The Dalai Lama: UW Misses the Point

On Monday a delegation of Cougs piled into a bus to see the Dalai Lama and sadly the U-Dub missed the point.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama asked to meet with the students of the Pacific Northwest to talk about the future of peace. Yet this conversation and call to action between students and the 

spiritual leader was overshadowed by the University of Washington’s own self-importance. I didn’t learn until I arrived that Dalai Lama’s original purpose, to speak to students, had been bastardized into a formal convocation ceremony where the Dalai Lama was awarded an honorary degree from the U-Dub. The stage where His holiness sat was not full with students but with faculty in full graduation dress robes symbolically representing the hijacking of the dialogue by the University’s administration.

The University of Washington had all the best intentions -- an honorary degree is the greatest honor that they can bestow -- but they missed the point. His wisdom doesn’t need to be validated by having a worthless honorary degree. The degree itself seems patronizing. “Here in the west all our wisdom and our validity is marked by this piece of paper (a degree) so you can have one too. Here you go.” He didn’t need or want an honorary degree; he wanted to have a conversation about changing our world philosophy with the future generation.

He doesn’t need another award or meaningless honor? click

Despite the University of Washington’s worthless ego masturbation the Dalai Lama was able to speak about peace and how it can only be achieved though inner peace. In other 

words, we need to learn to love ourselves and reject negative feelings. This is because negative feelings only led to our own individual suffering, which can led to anger, and then more hate. He said that peace could only be achieved when individuals can break this cycle and learn to value compassion more than hate and violence. This is his dream for the world but he is also realistic. No generation can make that kind of change in merely one lifetime. The short-term solution, he said, is to educate and offer respect and opportunities for success.

According to the Dalai Lama we need to focus on three things:

1) We need the will power to face any conflict with dialogue. Because dialogue is the only way.

2) We need determination to refuse force because violence only begets more violence.
3) We need wisdom, which he explains as a holistic view of the world. We need to realize that everything is inter-connected and because of that no group of people can be an enemy. The destruction of your enemy is the destruction of yourself. And it is through this philosophy that we can get our conviction.

It is time for us to put away all of awards and honors and listen to what he is saying. If University of Washington really wants to honor the Dalai Lama try leading the way in reducing tuition costs and increasing the spread of knowledge throughout the world for free. Face it; we like being the elites with the degrees and part of the most educated one percent of the world. And we like giving honorary degrees to those that work for real change and then we kid ourselves into thinking that we’re not part of the problem. Once we get over our own superiority complex maybe we can truly understand what the Dalai Lama is saying and help to make real change.