By Ralph Jennings

TAIPEI (Reuters) – A senior Chinese official has asked whether Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama would agree to attend the Beijing Olympics to ease recent tensions, a Tibet government-in-exile legislator said on Monday.

The Dalai Lama would consider going, the law maker said.

Khedroob Thondup, a Taipei-based member of Tibet’s parliament-in-exile, said a senior leader in Beijing had called him about two weeks ago to “sound out” the Olympic visit idea. He did not identify the leader.

China has blamed the Dalai Lama for unrest in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China since mid-March.

The gesture suggest that Beijing seeks to show the world that it can get along with Tibetan leaders following a world opinion backlash over China’s handling of the Tibet violence.

“If they want to invite His Holiness to the Olympics, that would be a big change,” Thondup told Reuters, referring to the Dalai Lama. “I’m sure he would consider this.”

China has repeatedly lashed out at the Dalai Lama for a deadly March 14 riot in the region’s capital Lhasa and for subsequent scuffles or protests in Tibetan areas of China, which took control over the mountainous territory in the 1950s.

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Ma Ying-jeou

Hu Jintao is the first Chinese leader who grew up in the aftermath of the revolution that established communism in 1949. He inherits its tradition, but he has gone far beyond it. In a marked evolution from Mao Zedong, Hu, 65, has proclaimed the goal of a harmonious society whose components work together by consensus rather than direction. It is a principle he has tried to apply to international affairs as well.
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Dalai Lama
By Deepak Chopra

Millions of people turn to the Dalai Lama for inspiration, but to whom does he turn? He and his people have struggled all their lives with the audacity of hopelessness. Oppression and exile are their daily bread. Yet the Dalai Lama, 72, remains calm in the face of cruelty. What does he think of the human race? “We are the superior species on Earth but also the biggest troublemakers,” he once told me.

China’s rulers aren’t like the British masters of colonial India, and the Dalai Lama’s Gandhiesque nonviolent struggle won’t give them twinges of conscience, leading to Tibet’s freedom. If anything, Beijing has grown more ruthless in suppressing Tibetan aspirations, as we’ve seen this Olympic year. And yet he has found a way to think kindly of those who oppress his people and vilify his name. I found him unwilling to show any harshness. He said to me, “I don’t dislike the Chinese, only their actions.”

To me, the most mystical thing about him is also the most ordinary: the Dalai Lama is happy. He’s happy in the midst of chaos and turmoil. The most inspiring thing he ever told me was to ignore all organized faiths and keep to the road of higher consciousness. “Without relying on religion, we look to common sense, common experience and the findings of science for understanding,” he said. I do the same thing, but I still marvel at this model of calm and compassion. I’m sure neuroscientists would love to know what’s going on inside that brain.

To whom, then, does the Dalai Lama turn for inspiration? It’s not a person but a place