The Dalai Lama was in Toronto on October 31st so I went to hear him speak at Skydome (Rogers Centre). I had no real reason other than just wanting to see this personality who has loomed large for our generation. I'm so glad I went - he's a very engaging speaker!

He came out on stage wearing one of those Madonna wrap-around-the-head microphones, greeted the crowd of 16,000 then proceeded to take off his shoes and sit lotus-style on the couch provided. He rambled conversationally for awhile before even pretending to address the topic, "The Art of Happiness". He's a giggler and has those crinkly eyes which make him seem like your favourite uncle or a gnome or whatever. This isn't disrespectful, I think it's part of his global appeal. In fact, at one point I had an overwhelming sense that I was watching Yoda. The parallels between the two are many and so obvious that I'm not the first person to posit this comparison; the worldly-naiive wisdom, the broken english, the unexpected giggle, "do or do not, there is no try". Go ahead and Google 'Dalai Lama & Yoda'. It pulls up roughly 50,000 hits.

He addressed many aspects of happiness but in fact, his talk referred more often to a global emotion as opposed to the personal. One buddhist expressed surprise that the Dalai Lama had chosen this topic because, as he stated in an email read to the crowd, "happiness is never discussed in the texts or teachings of Buddha, only the absence of suffering." The DL waved this away as semantics and would not be drawn into an academic discussion of Buddha's intent. Having grown up in a Christian culture where arguing the minutae of a multi-translated, second-guessed text is considered dinner conversation, this was incredibly refreshing.

His message was pretty straight-forward and familiar. Be tolerant, be kind and be who you are. He advised that while there's nothing wrong with educating yourself in the various religions & teachings of prophets, it's important to stay with the religion in which you were raised. He told a funny story about a buddhist friend who moved to America and after several years there told the DL that he was converting to Christianity. "But don't worry," he said, apparently oblivious to the fact Christians don't believe in reincarnation, " I'll be a Buddhist in my next life."

Anyway, as I said he's an interesting speaker and there's a directness about him that you don't usually find in such a public figure. I'd definitely recommend going to see him if you ever get the opportunity. At the end , I was so relaxed it was like I'd had a massage. I stood in the middle of the field, waiting for the floor and exit aisles to clear when I suddenly realized that I was standing IN THE MIDDLE OF SKYDOME FIELD!! I had to text my son and say, "Hey, guess where I am!".

Actually, that's not the first time I've stood on the field at Skydome - except the last time it was after midnight during the '93 World Series, all the lights were off and I was playing baseball.

A group of us had rented one of the Skydome hotel rooms to watch game two of the series. It was one of the two-level rooms with one full wall of windows overlooking the field (there was actually an incident a few weeks before this where two people "forgot" to close the drapes and were caught on camera having sex during a game). Anyway, late that night we decided to head out to a bar. We jumped in the elevator intending to get off at the lobby but when the doors opened, we were looking at the Skydome field. Somehow we'd gotten down to field level and we weren't about to pass up the opportunity.

In fact, we'd actually come prepared on the off-chance that something like this might happen. No kidding. One of the guys hiked back up to our room to grab the gloves and balls we'd brought "just in case" and we started to play some baseball. It was very cool. We threw the ball around and took photos for about 15-20 minutes before security came down and rounded us up. The security guys pretended to be pissed but they weren't. As soon as they realized we weren't going to cause any problems they relaxed and asked us to follow them back up to the lobby. One of them told us it was their fault for forgetting to lock down field access on the elevator panel. Ah, such a great memory! I'll have to find the pictures of that.