With self-deprecating jokes, the Dalai Lama elicited frequent laughs from the audience.
He told a story from when he was “a young, naughty Dalai Lama” and enviously watched his teacher feed and pet a parrot.
Hoping to attain the same kind of affection from the parrot, he grabbed some seeds to feed the bird.
“The parrot took very aggressively, and when I tried to touch, [he began] biting,” he explained. So the 10-year-old Dalai Lama took a small stick and hit the bird, he said, and the prospect of friendship between the Dalai Lama and the parrot was over.
Another questioner asked him to name his favorite movie. The Dalai Lama said he found most fiction films too violent, and that he preferred National Geographic and the Discovery Channel.
“The Dalai Lama is so fond of animal world, his next rebirth could be as animal,” he said a friend once teased him.
Students waited on line for hours this weekend—arriving in some cases as early as 1 a.m. on Friday, ten hours before tickets were to be distributed—to ensure that they would get to see the Dalai Lama.
The event sold out quickly.
The speech was simulcast in the Science Center and also broadcast live on the Harvard University Asia Center’s website.
Tenzin Dickyi ’06, who grew up hearing the Dalai Lama speak on religious occasions in Dharamsala, India, said the talk was appropriate for the largely student audience.
“It was very meaningful to have him there and stress that we need to be better human beings and not just brainy intellectuals,” she said. “We are always trying to improve our academics, but none of us think too much about being better persons.”
The Dalai Lama’s visit to Harvard is his first since 1995, when he spoke at the ARCO Forum. He was scheduled to speak in the Memorial Church last year, but his visit to the U.S. was scrapped because of health concerns. Earlier in the day yesterday, University President Lawrence H. Summers—who wore a white ceremonial scarf, or kata, draped over his neck—welcomed the Dalai Lama to the University.
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church Peter J. Gomes introduced the Dalai Lama, joking that even at a place as old as Harvard, the Dalai Lama was “an even more ancient institution.”
Gomes turned the podium over to Kirby, who had initially invited the Dalai Lama in his former capacity as head of the Asia Center. Kirby called the Tibetan monk a “scholar and teacher who has received tenure in realms far beyond our control.”
The Dalai Lama is currently touring the U.S., and spoke Sunday in the Fleet Center to a packed crowd of nearly 15,000. He also attended a conference at MIT.
Today he heads to New York City, where he will conduct teachings and speak in Central Park.
—Staff writer J. Hale Russell can be reached at jrussell@fas.harvard.edu.