Tribune Staff Writer
WALTHAM – With appearances at the FleetCenter and MIT’s conference on meditation, the Dalai Lama’s Boston-area visit this year has been much different than the last time around.
Five years ago, Brandeis University was the Tibetan spiritual leader’s stomping ground.
Then, in May 1998, he spoke to a crowd of more than 7,000 at the Gosman Sports Center, talked with students from the Heller Graduate School’s Institute of Sustainable International Development and received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from the 4,800-student university.
“He is truly a man of great charisma, as well as learning and diplomacy,” said Laurence Simon, co-director of the Institute of Sustainable International Development, which hosted the Dalai Lama.
The relationship between the Buddhist monk and Brandeis continues today. Brandeis will donate 138 Tibetan artworks to New York’s Tibet House, an organization devoted to preserving and displaying Tibetan art and culture.
In a ceremony Sept. 16 at New York’s Mark Hotel, Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz will present the pieces to the Dalai Lama, nearly doubling the existing Tibet House collection.
The Dalai Lama has mandated that the Tibet House preserve artifacts for eventual repatriation in a Tibetan national museum if and when the Chinese-ruled land gains its independence.
The Brandeis collection was given to the school’s Rose Art Museum in 1971 by the late Nettie and Louis Horch and the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich, who acquired most of the works while traveling Central Asia in 1925 and 1926.
The collection, dubbed the Riverside Collection, was initially housed in New York’s Riverside Museum, but was donated to Brandeis when that institution closed.
Contact between the Dalai Lama and Brandeis began when a member of the leader’s government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, enrolled in Brandeis’ Graduate School of Sustainable International Development, Simon said.
Tswang Phuntso, who now handles the Dalai Lama’s Latin American relations, returned to India with a letter of invitation from Simon to the Dalai Lama, which he accepted.
During his two-day visit, the Dalai Lama met on separate occasions with Simon’s students, Boston’s Tibetan community and the area’s “finest and best-known China scholars” to discuss prospects for reaching a political settlement with the Chinese government, Simon said.
All of the events were at Brandeis, though the Dalai Lama stayed at the Marriott Hotel in Newton.
Born in 1935 as Tenzin Gyatso, he was recognized at age 2, based on a vision in a lake, as the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. When he was 15, Mao Tse-tung’s China invaded Tibet and has ruled since.
In 1959, he fled to India, where he has been the spiritual and political leader of six million Tibetans, many living in exile in India and Nepal. In 1989, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy of non-violence in his people’s struggle for independence.
Speaking at Brandeis’ Gosman Center in self-described broken English, the Dalai Lama concluded by saying he was “very, very optimistic” that Tibet would gain its freedom. “Meantime, I want to appeal to you, please help us, in order to save Tibetan nation, its unique cultural heritage, so that we can make a better contribution for our neighbor, brother, sisters and humanity as a whole.”
Simon, who played the role of host, recalled that one day in 1998 he arrived at the Marriott to find that the Dalai Lama’s eye was bothering him. Simon summoned a doctor friend who diagnosed a sty and prescribed the Dalai Lama to order a hard-boiled egg from room service, keep it warm, and place it on his eye whenever it bothered him.
The next day, on the way to the Gosman Center, Simon asked the Dalai Lama about his eye. Smiling, the man pulled from his robe the egg.
Joshua Myerov can be reached at 781-398-8004 or jmyerov@cnc.com.
