DALAI LAMA BRINGS TEENS A MESSAGE OF COMPASSION
By Rod Mickleburgh
The Globe & Mail
September 9, 2006
Original LinkVANCOUVER -- A remarkable, mutual admiration society took over the Orpheum Theatre here yesterday morning, as the venerable Dalai Lama held several thousand normally restless teenagers spellbound with his simple preaching on compassion.
Despite occasionally awkward English and less than perfect miking, the 71-year-old Tibetan Buddhist leader had them craning forward to catch every word, their cellphones and daily teenage rituals momentarily forgotten.
When he got up to leave, bowing to his young audience with hands pressed together in blessing, they responded with a long, sustained standing ovation, full of the whoops and cheers normally reserved for rock stars.
Maybe it was the red Canada visor he balanced on his bald head throughout the 21/2-hour dialogue, maybe it was his unflagging good humour, jokes and ready laughter, or maybe -- more likely -- it was his message of the need to learn tolerance and compassion in our increasingly violent world that turned the teenagers on.
But His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, as unlikely a teacher as the students have ever had, was a hit.
"He was really cool," said student Jenny Tan, before rushing off to join her friends. "He kind of opened my mind, that a lot of our own universe depends on others. I never thought about it that way before."
Echoed Vincent Wong, 16, of Prince of Wales Secondary School: "He's pretty cool, actually. He knows a lot. I really like him."
Sixteen-year-old Narpinder Rehallu from Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School said she was inspired to be a better person.
"Helping others out more, changing the way I act, I guess. Not being biased just to friends and family but paying attention to others," she said, thoughtfully.
The event, which filled the 2,800-seat theatre to capacity, was billed as one of the few times the exiled Nobel Peace Prize winner has shared the stage exclusively with young people.
There were student emcees, a student moderator and six other students to pose questions to the Dalai Lama, seated cross-legged in their midst on the seat of a large comfortable armchair.
Asked right off the bat why he felt it was important to have a dialogue with young people, the Dalai Lama replied: "The answer is quite simple. The past is past, and the future is coming.
"I am from the 20th century. We created many problems. Now we are now ready to say goodbye. . . . For the younger generation, it is easier to deal with the new reality. It is easier to change."
Then, pointing at his long-time interpreter, he added, with a large grin: "That is an old person's face. It is much better to see a young person's face."
The theme of his dialogue was "Nurturing Compassion," and the Dalai Lama did not shy from applying it to current events, including the continuing bloodshed in Iraq.
He said the world is becoming inured to such grim events. "Thousands die every day in Africa. Not much is done. Day by day, in Iraq, hundreds of people are killed, and it just becomes regular news. It is very sad.
"We are becoming more and more detached, seeing this as a chronic disease. That must change," the Dalai Lama declared.
The key to change is moving beyond selfishness toward compassion for others, he said. That is the road to inner peace and strength.
"Extreme self-centredness and selfishness always bring disaster. People who always use the words 'me, my, I' have a greater chance of heart attack. This is scientific fact."
Modern education seems one sided, he added, paying little attention to inner values.
"So we get people who just see profit as important. Money, money and more money. That doesn't go together with inner spiritual development."
He did not spare the world's religions, saying schisms in Catholicism, Islam and even Buddhism had caused hatred and destruction in the world. "More religions, more hatred. What benefit?
"The more harmony, the more peace."
The dialogue was not one sided. Three students shared their own stories with the Dalai Lama, who listened intently to each, particularly the tale recounted by 17-year-old Lucy Wang of Point Grey Secondary School.
Ms. Wang told of her summer visit to a poor village in China where her cousin Ting lived.
Each day, under a broiling sun, Ting, the same age as Ms. Wang, sold ice cream, raising money for new shoes, a better umbrella and school supplies for her young sister.
Then an old woman in the village became sick, needing an operation she could not afford. Without a second thought, Ms. Wang's cousin turned over her entire summer's savings -- $70 -- to the village's fundraising drive.
Ms. Wang asked Ting how she could give up what she had worked so hard for. Ting replied, "Those things can wait, but sickness cannot."
Ms. Wang was deeply moved and inspired by her cousin's unselfish decision. She said she is now working "every day" to meet her new goal of helping others.
The Dalai Lama was moved, too.
"Wonderful, wonderful," he told Ms. Wang, as her short video account ended. "I admire your way of thinking, and also your cousin's. Sometimes I think compassion is greater among poor people and the uneducated."
Seated on stage beside the Dalai Lama, the earnest high-school student blinked back tears.
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LEARNING LIFE LESSONS FROM THE DALAI LAMA
By Michael Scott
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, September 9, 2006
Original LinkStrictly speaking, Michael Kedge should have been at his school desk Friday morning. But the 11-year-old from Sooke and his family decided it would be better to spend the first week of Grade 5 in a different kind of classroom.
Kedge and his father, Peter, are in Vancouver for events surrounding the visit of the 14th Dalai Lama. On Friday, they attended a youth-oriented session at the Orpheum, during which a number of B.C. school students shared stories about courage and compassion, and posed questions to the Dalai Lama in front of a capacity audience of 2,800 students and teachers.
