WOODSTOCK, N.Y. September 23 – The Dalai Lama took Woodstock by surprise, offering a speech on world peace to about 2,000 people who gathered in a park on word-of-mouth alone.
The spiritual leader to Buddhists worldwide squeezed in the visit to the artists’ colony on Friday between scheduled appearances to receive an honorary doctorate in Buffalo and a teaching event in New York City.
“All traditions teach love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance and discipline, perhaps with a different presentation, but the same inside,” the Dalai Lama said.
“God teaches us to love God and other people. Those who cause trouble in the world, their love for God is questionable. Different spiritual masters preach wonderful things and reduce human suffering, not create it.”
On the way to hear the Dalai Lama, the peaceful crowd funnelled past a white van, not realizing it contained an X-ray machine checking for weapons. The crowd even applauded the bomb-sniffing dogs after they scanned the area around the stage.
The Dalai Lama was to offer a private teaching session Saturday to 500 Buddhists at a nearby monastery.
But town supervisor Jeremy Wilber called the last-minute public appearance a “gift to the people of Woodstock.”
The Dalai Lama fled to India following an abortive 1959 uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule. A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, he travels widely as a speaker on religion and morality and a representative of Tibetan culture.
