Mooney meets the Dalai Lama
MP Joseph Mooney travelled to Dharamshala, India, last week to meet the 14th Dalai Lama.
"I gifted a pounamu necklace from New Zealand which I had chosen because it incorporated the koru shape representing new life, growth, strength and peace; as well as including the shape of a whale tail at the tip of the koru which to me represented the traditional name for Southland (Murihiku - meaning the tail end of the land)," Mooney says. "I explained this to the Dalai Lama and he took the pounamu necklace from me and touched it to his forehead."
Mooney, whose Southland constituency includes Queenstown, travelled with New Zealand MPs Helen White and Ingrid Leary, and Fijian MP Rinesh Sharma, to participate in the 35th Anniversary of the Dalai Lama being awarded the Noble Peace Prize. They were there as individual MPs, rather than officially representing the NZ government.
After fleeing from the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959, the Dalai Lama established a government-in-exile in Dharamsala.
Mooney says the trip emphasised to him the "powerful nature of the Dalai Lama’s many years of advocacy for peaceful solutions which had reverberated around the world".
