Brick

Copy­right 2010 Ben S. Pollock

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — The appear­ances in Iowa of the exiled spir­i­tual and polit­i­cal leader of China-controlled Tibet, the 14th Dalai Lama, had a suc­ces­sive feel: first a closed recep­tion for a few dozen donors on Mon­day, May 17, a panel dis­cus­sion the next morn­ing, then finally a solo turn that after­noon. One wanted His Holi­ness to hit it out of the park, but knew he’d likely fur­ther develop thoughts he’d begun ear­lier, yet the over­all mem­ory is one of sat­is­fac­tion. Any dis­ap­point­ment would dis­ap­pear as days melded and faded, much like a bright man­dala brushed into a heap of now pas­tel sand.

This wasn’t sum­mer camp, a spir­i­tual retreat or a rock fes­ti­val despite sim­i­lar­i­ties. The man in the bur­gundy and gold­en­rod robes sim­ply agreed to a cou­ple of speeches in a state he’d not vis­ited before. [Aspects pre­vi­ously cov­ered in Lama-palooza I and Lama-palooza II.]

The title of the Dalai Lama’s keynote address,“The Power of Edu­ca­tion,” indi­cated more a start­ing point for broad con­sid­er­a­tions rather than a sub­ject, and indeed was the prac­ticed ram­ble of an extra­or­di­nary mind.

First, before the 2 p.m. start, the Uni­ver­sity of North­ern Iowa Wind Sym­phony played. As a recorder and low brass player, I’m a sucker for bands, and the group had it a lit­tle rough. The spring semes­ter was over by a week or so yet they hung around for this. They were play­ing before an audi­ence of 5,000 in the bas­ket­ball arena (the lofty acoustics of such are frus­trat­ing, too) set­tled nois­ily into the bleachers.

The UNI pres­i­dent, Ben­jamin J. Allen, opened. He pre­sented His Holi­ness an hon­orary doc­tor­ate. The aca­d­e­mic collar-shawl kept slip­ping off the Venerable’s shoulders.

Next, the band, accom­pa­nied by sev­eral cho­ruses, includ­ing a children’s chorale, per­formed Joy, com­posed for the visit by UNI music pro­fes­sor Jonathan Schwabe, a set­ting of a Bud­dhist verse. It’s sung in Eng­lish, and the trans­la­tion also was in the pro­gram. It advises joy, peace, health, trust. It’s a hand­some piece per­formed with quiet pas­sion. Hear­ing Joy again would be a plea­sure; maybe a pod­cast was made. Schwabe pre­sented the Dalai Lama with the hand­writ­ten orig­i­nal score; in return he received a khata white silk scarf and a blessing.

Leav­ing the arena later, MB and I found our­selves walk­ing near a French horn player so I asked him about it. Schwabe sat in on some but not all rehearsals, never con­duct­ing, he said, leav­ing that to the direc­tor, pro­fes­sor Ronald John­son. Schwabe made no changes in rehearsals that required rescor­ing, just requested some tempo or vol­ume adjust­ments. The young man said the group was excited to be a part of some­thing so impor­tant for UNI.

From the keynote, I offer squibs, as best as I could hear. To pre­serve the per­sonal impact, I’m yet now read­ing the news or review­ing record­ings. Rec­om­mended are videos posted on the web­site of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. The Dalai Lama’s lan­guage mas­tery is superb, but the Tibetan accent is tricky, deliv­ered in a low monot­one, despite the famously fre­quent laugh­ter. The Dalai Lama’s Eng­lish is clear but halt­ing. Sub­jects some­times are glossed over, verbs parts skipped.

“I am rather lazy.”

A jokey line the Dalai Lama said from time to time was a pref­ace to a devel­oped argu­ment that belied it. In Den­ver in 2006, he pref­aced com­pa­ra­ble para­graphs with, “I am just a monk.”

“I am one of 6 bil­lion human beings. Each deserves happiness.”

The main core of life stems from the fact that what we want, mother pro­vides. It’s bio­log­i­cal. Thus, “those chil­dren who get max­i­mum affec­tion and are taught com­pas­sion will grow and have happy lives.” Not all do.

Har­mony comes from the basis of mutual respect.

