With his trademark self-deprecating charm and wit, the Dalai Lama’s two-hour talk on world peace delighted an audience here Sunday.
BY ALEXANDRA ALTER
Few public speakers, however self-possessed, would have the nerve to tell 13,000 people who had paid to hear them that, oops, sorry, they had nothing to say. But that’s what the Dalai Lama told the throng at the Office Depot Center in Sunrise on Sunday when he took the stage more than 30 minutes late.
“I think most of you have come here perhaps with some expectation,” he said. “Then, I have nothing to offer, just show my face and teeth.”
With his trademark self-deprecating charm, the Dalai Lama launched into a two-hour talk on how to achieve world peace through inner peace, drawing occasional laughter and applause from the packed audience.
In fact, it was hard to tell what delighted the audience more — the 69-year-old Tibetan monk’s admission that he used to claw his older brother during fights, or his assertion that war is an outdated concept.
“War is out of date, obsolete,” he said to loud applause, adding he was heartened that so many Americans have protested the Iraq war.
In an audience of devotees, like the prominent Tibetan Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, father of the actress Uma Thurman and a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama, as well as the merely curious, many seemed to respond to the Dalai Lama’s discussion of “external and internal disarmament.”
“Until our mind becomes gentler, the human intelligence can always find some means of violence,” he said, arguing that people without weapons could still kill each other with stones if they have violent thoughts.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, fled Tibet in 1959 to escape the Chinese occupying power. Since then, he has advocated conflict resolution through negotiation and dialogue. In 1989 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
To many devotees, his message of nonviolence is particularly appealing.
‘PERFECT EXAMPLE’
“He is the perfect example of peace,” said Marta Gomez, a Buddhist practitioner from St. Petersburg who came to hear him speak.
Beatrice Paz, a Miami resident who has practiced Buddhism for three years and got free tickets to Sunday’s talk through her brother’s mother-in-law, said the Dalai Lama’s appeal is universal.
“I don’t see him necessarily just as a Buddhist leader,” she said.
CASUAL INTIMACY
Sitting on a stage flanked by giant screens projecting his broad, smiling face, his legs folded up under his maroon robes, the Dalai Lama, who last visited South Florida in 1999, exuded an air of casual intimacy. He made jokes about his broken English and asked people who had heard him speak at Nova Southeastern University on Saturday to cover their ears if he repeated himself.
While the Dalai Lama addressed the plight of the Tibetan people living under Chinese occupation and discussed the war in Iraq, he avoided politics, deftly dodging a question about how he would advise the next U.S. president. “I think you Americans, you are in a better position to advise the next president,” he said with a smile.
