"NEW DELHI (AFP) - Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama extolled the virtues of music as a way to bring peace as he opened a three-day festival here of chants from the world's different religions.Greeting the crowd of 2,000 gathered at a New Delhi park, the 68-year-old Buddhist monk said such performances of sacred music "are useful ways to promote positive qualities.""I believe that music and sound have a particular ability to affect the mind positively which is why I think music and chanting are useful, particularly in a religious context," said the Dalai Lama, clad in his customary maroon and yellow robes on Monday."Once we develop peace of mind, then automatically our actions become more peaceful. This is the way to promote a peaceful type of individual, a peaceful family and a peaceful society," he said.The Tibetan leader, who has lived in exile in India since 1959, said that "rapid developments" in science, especially the computer revolution, "have made the world significantly smaller.""Either we find peaceful solutions to the problems and conflicts that confront us, so that everyone gains and nobody loses ... or we selfishly follow the law of the jungle and perish," he said.The session began with traditional chants by Sri Lankan, Tibetan and Vietnamese Buddhist monks and featured prayers by an Israeli group to mark Monday's holiday of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.A singer from New Delhi performed qawwali, the voice-straining poetry popularised by the Sufis, or Islamic mystics, of South Asia.Other chants were performed by Benedictine nuns from the Netherlands, a Shaman from the Russian republic of Tuva, an American Indian from the United States and Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians and Bahais from India.The Dalai Lama closed the hour-long session by presenting ceremonial Tibetan white scarves to all who chanted."I don't doubt the wonderfully altruistic power of music, especially songs where lyrics deal with issues of peace, conflict resolution, et cetera. What I wonder is: Can instrumental music have a similar effect on a large audience? I would argue so. My prime example is the work of composer Aaron Copeland, most famous for "Fanfare For The Common Man", a piece created by Copeland to capture a specific idea of America at a specific point in time, a piece which is easily one of the most recognizable classical pieces ever, even if you don't know where you've heard it or where it originally came from. It's a piece that has become ubiquitous small-town America, and the sort of "Good Old Yesterday" mentality many Americans hold for the past, when life was simple and people were honest.Another example is the popular post-rock group Explosions In The Sky, whose album '"The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place" exemplifies an entire album's worth of music centered around trials, tribulations, and ultimately hope in both the moment when one is listening to the album, and also when the music ends. If one looks under the CD Tray, the hidden message is plain to see: "Because You Are Listening." Music surely has the power to cross bariers and unite people across bariers of language, race and ethnicity, religion, because music has the ability to be pure feeling, and when used to express ideas of peace and tolerance, ideas of hope and love, truly transcendent things can take place. I do believe it's up to each individual listener to extract their own interpretation from a given piece. One can decide what it is the artist may be trying to communicate, and also what the listener themselves infer or take from that piece to enhance his or her own thinking.