Mystical Arts of Tibet: Sacred Music, Sacred Dance

On Oct. 19, the monks of Drepung Loseling Monastery performed ancient temple music and dance at Hall Auditorium as part of festivities leading up to the 14th Dalai Lama's visit. They also played traditional Tibetan instruments.

The monks are endorsed by the Dalai Lama as a means of promoting world peace and healing through sacred performing arts, according to their website.

The Drepung Loseling monks were featured on the Golden Globe-nominated soundtrack of Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt. They performed with Philip Glass in the live presentation of his Academy Award-nominated music/score for the film Kundun.

On previous U.S. tours, the monks have shared the stage with Paul Simon, Sheryl Crow, Patti Smith, the Beastie Boys and Natalie Merchant.

Miami University junior Abigail Smith, a junior marketing and strategic communication double major, was there Oct. 19 to capture the images of their performance. Check out Smith's images in a slide show below, edited by Erin Kenney, a sophomore business economics major.

World's Apart: A Look into Tibetan Buddhism

By Kirsten Graffeo and Elise Sexton

• 6% of the world practices Buddhism
• There are about 360 million practitioners of Buddhism
• China, Thailand, and Vietnam are the three countries with the highest Buddhist population in the world
• Tibetan Buddhism makes up 6% of the entire Buddhist community
• 56% of Buddhists are followers of the Mahayana branch
• Today’s Tibetan region is now half the size it used to be
• Source: 2007 report from Buddhist Tourism, a New Delhi agency

Once the center of Tibetan Buddhism, southwestern China’s Tibetan region is now the center of worldwide controversy. Its inhabitants claim that the region is autonomous of China and they prefer to adhere to their own practice of the religion.

Despite the current controversy, Buddhism has deep roots in the area, going as far back as 173 A.D. Buddhism is divided into four different schools of thought, each based on different teachings, but they encourage community between all, according to ReligionFacts.com, an unaffiliated online encyclopedia of religion information.

The youngest and largest school is the School of the Virtuous, or the Yellow Hats, of which the Dalai Lama is a follower and leader.

Every school teaches the four basic truths, says Elizabeth Wilson, professor of comparative religion at Miami University of Ohio.

• The first two truths teach that life is suffering or bitter, and that the cause of this unhappiness is people trying to hold onto things that are not permanent.
• The last two truths explain that life does not have to be dissatisfying because nirvana can be reached through a path of meditation and morality.

Adherents of the religion desire to reach nirvana, a final state of bliss and contentment in which there is no longer a need for reincarnation, Wilson says.

Ethics in the Sold-Out, Craigslist World

By Kevin Jacobson

Miami University’s tickets to see the Dalai Lama’s speech on Thursday sold out faster than anyone expected. This has prompted a number of the tickets - original price $5 for students - to be listed for sale on Craigslist.com.

Call it the 2,500 percent mark-up opportunity of a lifetime.

The highest price listed Tuesday on Craigslist was $250 for a pair of tickets. This posting came from a sophomore business major at Miami University.

In response to an e-mail inquiry about the tickets, the student responded, “$200 is the lowest I can go” for the pair, which originally cost the student all of $10.

Another post came from a junior environmental science major who was “looking for $100 per ticket."

Not everyone felt it necessary to take advantage of this opportunity profit from their tickets to a talk ironically titled “Ethics in the Modern World.” One respondent, who posted a wanted ad on Craigslist for tickets to the event, reported he only paid $20 per ticket. Another offered a ticket for $1, arguing, "Please, if you are going to ask for more (than $5), why not consider donating the excess to 'Free Tibet' ?"

According to Miami, “The resale of tickets is a violation of Miami’s ticketing policy and Miami University reserves the right to revoke resold tickets.”

Tickets to the Dalai Lama’s speech sold out shortly after they went on sale. The initial ticket offering Sept. 1 was to students, staff and faculty only, for $5 per ticket. A public ticket offering for $25 per ticket took place Sept. 29, and 411 tickets at $25 each were sold within 20 minutes, said Claire Wagner, associate director of university communications.

This prompted the university to offer a free live telecast of the speech at Hall Auditorium, as well as at each of the branch campuses.

Kevin Jacobson is a senior majoring in finance.

Dalai Lama at Miami University

My old friend Bill Warren, a colleague and amazing photographer for The Ithaca Journal newspaper in New York, was the first to teach me about the Dalai Lama.

Bill's passion for chronicling the Dalai Lama - both during His Holiness's visits to a spiritual enclave outside Ithaca and in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai's home in exile - led him to publish a photographic and educational book, "Living Tibet: The Dalai Lama in Dharamsala," in 1995.

It has a foreword by the 14th Dalai Lama.

Bill and his co-author, Nanci Hoetzlein Rose, spent many months in Dharamsala reporting for the book. In fact, Bill was often granted long leaves from his corporate photographer job to travel to India and other spiritual corners of the world.

Here is one of my favorite photos from that book of a young boy, gazing through colorful banners imprinted with Buddhist prayers, as he watches Tibetan New Year festivities.

This Thursday, the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, visits Miami University to talk to students about ethics in a modern world. His speech is sold out.

Members of my Journalism 201 Honor's course in basic news reporting and writing will be reporting on the event live on this blog.

Peace.