This is a scene that immediately captured my imagination: last week, in the preacher’s room at Memorial Church in Cambridge, the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy of non-violence, turned to one of Harvard’s leading scholars of Islam and asked him about the meaning of jihad.

The Tibetan Buddhist leader briefly mentioned the exchange in his speech to at the church; it took me a few days to get more details, and now, here they are:

The 73-year-old Dalai Lama had been to Harvard multiple times, and on a couple of occasions had met Professor William A. Graham (right), a noted Koranic scholar who for the last several years has been the dean of Harvard Divinity School. The Divinity School, as well as the Harvard Graduate School of Education, co-hosted the Dalai Lama’s Harvard event last week, so Graham was with the Dalai Lama in a room behind the sanctuary while the assembly watched Tibetan dancers and listened to the strange sounds of a dhung-chen, a traditional Tibetan horn that sounded to me like a cross between a didgeridoo and a shofar. The Dalai Lama, preparing to give his speech about the teaching of compassion, was apparently thinking about the role of a divinity school at an institution like Harvard – he later talked about the importance of teaching comparative religion in university settings -- when he turned to Graham and asked him about Islam. I later caught up with Graham by phone, and here’s what he told me:

"We were simply talking about the virtues of doing comparative religion studies, which he believes in, and he said so many things are misunderstood, like jihad. He said he was thinking about the differences between greater and lesser jihad in Muslim jurisprudence. He had a few things to say about it – I didn’t get much of a chance to respond to anything – but he’s quite correct that the word jihad has been misused. Any traditionalist who knows his Islamic law knows that jihad is fundamentally defensive. The tendency has always been, with Muslim religious thought, to say the real jihad is the inner struggle with oneself, and the lesser jihad is actually having to take up arms. And, even then, Muslim law has ruled consistently that it has to be for defense of Islam. Obviously, various political leaders have taken and misused that -- rulers have always been able to find someone who can give a fatwa, saying it’s because they’ve been threatened or attacked or whatever, to say this is legitimately a jihad. But that’s why 9/11 was so thoroughly condemned by mainstream Muslim legal scholars and clerics, saying this should not be construed as an act of jihad."

Graham described the exchange as a form of "chit-chat" and said the point was "we need to understand more about other traditions – he was mostly just saying we need to know more."

But the Dalai Lama also seemed to draw a second lesson from the exchange, because in his opening remarks he not only paid tribute to the importance of educating students about religions other than their own, but he also made a more specific point, that Islam, like Buddhism and other religions, emphasizes compassion (the Dalai Lama’s most frequently mentioned priority). The Dalai Lama made his point visually, as well as verbally, pulling off his wrist his Buddhist prayer beads - called a mala -- while referring to Muslim rosaries and talking about how Islam fits into the family of faiths. Here’s what he said as he began his speech (his English is a little rough, but his meaning is clear):

"It is very, very important for religious school: comparative study of different traditions. Sometimes, unfortunately, the different religious faiths, sometimes instead of helping people, sometimes divide. In worst case, even bloodshed take place in the name of different faith. That not only in the ancient time, but also modern times sometimes it happen. So therefore the study of different traditions is very, very helpful, and I think make familiar to people there are many different tradition, and all tradition, in spite different philosophy, all have same purpose, to bring inner peace. And with that, I think all religion talks about sense of spiritual brothers, sisters, and also love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment, self-discipline, all tradition consider these are very valued, these are important.

So, while we just were waiting there, I asked you, from the special field of Islam…I asked the meaning of jihad. In certain way, when threat towards one’s own tradition happening, then, for protection or defense one’s own faith, then certain kind of appropriate action. So that kind of concept I think all religion have the same sort of use. So sometimes people, it’s a little exaggerated: Islam is more militant, because of few individuals misuse to action. So since September 11th event, in many occasion I always come forth, with a defense of Islam. Islam like any other major tradition. I think the very praising Allah means love, infinite love, compassion, like that. I understand Islam, they usually carry rosary, all 99 beads, different name of Allah, all refer compassion, or these positive things.