Reci­procity and appre­ci­a­tion. “Humans have this abil­ity, mos­qui­toes not so much. A mos­quito bites, sucks your blood and leaves with­out even a look back” (laughs).

Recalls meet­ing Thomas Mer­ton, the late Catholic monk. He was a com­pas­sion­ate Chris­t­ian, as was Mother Theresa. The Dalai Lama says they were the first model Chris­tians — by his lights — that he had met.

Knowl­edge is pre­cious. There are two kinds, head and heart. “Most edu­ca­tion goes to teach cun­ning — how to bet­ter exploit oth­ers.” Thus edu­ca­tion alone can’t give hap­pi­ness to the self or to the com­mu­nity. “This sort of edu­ca­tion can lead to anger, hatred, jeal­ousy.” (This from a man who reveres sci­ence.) As in the morn­ing, he admires the free­dom of reli­gion man­date in the Indian Constitution.

“Trust is the basis of friend­ship.” “These days, fol­low the gun, fol­low the money — they’re com­mon and based on fear — and these destroy trust, destroy friendship.”

Inner beauty as opposed to inner ugli­ness. Love — mean­ing roman­tic love — with­out mutual respect — can­not lead to deep and last­ing friendship.

“This cen­tury should be a cen­tury of peace, a cen­tury of dialogue.”

“The world needs both exter­nal dis­ar­ma­ment and inter­nal dis­ar­ma­ment. What Pres­i­dent Obama and the Russ­ian pres­i­dent are doing with reduc­ing nuclear arms, that’s exter­nal dis­ar­ma­ment, very good, very impor­tant. But we need to address inter­nal dis­ar­ma­ment” — to make the exter­nal stick. “For inter­nal dis­ar­ma­ment, you con­front the prob­lem then apply compassion.”

“You young peo­ple, this cen­tury is up to you.”

“The dis­putes are not just nation to nation but con­ti­nent to con­ti­nent. You must con­sider the entire world. It comes to: I need you, Amer­ica needs Asia, Arabs need Amer­ica. And so on.”

“I don’t admire Amer­i­can nuclear [weapons] power, but I do admire Amer­i­can prin­ci­ples: Lib­erty, democ­racy, equal­ity, and also its cre­ativ­ity. Also free­dom of speech and free­dom of press. These are gifts to the world.”

He ends speeches abruptly: “Thank you. That’s all.”

But Pres­i­dent Allen stands, he was sit­ting on the couch next to the Dala Lama. His Holi­ness dur­ing his speech often looked directly at Allen, touch­ing his knee or shoul­der. Allen has screened ques­tions ready.

Allen: How should young peo­ple stay moti­vated for education?

The Dalai Lama recalls his own upbring­ing, Tibetan edu­ca­tion being “very sys­tem­atic.” He and his brother were tutored. But how to moti­vate a lit­tle boy who has been told he’s the rein­car­nated leader of a peo­ple? He was nor­mal — “lazy” — and until age 13 or 14, indif­fer­ent to school­ing. The tutor showed the chil­dren two whips that would, if needed, be used to keep them focused. His was yel­low, sig­ni­fy­ing holi­ness and royalty.

“Holy whip makes holy pain!”

He got his laugh and said moti­va­tion even for good things can be from fear, and until 14 or 15 it was, then “I got inter­ested in the knowl­edge.” From then on, he has been self-motivated. He doesn’t really answer the ques­tion about moti­vat­ing reg­u­lar children.

Allen: Are at their base all reli­gions the same?

No, the Dalai Lama says. Even within Tibetan Bud­dhism there are lots of divi­sions. Reli­gions are alike at their high­est lev­els, in com­pas­sion and for­give­ness. At their basic lev­els, even Bud­dhism has contradictions.

“But Bud­dha not con­fused. … Bud­dha wanted to cre­ate con­fu­sion in his stu­dents,” because it deep­ened their wis­dom, knowl­edge, under­stand­ing of the world.

That is what I heard, but My Beloved says I missed a clar­i­fi­ca­tion he then made. I’m stick­ing to my notes, they make Tal­mu­dic sense.

“Some reli­gions empha­size phi­los­o­phy, some empha­size the cre­ator. All have the same pur­pose, to build these human qual­i­ties. [But after that the mutu­al­i­ties splin­ter.] The dif­fer­ences are real, and deserve respect.”

