By PATRICIA ALEX
The hot dogs will be replaced by hummus at Rutgers Stadium, and out-of-towners will be instructed on the vagaries of Middlesex County’s Route 18 construction project.
Such earth-bound details have occupied organizers for months in preparation for the visit to Rutgers next month of the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism. Through his advocacy of non-violent conflict resolution, the Dalai Lama has become one of the world’s best-known spiritual leaders.
Working out the logistics of the visit has spawned a frenzy of temporal details – such as shuttle bus schedules and vegetarian concessions. But organizers say they hope those will, ultimately, give way to the transcendent on the state university’s flagship campus.
Linda Schulze, an assistant vice president at Rutgers and lead organizer for the visit, said it presented an opportunity to spur discussion throughout the academic year. “This opens up an opportunity for dialogue, an opportunity to talk about these issues and ways of resolving conflict.”
The 70-year-old Dalai Lama in 1989 won the Nobel Peace Prize for his insistence on a non-violent approach in trying to negotiate with China for the liberation of Tibet. China took control of his homeland by force in 1959. The Dalai Lama and more than 80,000 other Tibetans fled across the Himalayas to exile in northern India.
This Dalai Lama, the 14th, has traveled extensively in recent decades, meeting with world leaders and drawing crowds around the globe. Tenzin Gyatso last traveled to the United States in 2003, where he spoke in Central Park. In 1998, he visited the Tibetan Buddhist Center in Warren County. Rutgers requested that he appear during his latest trip to the United States, which will last from mid-September to mid-November, by writing to the Office of Tibet in New York.
Rutgers will host his lecture, titled “Peace, War and Reconciliation,” on Sept. 25 at 10:30. Later in the day he will have an audience with Himalayan Buddhists at Madison Square Garden, and the following day he will appear at Columbia University.
More than 25,000 tickets have already been sold for his appearance at Rutgers Stadium, which seats 41,000, said Schulze.
Additionally, new courses, lectures, art exhibits and seminars are planned around the New Brunswick/Piscataway campuses throughout the academic year. Incoming freshmen from Rutgers Douglass and Cook colleges will be making “peace flags” during their orientations later this month that will decorate the stadium.
The flags will later hang from a “peace tree” on the Douglass campus,” said Regina Navickas, a member of the Religion Students Association. Navickas was so excited about the upcoming visit, she says, that she couldn’t sleep the night before the tickets went on sale.
“There’s been a buzz around campus that’s getting louder and louder,” said Navickas, who plans to make a scrapbook of the visit to someday “show the grandkids.”
The lecture has sparked excitement off campus as well. Way off campus.
Michael Meade, an immigration counselor in Galway, Ireland, found out about the Rutgers event from an Indian Web site on Buddhism. He plans to travel to New Jersey for the lecture and celebrate his 49th birthday listening to the Dalai Lama.
“I’m pretty delighted about it,” said Meade. “We have been going through our own peace process here. Reading the Dalai Lama has been a lesson to me as an Irish person about trying for lasting peace and communication.”
Rutgers President Richard McCormick said in a statement he hoped the visit will spark similar reflection on campus.
“This broad rubric has the potential to foster explorations of a wide range of issues,” said McCormick, such as human and animal rights, science and morality, and religion and global conflict. “The visit of the Dalai Lama also gives us an opportunity to broaden our understanding of different cultures through related concerts, exhibits, films and other cultural events.”
One of the first such events will begin before the visit. The monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery at Emory University in Atlanta will construct an intricate mandala sand painting at the Zimmerli Art Museum over a four-day period beginning on Sept. 21. Museum visitors can view the monks at work during that period.
By Tibetan tradition, the sand painting will be ceremoniously destroyed after its completion to serve as a metaphor for life’s fleeting quality. The sand will be collected and placed in an urn, and during the closing ceremony at the Zimmerli Art Museum, a small portion will be scattered into the waters of the Raritan River.
Schulze said she thought reasonable ticket prices – $10 for the general public, $5 for Rutgers students – attracted many people to the event. “We get calls and e-mails every day,” she said. “People are really happy we are doing this.”
Seating will begin at 6:30 a.m., rain or shine. Seating is assigned and tickets and parking vouchers must be purchased in advance.
