Magical day.. started the day with a run with the dogs. When I can. I use my runs to do some moving meditation.. I’ll take something.. or nothing as the spirit moves me and concentrate on it during my run.. more than anything I do this to keep work and the days business from creeping into my head too early in the day. Anyway.. today I was thinking about my future and where I want to take my life next.. I was thinking abut something in particular and put it out there to the universe.. to Sam ? .. to let me know what it/he thought about the situation. I was standing by the river as I did this..  As I looked down, I found first 1, then 2, then 5 perfectly (?) heart shaped rocks around my feet. I took that as a vote of confirmation. Not a miracle.. but a cool coincidence of the kind I can never ignore. I jammed them all in my hoodie and went home by wading across the river.

Around 9 Tim, Jen, Avery  and Nate came by and we all piled in 2 cars and drove up to Montreal.. We stopped by UVM to pick up Marie on the way.   We’d gotten tickets to see His Holiness the XIV Dali Lama at the Bell Centre this afternoon. It felt like we were going to a rock concert… I guess it was.. he’s another one of my life heroes .. I’d always wanted to her him speak…   

We got to montreal in time to eat so we went to a good Lebanese place on St. Catherines street. It was done up as sort of a cave.. this guy was looking at us from the wall near our table.. Full of falafel, we headed back down to the Bell Center..

The place was hopping.. there were crowds of people… even folks scalping tickets..   It felt a bit like a Grateful Dead show.. ( Hey.. I need a miracle !) ..

The lien went all the way down the block and around the corner..   There were all sorts in line.. anglo and franco-phones, tibetians, hippies, rastas, business types.. all ages..

Here’s our crew..

We found our seats and watched the warm up bands.. no seriously.. there were slide shows, a musician, a cool Tibetan dance troop.. then the man himself.. the whole place stood spontaneously as he walked in.. The Dali Lama himself.. What a sweetie he’s this jolly little guy.. so personal and humble.. yet powerful at the same time.. His smile just made everyone in the room smile.. He sat down, kicked off his shoes.. and started talking.. He spoke in heavily accented English and  took a break every few minutes for a french speaking monk to translate. He was so cute and entertaining to watch.. while the translator was speaking, the Dali Lama, sat and fidgeted.. he scratched, looked around, played with his robe. and fiddled with his mike.. An ADD-Diety if there ever was one. He was clearly very, very human.. very learned and  in love with life. He began by pointing out how very human he was.. he said he had no special powers and no special wisdom..  and any thought that he had magical healing powers he dispelled by pointing out that he’d had to have his gall bladder out last year. (this he described in graphic detail.. yuck !)
    He began by asking for the house lights to be turned on. He said he could not speak without being able to see and feel the people he was speaking too.  He recalled how humans are completely social animals.. evolved to read faces and smiles..That we needed to be together.. that we craved each others company.  He said that talking to people you couldn’t really see and feel was just talking.. nothing was accomplished by that..  That riff resonated with me deeply with the ‘Calor humano’ (human heat) point I blogged about a few weeks back.. Our global workflows are draining the humanity .. and maybe the compassion out of our day to day work… something to really think about !
    Anyway, his main message was simple and at the same time powerful.. Compassion is the answer to the worlds ills. Compassion brings happiness, compassion brings peace.. and compassion even brings health. He told us how people who are deeply compassionate have fewer heart attacks.. (to say nothing of fewer wars 🙂 .  He told us how true compassion is the kind that you can even feel for your oppressors.. He told a story about a colleague who spent 17 years in a Chinese prison.. The friend told the Dali Lama that in the course of his imprisonment that just three times was he in danger of loosing his compassion for his captors.. only three times in 17 years.. wow !
   His Holiness also talked about the need to balance the mind and the heart. He felt that modern society was doing a good job of training folks to use their heads.. but not enough to teach them to use their hearts. Again.. I loved this message.. It fed my own Dharma about working to add passion and compassion into science and engineering..
He talked about the need for parents to teach compassion diligently to their children by showing them love, respect, understanding and tenderness.   I was so glad to have Gabe there with us to hear that..  

He laughed and smiled frequently during his talk.. .. I’m still smiling..!
  

After the Dali Lama finished speaking he answered a few pre submitted questions… (Q: What advice would you give to Tibetians living in exile ?.. A:  Be proud of your cuture, preserve your culture and try to work hard.. he said Tibetians work very hard during times of crisis.. but at other times they can be lazy 🙂   Q: : should everyone convert to Buddhism ?  A: No.. stick with your original culture… changing is hard..   He told a story of a woman who wanted to convert to Christianity from Buddhism,  she told him her plan was to be Christian this life.. and Buddhist again in the next life 🙂

After His Holiness answered the last question, we all dashed to the door. We had arraigned to do the only sensible thing one can do after hearing one of the world’s great sages preach peace.. we were going to play Laser Tag !    We quickly walked up to busy st Catherine’s street..

And lined up  and waited our turn in the Laser Quest maze…

After a quick indoctrination under black light, we armed ourselves and ran into the maze.. to shoot at anything that moved for the next 15 minutes.. It’s amazingly fun !  I was too busy fragging folks to take any pictures in there .

In the end.. we all did pretty well.. I was number 5 out of about 36 folks.. (it was packed).. Last time I was number 1.. This time I tried not to shoot my friends and family.. that must have been what dropped my score 🙂

What a hoot ! I crammed a SamStone behind an electrical conduit as we left the place.

We were all still too full from lunch to eat, so we headed back down to VT.. On the way home we stopped at Juniors in Colchester.. Our good friend Becca was working the register

She’d been newly decorated..   !

We got back home around 9:30.. It was one of those cool cloudy nights over a full moon..

It’s been a fun and thought provoking day.. time for bed now..   Namaste folks.. Namaste Sam
-me