Thank Goodness It's Monday #304

THREE DAYS OF PEACE AND LOVE,

JERSEY STYLE

Pico Iyer, essayist, journalist world traveler, and friend and biographer of the Dalai Lama made a presentation at the Newark Museum late last week.

His talk was part of the ongoing 100^th anniversary celebration and reinstallation of the museum’s spectacular Tibetan collection. It also served as a prelude to the noteworthy Newark (New Jersey) Peace Education Conference this past weekend featuring the Dalai Lama among the three Nobel laureates, international leaders, local anti-violence activists and, yes, movie stars.

I’ve got notes. A bunch of them that I think are worth sharing. And so I’ll take this TGIM opportunity to do just that.

But before I do, a little preface.

Pico Iyer spoke for a little under an hour from behind a lectern on the stage of the newly refurbished auditorium at the Museum. The space is tech sophisticated, but other than the speaker system, he used none of it.

Yet he held the audience spellbound.

How? Several points were immediately apparent.

His only notes, which he referred to sparingly, were the outline he had sketched out on a single sheet of phone-side notepaper from the hotel where he was quartered.

 And he immediately acknowledged his tech unsavvy-ness. Having no PowerPoint, he said, might lead us to believe his presentation might be both powerless and pointless.   

Which, of course, it wasn’t. He suggested that, since we are now exposed to as many images in a day as Victorians were in a year, it might be refreshing to experience the simple power of the human voice to make a point or two.

And he went on to prove it by speaking from the heart and with a complete command of his subject matter.

From Iyer’s half-century of detailed involvement in personal experiences and journeys with the Dalai Lama, and from a position of unique friendship he has come to hold, I gleaned these additional  TGIM Takeaways that I want to share today:

►Iyer, now in his 50s, is of East Indian ancestry, raised in a sophisticated academic family, growing up primarily in the west, particularly England and the USA. As a small child the Dalai Lama, now 75, ascended to the Lion Throne high in the Himalayas and became the political and spiritual ruler of 6 million people who would shortly be driven from his homeland by the Communist Chinese. Seemingly the two were worlds apart. But --

TGIM Takeaway: We all share common ground. As a child of 4 Iyer received a picture from the exiled young-adult Dalai Lama showing him enthroned when he was also 4. From that moment on Iyer related to their shared status as strangers in a strange land.

► That photo became a treasure that Iyer displayed prominently into adulthood. But after considerable success as a journalist and author, Iyer lost both the photo and many of his worldly possession when a forest fire destroyed his California home.

While he first grieved the loss, and although he was not and is not a Buddhist per se, through his experiences with the Dalai Lama he came to this --

TGIM Takeaway: You can’t cling to the stuff of the world. Take it into you head and heart and hold it there where it can be forever your reality.

The completed mandala

► As I write this the Dalai Lama is at the Newark Museum blessing a delicate, elaborate Buddha of Compassion "Lord Avelokitesvara" sand mandala -- a metaphor of life's impermanence -- painstakingly created over a number of days by a team of skilled Tibetan Buddhist monks. It will be ritually destroyed and dispersed into the nearest body of moving water (the nearby Passaic River, in fact) to create blessings for all.

But despite the attractive ceremony and religious custom in this, the Dalai Lama preaches this --

TGIM Takeaway: Science trumps fate. With all this pageantry and these complex belief systems, the Dalai Lama insists on bringing principles into the real world. He doesn’t even necessarily want people to become Buddhists; he prefers that they remain connected to their roots.

► A message for Newark and the world. “I think a one-time conference may not make a big impact on your community …” his Holiness told a press conference. “But …”

TGIM Takeaway: “… You yourself must make an effort to reduce violence.”

Apart from that reality check, Iyer also reiterated the Dalai Lama’s emphasis on concentrating on the present moment.

It’s classic counsel: Don’t dream or hope or pray for change. Work for it. Meet and engage problems face-to-face.

► A fundamental “truth” and understanding of Tibetan Buddhism is that existence is suffering; it has a cause; it has an end; and it has a cause to bring about its end. That view, however, is a pragmatic perspective that deals with the world as it is, and attempts to rectify it.

Iyer related how, when His Holiness finally reached safety after being forced to flee Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s observation to his brother after a long and dangerous escape from their ancestral homeland was not about tragedy and loss, but about opportunity. He said, speaking with all Tibetan Buddhists in mind, “Now we are free” – to begin on a new political and spiritual path to advance the destiny of a previously isolated Himalayan people into a modern, democratic world.

TGIM Takeaway: You can change the world by the way you look at the world. Suffering is not the same as unhappiness. Happiness has to do with perception, not circumstances.  

►Asked in the Q&A that followed his talk if there might ever be a China/Tibet reconciliation, Iyer reiterated the view of the Dalai Lama, who has given up his political responsibilities to the recently elected, non-monk, Harvard academic Lobsang Sangay who is the new prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile.

TGIM Takeaway: Too much anger destroys and won’t solve the problem.

Tibet may be viewed as just a small finger on hand that is largely Chinese that, in turn, is part of the body that is all mankind. But to hurt it or torment it eventually injures the whole body. Why would anyone continue to do that?

And it’s not just Tibet. We are all interdependent. There are 200 million “displaced” people in the world, people removed from their ancestral connections. Every person’s destiny is, in a sense, the other person’s destiny.

►That just about brings this TGIM message full circle. Buddhism teaches that desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering we mentioned early on. Still, the realm we live in, the realm of man, is considered the highest realm of rebirth.

Train your mind. Without the capacity for mental concentration and insight, Buddhism explains, one's mind is left undeveloped, unable to grasp the true nature of things. Good actions bring about happiness in the long run and offers

 The opportunity to achieve enlightenment, or Nirvana.

Hope this has been enlightening.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S.  “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, religious name,  Tenzin Gyatso, (shortened from Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso,) born Lhamo Dondrub in1935, said that. But I bet you guessed that already.