The Dalai Lama arrived for a 5-day conference is Seattle on Thursday, NY Times reports. And, he’s going to be busy.
In addition to a Dave Matthews concert he is attending and a variety of other events, including an address at the University of Washington, he is to speak at Qwest Field, where the Seattle Seahawks play football. More than 50,000 people are expected there. It seems that the Dalai Lama is, like, totally mainstream in Seattle, dude.
Why is Seattle his kind of town? According to the NY Times article, spirituality and self-help sections in bookstores do well, neighborhood farmer’s markets thrive, and craigslist is the place to go this week if you want to buy tickets from scalpers to see the “simple monk” from Tibet. People move to the Northwest “to separate, to differentiate themselves from their families and their traditions,” said James K. Wellman Jr., an associate professor in the comparative religion department at the University of Washington in the NY Times article. “And then they get here, and there’s not many people, so there’s this sense of isolation. There’s an ambivalence about it. They both love it and they wonder, ‘Well, how can I connect?’ “
That theory could also explain why Seattle “invented” the coffee shop culture.