A few minutes before the event wrapped up, Michael and Peter slipped out of their places in the theatre and moved to the sidewalk near the Orpheum's Seymour Street stage door. Peter helped Michael, who uses a wheelchair, find a place at the front of the group of people gathered there to watch the Dalai Lama leave in his limousine.
The Kedges are Buddhist, and Peter is the director of a visionary project in Uttar Pradesh that aims to erect a 152-metre bronze Buddha in that northern Indian border state.
The Dalai Lama emerged from the stage door, and was clearly surprised and happy to see Peter, who he recognized. He walked over to tap him affectionately on the cheek, and then inquired about the health of Michael, who sat quietly there, wide-eyed and looking like a Hong Kong school boy in his dark blazer and grey flannel trousers.
After a few moments of quiet conversation with the father, the Dalai Lama bent low over the lad to administer a deep blessing. It was an act of unstaged, unplanned compassion that sent a ripple of sighs and nods through the small audience.
If the previous three hours in the Orpheum had been a theoretical exploration of the Dalai Lama's concept of compassion, this unscripted encounter made it clear that the Dalai Lama has a deep commitment to practicing what he preaches. Many of the people present, including members of the Dalai Lama's own security staff and entourage, were clearly moved by the moment, with faces registering surprise and happiness. Several fished out personal cameras to record the exchange.
"You can't imagine what this means to us, to Michael," Peter explained after the motorcade had moved off. "I have had the honour of meeting the Dalai Lama several times, and have received teaching from him several times over the past 30 years. But this was very, very important to Michael."
His son nodded a vigorous agreement, and summed it up in one word: "Amazing."
The morning session was built around three British Columbia high school students, who each brought a videotaped story illustrating some aspect of compassion, and then posed one question to the Dalai Lama -- whose traditional monk's robes were augmented for the day with a jaunty bright-red sun visor with the word 'Canada' emblazoned on the front.
Lucy Wang, 17, of Point Grey secondary in Vancouver, told a story about her summertime trip to visit relatives in China, and how an impoverished cousin who barely had enough for herself decided to donate her hard-earned savings to a medical fund for a village elder.
"Those things [I wanted for myself] can wait," the Chinese cousin told Wang, "but the sickness cannot."
"It changed my perspective," Wang said. "The people in my story have little education, but so much compassion. I wonder, does that mean education is unrelated to compassion?"
The Dalai Lama said he believed that compassion is sometimes more available to poorer people and among the uneducated, but didn't know the reason. Wang's question allowed him to repeat a message he had given the day before at city hall: that the bond between mother and newborn child is the fundamental building block of compassion throughout our lives.
Even Hitler and Stalin sprang "from mother's milk, from mother's compassion," he said. Only later did their lives turn to fear and hatred.
Kit Sauder, 17, of Earl Marriott secondary school in Surrey, spoke about an encounter he had with a middle-aged woman, who was weeping.
"People should never sit alone for too long when they're crying," he said. He encouraged the woman to try to enjoy the day, and the childhood memories that had led her back to that particular neighborhood.
The Dalai Lama delivered a consistent message on several fronts, including the failure of what he calls modern education to move beyond its pre-occupation with filling the brain with facts. "There is not enough concentration on the inner side of life," he said. "On mental functions and emotions.
"We must cultivate compassion, not through religion, not through prayer, but through modern education."
He made constant use of humour, as he did Thursday in his city hall appearance.
"Europeans have a long, long history of troublemaking," he said at one point, triggering wide laughter, before acknowledging Europe's eventual role in developing democracy, the notion of religious freedom and human rights.
Later he talked about a scientist who had done a study of people who make heavy use of the first person singular -- "all the time me, mine, I," the Dalai Lama explained.
"These people have a greater possibility of heart attack," the Dalai Lama reported, again to gales of laughter.
The messages were simple and abundant: there is no need to be introduced to strangers because we are all brothers and sisters in humanity; selfishness leads to unhappiness; some aspects of modern culture lead people toward negative actions; exploiting others will result in loneliness; we are part of the cosmos and the cosmos is part of us.
The earnestness of the questions and the Dalai Lama's careful, deeply considered answers were not tailor-made to keep a theatre full of teenagers still and quiet, and yet, surprisingly, there was very little fidgeting or doodling, even up in the furthest balconies.
"At first he was a bit hard to understand," said Betty Zhang, in Grade 11 at Killarney secondary in Vancouver.
"But it got easier after a while. I like [Lucy Wang's] story about the trip to China, and also the Dalai Lama's comments about how people are born with [maternal] compassion -- even Hitler -- and then afterward something must have gone wrong."
Zachary Cooperstone, beginning his senior year at London secondary in Richmond, said he was impressed by Kit Sauder's story of comforting a stranger.
"That was definitely very touching, very sweet," he said. His friend, Ranji Atwall, also in Grade 12 at London secondary, said he was inspired by all the stories.
The morning session was summarized by Marc Kielburger, a 29-year-old Harvard grad, and Rhodes Scholar, an international child rights advocate. Having just returned from a field project in East Africa with his multi-national children's aid network, Free the Children, Kielburger was passionate and succinct about the day's events.
The youth present had learned four things, he said. First: that the world can change. Second: that change can take only few minutes a day if enough people are involved. Third: no one is too young to help create change.
And finally: "[What we've learned here today] is not to be an idealist. But to be a shameless idealist."
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