[ Applause ]

>> Thank you. [Applause] It's nice to be here with you. [Singing]

>> This is better.

>> Again.

>> Yes. My brother. Yes. Thank you.

>> Thank you.

[ Singing ]

>> Thank you. Okay. Thank you. [Applause]

>> Good. Thank you again.

>> You're welcome.

>> Chancellor Dave Gearhart: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. And thank you all for

coming. We have an exceptional panel assembled for today's historic discussion on nonviolence.

This is an extraordinary opportunity to hear from some of the most famous proponents of

nonviolence in the world. Dr. Sidney Burris is going to provide a more thorough introduction

of our guests momentarily. But I, personally, on behalf of the University want to welcome

Dr. Vincent Harding, Sister Helen Prejean, and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama to the

University of Arkansas.

[ Applause ]

>> Chancellor Dave Gearhart: I also want to take this opportunity to thank the Distinguished

Lectures Committee of Students for sponsoring this event. And we have a number of the members

of that committee with us today, and I would like to ask them to stand and thank them for

making this possible. Would you please stand? [Applause] Members of the committee, thank

you.

[ Applause ]

>> Chancellor Dave Gearhart: An additional word of thanks is owed to Dr. Sidney Burris,

Director of the Honors Program in the Jay William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences

and a faculty member Geshe Dorjee for their involvement inviting the Dalai Lama to our

campus.

[ Applause ]

>> Chancellor Dave Gearhart: Ladies and gentlemen if they had not been in India working on the

Tibetans In Exile or TEXT Project with our students, I'm not sure we'd all be here today.

Thank you, gentlemen for your leadership. I would also like to remind you that following

this panel, everyone will have to exit the arena and come back through security at noon,

even if you have a ticket for the afternoon lecture. We apologize for any inconvenience,

but it is a requirement of State Department Security that an additional sweep of the area

be performed before the afternoon lecture. Thank you for your understanding. And now,

let's hear a little more from Dr. Burris about today's honored guests.

[ Applause ]

>> Dr. Sidney Burris: Good morning. Thank you Chancellor Gearhart, for your kind words.

Before I confront the daunting task of trying to introduce these three individuals, let

me add a couple of things to what our Chancellor has already said. None of this would have

happened without my friend and my teacher, Geshe Dorjee, a Tibetan monk who left Tibet

in 1969, and whom I brought to Arkansas [applause] in 2006. His presence here on this campus

has been simply transformative. Thank you, Geshe, wherever you are. [Applause] Both my

Chancellor and my Dean Bill Schwab, have shown an unwavering support of all things Tibetan

on this campus, and their support has been crucial over the past 14 months. Thanks to

you both as well. [Applause] To my Co-Chair Melissa Banks, who does not know the word

impossible, and to my good friends Bill Simms, James Ownbey and Karen Chotkowski, whose hard

work and intelligence over the long haul, I've come to rely on many, many thanks to

you as well. [Applause] To my wife, Angie who, when I could not see past the next 12

hours, always reminded me that this day would come. Thank you very much. [Applause] Finally,

and of course, our students, without whom [background talking] the TEXT Project would

not even exist, and without whom I feel confident this would not be occurring today. It does

indeed take a village. We have here on our stage today a monk, a nun, and a college professor.

Not professions that we typically associate with widespread social change and political

renovation. But I would suggest to you that these individuals from their cloistered positions

have affected more positive change in our lives, than many who have devoted their careers

to public service in the traditional manner. Why is this so? My first inkling of an answer

came while [background talking] reading Sister Helen as she described the day in June 1980,

that would change her life. She was listening to Sister Marie Augusta Neal as she lectured

to her community, and she was urging direct action with the poor. Within the year, Sister

Helen had moved from a lakefront suburb into the Saint Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans,

where she began her work on death row. It was about this experience that she would later

write, "Better I decide to try to help ten real hurting people or nine or one than, to

be overwhelmed and withdraw and do nothing or write an academic paper on the problem

of evil." I would suggest that we know and respect Sister Helen now because she has avoided

that academic paper and embraced instead, the ten real hurting people, a number that

has grown steadily and shows no signs of slowing. And because we know how deeply Dr. King weighed

the words that he spoke in public we are mightily impressed to learn that he turned to Professor

Harding to craft the speech that outlined the King's opposition to the war in Vietnam,

one of the landmark statements on nonviolence in American history. But how many of us know

the following words of Professor Harding, which describe a conversation he had with

a young man, articulate and intelligent, who was bent on surviving the tough neighborhood

in Boston where he'd grown up? This young man told Professor Harding that what he needed

were living human signposts to help him find his way, and Professor Harding's response

is emblematic, I believe, of his life. "I have never forgotten these words," Professor

Harding writes, "and these confessions seem to ask us not only to be signposts, but to

introduce our students to other living signs who may be able to help them find the way.

They need to see and know the lives of women and men who provide intimations of our human

grandeur." To all of his students who number now in the thousands Professor Harding has

served as such a signpost, and I would suggest that our stage today, is brimming with such

signposts. I first saw His Holiness in 1979 when I was a young graduate student at the

University of Virginia, and since then I have read his books, attended his teachings, and

generally tried to understand the great compassion and generosity that illuminate his work in

our world. You can open many of his books randomly and find passages that clarify and

illuminate. Here is a passage from a recent collection. "Nonviolence is not limited to

an absence of violence. For it is a matter of an active attitude motivated by the wish

to do others good. It is equivalent to altruism." Altruism, which defines all of our panelists,

is a form of nonviolence. It is a formula both clear and profound, and these are the

two qualities: clarity and profundity that I most associate with His Holiness. So our

panelists agree, happiness depends on developing the kind of warm heart that will recognize

human suffering wherever we might find it, and on developing the capacity to declare

this suffering intolerable. And, of course, the spirit that finds this suffering intolerable

rises from the spirit of nonviolence. Our three panelists have all devoted their lives

to this principle, and I am anxious, as I know you are, to hear their advice on how

we might incorporate something of this in our own lives. It is a great honor to present

to you, once again, Professor Vincent Harding, Sister Helen Prejean, and His Holiness the

14th Dalai Lama.

[ Applause ]

>> Dr. Sidney Burris: Now a word about how we intend to operate here today in this conversation.

I have spoken to Thupten Jinpa earlier, and Sister Helen and Vincent Harding, and what

we will do is we will allow our panelists to talk each for two or three minutes about

their own personal path to the stance of nonviolence, and the particular role that nonviolence plays

in what they do in the world. We will then follow that up with questions and comments.

And then at the end we will have a one minute or so summary from each of the panelists.

And I am certain that we will all be by that time greatly enlightened. We would like to

start, of course, with His Holiness - - if you could talk for a couple of minutes about

your own personal path to nonviolence, and then Sister Helen and Vincent Harding. [Thupten

Jinpa and Dalai Lama converse]

>> Dalai Lama: Good morning everybody.

>> Good morning.

>> Indeed I'm very happy. I think this is the first visit -- the first time I think

come to this state -- I mean this city. So this morning I found -- of course, I usually

get up early morning. So I think at the time I almost at dawn some birds singing. I like

big city -- very beautiful, very beautiful. So I'm very happy. [Chuckle] Thank you. And

then obviously I need to share...

>> Thupten Jinpa: Talk.

>> Dalai Lama: My own experience until now with nonviolence. Firstly, we human being

is social animal. So individual sort of survival depends on the rest of the community. So there

must be some sort of force in our emotion to band together. So that is compassion, human

affection. Then secondly, the way our life start we come from our mother, and not like

some other species like some turtle. As they die the mother as they lay down their egg

they ran.

>> Thupten Jinpa: [Inaudible]

>> Dalia Lama: The egg then left. No need mother's care. They're a youngster. So they

themselves have survived by themselves. We're not like that. Like some other mammals they

at a young age their survival entirely depends on the others for most of their care. And

our case and many birds and many of the mammals their survival depends entirely for the affection

or caring by the mother. So our life starts that way. Therefore I consider basic human

nature is more gentleness. Of course aggression also, part of our life because of our intelligence

and because of greed and some other different emotion. So because of intelligence we must

certain [inaudible] extra ability so that use control other. However they in our -- sort

of now according medical scientists constant anger, fear, very bad for our health. Compassionate

mind, warm-heartedness very good for our health. So that also is confirm our basic nature is

more gentleness. So positive mind, constructive filled emotions goes very well with our body.

The destructive emotions not go well with our body. Now nonviolence and violence , although

I think there are many different levels of action, physical action, verbal action, mental

action. I say there are violent and nonviolent, but generally and any way violence and nonviolence

is action. Every human action, those effective action must come through motivation. So any

action motivated by compassion, central affection is nonviolence. Any action whether verbal

action or physical action out of hatred, out of anger, out of jealousy, out of [inaudible]

these negative feeling ,that essentially violence. So the minds are bleak. In order to promote

nonviolence we have to deal with emotional level. We should sort of make awareness. The compassionate

mind is very good for the society, very good for the family, very good for individual.

The destructive emotion such as jealousy, suspicion, fear, hatred, anger these are very

bad for the society, as it is for the family level, and also [inaudible] for individuals

on the health of these things. So that's my universal way to promote nonviolence. Stress

on the motivation. So now that's it -- [Chuckle] finished.

>> Very short.

>> Thank you. Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> Sister Helen Prejean: My path awakening to nonviolence or what I call or what Gandhi

calls soul force, resistance to what is wrong, trying to help create what is new, and not

to be passive and overwhelmed. A Catholic nun, grew up with great mom and daddy. I wasn't

just a little egg placed in the nest, and then they left. Great mom and daddy, Catholic

mom and daddy, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And to give our life over to God was prized

in our family, and I became a nun with great support. Mom and Daddy, my sister Maryann

are sitting in here today. And I became a nun and the spirituality out of which I was

trying to follow the ways of Jesus, was the spirituality that really separated the world.

Everybody's trying to get to heaven. So if people have to suffer here, well one day they're

going to have a great crown in heaven, and I was separated. We became nuns and cloistered

ourselves so I was separated from the world. And living out in the suburbs of New Orleans

[Thupten Jinpa and Dalai Lama converse] -- and living out in the suburbs my father had been

a successful lawyer so in New Orleans, ten major housing projects in the inner city of

struggling African American people. And I had only known African American people growing

up as our servants. I didn't even know the last names of the woman who worked in the

house or the man who worked in the yard. So the awakening -- the spiritual awakening happened

through coming to understand who Jesus was, and actually through the God revealed in the

Hebrew testament of the burning bush. That one of the first revelations in the Hebrew

scriptures of the heart of God is in the burning bush to Moses, "I have heard the cry of my

people." And I realized that here I was in another world. Here was the inner city, and

I woke up. And the awakening was such a grace. I'm grateful to this moment that I woke up,

and then what you talk about your Holiness. The motivation to act because consciousness

when my consciousness changed and I realized, I don't even know those people. I moved. I

acted and lived in the presence of African American people in the Saint Thomas Housing

Project who became my teachers. And once you get in this river as Dr. Harding loves to

write about -- once you get in the currents then one day coming out of the Adult Learning

Center where I was helping people to get their GEDs, realized the miserable state of education

for poor African American people in public schools. People were coming into the Adult

Learning Center, juniors in high schools who couldn't read at third grade. What is going

to happen to these kids and why had I been so privileged? Why was I so blessed? And so

I began to act. So and coming out one day somebody said hey Sister Helen you want to