The Dalai Lama Comes Down to Georgia

I saw no sign of Charlie Daniels or Richard Gere. But I did see the Dalai Lama himself, post W., if from some distance. I saw him once before, almost thirty years ago, when I lived just above the Tibetan Monastary in Berkeley, but this was from my window and he stepped out of the limo and was quickly escorted into the lovely wooden building.

At Emory, the Dalai Lama performed a sangha, and I went with sweet Amy. He entered while monks sang in the traditional throat style, sat, chatted and joked a bit in English, then started the lesson in Tibetan. Another man, seated near him in a business suit, interpreted, and we listened to a lesson on mindfulness and emptiness and achieving the kind of awareness that may lead with much practice to enlightenment.

This blog, however, composed as it is out of the fishnet of words, is firmly grounded in the samsara, so I won't burden you with a spiritual discussion just now. I would just like to put in your mind the image of half a dozen Tibetan monks in their maroon and saffron robes after the event eating pizza at a tavern across from the university. I remember wondering where they keep their wallets. Meanwhile, someone outside protested David Horowitz's Islamophobic events and people drank and watched as Byron Leftwich became the latest Atlanta quarterback/victim and Amy and I and her parents and our friend Anna sat and waited for food, or, in Anna's case, a ride.

We had come down from the mountain where Amy's folks now live, after hiking, moving boulders, killing a scorpion (my scorpio soul winced), buying and drinking fine wine (Buying='03 Sociando Mallet; drinking=Talley Pinot), eating great Thai food at N'ham in Alpharetta, driving and driving in the cooling autumn air and enjoying a fine weekend outside of wet, swampy Valdosta, where the drought has abated a bit of late. Om, mane padme, Om; Oh, dharma, keep on spinning. . .