c. 2003 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ The eighth-century Indian Buddhist saint Shantideva coined the following pragmatic advice: “If you have a problem and there’s a solution, then there’s no need to worry. If there’s no solution, there’s no use in worrying.”

The Dalai Lama offered that teaching, one of his favorites, to an estimated 65,000 people who gathered under a brilliant sun in New York’s Central Park on Sunday (Sept. 21) to hear him speak.

In his first visit to New York City since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the exiled spiritual leader offered a prayer for the victims and advocated reducing negative emotions on both an individual and global level as a way of combating terrorism.

“The very concept of war is out of date,” the Dalai Lama said, drawing loud applause from the crowd. “Destruction of your neighbor as enemy is essentially destruction of yourself.”

Relying occasionally on a translator, the Dalai Lama alternately scolded, mocked and reduced the crowd to giggles as he discussed topics ranging from the dangers of materialism to the futility of war.

During his 15th trip to the United States, the Dalai Lama also met with U.S. politicians in Washington to discuss the plight of Tibetans under Chinese occupation, promoted comparative studies of Buddhist meditation and the cognitive sciences at a symposium with neuroscientists at M.I.T, and addressed crowds in New York, San Francisco and Washington D.C., about the importance of human compassion and kindness.

Not everyone who crowded into Central Park’s East Meadow to hear the man many call a living Buddha speak was a believer.

“I have no idea who the Dalai Lama is,” said Alsu Fatykhova, 23, a student from the Muslim republic of Tatarstan in Russia. “It’s going to be my first lesson.”

The Dalai Lama’s popularity has grown to such an extent that few, however, would fail to recognize the bespectacled, saffron and maroon-robed monk. He became a world figure after fleeing his land in 1959 after the Chinese takeover and now lives in exile in India.

The large audiences the Dalai Lama has drawn nationwide can be attributed in large part to the 68-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate’s staunch advocacy of nonviolence, said Matthew Weiner, the director of programming at New York’s Interfaith Center and its Buddhism analyst.

“Two years after Sept. 11, people are questioning the violent reaction we had and whether that reaction has done any good,” Weiner said. “The Dalai Lama’s voice about how to respond to violence is taken more seriously.”

The Dalai Lama’s growing celebrity as a Buddhist master and secular, moral leader has contributed to the spread of Buddhism in America, where there are now more than 1,000 Buddhist centers and an estimated 800,000 American converts, said Tenzin Gelek of the Trace Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to protect Tibetan culture. Like many Tibetans, Gelek shares the first name of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, whom tradition regards as the incarnation of Avolokitesvata, the Buddha of Compassion.

“He’s been an important advocate for people who believe in nonviolence,” Gelek said, adding, “He’s becoming a very hot sell.”

But for the Dalai Lama himself, who has repeatedly urged people to stay within their own religious traditions, the spread of Buddhism in the West is something of an unintended side effect.

“Sometimes I hesitate to give teachings in Western countries,” the Dalai Lama said at a Sept. 16 news conference at the Guggenheim Museum. “I believe it is safer to keep one’s own tradition.”

Such ambivalence toward new converts might strike many as strange coming from the leader of a religious tradition, but it is consistent with the Dalai Lama’s efforts to serve as a nonsectarian advocate of humanitarian values, said Jeffrey Hopkins, a professor of Tibetan Buddhism at the University of Virginia who served as the Dalai Lama’s translator from 1979 to 1989.

“He’s tried to formulate a message for the whole world because he believes the world needs a nonsectarian, areligious ethical message,” Hopkins said, adding that he believes the Dalai Lama’s popularity has been built on substance rather than hype. “That’s why he emphasizes kindness and compassion.”

But some are questioning whether American Buddhist institutions might benefit from a more formal structure, said Ganden Thurman of the Tibet House, an organization dedicated to preserving Tibetan religion and culture.

To address issues of structure and discipline in American Buddhism, which has tended to be a free-wheeling, decentralized entity, the Dalai Lama will meet with about 300 leaders from American dharma centers at a two-day conference in Garrison, N.Y., today (Sept. 22 ) and Sept. 23.

Although he wields a large amount of influence, the Dalai Lama doesn’t have the authority among different Buddhist schools that the head of a church hierarchy might, Hopkins said.

“He doesn’t serve like a pope who appoints this person or that person and makes new rules,” Hopkins said. “He’s more of a person who leads by a moral example.”

DEA END ALTER