The Dalai Lama comes to Seattle:
The visit by the Dalai Lama, who arrived here Thursday afternoon on a flight from Japan, is his first to the United States since the onset of international protests over the Chinese crackdown in Tibet. But the trip was planned long before the recent troubles, and few expect him to use it to begin making demands for Tibetan independence.
Nor, for that matter, is he expected to guest on bass or bellow backup vocals when he joins the rocker and local organic parent Dave Matthews onstage here Friday evening.
The expectation, instead, is that he will stick with what got him here, “dialoguing” about the importance of an inclusive kindness and compassion: pitch-perfect preaching for an area with one of the country’s lowest rates of church attendance and a notable lack of interest in mainstream American religion.
