His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, visited the IDI on Friday, 17 February 2006. The meeting, entitled Reinventing Compassion, was broadcast live on this website.
At 9:30 a.m., the crowded room stood up as his holyness entered. The President of the Israel Democracy Institute, Dr. Arye Carmon, opened the event by speaking of compromise and accepting differences in others. He then presented the Dalai Lama with a copy of the Constitution by Consensus. The Dalai Lama, in turn, expressed his surprise that Israel does not yet have a constitution, and spoke of openness and change and expressed his hopes that this constitution will be adopted.
The Dalai Lama spoke with wit, humor, and humbleness about a range of topics including the relationship between economics and peace, education, welfare, the European Union, money, terrorism, the Hamas, the Holocaust, and, of course, compassion.
Participants in this event included prominent journalists, economists, and other key figures including The President of the Supreme Court (Emeritus) Meir Shamgar, Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff, journalist Tali Lipkin-Shahak, Linda Gradstein (NPR), Deputy Governor of the Bank of Israel Professor Avia Spivak, and many others.