Dalai Lama’s Visit

The Dalai Lama spoke of developing compassion and spirituality — as well as the intellect — to more than 4,200 people in Jadwin Gym in October. 

Crowned by an orange Princeton baseball cap, he challenged the students: “It is your responsibility, it is your opportunity. ... You should be active in order to achieve a happy century, a peaceful century, a compassionate century. It will not be achieved through wishful thinking, only through action.” 

A question-and-answer period featured inquiries about forgiveness, universal human rights, and Chinese politics, as well as the question: “Investment banking. Thoughts?” to which the Dalai Lama responded swiftly: “I don’t know. I think in order to make a proper answer, let me spend at least one year in bank work, with a high salary.” 

“It’s interesting to try and get a sense of who the Dalai Lama is,” Arjun Dhillon ’15 said after the event. “It’s not as if I’m hearing him as an oracle of wisdom; I’m hearing him as a person with a lot of wisdom.”

Later in the day, a group of students and faculty met with the Dalai Lama in a more intimate setting. 

Several hundred protesters marched through campus, claiming discrimination in Tibet against followers of the Shugden faith.