Dalai Lama Tickets Now Available

His Holiness the Dalai Lama will visit the College in October and will give two speeches on Friday, Oct. 12 and Saturday, Oct. 13, as part of his tour of several U.S. colleges and universities.

His speech on Friday, Oct. 12, "Educating the Heart," will be open only to students, faculty and staff, and will be an opportunity for the Dalai Lama to tailor his remarks to an audience comprised of only members of the college community. The doors of Nelson Arena will open at 11:45 a.m., and will be closed to further entry at 1:15 p.m. for security reasons.

Current students each are entitled to one ticket to this event free of charge, and students began reserving tickets at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 12. Faculty and staff tickets for the first lecture will be available online and at box offices beginning Friday, September 14 at 6 a.m, with a limit of two per person.

The Dalai Lama's second speech, "Finding Common Ground: Ethics for a Whole World," will be held on Saturday, Oct. 13 and will be open to the general public. The doors will open at 7 a.m. and be closed at 9 a.m. Ticket sales for the Oct. 13 talk will open online and at the box offices at 6 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 27. These tickets are $20 for the public and $15 for alumni, faculty, staff, students and parents of current students.

Accommodations will be made for those that do not secure tickets. While the event will be held in Nelson Arena, there will be live video feeds of the talks broadcasted at Dana Auditorium and McCullough Social Space. Free seating will be provided at these alternate locations.

This will be the third visit to the College for the 14th Dalai Lama, who has previously visited the campus in 1984 and 1990. He returns this year at the request of the College, which he respects particularly for its environmental consciousness, among other reasons.

The preparations for this year's visit began in 2009, when Venerable Lama Tenzin Dhonden, personal emissary for peace to His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited the College to give a lecture. Chaplain Laurie Jordan said that during Lama Tenzin's talk "all the chairs were full, and people were seated on the floor around the edge of the room."

He explained that the popularity of this lecture led to discussion of a future visit from the Dalai Lama. Lama Tenzin offered to hand-carry a formal invitation back to the Dalai Lama and to guide the College through future arrangements if the invitation was accepted, says Jordan.

By August of 2010, a formal invitation was drafted, and the Dalai Lama accepted the College's invitation in the fall of 2011. The Dalai Lama will also visit Syracuse University, the College of William and Mary, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University and the Lincoln Center in New York City while in the United States.

A steering committee has been working on logistical arrangements associated with the Dalai Lama's visit, Jordan reports. This committee has also worked with faculty and students to create supplementary events to the Dalai Lama's visit. The organizers hope these events will spark conversations about global interconnectedness and the role of religion in the world, amongst other topics.

The Dalai Lama's message has changed with each visit to the College. This time, his message will echo the theme in his recent book, Ethics for the Whole World: Beyond Religion. This new message will be particularly pertinent in a world that is struggling with a global financial crisis and religious differences. As to what his exact insights will be, "the Dalai Lama usually does not speak from a text so it will be difficult to know for sure" says Jordan. Following his remarks, the Dalai Lama will answer selected questions that have been submitted in advance.

The arrival of His Holiness is a highly anticipated event at the College this fall as students and community members look forward to this unique occasion.