East meets West

Today, I attended the Dalai Lama's address to Atlanta in Centennial Olympic Park. Thousands gathered in the fog to hear his words of wisdom. I managed to get fairly close to the Emory stage. Civil Rights hero and my Representative to Congress, John Lewis welcomed the Buddhist leader. Of course, the president of Emory where the Dalai Lama has become a visiting professor gave the introduction.

The Dalai Lama spoke for over an hour, emphasizing compassion, positive emotions, and the rising above our differences of religion and culture. We must disarm individually, if we hope to disarm on the global scale, he said, promoting a message of world peace along the lines of Martin Luther King, whom he praised, and Mahatma Gandhi.

Thousands of Atlantans applauded his message through the fog.

Message of Compassion (click)

From the AJC:

CRUSADERS MEET

Rich Addicks / AJC

The Dalai Lama reaches over to U.S. Rep. John Lewis as Lewis is introduced as a civil rights crusader during a talk at Centennial Olympic Park.

Wisdom of the Dalai Lama:
(from http://www.dalailama.com/)

Training the Mind

The first seven verses of the Eight Verses for Training the Mind deal with the practices associated with cultivating the method aspect of the path such as compassion, altruism, aspiration to attain buddhahood, and so on. The eighth verse deals with the practices that are directed toward cultivating the wisdom aspect of the path.

• Verse 1
• Verse 2
• Verse 3

These are the first three verses from the Eight Verses of Training the Mind, and commentary by His Holiness the Dalai Lama that was given on November 8, 1998 in Washington D.C.

With Empathy,


Jameson