I was asked to recollect the Dalai Lama’s visit to Grace United Methodist Church to speak to Cambodian refugees in Dallas. Here is what I remember (with a little help from David Overton):
Bill Bryan, the pastor at Grace told me that the Dalai Lama was coming to Dallas to speak at Thanksgiving Square. Bill and I talked about it and thought it would be a good thing if His Holiness spoke to the Cambodian refugees who were in Dallas and didn’t have much in the way of Buddhist spiritual support.
Bill and I worked together to write a letter asking His Holiness to come and speak to the Cambodians. We got the address in Dharamsala from David Overton, a hospice social worker. I recall we said that the Khmer Rouge had killed most of the monks in Cambodia and at that time the Khmer temple in Dallas had not been built. I think there were a couple of novice monks in the Dallas area.
Initially the visit was turned down by one of the Dalai lama’s assistants. David Overton wrote another letter and a few weeks later the Dalai Lama heard
about the request and okayed it. I was not surprised at any part of these events. I think the decision went the way it did because we told him the truth about the situation in Dallas and the Dalai Lama has great empathy for refugees and is himself a refugee.
Bill felt it was inappropriate for a person of a religion other than Christianity to speak from the pulpit and so another site was set up at the front of the sanctuary for the Dalai Lama to speak from.
The visit was publicized word of mouth. At the time I was working in the refugee community seven days a week and I talked to a lot of people every day and I told everyone that a famous monk was going to come to Grace and speak to the people there. Few if any Cambodians had any sense of who the Dalai Lama was, but they understood the idea of a famous monk.
There were over 100 people in the sanctuary. There were many Cambodians, some Tibetans, and some American refugee workers and others. I don’t know how the Tibetans found out about it. At one point I asked some of the Americans to sit toward the back so the Cambodians could come up closer to the His Holiness. Then someone told me I had to sit in front, so that was a little awkward.
Pa Nous Pan did the introduction and I think he did the translation of what the Dalai Lama talked about. His Holiness was speaking English. What he talked about was similar to others of his homilies: being kind to one another was a dominant theme that I recall. He also said that we are all refugees in the Buddha.
When he was through speaking he was surrounded by people from the audience, mostly Tibetans and he was giving people a blessing by draping a white scarf (khata*) around their necks.
I was standing back behind that circle of people and he reached through the people and took my hands which I was holding in a prayerful posture of devotion and he took my hands between his. His hands were very soft. He said, “Keep doing this work.” I thought it was amazing because I hadn’t been introduced to him and as far as I know nobody pointed out to him what I was doing with refugees.
The Dalai Lama gave me a thanka after it was all over. I didn’t want the karma of having it and so a few months later gave it to the Cambodian Buddhist temple that was just then being completed. A few months after that the temple burned to the ground and everything in it was gone. Another lesson in impermanence.
*In Khmer “khata” means an amulet