No religion, no religious tradition say their god is full of hatred, full of anger, nobody say that. So Allah means infiniteness of love. So genuine follower of that kind of god, the meaning is, must practice love, compassion, because they are genuine follower of that kind of god. So in that case, more faith towards one’s own god, the person should be more compassionate person. That’s logical like that.

So it’s wonderful, comparative study. Usually my approach, about interfaith, and promoting religious harmony: firstly make clear all the differences. Then try to analyze the purpose of these different approach, different philosophy. Then more or less you can find that all different approach, all different method, different concept, meant for promote love, compassion, forgiveness, honesty, truthful, these things. So like medicine. There are a variety of medicine. Each medicine different. But all same purpose: cure illness. Some medicine serve to some illness. Some medicine is very harmful, very dangerous. But overall, all meant for better health, cure illness. So similarly, all religion like that."

(Photos of the Dalai Lama at Memorial Church by Mark Wilson of the Globe staff, 4/30/09. Photo of William Graham by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University News Office.)

The Dalai Lama spent yesterday in Cambridge; I covered his visit to Harvard, and my colleague Jim Smith covered his visit to MIT. Here's our dispatch, from today's Globe:

CAMBRIDGE - Arrayed before him were deans and doctors, professors and pupils, and the full range of scholars who populate the hallowed halls of Harvard.

After the Dalai Lama slipped off his shoes, crammed his crossed legs into a too-narrow chair, and unceremoniously blew his nose, the world's most revered and honored Buddhist monk offered a bit of wisdom for the sages: Being smart doesn't make you happy.

During a day of high-minded events at Harvard and MIT, the 73-year-old spiritual leader repeatedly showed that he was not interested in the pomp of his surroundings.

When the crowd rose, in complete silence, as he entered Memorial Church, he said, abruptly and simply, "Sit down."

At a tree-planting in his honor in Harvard Yard, he made it clear this would not just be for show. He chastised the president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust, for shoveling too little dirt on the birch sapling's roots, and once the dignitaries had done their thing, he grabbed his shovel and smoothed out the ground, and then took a plastic water bottle and liberally sprinkled its contents over the sun-drenched green leaves.

At Harvard, he flipped through a program while a group of Tibetan girls performed a dance for him; at MIT, as the Buddhist chaplain delivered closing remarks, the Dalai Lama busied himself putting on his slippers.

His day had two major events - a talk at Harvard about the importance of educating people to be compassionate, as well as intelligent, and a fund-raising event for a new institute in his name, the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values, at MIT.

At Memorial Church, after being welcomed by Tibetan dancers and musicians, the Dalai Lama posed a rhetorical question, "whether education, intelligence, can bring inner peace," and proceeded to conclude that it cannot. He joked about Harvard's reputation, saying: "Some of my friends in the East once told me Harvard is so famous, even just to walk in that place is something sacred. That is too much, I think. Foolish people, or silly people, can walk [through] easily."

At another point, he observed: "There are very smart scholars, professors . . . full of feelings of competition, full of jealousy, full of anger. . . . I don't mean disrespect."

He said, as he often does, that compassionate feelings appear to be a biological component of human beings - he cited the early connection between children and their mothers - and said those feelings need to be cultivated, not only by families, but also by schools.

He noted that Buddhist monks have weathered imprisonment in Chinese prisons with less apparent psychological damage than that experienced by veterans of the Iraq war, and said, "More compassionate persons, in spite of traumatic experiences, their mental state is still calm." And he attributed some youth violence to a lack of "compassion, or affection, in family, or society."

But he suggested that "Warm-heartedness" is difficult to teach.

"How to teach, I don't know," he said. "I often express these things. But how to implement, it's up to you."

