His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Pilgrimage
Tuesday, May 1st, 2007Today His Holiness the Dalai Lama was in Houston. I didn’t go and couldn’t listen to the streaming audio of his talks at 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. I had classes to teach (this is the last week of classes before exams), and I have already had the astonishing privilege of sitting just ten rows away from him when he talked in Durban, South Africa in–oh, I guess 1997 or so. But by remarkable coincidence, my rental of Werner Herzog’s film called Wheel of Time (about a pilgrimage and ceremonies led by the Dalai Lama in 2002), arrived in today’s mail, as did a letter from a prisoner who had just had an argument with a fellow inmate about whether it is right to call any living being “His Holiness.” So the day has been a weave of thoughts, memories, and impressions centered on the man who calls himself “a simple monk who keeps his vows.” [read on]
Kendall