This evening, people gathered at Snow Lion to watch the Dalai Lama receive this year’s Templeton Award. He is donating the money to an Indian organization called Save the Children, the Mind and Life Institute, and to a fund for educating Tibetan monks about science.
Tibet TV picked up the live Internet stream and broadcast it locally. The stream would disconnect occasionally, and a cursor would appear on the screen, pulling away the video to reveal a Macintosh desktop underneath.
Several young missionaries were loudly discussing deals on plane tickets, drowning out the Dalai Lama’s award speech, where he was discussing a more compassionate world. I tried to synthesize these two conflicting feelings and asked them to shut up in the gentlest way possible. “Oh my god, sorry” one of them said. After a few minutes, they resumed the discussion about Orbitz and Travelocity, but at least kept it to hushed tones.
