NEW YORK, September 21 – Tens of thousands of people flooded into New York’s Central Park for a free public lecture by Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
The lecture, one of the highlights of the Dalai Lama’s ongoing US tour, had all the trappings of an open-air rock concert, complete with a massive public address system and celebrity announcers.
“Hello, New York!” bellowed Hollywood star Richard Gere, before introducing the Dalai Lama as “one of the great beings, perhaps, to walk on this earth.”
The lecture drew an enormous crowd to the park’s East Meadow, and by the time the Tibetan leader began speaking at noon (1600 GMT) there was still a queue stretching 10 blocks down Fifth Avenue of people trying to get in.
The audience was an eclectic mix of maroon-robed Tibetan monks, ex-patriate Tibetans, western Buddhists, Hari Krishna devotees, and thousands of the simply curious.
T-shirts on view ranged from “Free Tibet” to “Jimi Hendrix Lives” and “I Love Jesus.”
Some of the volunteers brought a touch of Zen philosophy to their efforts at crowd control around the open-air stage area.
“You’re almost at the end of the line, or the beginning, depending on where you feel you want to get to,” shouted one usher over the heads of a baffled queue of people.
“I can’t say how breathtaking it is to look out and see all of you on the hills of Central Park,” said Gere, a long-time follower of Tibetan Buddhism and a passionate advocate of Tibetan liberation from Chinese rule.
Before embarking on a teaching from Buddhist scripture, the Dali Lama told the crowd to enjoy the sunny weather and pretend they were on a picnic.
“Enjoy yourselves and listen to me in the background,” he said.
“If it’s interesting, pay attention. If you think it’s nonsense, look at other things.”
In the evening, the Dalai Lama was due to attend a special concert, titled “Healing The Divide,” at the Lincoln Center in Manhattan.
The concert for “peace and reconciliation” was to feature musicians as varied as Philip Glass, Tom Waits and Anoushka Shankar.
