Sunday, 4 October 2009 @ 21:36Written by Jackie

Women and Peace-building: The Dalai Lama & Luminaries

I had the opportunity to participate in the Dalai Lama’s visit to Vancouver this week. The session brought together leaders from a variety of fields to discuss the ways that women are contributing to a more peaceful world. The theme for the event and for the entire Dalai Lama’s visit was compassion. I was very excited to attend the event, hopeful to get some insights about how to bring peach to our world and excited to hear from someone who lives a very unique lifestyle, the Dalai Lama. Overall the thoughts were interesting and I was happy with the general conclusion that women deserve a more important leadership role in our world, but there were a few aspects of the event which were a bit disappointing, namely the over-reliance on the Dalai Lama to provide answers to some very tough questions. Let me share some of my experiences with you.

The session was in Vancouver’s beautiful Orpheum theatre and began with a musical performance followed by a conversation between the Dalai Lama and panelists. To start things off, the Dalai Lama was 40 minutes late and his tardiness was explained in a rather unexpected manner– someone walked to the stage to explain that a previous event had gone late, and his holiness was now busy having a long lunch because it is his most important meal of the day. Although it was honest, I found the excuse rather irritating. Perhaps I am too used to our busy culture, but the idea of someone taking a leisurely lunch while a whole auditorium of people sat and waited for him just didn’t feel right. On the other hand, perhaps it also highlights the fast paced nature of our culture and how the Dalai Lama would not let societal pressures stop him from taking his nice long lunch break. Despite annoyingly looking at my watch, I made a mental note to never let all of the things I “have to do” get in the way of things which I enjoy. 

The major thing that struck me was how it seemed that everyone was looking to the Dalai Lama to have the answers to some of the most important questions about our world today. Questions such as, what do you think are the biggest challenges for our world in the next one or two years? Do we need to re-brand compassion so that more people care? There was this indescribable feeling that the whole auditorium was looking to the Dalai Lama to somehow have the magical answer that we were all waiting for. The Dalai Lama’s answers were far from profound and he often simply said that he did not know. The interesting thing about all of this was that it seemed like everyone was waiting for the Dalai Lama to have the perfect answer and when he did not have the answer and simply said he did not know, everyone broke out in laughter and it made him all the wiser. This was an interesting thing to witness. It made me realize that even people in leadership positions are people too, and they would still need to do research and understand the field to answer questions in specific areas.

One cultural aspect I noticed was the differences between each panel member in discussing things – some were blatantly honest about their lives, with Swanee Hunt even revealing the fact that her mother was a mistress to her father, while others were more reserved and were not used to talking about themselves. It was humbling to see Ela Bhatt, an activist from India, begin speaking by apologizing that she has to speak about her own accomplishments today. I was very surprised at this – I was always taught to speak proudly of one’s accomplishments. Here was a woman who had helped so many oppressed women worker’s in India, and she began by apologizing that she had to speak about herself. I had never seen that before and I made a mental note to always aim for humbleness in my achievements.

Although I had higher expectations for the event, I still came away with a few lessons, with the most important one being the importance of not relying on leaders to have the answers to everything. They are people too, and often need as much guidance and research to answer a question as we do.