• • •

This Iowa trip leaves me hum­bled, inspired and angry.

The Dalai Lama seems to be the one polit­i­cal or reli­gious world leader to encour­age com­pas­sion as a first prin­ci­ple, and with no limits.

I’m not Bud­dhist but a stu­dent of world reli­gions, since child­hood. The major reli­gions all express evil qual­i­ties, includ­ing my own. For a cen­tury this is partly the fault of the mass media, where I make a liv­ing. The media — news and com­ment, aca­d­e­mic and pop­u­lar, cul­tural and main­stream — veer toward extremes. No mat­ter what audi­ence we’re a mem­ber of, our atten­tion is drawn to the edges, strong state­ments, vivid images.

We tell the broad­cast media what we want to see. Rat­ings pro­pel the pseudo-historian not a fact-based ana­lyst (how can Nazism as well-recorded as it was be so blithely ref­er­enced?). The Chris­t­ian tel­e­van­ge­list gets the sound bites for intol­er­ance, not local pas­tors who coun­sel every­day heart­break. Two Catholic popes have had to clean up decades of child abuse and cover-ups, while TV skips Angli­can and Chris­t­ian Ortho­dox lead­ers who gen­er­ally empha­size the com­pas­sion of Jesus over the heaven of Christ. Arab extrem­ists post video threats to web­sites, and we’re never shown Mus­lim benev­o­lence. How do nation­al­ist Jews get cam­era time over pro­gres­sive rab­bis who act from an inter­faith and intereth­nic tra­di­tion of social justice?

The first role of a major reli­gion should be to teach fol­low­ers kind­ness among them­selves and with other peo­ples. Rev­e­la­tion and assur­ance of an after-life, if they don’t pro­mote com­pas­sion, should be sec­ondary. What good are they, otherwise?

The Dalai Lama is an inclu­sive extrem­ist. He gets the cam­eras and ink for wear­ing a robe out­side the home, for scruffy brown shoes and some kind of purse because the gar­ment appar­ently has no pock­ets. He’s the only global head­liner who does not resort to exclu­sive­ness, bile or fact twisting.

What’s his attrac­tion, what made the long drive worth­while? The Dalai Lama and other Tibetan cler­ics, the pre­cepts of other branches of Bud­dhism, like Zen, as I under­stand them, are sim­ple not simplistic.

Sim­ple not sim­plis­tic works. Judaism, Chris­tian­ity and Islam could go there, monothe­ism leads smoothly to com­pas­sion but for cen­turies of tribal politi­ciza­tion. And recent decades seem to have accel­er­ated fear, the pre­sump­tion of vio­lence, in the West. (Thai­land now is show­ing East­ern reli­gions are not immune.)

• • •

The next morn­ing, Wednes­day, May 19, UNI vis­it­ing scholar Geshe Thupten Dor­jee, a Uni­ver­sity of Arkansas instruc­tor, and two monks from Min­neapo­lis rit­u­ally destroyed the days’ old man­dala, a table­top maze full of sym­bols con­structed of col­ored sand. Lit­er­ally sweep­ing it up once com­pleted demon­strates the Bud­dhist prin­ci­ple of imper­manance. There’s a spe­cial brass tool, a fun­nel of sorts, to place sand grain by grain in the ancient pat­terns. At the end, though, the men used com­mon foam paint­brushes to pile the sand. Some went into tiny bags as sou­venirs for we wit­nesses. The rest was car­ried to a flow­ing stream, and poured in.

• • •

The Dalai Lama went on to New York. The Times pub­lished a col­umn he wrote.

Next spring, Lord will­ing, His Holi­ness will travel to Fayet­teville, for at least one address at UA’s Bud Wal­ton Arena. Chan­cel­lor G. David Gearhart will be up front of course. Iowa’s gov­er­nor wasn’t here, but I can see Mike Beebe on the dais. It takes lit­tle to imag­ine Bill Clin­ton show­ing up as well.

I’m a third-generation Arkan­sawyer and UA grad (M.A. ’03), but I cringe at how some crew­cut goober may hand the Tibetan leader a Razor­back Hog Hat as a coach leads the fascist-arm-waving Hog Call. Please, God, help state lead­ers main­tain dignity.

Amen and tashi delek (Tibetan salu­ta­tion for “good luck”).