Monday, September 26, 2005

Happier Days and Happier Dreams


Yesterday morning, I was one out of 36,000 or so at Rutgers Stadium. Why were we there? A football game, you are assuming, right? Nope, we were there to see the Dalai Lama in the flesh. The lecture was titled “Peace, War, and Reconciliation” and it was to be delivered by none other than Nobel Peace Prize winner, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. Although the presentation did not start until 10.30 AM, beginning at 6.30 am were to be films of Tibetan culture and musical entertainment. I arrived at 9 am and enjoyed some throat singing and Buddhist chanting. It was very beautiful! The Dalia Lama was given an honory doctorates degree of Rutgers University. The Dalai Lama expressed his thoughts on receiving this honor--he thought of himself to be very lucky to receive this degree without any of the hard work! The Dalai Lama lectured for about 40 minutes and then spent some time doing a question and answer session. He really is an amazing man who strives for world peace, the abolishment of all nuclear weapons and resolution of all world conflicts. Here are some thoughts of the Dalai Lama's that I will share.

In today's society, we are all interdependant on one another. America is dependant on Europe, Europe on Asia, etc. In today's world, war is outdated. We should be getting along, not killing.

Killing is not morally right--on any grounds, whether it's one man shooting another for drugs--or one man shooting another in war.

The Dalai Lama's English wasn't exactly the sharpest, so some of what he said was kind of funny. He was trying to say there are evil people in all religions. But what he said was--there are mischievous Jews, mischievous Christians, mischievous Muslims. When there are only a few of the "mischievous" in that religion--it makes no sense to discriminate against the religion.

May we all have happier days and happier dreams.

The Dalai Lama visits Rutgers.

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