September 27, 2005--His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso AKA The Dalai Lama
I don’t know about you but I was wondering what the Dalai Lama was doing in Piscataway, New Jersey the other day. According to the NY Times (see link below) it was to give a talk, a “sold-out” talk at Rutgers Stadium.
Of course I know about China and Tibet and that as a result of China’s annexation he has been forced to live in exile, but I also remember the time before then when no one except a few monks were allowed to even see the DL, much less have direct access to him. Those were the good old days when the Dalai Lama was the Dalai Lama. Remote. Inscrutable. Mystical. (Orientalists please hold your fire.) Before the world knew that he also had a given name, Tenzin Gyatso.
But now here he was in New Jersey before an audience of 36,000. I had a hint that things had changed when, a few years ago, I saw him pictured in an Apple Macintosh ad on a huge billboard at the intersection of Broadway and Houston Street in NYC. The tag line, I recall, was something like, “Think Different.” And then of course he was seemingly everywhere, with Richard Gere at the center of his posse.
Thus, I couldn’t resist checking his official website (http://tibet.com/DL/) to catch up with what he has been up to. That wasn’t too difficult since the homepage moved me quickly from (1) Biography to (2) Discovery of His Holiness to (3) Dignitaries His Holiness has Met. I was surprised not to see Mr. Gere listed, just assorted prime ministers and heads of state.
Attempting to understand what drew so many thousands to the Stadium “event,” I went back to the Web to find his remarks in full. The crowd apparently responded most enthusiastically to his vision that “We are all living things, like trees and grass.” And smiled and laughed when he pointed to the artificial turf of the football field, “But I don’t know if this is true grass.”
In the audience, the Times reports, was Kathleen Davis, a former flight attendant, who heard him expound upon the difference between attachment and compassion. She had been taking notes on “a pink piece of paper,” and “squealed” when she pointed to those words in her own handwriting.
Later, back in New York City, surrounded by Secret Service agents, he ventured into the crowd for a meet and greet, stopping to sample a roasted ear of corn from a street vendor who exclaimed in glee, “I’m a lucky man!” And so he is.
Of course I know about China and Tibet and that as a result of China’s annexation he has been forced to live in exile, but I also remember the time before then when no one except a few monks were allowed to even see the DL, much less have direct access to him. Those were the good old days when the Dalai Lama was the Dalai Lama. Remote. Inscrutable. Mystical. (Orientalists please hold your fire.) Before the world knew that he also had a given name, Tenzin Gyatso.
But now here he was in New Jersey before an audience of 36,000. I had a hint that things had changed when, a few years ago, I saw him pictured in an Apple Macintosh ad on a huge billboard at the intersection of Broadway and Houston Street in NYC. The tag line, I recall, was something like, “Think Different.” And then of course he was seemingly everywhere, with Richard Gere at the center of his posse.
Thus, I couldn’t resist checking his official website (http://tibet.com/DL/) to catch up with what he has been up to. That wasn’t too difficult since the homepage moved me quickly from (1) Biography to (2) Discovery of His Holiness to (3) Dignitaries His Holiness has Met. I was surprised not to see Mr. Gere listed, just assorted prime ministers and heads of state.
Attempting to understand what drew so many thousands to the Stadium “event,” I went back to the Web to find his remarks in full. The crowd apparently responded most enthusiastically to his vision that “We are all living things, like trees and grass.” And smiled and laughed when he pointed to the artificial turf of the football field, “But I don’t know if this is true grass.”
In the audience, the Times reports, was Kathleen Davis, a former flight attendant, who heard him expound upon the difference between attachment and compassion. She had been taking notes on “a pink piece of paper,” and “squealed” when she pointed to those words in her own handwriting.
Later, back in New York City, surrounded by Secret Service agents, he ventured into the crowd for a meet and greet, stopping to sample a roasted ear of corn from a street vendor who exclaimed in glee, “I’m a lucky man!” And so he is.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:13 AM
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