At MIT, the Dalai Lama offered a mix of provocative ideas about promoting ethics in a secular society with banter and jokes that he chortled at himself.

After entering the nearly full Kresge Auditorium, where some guests had donated $1,250 or more for a pair of tickets, he kidded a Catholic monk in the front row that his head was less than perfectly shaved, unlike the Buddhist monks in the hall. Sitting cross-legged on a sofa, he recalled that he had visited a homeless shelter in San Francisco recently and told a man there that he, too, had suffered the same fate after going into exile in 1959. "I said, 'Me too, homeless.' "

His talk centered on how to achieve genuine compassion - not the kind that people easily muster for friends who share their views, but compassion for those they don't agree with.

The Dalai Lama also said the new ethics center should search for ways to help secular people build ethical values, arguing that most of the world's 6 billion people are nonbelievers who won't get ethics through religion.

He asked the Catholic monk whether secularism means rejection of religion, to which the monk replied, "that depends on your experience of secularism."

"Very wise answer," the Dalai Lama told him to laughter. "We need to promote secular ethics through education."

The Dalai Lama had some imaginative ideas for MIT scientists to work for peace.

"You could invent an injection for compassion," he said. "I would want that."

And maybe commerce could contribute: "You could have shops selling compassion. In a supermarket, you could buy compassion."

A student asked about ethics and the weapons industry. The Dalai Lama, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his nonviolent campaign for Tibetan rights, said he hoped this would be the century for global demilitarization.

But a good start, he said, would be for institutions like MIT to invent a bullet "that misses ordinary people but hits the decision makers," waving his arm in the path of a wiggling bullet to laughter and applause. "That kind of bullet needs to be developed. Wonderful."

(Photo above, by Mark Wilson of the Globe staff, shows the Dalai Lama at Memorial Church at Harvard on 4/30/09.)

In my many years as a newspaper reporter, I've been to a lot of groundbreakings and ribbon-cuttings and other events that journalists tend to dismiss as "dog and pony shows,'' but I must say I've never seen a dignitary take to a tree planting with quite as much gusto as the 73-year-old Dalai Lama showed in Harvard Yard this morning.

It was just after the Tibetan Buddhist leader had delivered a talk on education inside Memorial Church (more on that in tomorrow's paper), on a patch of grass (OK, on a piece of fake green stuff that had been placed over the ground) just in front of the chapel-cum-war memorial. Harvard's staff arborists (yup, Harvard has a staff of botanists, horticulturists and arborists over at the Arnold Arboretum) had apparently created a hybrid tree just for the Dalai Lama -- a blend of the Monarch Birch from Asia and the Paper Birch from North America that is supposed to evoke trees significant in both Tibetan and Native American cultures.

The event began with the requisite speeches. Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust reviewed the Latin-Sanskrit etymology of the word "birch,'' and the uses of the tree by various cultures, including, she said, the use of its bark for the recording of the earliest Buddhist texts.

"Just as His Holiness has linked East and West, and inspired so many with his leadership and humility, so shall this tree combine the expression of a large heart and a tradition of simple service,'' Faust said, before giving the Buddhist leader a framed rendering of a birch tree in three seasons.

The Dalai Lama offered thanks, saying the tree would likely outlast both Faust and him, and would remind future generations of his visit.

"Sometimes, in the modern time, in a big city, sometimes a lot of modern machines...a little bit distance from nature,'' he said. "Trees and flowers always bring us close with nature.''

He said the tree is a reminder of the importance of environmental issues, saying that with dramatic climate change, "we are finished,'' and warning that excess pollution causes harm to unborn babies. He noted that war is an obvious problem, because it creates for people images of blood and death, but that "the destruction of ecology" occurs "invisibly, unnoticeably, gradually...without much notice.''

