Gifts from the Dalai Lama

The Giraffe Heroes Project sent a team to the five-day Seeds of Compassion conference in Seattle. As a Giraffe staffer, I talked with hundreds of teachers and parents who had assembled there, telling them about Giraffe ways to foster compassion in the young.

After days of giving, I'm now struck by all the gifts I took away from those five days.

A quarter century ago I listened to the Dalai Lama talk with a small group of people in Manhattan. Now he was in a football stadium, surrounded by over 50,000 people, his face projected on gigantic screens that normally show huge Seattle Seahawks trying to disable other large guys wearing different colors.

Now, below the benevolent smile of Tibetan Buddhism, the screens presented a giant lotus with a heart at its center. The visual dissonance between the stadium setting and the message was stunning and deeply moving.

The sounds too. Instead of the voices of Seahawks fans roaring a demand for victory, here was a Nobel Peace Prize winner calling for an end to war, an end to competition, for more policy control by women. Women are not, he suggested with a laugh, as prone to troublemaking as men.

As to competition, here's a delicious tidbit: the Tibetan translator got stuck trying to translate "Nice guys finish last" into Tibetan. It can't be done.

Security was intense, given the current uproar over Tibet, China, and the Olympic Games. On the ground, at the gates, in the stands, hundreds of security guards were on the lookout for anyone who might want to harm this gentle man.

But in the sky, a small plane was circling, beyond the reach of security guards. It trailed a banner that said, "Dalai Lama Pls stop supporting riots." As if he ever had or ever would. (He has in fact said that he would resign as head of the Tibetan government in exile if the rioting doesn't stop.)

Maybe it's impossible for some people to believe that the man is not moved to anger himself, despite extreme provocation. I got a clue about that from a quote on the T-shirts for the conference: "Be kind whenever possible." So far so good. Four words that are easy to take, and to follow.

Then the kicker: "It is always possible."

Oh no. Always? I started playing scenes in my life that I was sure had called for reactions other than kindness. But none of them came close to what this man has endured without breaking his own two-sentence admonition.

Even when your country has been invaded and occupied, your people killed by the thousands--it is possible even then to be kind.

But of course it's not "normal." So I'm ditching normal. I'm thinking of tattooing the eight words on the palm of my hand so I can flash them at myself the moment I'm tempted--which is all too often--to do something that's anything but kind.

There's something else that I will now carry with me for the rest of my days. After a forum with Washington business leaders and politicians, the Dalai Lama went from one panelist to another, putting white prayer scarves around their necks. One of them was Ray Heacox, President of KING broadcasting, a man who walks with two canes. The Dalai Lama put the scarf around Heacox's neck, held his face in his two hands, then went to the floor to get the canes and hand them to him.

It was a magnificent gift to everyone present--a fleeting, unstaged, unselfconscious connection between two men who did not know each other, who did not share a culture, a race or a religion. It was a snapshot of pure, loving kindness.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
--the Dalai Lama

Comments

[Bonyuyu]

Dalai Lama，the most hypocritical person i've ever heard. Once a fan of Chairman Mao and communism and having welcomed the PLA into Tibet, he fled to India when the communists (not chinese but Tibetan) were planning to remove bloody slavery from land of Tibet.
Dalai lama, your smile charm, your action harm.
BTW, we INVADE and OCCUPIED Tibet, so what? i'm telling u that the map of modern world is actually based on WAR and OCCUPATION, winners or losers, that's the world, and u anti-China idiots are soooooo pathetic.

[Hemiboso]

Nowhere in Ann's comment or mine is there any indication that either of us is "anti-China."

I feel no enmity toward China as a nation. Of course, I have issues with many of China's policies, but I can say the same about my own country, the United States (which doesn't make me anti-US). My focus is on the issues I perceive to be associated with a given country--not the country, qua country ("Focus on the problem, not the counry.").

China, like the United States, has a rich, fascinating and sometimes glorious history, which I deeply admire and respect. It can also be said that both China and the United States have been guilty of deplorable acts initiated by their ruling regimes. Such is the nature of any given nation: none are innocent, all have blood on their hands; and thus you take the good with the bad. As individuals embedded in our respective political systems, my hope is that each of us will endeavor to make our countries--and ultimately the world--better for our having been here.

[Hemiboso]

Thanks, Ann, for sharing your encounter with the Dalai Lama.
Here is one of my favorite quotes from His Holiness (also on the subject of kindness): "This is my simple religion: There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
Adhering to this simple philosophy can help us harmonize with the spirit of the universe, which is love. Spiritual love (not the private preserve of any particular religion), when translated into human action, invariably manifests as kindness. We can only hope that a critical mass of humankind will internalize this philosophy and apply it to Gaia, herself, by feeling love for her, and being kind to her future, which is our future ...