AP photo

Above, the Dalai Lama acknowledges the audience Monday during a program at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga.

Being graced with a wave from the Dalai Lama leaves you feeling spiritually giddy, a group of local Catholics discovered after traveling to Indiana this week to attend an interfaith service with the Buddhist leader in Bloomington, Ind.

After the five-and-a-half-hour drive back to Columbia, the 20 travelers and the Rev. Thomas Saucier arrived at the St. Thomas More Newman Center Tuesday night with the traditional gift of a white linen scarf blessed by the Dalai Lama. It will soon hold a place of honor in the Catholic center on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus.

The hour-and-a-half-long interfaith service included religious members of a range of faiths: Hindu, Evangelical Christian, American Indian, Sikh, Bahai, Unitarian Universalist, Catholic and Jewish.

Nick King photos

Michael Jandusa, above left, hands his bag to the Rev. Thomas Saucier on Monday as a group prepares to leave the St. Thomas More Newman Center in Columbia to attend a service led by the Dalai Lama at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. Below from left, Jeff Scott, Kevin Shull, Dana Bocke and Kaitlyn Bender share a laugh Monday at the Newman Center as they prepare for the trip to Bloomington, Indiana, to see the Dalai Lama.

Each religious leader presented the Dalai Lama with a gift and delivered a prayer of their tradition. The overall effect was to leave this group of students seeing little difference between the faiths. Every faith believes in compassion, they said.

Michael Jandusa, 22, said it’s a message the student ministry at Newman can now carry to the MU campus.

"I don’t know if any other leader would have inspired that kind of feeling," said Emily Wenzlick, 23.

The Buddhist leader, whose name means "Ocean of Wisdom," is known worldwide for his message of peace. He spoke for about 20 minutes to a crowd of more than 400 people about the importance of compassion, tolerance and forgiveness.

There are many Lamas in Tibetan Buddhism, each representing a different aspect of Buddha; the Dalai Lama is the manifestation of Buddha’s compassion.

"He radiates a very spiritual presence, which I found very moving," Saucier said.

Saucier said the Dalai Lama exerts the same kind of pull as the pope in Rome - people just want to touch him in the hope some of his spirituality will transfer to them. Indeed, shaking the hand of the Dalai Lama might have rubbed off on Saucier, who said he is already exerting more mental control over himself.

Saucier incorporated this example in to a homily during Mass last week: He often drives through campus and gets frustrated by students stepping out in front of his car without looking. "The students just walk right out in front of you. I used to really get upset about that, and with the windows rolled up in my car, I was mouthing certain things a religious person shouldn’t be mouthing. I know that’s not the way to respond to it," Saucier said.

So he’s stopped responding that way. Now he works on remaining calm.

The Dalai Lama is known for his humor. Saucier said he’d never seen someone smile more in his entire life.

This combination of humor, happiness and compassion put a different light on the compassionate role the priest is often called upon to fill for his congregation, Saucier said. "When I think of compassion, I think of people telling me a horrible sob story - they just lost a relative or they are going through a horrible divorce," he said. "Compassion almost means I am sad with them, in a way."

Saucier said he realized compassion also means being able to feel people’s happiness.

The interfaith service was part of his six-day visit to Indiana. The Newman Center’s Campus Ministry Director Angelle Hall said one thing that especially stuck with her was his message of being committed to one’s faith. "He said if you are a believer then you need to listen to your faith and be committed."

She also appreciated the difficulty of the simplicity of his council. "We have so much here" in America, "and we have to be content with what we have," Hall said.

"I have some significant issues with Buddhism," Saucier said. "I’m not going to run out and join a Tibetan monastery, but there are a lot of things we can learn from it."

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama since 1391, is considered the reincarnate of Buddhism’s highest religious leader by Tibetan Buddhists. The 72-year-old was visiting an elder brother who once taught at Indiana University, Thubten J. Norbu.

Congress awarded the Dalai Lama its highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, and Emory University in Atlanta named him a Presidential Distinguished Professor.

The Congressional Gold Medal sparked outrage from China, which considers the Tibetan leader a separatist. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet after China took control of the country in 1959 and now lives in exile in India.

China’s Communist Party issued a statement condemning the U.S. government award, and an article in the International Herald Tribune reported a monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, has been surrounded by armed troops after monks there celebrated the award.

The most animated part of his speech to the interfaith service, the students said, was when he talked about war.

"He said it brings sadness to God," Hall said.

In the face of all these global politics, the monk’s position has remained the same: "I am a simple monk." For the group of Newman Catholics, the experience was simply amazing.

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