But then the fun began. The tree had already been planted, but there was a ditch dug around it, and a pile of dirt with four shovels so that the Dalai Lama, Faust, and the deans of the divinity and education schools could ceremonially turn over some soil. But the Dalai Lama was having none of that. When Faust turned over a timid shovelful, he said to her, simply, "too little,'' and waited for her to do more, at which point he said, "good.'' And then, after the deans did their part, he took his shovel and proceeded to circumnavigate the tree, adding dirt to cover its roots and smoothing out the ground.

Finally, he asked of no one in particular, "have you some water?" An aide brought him a plastic eco-shaped half-liter of Poland Spring with which he proceeded to lovingly water the sun-dappled green leaves.

"Good,'' he said again, before shaking a few hands, walking slowly back to his motorcade, and heading off to lunch.

(Photo, by Mark Wilson of the Globe staff, shows the Dalai Lama at a tree-planting ceremony in Harvard Yard today, 4/30/09.)

The Dalai Lama, kicking off a four-day visit to the Boston area, today acknowledged China's extraordinary economic and political might, but said the world's largest nation's quest to be considered a superpower will be stymied as long as China continues to dodge human rights concerns.

The 73-year-old spiritual and political leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who has led a government in exile in India for 50 years, beamed and laughed as he fielded questions from the Boston news media at the Charles Hotel, sitting in a conference room decorated with images of doodles and notes by former President John F. Kennedy. As he began the session, he was noticeably fatigued, but he became increasingly animated, and as he rose to leave, a reporter's shouted question about whether he ever expected to set foot in Tibet again prompted a lengthy finger-pointing response about the meanings of home and of hope, and he then plunged into the media scrum to bow, shake hands, and pose for pictures.

Perhaps the most pointed moment of the news conference came when the Dalai Lama appeared to compare the U.S. to China, criticizing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alongside his criticism of China's repression of Tibetan demonstrators last year.

Despite the fact that some have criticized the Obama administration, and particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for allegedly soft-pedalling human rights concerns when talking with China, the Dalai Lama said he saw no change in American policy toward Tibet with the arrival of the new administration, and he praised Obama as "straightforward" and for trying to improve some of America's testier foreign relationships.

But the Dalai Lama also acknowledged that he is not meeting with Obama during his current trip the US, and said that he hopes, but is not certain, that he will meet the president during another trip to the U.S. in October. And the Dalai Lama said, referring to former President George W. Bush, "I love President Bush,'' acknowledging serious policy disagreements, but citing Bush's warm personality.

The Dalai Lama offered warm remarks about Harvard University, which he first visited in 1979, and will visit again tomorrow with a speech at The Memorial Church and a tree-planting ceremony in Harvard Yard. The Dalai Lama has cultivated a relationship with Harvard because of a perception that many the nation's future leaders study there.

During this visit to Boston -- the Dalai Lama's sixth trip to the region -- he will also dedicate a new ethics center, named after him, at MIT; will discuss the relationship between meditation and psychotherapy at a Harvard Medical School sponsored panel discussion, and will host two large public events, including an introductory course in Buddhism, that are expected to be attended by as many as 13,000 people on Saturday at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro.

While in Cambridge, the Dalai Lama was scheduled to meet privately with a handful of elderly and disabled Tibetan-Americans, but most of the area's tiny Tibetan community -- estimated at about 600 people -- is expected to arrive en masse in Foxboro on Saturday.

"I doubt there is a single Tibetan in Boston who won't be there -- this is a huge deal for Tibetans to see His Holiness,'' said Dhondup Phunkhang, a spokesman for the Tibetan Association of Boston. "Tibetans in Tibet risk their lives to see him, so of course we who live in a free country should go. It's a huge honor to be able to see him and to associate with His Holiness.''

The Dalai Lama, asked whether, after 50 years with no success in his quest to win greater autonomy for Tibet, there is any reason for hope for the Tibetan cause, acknowledged that rationally there is little cause for optimism. However, he offered a brief history of post-revolutionary China, suggesting that the nation has repeatedly changed course in serious ways, and so it is possible it will change again. He said China has essentially abandoned socialism -- he called it a "capitalist autocratic communist'' nation. And he said the Chinese people have been more sympathetic to the Tibetan cause than has the Chinese government -- he cited as evidence what he said were articles sympathetic to Tibet that have been written by Chinese authors over the last year.

