Dalai Lama expected to speak at UMass this fall; details being worked out

AMHERST — The University of Massachusetts Amherst is in discussions with the Dalai Lama to have him speak at the university this fall.



Nancy Buffone, the university’s executive director of external relations and university events, said the university was in “planning mode.”



“We’re expecting a visit in the fall, that’s all I can say right now,” Buffone said Thursday. “We’re in very intense planning.”



The details of his appearance at UMass are still being worked out.



The Dalai Lama, Tibetans’ exiled spiritual leader, last came to the region on May 9, 2007, to speak at Smith College and receive an honorary doctorate from that institution.



He was welcomed that day by both Hampshire and Smith colleges. The Five Colleges run an exchange program with the Tibetan universities in exile in India. The Dalai Lama also spoke privately with members of the Tibetan Association of Western Massachusetts.



“With a good education, facilities and warm-heartedness, a person becomes fuller and, I think, better equipped to face problems,” he said to a group of thousands at Smith. “Education gives us guidance, and warm-heartedness gives us the proper use of all our knowledge.”



Constance Kassor, a lecturer in the religion department at Smith and the current director of the Five College Tibetan Studies in India exchange program, said she is pleased the Dalai Lama will likely return to the Valley.



“It’s a really exciting opportunity, especially for our students,” Kassor said Thursday.



Some students who have participated in the exchange program have gotten to meet the Dalai Lama and have a private audience with him, Kassor said.



Anna Lee White, a senior at Mount Holyoke College, participated in the program in January 2013. During her stay in northern India, the Dalai Lama visited the university for a week to give public teachings, she said.



“It was incredible to attend these teachings along with thousands of Tibetans,” White wrote in an email to the Gazette.



During her group’s private meeting with the Dalai Lama, White remembers how many groups were waiting to see him, but how calm, friendly and curious he was with everyone he spoke with.



The group before them were all blind Indian children, and he gave each of them a hug before saying goodbye, White wrote.



“I remember him telling all of us that he hopes that someday we would have the chance to travel to Tibet and continue learning about Buddhism and see what it is like there ourselves,” she wrote.



The experience led her to return to India the following year for a semester and she will be studying Hindi in India next year after graduating in May.



She will miss the Dalai Lama’s visit, but hopes to hear about it from her sister, who attends Amherst College, she said.



Elena Read, a senior at Smith, also participated in the exchange program in 2013.



She said the Dalai Lama’s teaching sessions stuck with her more than the private visit with him.



Much of the teaching focused on death, and living with the awareness that one day each person will die, she said.



“The only certainty in life is that it comes to an end,” Read said. “And so to kind of not waste time, I think that stuck with me pretty strongly.”



Tibetans believe that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnated being of the Buddhist patron saint of Tibet, known as the Bodhisattva of Compassion, according to the Dalai Lama’s website. Bodhisattvas are beings who have chosen to become reincarnated rather than achieve nirvana so that they can serve humanity, according to the website.



Born on July 6, 1935, in northeastern Tibet, the Dalai Lama began education as a Buddhist monk at age 6.



In 1950, the Dalai Lama was called upon to lead Tibet in the face of a Chinese invasion. He went to Beijing for peace talks with Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders 1954, but was forced into exile in 1959 and has lived in Dharamsala in northern India ever since.



The Dalai Lama has spoken to the United Nations and governments of the United States and Europe, seeking for Tibet the status of an independent nation and a place of peace. He has advocated for non-violence.



He has traveled to nearly 70 countries on six continents and received more than 150 awards including, in 1989, the Nobel Peace Prize. He has also written or co-written more than 100 books.



While the Dalai Lama continues to be the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, he is no longer the political leader, having transferred that authority to a democratically elected leader in 2011.



Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at deisen@gazettenet.com.





