The Dalai Lama Comes to Town

Along with 10,000 others, I crowd into the Maui War Memorial stadium to see his Holiness the Dalai Lama on his visit to Maui. Preferring not to pay $1,000 for a seat up front, I'm sitting about 100 yards from the stage in the hot Hawaii sun, peering at His Holiness way off in the distance. A big jumbotron screen provides a simulcast.

It has been a thirty-year dream to be in his presence, ever since seeing a video of one of his visits to America. His warmth and compassion draw me like a magnet. I may be here with 10,000 others, but the essence of this extraordinary being comes through as if we're meeting one on one. That is part of his gift.

As he enters the stage he brings his hands together in prayer position, giving everyone a warm smile, saying, "Aloha." He laughs (and everyone else laughs with him) at this being the one word he knows in Hawaiian.

Before starting the talk, he makes a comment about his translator: "He used to be a monk and now he isn't. That means you have one monk and one who is not monk." You can't help but like the guy.

His talk on "The Eight Verses for Training the Mind" is predictably esoteric, but the Dalai Lama somehow lets you feel he is talking to you and a few others sitting around him in a circle. "Happiness exists on the physical level and the mental level," he says. "The inability to achieve it stems from confusing the two, or not realizing the causality that links them."

Try as I might, I have trouble following his discourse, even though the topic fascinates me. It's no accident that I never became a Buddhist. I just can't seem to get my head around the "The Ten Stages of . . . , and the Six Agreememts for . . ." Instead, I'm blissfully happy just to sit in his presence and let the words flow over me.

Here is someone who is a living embodiment of what it means to live from an awakened place. His life is a demonstration of an unwavering focus on compassion and love as being the two most important values we can live by. His humility as a world leader and the 14th Dalai Lama deeply touches me. "I am not special," he says. "I am just like you."

What a blessing to have someone like him in the world as an inspiration for us all to be a little more kind, a little more understanding, and a little less ready to judge.