The Dalai Lama on Thursday added a new entry to his English vocabulary – “political correctness” – oddly enough in Prague, a liberal city known for leniency towards the incorrect.
Tibet’s spiritual leader, who is in the Czech capital to speak about human rights in Asia at a conference on Friday, found himself lost for words when a Czech journalist asked him what he thought about political correctness.
“What do you mean?” he blinked, genuinely puzzled.
After a lengthy discourse, the Dalai Lama straightened up but still radiated uncertainty.
“I don’t know . . . I openly express – if someone’s short, I express it as short. If someone’s very tall, I say very tall,” he mused.
“Of course, if you create embarrassment, you can’t be saying this. But otherwise, black is black, white is white, yellow is yellow. And that’s it.”