For more information about the Dalai Lama's visit, and for tickets to the Gillette Stadium event, visit bostontibet.org.

(UPDATE: Here is the full story, from the 4/30/09 Globe, about the Dalai Lama's first day in Cambridge.)

And here's a brief video from the Dalai Lama's opening remarks:

(Photos, by Pat Greenhouse of the Globe staff, show the Dalai Lama at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge today, 4/29/09.)

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, arrives in Boston next month at a time when there is renewed focus on the future of the Tibetan cause 50 years after the Dalai Lama and his followers fled into exile in India.

The local Tibetan community, which numbers about 500, is eagerly preparing for the visit, which will take place from April 29 to May 2. During the visit, the Dalai Lama plans to hold a press conference, to give talks at Harvard and MIT, to meet with scientists at the Boston Park Plaza, and to hold two public talks at Gillette Stadium. His remarks over the four days are expected to touch on the four main themes he often discusses in the U.S. -- religion, science, politics and education.

The Dalai Lama previously visited Boston in 1991, 1995, 1998 and 2003, and he visited Northampton in 2007.

I talked today with Lobsang Sangay, a senior fellow at the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School and the coordinator for the Dalai Lama's upcoming visit.

Q: Why is the Dalai Lama coming to Boston?
A: He is coming here to share his wisdom and thoughts with the people of New England on his sense of Buddhism and also on the path to peace.

Q: He's been here several times before. Does he have some connection to this area?
A: I think he does. New England is a land of immigrants, has a liberal mindset, and a history of refugees, and I think he feels some special connection with the people of New England. And there are the schools -- he always tries to reach out to the future leaders of nations.

Q: How is his health?
A: He's doing pretty well. The situation in Tibet is grim and tragic, and as a person I'm sure he's saddened by the present reality in Tibet. But he has spent time as a practitioner, and he exudes compassion and understanding and tolerance of others.

Q: What's the significance for local Tibetans?
A: Tibetans are very excited to see their spiritual and temporal leader, and also whenever he comes it's a deep inspiration for Tibetans, who will come and greet him and hear his message and follow what he tells us to do.

Sangay had an op-ed piece previewing the visit in today's Globe, and Globe reporter Jim Smith had a piece last week about a new Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT that the Dalai Lama will dedicate during his visit.

(Photo, by Dina Rudick of the Globe staff, shows the Dalai Lama at Smith College in Northampton on 5/9/2007.)

Tibetan Buddhist performer Penpa Tsering, who is a throat singer, a flautist, and a dancer, among other talents, will be performing today and tomorrow at the Lowell Folk Festival. Stephanie Schorow in Globe NorthWest has the story:

"Tsering, 44, explains - almost apologetically - that he learned to play music from a teacher in white robes with white hair, carrying a white flute, and accompanied by a white horse, who has come to him in dreams. No, he doesn't understand why this spirit teacher chose him or why he can learn so much while he sleeps. He is mystified by this and says he always prays before a concert, in gratitude. It's true that many people don't believe him, he acknowledges, but 'I never had any regular teacher. I learned from dreams.'"

Each year for the last decade, the Forest Hills Cemetery in JP has held an annual lantern festival, inspired by a Japanese Buddhist festival, called Bon, at which the dead are believed to return for a visit.

Last night, a crowd of about 4,000 surrounded Lake Hibiscus at sunset. Participants illustrated the rice paper sides of wooden lanterns, illuminated them with small candles, and, at dusk, set them to float on the water, a gesture intended to welcome back the departed souls.

Among the many performers at the event was Grand Master Tsuji, who led Samurai Taiko Japanese drumming: