A Year of Events

There is an exciting year of events being planned in anticipation of the Dalai Lama's July 2008 visit. A wide range of academic initiatives will take place leading up to and celebrating the visit.
Learn more about upcoming events >
Learn more about events in the community >

The year kicked off with the Lehigh University Summer Reading Program. This year, students read Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama's autobiography.
Read more about past events >

View Lehigh's library/web resources about the Dalai Lama >

Upcoming Events

Tibetan Meals

A series of monthly Tibetan lunches will be served at Asa, Court and Rathbone Dining Halls to give the university community a taste of Tibetan culture in the months leading up to the historic visit by the Dalai Lama in July 2008. The special Tibetan lunches will be served on Nov. 27, Jan. 25, Feb. 25, March 25 and April 25.

Many of the recipes, chosen by dining services in conjunction with the Dalai Lama Organizing Committee, came from a Tibetan cookbook entitled The Lhasa Moon; others originate from India, where the Dalai Lama has lived in exile since 1959.

A Year of Academics

As part of Lehigh University's preparation for the historic visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in July 2008, several courses are being offered to students during the Spring Semester (and Summer Session I) that provide insights and access related to topics such as: Tibet; Buddhism; His Holiness the Dalai Lama; as well as to concepts and ideas central to Buddhism. Several of these courses are new and have been created because of faculty interest in promoting the learning opportunity that the Dalai Lama's visit is making possible.

View course listing information >

Asian Studies Lecture Series: "Transformation of Self, Society, and Text in Early and Medieval China"

This lecture series has been organized by Asian Studies as an academic event in preparation for the visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Lehigh in July 2008. The series is supported by Asian Studies, Global Citizenship, Modern Languages and Literature, Philosophy, Religion Studies, and Sociology & Anthropology.

Tibet Revisited, 20 Years: The Photography of an Expedition to Tibet

April 1, 2008
4:10 p.m.
Linderman Library Room 200
Related Info: Modern life and ancient traditions blend in photographer Elaine Ling's Tibetan images
For more information, view event flyer (PDF)

Artist-in-residence Elaine Ling will offer a public lecture and visual presentation of her recent photographic work in Tibet, with special emphasis on Tibetan art. Ms. Ling will focus on the people, the culture the temples, Buddhism, and the landscape, relying on both black and white and color photography and a few short movies. Tibet Revisited follows pilgrims on their prostrating journeys along the mountain roads to the sacred temples, and witnesses the festival celebration of the yearly unfurling of the tungas--and reassures that Tibetan Buddhism is alive and well.

Elaine Ling is a celebrated photographer who has explored the shifting equilibrium between nature and humanity across four continents. Born in Hong Kong, a resident of Canada since the age of nine, and a medical school graduate, Ms. Ling has exhibited extensively in North and South America and Europe. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas, the Henry Buhl Foundation in NYC, the Brooklyn Museum, the Musee de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and many others; and she has published in Aperture, The Polaroid Book 2005, View Camera, The Photo Review, Powerhouse Review and Artweek in the US and in numerous other publications in Europe, Canada, and South America. This lecture is sponsored by the Visiting Lecturers Committee, the Lehigh University Art Galleries and Museum Operations, and ArtsLehigh.

Related events:

Gallery Talk in Dubois Gallery

April 3, 2008
4:30 p.m. Dubois Gallery, Maginnes Hall
Presented by the Lehigh University Art Galleries

"Contemporary Tibetan Art"

April 10, 2008
4:30 p.m. Zoellner Main Gallery
Lecture by artist Pema Rinzin

Virtual Gallery Exhibit: "Contemporary Photographers of China," and Pok Chi Lau: "Time-Lapse Diptych Visions: The Chinese Cultural Revolution"

March 19-September 12, 2008
Zoellner Gallery lobby

Women in Tibetan Buddhism: Problems and Promise, in both Theory and Practice

April 15, 2008
4:10 p.m.
Sinclair Auditorium
For more information, view event flyer (PDF)

Professor Janet Gyatso will discuss historical women in Tibetan Buddhism, issues about gender politics, and some distinctive theories about gender from Tibetan communities. She will also consider the current debate about the reestablishment of the fully ordained nun's order in Tibet by the current Dalai Lama.

Janet Gyatso is the Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard University. Her books include Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary; In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism; and Women of Tibet. Co-sponsored by Women's Studies, the Visiting Lecturer's Committee, Asian Studies and the Chaplain's Office.

Baccalaureate 2008

May 18, 2008
4:00 p.m.
Packer Memorial Church

The 2008 Baccalaureate Address: Tenzin Robert Thurman

Tenzin Robert Thurman holds the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West, the Jey Tsong Khapa Chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. After education at Philips Exeter and Harvard, Professor Thurman studied Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism for almost thirty years as a personal student of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He has written both scholarly and popular books, appeared in numerous documentaries and media broadcasts, and he has lectured widely all over the world. His special interest is the exploration of the Indo-Tibetan philosophical and psychological traditions, with a view to their relevance to parallel currents of contemporary thought and science. Professor Thurman will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at the University Commencement exercises on May 19.

