Last week–May 17-19, to be exact–my fiancee and a friend (A.K.A. Darby and Stephen C.) drove up to the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls to see His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. I’ll stop there–if you want to know more about him, let me know.

He spoke at two sessions on the 17th: the first was a panel discussion about educating for a non-violent world, and the afternoon “main event” was simple a long discourse on the power of education in the promotion of peace. He also touched on inter-faith tolerance, how humans are peaceful by nature, the importance of caring for the environment (and he even mentioned overpopulation!), and more. It was quite a day.

Sadly, I wasn’t allowed to take my camera in (too big), but we took Darby’s point & shoot to the event in the afternoon so I could get some noisy, blurry shots.

Geshe Dorjee, the monk who teaches at the UA, and Dr. Sidney Burris, director of the Fulbright College Honors Program, had been traveling up to UNI all semester to prepare their students for this big day. Geshe la is also the reason we even got tickets for these events! Two monks (one who is 89 years old!) from Gyuto Monastery who live in Minneapolis came down and constructed a sand mandala, and it was quite a sight. It took them over 300 hours to construct, and then, as always, they swept it away as a symbol of impermanence.

And, in case you didn’t hear, the Dalai Lama is coming to the U of A next May (and he’s already got a kickin’ website)! It’s going to be bigger and even better than this event at UNI. I can’t wait.

Maybe I’ll get a photo pass.

Here they are on Flickr.

We also met the Tibetan students at UNI–all seven of them, which is seven more than there are at the U of A. After the main events, we had dinner with these students and other people from the Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas at one of the UNI professor’s house. It was a great night–the Tibetan students sang and danced for us, and there was a general feeling of happiness all around. Beautiful.

Here’s a video of some singing the night before His Holiness spoke. I don’t have their names, but when I do, I’ll post them. The song, in short, is about Tibetans’ respect and love for His Holiness, calling him their protector, etc.

(Oh, and on this trip I learned to drive a stick shift…in Kansas City…in construction…at rush hour. I’m pretty much a pro.)