By Catherine E. Galioto
A Nobel Peace Prize winner, spiritual leader, best-selling author and government leader-in-exile will come to campus in six days.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama will speak Sunday at Rutgers Stadium, delivering the lecture “Peace, War and Reconciliation.”
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th dalai lama, will make his first public visit to the University that day.
The Dalai Lama serves as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists worldwide but also led the nation-state of Tibet until 1959, when he was forced into exile years after occupation by China.
Ruling his people from exile in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama has toured the globe extensively, preaching nonviolence, and saw a surge of Buddhist thought into the Western world.
His speech at the University is part of such travel, as the Dalai Lama is on a short U.S. tour.
He spent Friday through yesterday in Tucson, Ariz., and is scheduled to appear Tuesday at University of Texas in Austin and Thursday at Rice University in Houston. His appearances on the East Coast include a talk next Monday at Columbia University.
The Dalai Lama will visit Stanford University, in Palo Alto, Calif., on Nov. 4 and 5, before heading to Washington, D.C., for a final public appearance Nov. 8 through 9.
According to University spokeswoman Nicole Pride, thousands of tickets are sold for the lecture, with groups as far away as Ohio buying tickets to the lecture. Others have rented buses.
His speech serves as the keynote event in a semester that will focus on issues related to conflict and moral obligation. Leading up to his visit, the University has planned honors seminars, films, lectures and special concerts.
A recent speech in New York City’s Central Park in 2003 drew a reported 7,500 people, and University officials said they are coordinating appropriate security for a similar large audience at the University and for the Dalai Lama himself.
More than 25,000 tickets were sold before the semester began.
“This is an immense undertaking,” said Sandy Lanman, University spokeswoman.
Besides organizing a bus shuttle from the train station, the police presence and the Dalai Lama’s security, the University is also soliciting questions from the public through the University’s Web site, www.rutgers.edu.
The Dalai Lama will answer some of the submitted questions in a question-and-answer period following his lecture. Lanman said the submissions vary widely.
Tibetan Buddhists believe that, as the 14th dalai lama, Gyatso is the reincarnate of the Buddha of Compassion.
As both the Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader, the Dalai Lama fled the nation-state after a failed uprising against communist China, which still rules over Tibet since its invasion in 1949.
The Dalai Lama remains in India, along with the Tibetan-government-in-exile, and refuses to use violence against the ruling Chinese.
For these ongoing efforts, the Dalai Lama won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, despite protests from China.
Since then, his books, such as “Freedom in Exile,” “The Art of Happiness” and “Ethics for a New Millennium,” have further introduced the Dalai Lama to a Western audience.
His recent speeches have focused on the call for peace worldwide, seek a compassionate solution to conflicts – such as the war in Iraq – and reflect on world events, such as the Sept. 11 attacks.
The University announced the visit Nov. 14, 2004. Since then, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs Linda Schulze, along with a student planning committee and other committees, have planned events leading up to the visit.
Besides a focus on the New Jersey Film Festival, part of the Rutgers Film Co-op, the University’s art community arranged special exhibitions of Tibetan art, such as one on Douglass campus. In addition, the Zimmerli Art Museum will host the creation of a sand mandala by Tibetan monks.
The mandala – which is defined as both art and ritual – finds the monks creating a detailed picture in intricate piles of colored sand. The sand, drawn on a special platform, creates an illustration that often serves as a metaphor for earth and its inhabitants.
The mandala, which will start Wednesday, takes several days to make. After completion, the sand illustration is swept away, and a portion of the sand will be carried in a ceremonial walk to the Raritan River.
There, the monks will deposit the sand. The process serves as a symbol of impermanence.
Besides this, the University marketed several academic courses in the University catalog as part of the focus on the Dalai Lama. This semester, such courses as “Interdisciplinary Topics in East Asia: The Response of East Asia to the West” and “The Buddhist Path: Meditation, Transformation, and Enlightenment” are among the offerings.
The Dalai Lama is this year’s Mason Welch Gross lecturer. He will receive an honorary degree of letters at his speech.
