The path of an invitation
What inspired Peggy Pizzo and Tenzin Tethong to invite the Dalai Lama
— the religious and political leader of the Tibetan people — to Stanford?
By ROSANNE SPECTOR
The story begins with a car crash. It was in Boston on an afternoon
in 1998 and Peggy Pizzo’s car was hit from behind. The jolt caused
a small amount of whiplash and, oddly, deprived her of her voice for
months. Meanwhile, repetitive stress syndrome had made writing and using
a keyboard inadvisable for Pizzo, who at the time was a scholar of early
childhood education and public policy at Harvard.
A disaster, yes. But not without a bright spot.
“It seemed like a good time for reading,” says Pizzo.
A few of the books on her recuperation reading list set in motion the
Dalai Lama’s planned visit to Stanford on Nov. 4 and 5, 2005.
A Quaker (though, Pizzo adds, “not a very good one”), she
had long desired to study the Buddhist monk’s teachings on nonviolence.
She dug into texts describing his philosophy and teachings. What she
read was stimulating. But beyond that, “it was helpful personally,” she
says. Learning to shift perspective on challenging situations and see
them in a different light, as the Dalai Lama advised, was useful. Of
interest also was the idea that training the mind to achieve calm in
many different circumstances is a route to happiness — and that
happiness is the goal of life.
Pizzo’s voice eventually returned. Not long after, her husband,
Harvard’s chairman of pediatrics, Philip Pizzo, MD, accepted the
job of leading Stanford’s medical school. The family moved west
and began adjusting to California’s unfamiliar ways. “The
informality and openness are different from what we’re used to
on the East Coast,” she says.
But a summer 2002 Continuing Studies course on the Dalai Lama promised
a thread of continuity. Peggy Pizzo joined the class, became further
fascinated with the philosophy and personal history of the Dalai Lama
and often stayed afterward to speak with the teacher, human-rights advocate
and former member of Tibet’s government in exile, Tenzin Tethong.
During one of those talks, Pizzo asked Tethong if he thought it might
be possible to interest the Dalai Lama in coming to Stanford. Fresh in
her mind was a campus rally for peace in Israel that spring, marked by
angry speeches from many participants.
“When I asked Tenzin if he thought His Holiness would come to
speak to the students about nonviolent expression, his whole face lit
up,” she says. “I was encouraged.”
Pizzo soon realized that Stanford had another draw for the monk: neuroscientists.
He’s a major science geek, with a special thing for the latest
brain research. Since 1987 he has participated in a series of symposia
bringing together Western scientists and Buddhist scholars, organized
by the nonprofit Mind and Life Institute, based in Louisville, Colo.
So after gaining support for her idea from Stanford’s dean of
religious life Rev. Scotty McLennan and his wife Ellen, not to mention
her own husband, she pulled together an information packet about Stanford’s
neuroscientists and sent it to Tethong’s home. He mailed it with
an invitation to the Dalai Lama’s office in Dharamsala, India.
A letter came back with word that the Dalai Lama was considering the
request. But the wait for a visit to be scheduled would likely be years,
Tethong told Pizzo. So she was floored when a few months later Tethong
gave her the news: “He told me that His Holiness had just agreed
to come and talk with the students, meet with the neuroscientists and
he also proposed a Mind and Life Institute symposium to be held here.
I was euphoric.”
And happiness, after all (per the Dalai Lama), is what it’s all
about.
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