So, just spent a good chunk of the day at a teaching event with the Dalai Lama (and yes, I sang Hello Dolly on my walk down to the event, couldn’t resist). It’s happening like five blocks from my apartment, so that’s kind of cool. I’m not sure how I feel about the event yet.

For one thing, I am basically an entry-level Buddhist at best. The event was largely a close reading of Hymn to the World Transcendent (PDF download) by Nagarjuna.

At the beginning of the day, the Dalai Lama spoke in pretty easy-to-understand English, and I was getting optimistic that the whole event was actually going to be him speaking English. But that only lasted until it was time to dig into the verse.

One of the surprising thigns about the translation was how long it went on between bursts of English. He would talk for 5, 7, 10 minutes at a time (or so it seemed), and then we’d get an equally long English translation, while he waited. But they were so far apart it sort of became difficult to remember what he last said.

The event also had what I refer to as the Andrea Bocelli factor, in that a lack of connection with the headliner sort of makes the event less than expected. In the case of Bocelli, him being blind would either mean I’d get the cheapest seats possible or stay home, because I just perceive there being some inherent lack of connection between performer and audience.

Similarly, as I expected this event to largely be in Tibetan, I got a seat way up in the nosebleeds, since I didn’t think there was any benefit to paying $100 more to be closer to the Dalai Lama. So, it was a strange thing to sort of zone-out and look around the venue while the Dalai Lama was speaking and then focus when some random guy would speak the English. But, like I said, the translation came so much later, it didn’t really benefit you to watch the Dalai. He would be banging his fist into his thigh to emphasize a point, but there’s no way you coud figure out what part of the speech that was, and since we were getting a translation, it wasn’t delivered with the same gravitas and sense of performance. I’m curious how many people in the room can speak Tibetan. Would be a shame if the vast majority of people weren’t getting the benefit of hearing him on the first go-round.

So, on the text itself, I’m also of two minds. Very often, it is not a difficult piece to decipher, and a lot of time is spent on what even a poetry-hating entry-level Buddhist like me easily picked up from a cold reading. When it gets deep, though, they often tie it to things from other important texts (the phrase “Middle Way” came up a lot, and I’ve no clue what that is) and other Buddhist writers and told you what that line was written in response to at the time it was written. That stuff, usually, was often footnoted. Like, to really get the point of that line, you should read chapter 24 of the Middle Way thing… so, if it’s easy, they go over it. If it gets difficult, they send you elsewhere. Again, somewhere in the middle might have worked better for me.

So, tomorrow morning, we have a 2 hour session on another text, In Praise of Dependent Origination, and then the afternoon session is a message to Buddhists, so I’m thinking that will either be a) in English, or b) easier to follow, as the translation will be a little more back and forth. On Sunday, I also have tickets to his three hour talk, in the same venue, which is more of a public event, and meant for a more general audience.

It’s interesting how calm the event is. I’ve only been there for conferences and concerts before, and this is such a laid back, zenned out group in comparison. At the end of the second session, I beelined to the railing near the stage (from my high balcony perch), and got close, but for so many people, he is a spiritual leader of the highest order, that holding up an Art of Happiness book and a Sharpee seemed like the wrong vibe. Well, to hold that over other people seemed like the wrong vibe, so tomorrow I’m going to get down there earlier and get right on the rail.

The talk is given with the Dalai Lama sitting in lotus(?) hard to tell what’s going on under the robes, on an elevated throne-like thing. The rest of the stage is all various Buddhist Monks sitting around him. A big screen on each side of the stage lets you see the Dalai pretty easily. It seems wrong to say, but he has a very Yoda vibe. Not too tall, the lotus position on the throne makes him look even smaller (not helped by my far-off seat), and his broken English tends to make sentences flip around a bit, although not a full-on Yoda flip by any means.

One other thing that made me wonder about the event was there was some indication that they are hoping to put up podcasts of it afterward. So, with the Dalai Lama offering no visual augmentation to his speech, as it’ll be a good 5-7 minutes before you hear what he’s been saying (kudos to the translator, though, that guy’s a rock star. And the Dalai corrected a word here or there, so he must be pretty darn accurate otherwise), so I’m wondering how much the in-person aspect matters, and whether I’d get the same takeaway if I just listened to the podcast. Of course, that brings up an interesting question… would the Dalai Lama podcast just include the English he spoke and then the translator? Cuz otherwise, that’s a strange podcast, when half of it is going to be Tibetan.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings…

This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 4:01 pm and is filed under diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.