The Lama Report

I know I promised to write about my experience this weekend but I’m not sure where to start or what you want to know, so I’ll just start and see where it takes me. 

The Dalai Lama himself looks well, his usual joy child self. He joked about being in the hospital and mentioned that this is where he learned a great deal about the compassion of women, in the nurses who cared for him. Compassion is about touching another human being. Sound is a felt sense. If you don’t like being touched, give some serious thought to this. There is something there. 

What was the weekend about? It was really about a leader coming to be with his people. There was the public talk at the Skydome (Rogers Centre) discussing Human Approaches to World Peace. What a great topic. We see peace as a utopian, alturistic goal that makes it so completely unachieveable for us mere flawed humans. A human approach to world peace is not only something we can achieve, it is something that we can imagine, evision and strive to access in our daily lives. How wonderful! At the Skydome, the volunteers jobs were to sell t-shirts, books, hats, flags. They sold. It was hard to keep up with everyone’s enthusiasm but it was also beautiful. All the proceeds from the purchases went to the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre. 

We were given seats to go and listen to the talk which was lovely and unexpected. As it was winding down, I left and went back to the table because I knew people would be excited to buy their souvenirs, and they were. That was intense. 

Two things I walked away with... 

“Compassion comes from character.” 

What does this mean? Character comes from having a life well lived, you have faced struggles and hardships and learned that there is still love and joy, peace and beauty in the world, there is something to believe in, there is still something to walk toward. Character is what gets you out of bed in the morning, helps you fight your demons, mental, emotional, physical or spiritual, it is the core of you essence. That is where your compassion comes from. How can we be grateful for the crappy days? Because they build character and from that comes compassion. Gratitude is much easier to find all of a sudden. 

 “Peace is in our actions, not just our prayers and wishes.” 

Being the change you want to world is far more simple than it seems. It is asking us to be the best version of ourself that we can be. It is not asking us to change outside of  ourselves but to be passionately in love with ourselves, life and the world we live in. When we do that, peace will be in our actions and anything we do will be the change we want to see in the world, without any effort, other than be your beautiful self. That is the peace in your actions. 

These are things to meditate on. 

What does it mean to be a volunteer? It’s all about being flexible and giving with compassion. I have been organizing events since I was 18. It is part of my degree. If there one thing I learned over the years is that, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans, so make plans and see what happens.”  Plans are always made, organized chaos ensues, everyone wants to be a leader. It’s a blast!  I have learned that it is my goal, my function to make sure that everyone around me, the people who have paid to participate and the people who have accepted me as a volunteer, to have the best experience that they can have. Sometimes that means stuffing bags at 6:30 am, sometimes that means controlling a crowd of tibetan people out of a specific area in a safe way. It can be showing people to their seats, serving tea, hushing children or watching to make sure someone who is not feeling well doesn’t need medical attention, even grab a mop and sit down a few times. Never be afraid to be a leader or a team member chances are, you’ll need to be both. Don’t get too hung up on which it will be. What was beautiful about this event was that out of the 4,000 volunteer applications, the 300 they chose were excellent choices. I’m super impressed. Very little of what I did was actually planned. We flowed. We communicated, we worked together. We listened to good ideas and we followed the best plan. All in the moment. Everyone led when necessary, we were an amazing team. You need to have really good eyes and a brilliant smile and don’t be a push over. The Dalai Lama said that being compassionate does not mean being weak and a push over last weekend, several times. That made me smile. 

Something that really stuck with me was a participant who came for the teachings on Sunday. The teachings are read in Tibetan,  then the Dalai Lama gives his interpretation of that stanza and the interpreter translates it into english. This is different than the public address on Friday and Saturday morning where the Dalai speaks in english with the ocassional help of his interpreter. This person was frustrated with the idea that the Dalai Lama was not speaking in english. I explained to him that these were the teachings and this is how they are done. He got frustrated and left. I found that disrespectful. I appreciate that the Dalai Lama is a famous person, but unlike the those who are famous just at being famous, the Paris Hilton’s of the world, he has an actual job. He is a scholar and a leader for his people. Part of his job is to provide teachings, what would be similar to a service to a christian, for his people. This person who was disappointed was sitting in on a sun feeding it’s rays as the rays fed the sun, but he could not see that. He could only see what he wanted. I was surprised by his response. 

The Tibetans are a beautiful people. It is always a joy to be with them. I met wonderful people and made beautiful friends. I even learned things. I love learning things. It is a joy to serve them. As the weekend came to a close, I ended up doing crowd control. A lovely Tibetan security  man asked for help controlling the exit of people row by row. That requires a great deal of compassionate strength, which you can only understand if you know what a line jumper is... they will use any excuse. It was probably the most challenging job I had all weekend but for the most part, people were very co-operative and respectful of me, a little nobody. That was cool. When that was done I went outside to find that many of them had become a beautiful circle of song and dance. That just made my heart sing. It was so moving. I think that little moment was my favourite of the entire weekend. I have it on my iphone video. 

Sonic blissings, Anny Fyreagle, 

October 24, 2010