Please check back here often, as more event details will be shared as they become finalized.

Events in the Community

Discussion of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's book and exploration of Buddhism

April 3, 10, 17 & 24
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Bethlehem Area Public Library
Main Library
2nd Floor Program Area
11 W. Church St.
Bethlehem, PA 18018
For more information, view event flyer (PDF)

"Buddhism" Presentation by Christian Rice

Sunday, April 6
10:00 a.m.
Central Moravian Church
Christian Education Building
73 West Church Street
Bethlehem, PA 18018

Christian Rice teaches a course on World Religions at Ursinus College and is getting his ThD from Harvard Divinity School in Christian Ethics.

Contact Information:
Church Office: 610-866-5661
Christian Ed. Building: 610-867-2996
Old Chapel Basement: 610-694-0200
Fax: 610-866-7256
Email: office@centralmoravianchurch.org

Video Showing: A&E Dalai Lama Biography

Sunday, April 13
12:15 p.m.
Central Moravian Church
Old Chapel
73 West Church Street
Bethlehem, PA 18018

There will be a showing of a video biography of the Dalai Lama produced by A&E. The event will begin with a light lunch in the Chapel basement. The video is about an hour long, followed by a half hour for discussion.

Contact Information:
Church Office: 610-866-5661
Christian Ed. Building: 610-867-2996
Old Chapel Basement: 610-694-0200
Fax: 610-866-7256
Email: office@centralmoravianchurch.org

Past Events

Summer Reading Program

Each summer, the Lehigh University Reading Program chooses a book that all incoming students are required to read to help them prepare for the academic rigor at the university level. This year, students read Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama's autobiography.

Visual Tibet: The Land and Its People

September 18
4:10 p.m.
Sinclair Auditorium
For more information, view event flyer (PDF).
Related Info: An inside look at the hidden land of Tibet

The College of Arts and Sciences Dean Anne Meltzer and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Peter Zeitler gave a lecture and visual presentation highlighting their research in Tibet over the past several years; highlights included the Tibetan plateau, the Himalayas and the Tibetan people. This lecture was free and open to the public.

This was the first in a series of public talks offered in the 2007-08 academic year as Lehigh University prepares for a visit from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in July of 2008.

The Search for Shangri-La

October 17
4:10 p.m.
Sinclair Auditorium
For more information, view event flyer (PDF)
Related Info: Donald S. Lopez conducts the search for Shangri La at Lehigh

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan was on campus for two events on October 17.

"The Search for Shangri-La" - Professor Lopez's public lecture at 4:10 in Sinclair Auditorium

"The Angry Monk" - Professor Lopez introduced and lead a short discussion of the controversial Luc Schaedler film, "The Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet" at 7:30 p.m., also in Sinclair Auditorium.

Professor Lopez is among America's foremost scholars of Tibetan Buddhism. His books include: Buddhism and Science: A Historical Critique, The University of Chicago Press, forthcoming; The Madman's Middle Way, Buddhism: An Introduction and Guide; Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (winner of the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, 1999); Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra, The Heart Sutra Explained: Indian and Tibetan Commentaries, SUNY Press, 1988 and many others.

Professor Lopez has also written a short statement concerning "Seven Things You Didn't Know about Tibet" http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493105.html .

Buddhist monks to create intricate sand mandala

October 22 - October 26, 2007, Linderman Library
Related Info: Buddhist monks to create intricate sand mandala

The monks of the Namgyal Monastery Institute of Buddhist Studies created and deconstructed a sand mandala at Lehigh University from Monday, Oct. 22 to Friday, Oct. 26.

The monks, acting as cultural ambassadors from the exiled personal monastery of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, painstakingly created the complex design using grains of colored sand on a platform in the rotunda of Linderman Library.

Members of the Lehigh community and general public were welcome to observe the process from the hours of 9 a.m. to noon and 1:30 to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

A public viewing was also held from 9 to 10 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 26, and was immediately followed by a dismantling ceremony that took place between 10 and 10:30 a.m.

Friends of the Library Lecture: Stages of the Path to Enlightenment: An Overview of the Great Treatise by Joshua W. C. Cutler

November 13
4:00 p.m.
Humanities Forum, Room 200, Linderman Library
Related Info: Buddhist scholar shares insights on path to enlightenment

Joshua W. C. Cutler served as Editor-in-Chief of the English translation of this important early 15th century work by Tsong-kha-pa, "The Great Treatise on the Stages on the Way to Enlightenment." It is the source text for the Dalai Lama's week-long teaching at Lehigh University in July 2008. Mr. Cutler is also the Executive Director of the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center (TBLC) in New Jersey where he and his wife, Diana Cutler, live, serving as resident teachers and scholars. His interest in Tibetan Buddhism started in the late sixties when he was at Harvard University where he studied with Dr. M. Nagatomi and then graduate student Dr. Robert Thurman, now of Columbia University . Two weeks after graduating in 1970 with a B.A. in English he moved to New Jersey to live at TBLC and study with its founder Geshe Ngawang Wangyal. After the founder's death in 1983 Mr. Cutler has continued to study, teach, and translate Tibetan Buddhist scriptures with the many Tibetan monk-scholars and American Buddhist scholars who resided at TBLC over the years.

