The next day at the Dalai Lama teachings I had much more success.  I decided to sit down in the courtyard below the balcony I was on the day before.  It is still within the temple, but far less crowded.  Here I could sit out amongst the trees and watch the adorable little kids run around.  In India there are many things lying around that seem often dangerous and out of place.  Buildings often times appear to me to midway through construction and look as if they’ve been that way for a very long time. Anyway, an example of this is that in the courtyard at the Dalai Lama temple there’s this large pile of really long rebar on the ground.  I believe, quite possibly, that if any other place in world were having a public event let alone the Dalai Lama teaching; they would remove this rebar.  But, we are in India and you see this kind of stuff all the time!  The children discover the pile of rebar and of course immediately begin to jump and play on it.  I watched many near misses.  We had one little girl down for the count at one period (startled but okay), overall the kids came out unscathed.   I unfortunately was incredibly distracted watching (and cringing) as these little ones jumped and played on rebar.  I caught most, but not all of what the Dalai Lama said.

My other success was that I found the English translation on the radio (you thought I learned how to speak Tibetan)!  The topic of the Dalai Lama’s teaching was Emptiness, which to be honest with you, I’m not sure I fully grasped this concept and I certainly will be unable to explain it to you.  All in all, it’s lovely to watch the Dalai Lama speak.  It’s lovely to see how he interacts with the people and the monks.  He seems to be a man with a great sense of humor.  He laughs a lot and quite often gets the audience into a pretty good belly laugh  as well.  Every time the Dalai Lama is done with his teaching for the day he departs down one particular set of stairs.  One afternoon I raced to the stairs to maybe get a chance to shake his hand.  No such luck on the handshake, but I was standing about three feet away from him.
What a presence.