Hello, Dalai
On Saturday afternoon my mother and I had the privilege of seeing the Dalai Lama at Qwest field. Well, us and 64,998 fellow Seattleites got to bask in the presence his holiness on what turned out to be the very first glorious bought of weather in 2008. Perhaps global warming was responsible for the 83 degrees worth of sunburn I developed that afternoon, but I’d like to think that my favorite Buddhist master had a little something to do with it.
Mona of Kirida fame was gracious enough to give me tickets to the big day and I accepted at once. After all, when the Universe offers up a chance to see the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama it is in your best interest to clear your schedule. You know, don’t hide your light under bushel basket and all that.
In order to carpe the hell out of the diem, my mother and I put on our best holy garments (which oddly enough include denim and hooded sweatshirts) and hit the scene with full force. Seeing as neither of us had previously set foot onto Qwest Field (go Seahawks) the sheer construction of what is known as one of the loudest stadiums in the country was enough to stir feelings of expectant excitement in us. There were the industrial cranes set against the backdrop of the cascades, the children dressed in their best shiny robes, the four dollar bottled water, and all before we found our seats.
Earlier in the week a few friends had speculated as to what, exactly, the Dalai Lama would do during his much-anticipated holding of court that afternoon. Magic tricks? A few tunes on the old karaoke box? While I would have loved to close the retractable roof and take a few whacks at the world’s largest pinata with the spiritual and, sometimes, temporal leader of Tibetan Buddhists worldwide, I was excited to hear him speak about, well, anything. And luckily for us, our excitement to simply be in the presence of his holiness made up for the fact that we could only make out about 1/3 of his speech. Qwest field, as it turns out, may be excellent for spectacle, but the acoustics leave much to be desired.
Under normal circumstances, the inaudibility of his speech would have set me off to no end, but there, under the Seattle sky next to my mother on the first warm day of the year, I simply shut up and let the cherry-picked words of the Dalai Lama come to me as they pleased. So, I sipped my four dollar water and stared out into the crowd. I tried to read his lips from one of the two jumbo screens. I listened to an eleven year old violin prodigy play him a song. I watched him laugh and yawn and bless the audience.
Here was a man who cracked jokes and talked about his mother. From what I heard, he spoke about the importance of compassion and creating a peaceful future for children.
I tried to find my epiphany in the 314th section of Qwest field. Perhaps because I was in desperate need of a nap, or perhaps because the heat was finally getting to me, or perhaps because I had just finished reading Eat, Pray, Love and was simply too embarrassed by my own complex feelings regarding new age aesthetics to pursue enlightenment directly, I couldn’t seem to push myself into the moment and feel like a child of the Universe.
“I bet there will be a Real Housewives of New York City marathon on TV when I get home,” I thought. Then I glanced down at my prayer bead, given to me by a volunteer on my way into the stadium. I reminded myself to concentrate. I reminded myself that this was important.
My mother turned to me and echoed what the various opening speakers had said about the value of family and raising children with compassion. “You’ll be an excellent mother some day,” she whispered, holding my hand in her identical one. There it was.