Adventures on top of the world: A visitor's view of Tibet's cultural, political, and geological place on the Earth ** (Please note location change)

November 28
4:10 p.m.
Room 200, Linderman Library**
A lecture by Professor Dork Sahagian, Environmental Studies Initiative Director
For more information, view event flyer (PDF)
Related Info: Sahagian shares views on rapidly changing Tibet

Dork Sahagian has studied various part of the Earth in his efforts to understand the processes that drive geologic, climatologic, and system-level processes as well as the interaction between humanity and the natural environment. He served as Executive Director of The Global Analysis, Integration, and Modeling Task Force of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP/GAIM) before moving to Lehigh to build the Environmental Initiative. Professor Sahagian has been conducting research in paleoclimatology, volcanology, stratigraphy, geodynamics and tectonics, global hydrology and sea level. He also served as a contributing author and reviewer for the various Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His emerging interest in global religions and cultures stems from the notion that while peoples' collective behavior profoundly affects the Earth system, it is often controlled more by a wide range of emotional and philosophical responses and worldviews than by scientific understanding of millennial scale causes and consequences at the global level. His recent trip to Tibet took him from Potala Palace to the distant countryside in an effort to determine when the Tibetan Plateau rose to become the "top of the world."On his way, he encountered the people and places that make Tibet a truly unique, yet endangered gem on Earth.

Contemplative Education

February 12, 2008
4:10 p.m.
Sinclair Auditorium
For more information, view event flyer (PDF)
Related Info: Naropa president to discuss 'education in a different key'

Thomas Coburn, president of Naropa University will give a lecture on contemplative education. Contemplative education is a movement within higher education that brings together the contemplative traditions of Asia with the liberal arts tradition and pre-professional training of the West. It seeks to move beyond the analytic emphasis of "either/or" thinking to a "both/and" complementarity: East and West, intellect and emotion, inner and outer, teacher and student. This kind of education has its roots in conventional patterns of teaching and learning, but goes further by exploring questions that the conventional academy skirts or avoids altogether: questions of deep subjectivity, spirituality, and meaning. In what may appear to be a paradox in a world that conventionally sees "self" and "other" as competing values, contemplative education learns from the experience of those who have engaged in disciplined inner cultivation that the results of this cultivation are a more discerning and balanced relationship to the external world, an awareness of all beings, and the motivation to act with compassion in the world for the benefit of others.

Thomas Coburn is President of Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado. Naropa is a non-sectarian University with a Buddhism-inspired curriculum. Sponsored by the Visiting Lecturer's Committee.

Summer Reading Program - Continuing the Dialogue: The Tibetan-Chinese Conflict

February 27, 2008
4:10 p.m.
Linderman Library Room 200
Related Info: Menon gives powerful insights into Freedom in Exile

The Class of 2011 read Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama this past fall as part of the Summer Reading Program. From this autobiography, first-year students learned more about the Dalai Lama and his experiences as the spiritual and political leader of Tibet. In his writing, the Dalai Lama chronicles his escape from Tibet amidst the increasing conflict with China. Join Dr. Rajan Menon, Lehigh University's Monroe J. Rathbone Distinguished Professor of International Relations, for an informal talk as he expands on the issues of the Tibetan-Chinese conflict.

Sponsored by the Office of the First-Year Experience. For more information, please call (610) 758-1300.

Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

March 25, 2008
4:10 p.m.
Sinclair Auditorium
Related Info: Magid to challenge the pursuit of happiness
For more information, view event flyer (PDF)

Dr. Barry Magid's public lecture will be drawn from his recently published book, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness, which poses the question: can the continual pursuit of happiness actually be a cause of suffering in peoples' lives? Taking cues from a specifically Zen Buddhist psychology, Dr. Magid directs attention to the contentment that is to be found in the ways things are. His publisher writes, "Barry Magid works with people grappling with the problem of suffering and the pursuit of happiness as both a psychoanalyst and as a Zen teacher. [He] offers a vision of practice that challenges us to radically leave everything as just it is, and to experience a life free of the cures and fixes that perpetuate our fantasies of damage and repair, of happiness and enlightenment."

Barry Magid is a Zen teacher, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He is the author of Ordinary Mind: Exploring the Common Ground of Zen and Psychoanalysis; and a new book published this spring, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide. Jeremy D. Safra, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the New School for Social Research, as written of Magid's new work: "Ending the Pursuit of Happiness is destined to become a classic. [Magid] systematically exposes and dismantles the subtle fantasies that keep us trapped in our futile attempts to transcend the human condition...In an era dominated by the pursuit of quick fixes and the growing medicalization of the mental health field, this book provides a radical and vitally important challenge to the prevailing cultural ethos." Sponsored by the Visiting Lecturer's Committee.