barry burton
the Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama is currently visiting the US. Yesterday and today he is in Ithaca. Apparently there is a branch of his monastery here, Namgyal Ithaca. Yesterday he gave a talk at Cornell entitled “A Human Approach to World Peace”. It was good but nothing ground breaking. I was surprised at how good his english was. He was also quite the spry, jovial old man, cracking a few jokes on stage. Actually, there is a video of the talk on Cornell’s website. I guess Namgyal Monastery did most of the administrative work of putting the event on, and I have to say, the design for everything from tickets to programs to the website was pretty fantastic. Maybe I should be less surprised by this?
The talk was in Barton Hall, which is unsurprising as big events are often held there, but nonetheless a bit ironic, as the building is labeled as “Military Sciences and Physical Education”, with ROTC among other activities being held there. It is the location of the indoor track, as well, which I will have to make use of later this winter in lieu of treadmills now that I know it exists. I believe the building was built with some amount of funding from the military or perhaps just the government, but the exterior resembles many of the other older buildings on campus, with a stacked stone façade and some style of architecture whose name I will not attempt to identify. Inside, however, the building looks just like a hangar or large gymnasium with exposed metal trussing supporting the ceiling and such. An interesting contrast in and of itself.
Getting in to the event required waiting in long line which wrapped around the building. At one point when I was in line at the back of the building, a white fifteen passenger van pulled up and several policemen suddenly parted the line in front of the rear door to the building. Then a large number of Tibetan monks started filing out of the van and into Barton Hall. I’m pretty sure that the Dalai Lama was among them, but as it is hard to translate to a real person from only a picture, I can’t be positive (no, not because all Tibetans look the same to me). So he may have walked right in front of me (a distance in the single digits of feet), but then again, maybe not.
To start the Dalai Lama expressed that some people undoubtedly came to the talk only out of curiosity, and that it would go well for these people, but others probably came with great expectations of him or the talk, and that these people’s expectations would only cause them disappointment. Nice. :) The main thrust of his talk was more or less obvious from the title — basically expressing the importance for individuals to be at peace with the world and each other — the end result being that the individuals themselves would be happier, and the world as a whole would experience greater peace.
One interesting moment came when he was discussing the relationship and contrasts between developed and developing countries. After stressing that national boundaries were an artificial construct and that material inequality was morally and practically bad, he went on to praise the Peace Corps (specifically giving credit to JFK for the program), saying it was better to send to people to peacefully help less developed nations than to send soldiers. Now let me just say that this is a point well taken, and a point I completely agree with, but seriously, could anyone think that the Dalai Lama believes otherwise? I note this because as he said that, the crowd erupted into thunderous applause for what seemed like an entire minute until he finally started vigorously motioning for silence. I suppose I will never understand being so excited at someone saying something which I already believe. Learning something new is exciting. Learning that someone else thinks something surprising is still interesting, albeit less so. But hearing someone mention in passing something that any idiot could figure out that they would obviously think deserves no pause. The main problem being that instead of hearing other, perhaps very interesting, thoughts from a obviously very intelligent and well traveled man, the crowd felt the need to interrupt him with cheers about something most everyone present agreed on. Group think scares me. I guess anytime there is a large group of like minded people, they end up doing some stupidly dogmatic things, but that fails to make it less annoying.
One particularly humorous moment came when the Dali Lama was answering a question about what hope he could offer to young people having a bad go of it. After lengthily explaining the benefits of a having a wider perspective instead of focusing on one small disappointing thing, he remarked something along the lines of, “and if that doesn’t work, I don’t know what to tell you. I guess there is always alcohol [making drinking motion with hand, and tilting head back]”. Much laughter ensued and after a pause far more lengthy than any American would have taken, he finally qualified that alcohol (and drugs) were only temporary solutions and thus not real solutions and thus silly choices.
Lastly, and unrelatedly, can I just say that Radiohead’s In Rainbows is frickin’ amazing? Also, I keep seeing commercials for Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited and it makes me sad, as Ithaca is apparently too small, even given its crazy hippy artsy fartsy population (I say this only with the most sincere affection), to have one of our three art flick houses carry the movie just yet. It just looks so good! Hopefully my expectations aren’t too great…
