this recognition with gratitude and humility. I don’t see it as something personal, but as a recognition of our shared universal responsibility. I truly believe that peace, compassion, care for our environment, and an understanding of the oneness of humanity are essential for the collective well-being of all eight billion human beings.”

“I’m grateful that this Grammy recognition can help spread these messages more widely,” he said.

Sixty-six years ago, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, disguised as a soldier, left Norbulingka Palace in Tibet, a Third Pole, and escaped into exile in India after his challenging 14-day journey. Since then, the longest, most respectable staying guest of the Indian government, who often says he’s enjoying every possible liberty, has been toeing a path of promoting human values, religious harmony, besides preserving Tibetan language and culture, the heritage received from the masters of India’s Nalanda University.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, with a retinue of soldiers and cabinet ministers, escaped into exile on March 17, 1959, after China crushed an uprising in Tibet.

Globetrotting the Dalai Lama, who’s considered a living Buddha of compassion, in his latest book, ‘In Voice for the Voiceless’, offers insights into his decades-long dealings with China. In the book, the Dalai Lama, a reincarnation of past Dalai Lamas, reminds the world of Tibet’s unresolved struggle for freedom and the hardship his people continue to face in their homeland.

The book captures his extraordinary life, uncovering what it means to lose your home to a repressive invader and build a life in exile; dealing with the existential crisis of a nation, its people, and its culture and religion; and envisioning the path forward.

He was 16 years old when Communist China invaded Tibet in 1950, only 19 when he had his first meeting with Chairman Mao in Beijing, and 25 when he was forced to escape to India and became a leader in exile.

On reaching India after a treacherous journey, the Dalai Lama first took up residence for about a year in Mussoorie in Uttarakhand.

On March 10, 1960, just before moving to Dharamsala, a town perched on the upper reaches of north India’s Kangra Valley, the Dalai Lama had said: “For those of us in exile, I said that our priority must be resettlement and the continuity of our cultural traditions. We, Tibetans, would eventually prevail in regaining freedom for Tibet.”

Currently, India is home to around 1,00,000 Tibetans and the government-in-exile.