Our Views: Dalai Lama to visit New Orleans

While the adherents of Tibetan Buddhism may be relatively few, people of every creed in the United States are among the admirers of the Dalai Lama. We welcome the news that the Nobel Peace Prize winner will visit New Orleans next year.

The Buddhist spiritual leader, 77, plans public speaking engagements — profits from ticket sales to go to charity — as well as accepting an honorary degree from Tulane University.

For more than a decade, Ronald Marks, dean of Tulane University’s School of Social Work, which is sponsoring the Dalai Lama’s trip, has been conducting a graduate social work class in north India. Students work with the Tibetan refugee population and with the Louisiana Himalaya Association, a local social service organization that provides services to Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala and in surrounding villages throughout north India.

This visit is a celebration of those connections with Louisiana, but also allows our state to demonstrate its solidarity with a freedom fighter, albeit one who practices nonviolent resistance to the increasingly repressive Chinese occupation of Tibet.

We welcome the Dalai Lama and applaud Tulane’s role in bringing his message to New Orleans and Louisiana.

Comments

1) Comment by Scrooge - 26/11/2012

Congratulations Cousin Dave, your comment was remarkably and superbly ignorant and is a good evidence of the reason that Americans are reviled in many parts of the world. Speaking of heathens, isn't stupidity a characteristic?

2) Comment by Scrooge - 26/11/2012

Cousin "Lefty" Dave has all the answers, you don't even have to ask him, he'll tell you.

3) Comment by twinkie1cat - 24/11/2012

Yes, the Dalai Lama does speak English. If he did not I am sure a translator would volunteer. You don't have to agree with his religion to respect his ideas as a man of peace and his positive influence on the world. Cousin Dave: Romney is from a false religion and people respected him enough to vote for him and did not call him a heathen. The Dalai Lama has never hurt anyone.

4) Comment by Chucky - 23/11/2012

@Cousin Dave -Do you even know who he is? People like him kind of like build a high platform where peace and harmony is the norm so the rest of us living in the muck and wast can stick our heads up look around and say "Oh this is how it should be"

5) Comment by Cousin Dave - 23/11/2012

Does this Heathen even know how to speak English? How is he going to charge money or public speaking engagements if no one can understand what he's saying? On the other hand, we're probably lucky if we don't understand what he's saying.

6) Comment by [e-mail] - 23/11/2012

All the Dalai Lama has to do is to let Obam know; he'll get on it.