Washington D.C., USA– July 14, 2011
From Michael Jolliffe:
At the beginning of a series of teachings His Holiness the Dalai Lama always stresses that all people share the wish to be free from suffering, the wish to achieve happiness, and the right to have those wishes come true. He says this over and over and over, and so I think it is clear that he really wants this point to be understood, perhaps more than any other he’ll make in his lifetime. If that’s the case, then it behooves us to consider why this is so important for all of His Holiness’ students and supporters to realize. I don’t know the real answer, but I think that it must partly be about establishing the basis for a shared sense of dignity. And perhaps with a shared sense of dignity, people as a community will be willing to let go of petty, shallow differences that sometimes are used as wedges to push us apart.
Today His Holiness arranged for his friend His Eminence Donald Cardinal Wuerl Archbishop of Washington to visit the Verizon Center. His Holiness made special preparations to sit level with His Eminence as they briefly reminisced on their first meeting 25 years ago at an interreligious conference in Assissi, Italy. His Holiness remarked how the Catholic Church’s work for human welfare, particularly in the field of education, is admirable and personally presented His Eminence with a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, stressing that His Eminence only needed to see the Buddha as a great philosopher and nothing more.
His Holiness made another arrangment today to demonstrate his committement to harmony between diverse groups of people. During one section of the Kalachakra initiation, representatives from various nationatlites went on stage to represent some of the national groups in the audience (Tibetan, Vietnamese, American, Bhutanese, Chinese and Japanese). (For the Americans who want to know, we were represented by actor Richard Gere.)
The great thing about taking the Kalachakra initiation is that when it concludes it is said that all the initiates become “vajra brothers and sisters” because they now share the same spiritual parent. Somtimes the word “vajra” is used to mean “indestructible” or “inseparable,” and although I am not sure that that is the sense meant here, I like to think of it that way: indestrucitble, inseparable brothers and sisters. Not everyone has a good relationship with their sibiling — or even has a sibiling — but everyone understands, in general, what it is like to love someone unconditionally.
So, I guess by the end of tomorrow I’ll have 15,000 more siblings to think about. I suppose I’m ready as I’ll ever be. And please excuse me if I look distracted, I’ll probably be busy having “We Are Family: A Musical Message for All” running in my head.
