By EMILY YEARWOOD-LEE
VANCOUVER – Amid the flurry of preparations for the Dalai Lama’s visit, it will be some harried organizer’s job to buy honey and brown bread.
It’s the preferred snack of the beloved Tibetan leader and securing a handy stash is one of the many tasks organizers must tick off the list before His Holiness arrives later this week for a 19-day visit to Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto.
“We will go out and make sure we get the best honey and the best brown bread there is to be had in Toronto,” says Rigzin Dolkar, adding the Dalai Lama’s personal cook will also arrive a few days in advance to go grocery shopping in preparation for his stay.
There are other small details to attend to, says Dolkar, such as ensuring a comfortable chair for the 68-year-old and arranging for hot thermoses of tea.
His followers fondly refer to him as a simple monk and insist he demands no special treatment, but bringing the Dalai Lama to town is not easy.
The exiled spiritual and political leader of Tibet last visited Canada in 1993. Since then demands on his time have skyrocketed along with his popstar-like appeal.
Organizers in Vancouver started making checklists more than two years ago in preparation for the Tibetan Buddhist leader’s arrival, says Victor Chan.
“It’s just these things have a tenancy to snowball,” he says. “When we first worked out a schedule two years ago, (it was) not as intense as now,” says Chan.
“The moment the word gets out the Dalai Lama is coming, people start coming out of the woodwork and they started to pitch programs at us.”
The Dalai Lama will arrive Saturday in Vancouver with what is expected to be a 12-person entourage, including personal attendants, a private secretary and security.
For three days he will deliver spiritual teachings, receive honorary degrees, participate in a roundtable discussion with fellow Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Shirin Ebadi and step out at a musical tribute hosted by celebrity fan Goldie Hawn. He will also attend a luncheon with B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell.
Then it’s on to Ottawa, where he will meet Prime Minister Paul Martin and attend a reception for MPs who supported a call for negotiations between the exiled Tibetan leader and the Chinese government. He’ll be introduced at a public talk there by singer Alanis Morisette.
China told Canada Thursday it would be inappropriate for Martin to meet the Dalai Lama because he is not just a religious figure.
A day earlier, Martin defended his decision to meet the Dalai Lama, describing him as a “very important religious figure.”
Beijing considers Tibet part of China and the Dalai Lama a champion of Tibetan independence.
The April 23 meeting at the home of the Rev. Marcel Gervais, Roman Catholic archbishop of Ottawa, will also include a group of community and spiritual leaders.
The majority of the Dalai Lama’s time will be spent in Toronto, where he will lead devotees and tantric newbies from April 25 to May 5 in the Kalachakra, one of the most important rituals in the Tibetan Buddhist faith.
It’s the first time the ritual, stretched out over several days, will be performed in Canada.
Participants will be led in prayers and purification and visualization exercises and witness the creation of a mandala symbol from sand, which believers say represents the palace that Buddha Kalachakra lives in.
At the end of the ritual, the sand creation is destroyed as a symbol of impermanence in the world, says Dolkar.
“It serves as a universal prayer for the development of the ethics of peace and harmony, and it serves as blessing for the people who are taking the Kalachakra, and it is also a blessing for the environment in which it is given,” she says.
In preparation, an army of some 200 volunteers are being scheduled to usher, deliver tea and assist in the kitchen during the ritual program.
The majority of volunteers are non-Tibetan North Americans in their 20s and 30s and many were unfamiliar with the ritual when they signed up, says co-ordinator Salden Kunga.
But their lack of experience is not important, says the former monk, since the ritual is simple to follow and volunteers will not be directly involved in its administration.
Many of the volunteers have travelled to India, where they saw the Dalai Lama, and want to give something back by volunteering, says Kunga.
The most sought-after gig is that of an usher inside the teaching venue – “those jobs (where) they can see the Dalai Lama and listen to the teachings all the time.”
In Vancouver, Chan says much of his organizing committee’s time has gone toward weeding through a massive pile of essays written by people keen to see the spiritual leader and juggling access requests from a more demanding crowd of 400-plus reporters.
They’ve even been working on accommodating prisoners who wanted to view the proceedings over the Internet.
Co-ordinating the celebrity side of the visit hasn’t been as painful as one might expect. Chan only wishes that other stars he invited to Vancouver – Richard Gere and Pierce Brosnan, both fans of the Dalai Lama – could make it.
More difficult, he says, has been liaising with Tehran-based Ebadi, who will participate in a roundtable with His Holiness and Tutu, as well as received honorary degrees.
“She doesn’t speak much English, so everything is being conducted in Farsi,” he says. “They do not know much about Vancouver or Canada, and they have been getting a lot of media requests for interviews,” which Chan has helped Ebadi sift through it.
And other special guests, including some of the most important Tibetan scholars from Europe and America, will be descending on the city for an academic conference attended by the Dalai Lama.
Chan, who has travelled with the Dalai Lama in the United States while writing a book with him, laughs when asked if the famous monk will have some personal time to himself.
“I wish I could take him around to Stanley Park and show him this beautiful city. But unfortunately his program is much too hectic.”
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Some facts about Tibet:
Population:Six million Tibetans and about 7.5 million Chinese.
Size:2.5 million square kilometres.
Capital:Lhasa.
Location:Between India and China in the Himalayas.
Main industry: Agriculture and animal husbandry.
History: Historic Tibet comprises the three provinces of Amdo now split by China into the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan; Kham, incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Qinghai; and U-Tsang which, with western Kham, is today referred to by China as the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The TAR comprises less than half of historic Tibet and was created by China in 1965 for administrative reasons.
Tibetans use the term Tibet to mean the three provinces.
Invaded: China invaded in 1950 as a ‘liberation.’ Tibet had declared itself independent of China in 1913 but China never renounced its claim to sovereignty.
Relationship with China now: Colony occupied by China.
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A sketch of the Dalai Lama:
Name:Lhamo Dhondrub.
Age:68.
Born:July 6, 1935, Taktser, Tibet.
Full title:Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, which translates as Holy Lord, Gentle Glory, Compassionate, Defender of the Faith, Ocean of Wisdom. Tibetans normally refer to His Holiness as Yeshe Norbu, the Wishfulfilling Gem or simply Kundun – The Presence.
Education:Trained in Tibetan Buddhism since age two.
Trained as: An engineer
Profession: The 14th incarnation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara. He’s also the leader of Tibet.
Credentials: Officials found him after receiving visions of his location. At age two, he correctly identified belongings of 13th Dalai Lama and completed other tests successfully.
Job duties: He is the most prominent and powerful lama of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism. He attends to matters of Tibetan state, culture and spirituality.
Enthroned:Feb. 22, 1940.
Exiled: In 1959. The Dalai Lama runs Tibet’s government in exile in Dharamsala, India.
Followers:Goldie Hawn, Richard Gere, Steven Seagal and Uma Thurman.
Awarded: Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
Quote: “I am just a simple Buddhist monk – no more, nor less.”
