Dalai Lama Donates $1 million Prize to Charity

The Dalai Lama with the young members of the Cathedral choir during the 2012 Templeton Prize ceremoney in London. Photo: Tenzin Taklha, OHHDL.

Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama is to donate more than $1 to his favourite charities after being awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize for 2012 in the UK this week.

The Dalai Lama announced that he would give $1.5 million of the prize money to Save the Children Fund specifically to address the problems of malnourishment among children in India.

He said during the Templeton Prize ceremony in London’s St Paul’s Cathedral that he had long had great admiration for the work of Save the Children and had personal experience of the support it had given Tibetans during their early years in exile.

He is also giving $200,000 to the Mind & Life Institute, an organisation that has for nearly thirty years helped promote the exchange of ideas and collaboration between science and spirituality.

He told the audience that the remaining $75,000 will be used to support science education in the Tibetan monastic universities.

The Prize, now in its 40th year, was set up by Sir John Templeton, whose son Dr Jack Templeton said his father wanted human beings to be more open minded about the nature of reality.

Dr Templeton said the prize seeks to identify entrepreneurs of the spirit, men and women who seek and provide wisdom. He expressed gratitude to everyone at St Paul's Cathedral for enabling the ceremony to take place there, referring to the Cathedral as embodying the spirit and might of the British people.

He said that the Templeton Prize judges had decided to make their award to the Dalai Lama this year because of his steadfast spiritual values, the power of kindness and compassion.

In accepting the Templeton Prize, the Dalai Lama said how happy he was to be in St Paul's describing it as magnificent temple filled with smiling faces.