“Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.” It’s a quote attributed to Tenzin Gyatso, known around the world as the 14th Dalai Lama. It’s also just 58 characters long, perfectly tweet-sized, as are so many others of the Dalai Lama’s insights. More quotes like this could soon become available from the source himself—on Twitter. It’s not just for devotees either. As the Dalai Lama said: “If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it” (88 characters).
The announcement that the Dalai Lama has joined Twitter came in the form of a Tweet—what else—from Twitter’s CEO Evan Williams: “Met the Dalai Lama today in LA. Pitched him on using Twitter. He laughed.” What he did not say is that the Dalai Lama’s account, @DalaiLama, was set up a week before the meeting. His first Tweet came later.
There have been six tweets since then, but in a very short time, the Dalai Lama has gotten 56,000 followers (there is no news yet as to whether the Beastie Boys or Richard Gere are among them). That may not seem like a lot, but Twitter still is not that popular in Tibet … and it has only been a week. Besides, only now can people look up his tweets on Yahoo. So watch out, Ashton Kutcher and all you other Twitteratti. There’s a new Boddhisattva on the block. Read more at Softpedia.
