To heck with the recently sold-out Paul McCartney concert — I got tickets to see the Dalai Lama in person for his scheduled September 22 talk at Rice University. VIP tickets, no less. And they were no easy get.
Unfortunately, I never used them.
I waited at least a year to be added to the waiting list. His initial venue was to be the 70,000 seat Reliant Stadium, home of Texans football and Big Monster Hummer crash shows. Once the owners realized they could not rake in the beer and hot dog concessions from a bunch of Buddhists, His Holiness’s talk was relocated to a much cozier auditorium on the Rice campus.
The free tickets became available while I visited my parents in Phoenix. Mom was recuperating from heart surgery, and I held her hand like a good bodhisattva. With cell phones verboten in the cardiac ward, by the time I contacted the Rice ticket office, HH was a “sell out.”
Then, a couple weeks between my hand-holding stint and hand-wringing ticketlessness, Karma smiled. A Rice faculty member kindly offered VIP tickets to local Buddhist sangha volunteers, so not only did I gain a coveted ticket reserved in my name, but a reserved seat as well. No need to stand in line like a Southwest Airlines passenger, I had elite seats up close and personal.
Yet, something nagged at me. The whole concept of reserved VIP tickets to hear the Dalai Lama smacked of ego and spiritual materialism. Who was I to best other followers who dedicatedly manned the speed dial? Sure, many caste ticket holders probably held no interest in hearing Dharma as much as oogling an international icon in person, while this devoted disciple expected life-changing enlightenment from the lips of a living Buddha. For that reason alone, I deserved them.
However, Karma winked again. Hurricane Rita glared her speedy giant eye directly at Galveston, only an hour from Houston. With images of her sibling Katrina dancing in our heads, Houstonians, especially those like me who lived too close to the coast evacuated for higher ground, causing the largest traffic jam in the state’s history. In a farewell e-mail to the sangha, lamenting how I suffered the caprice of nature, I sorrowfully relinquished my reserved Dalai Lama tickets for the next day’s talk.
His Holiness turned out to be a no-show as well. His handlers, getting wind of the pending storm as well as diesel incense from the dying SUVs clogging all the freeways, levitated HH away to safety, canceling his public talks.
But his trip to Houston was not in vain. The day before, he served as keynote presenter at a gala symposium on “Spiritualism and Science in the Modern World” at the upscale Westin Galleria. Billed as a means to bridge the ethereal with the esorteric, the publicity materials reported, “…spiritualism has become a way of life in fashion, food and drink, exercise and is a path taken by millions worldwide. Hollywood stars have brought much attention to their chosen directions of Buddhism, Kabbalah and Scientology, but little focus has been giving to spiritualism and its connection with science.”
Houston’s social elite planned to change that with discussions of the spiritual-scientific nexus, a gala fundraising dinner, and a VIP reception where giggling fans (“He was very funny, he had lots of personality.” – Houston Chronicle) crowded together to get their photo with the Tibetan icon.
VIP tickets to this Dalai Lama talk turned out a tad more difficult to come by than his canceled public teachings. Tickets began at $1,000 with corporate table underwriting opportunities starting at $25,000. Goldie Hawn, who according to the event news release, “often sides with the Dalai Lama on his visits to the United States” served as another keynote speaker.
HH Dalai Lama entertains guests at the pre-Hurricane Rita gala (photo Houston Chronicle)
© 2005 and 2008 by winkingbuddha.com
The Winking Buddha Blog 
Leave a comment