Saturday, October 31, 1998

Buddhist prayer flags fly for Dalai Lama's visit

By ANN RODGERS-MELNICK

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

When Carol Brode learned that His Holiness the Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso was coming to Seton Hill College in Greensburg, Pa., next month, she had a vision.

Not the sort of vision that Tibetan Buddhists have traditionally sought in mountain lakes. It was a vision of the Seton Hill campus and downtown Greensburg lined with gaily colored Tibetan prayer flags flying in the fall wind.

"I think it can be a nice kind of visual welcoming for the Dalai Lama," said Brode, an assistant professor of art and director of the art gallery at Seton Hill.

Prayer flags are pieces of blue, white, green, red or gold broadcloth, decorated with religious symbols and framed by the words of a prayer. Brode, her students and students from Westmoreland Community College are silkscreening the basic framework onto the flags.

Volunteers then use markers to draw Tibetan symbols, although rubber stamps are available for the artistically challenged. Finally, the volunteer writes a prayer around the border of the flag. The prayer can reflect whatever religious tradition the volunteer comes from, or none at all.

Brode and the students attach the completed flags to cords, so they can be hung around the campus and the city.

"The idea is that when the wind blows the cloth, the prayer is released," Brode said.

In Tibet, prayer flags are left outside until they disintegrate, so that the prayer is said to return to the earth. In her reading, she learned that prayer flags often decorate treacherous mountain passes in the Himalayas. Some have even been left at the top of Mount Everest.

Brode and a colleague from the community college had initially wondered if either the Catholic or the public school would object to symbols from the Buddhist religious tradition.

"What we said was that we were adapting the idea of prayer flags and creating our own," she said.

Some of the prayers are simple statements of peace and compassion. Others quote extensively from the Bible or Buddhist writings. One says "Let there be world peace." Another says "Please protect the lost souls."

Modifying a Buddhist tradition to accommodate Christian, Jewish or Muslim prayers is unlikely to disturb the Dalai Lama, who views the major religions as separate but equal paths to salvation.

The Dalai Lama is both the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism and the leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile. After nine years of trying to work with occupying Chinese forces, he fled to India in 1959. He travels widely to promote human rights and self-government in Tibet. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

The Dalai Lama will visit Greensburg Nov. 11. He will visit Pittsburgh Nov. 12.

His visit to Western Pennsylvania is part of a U.S. tour that includes a conference of Nobel laureates at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, meetings with political leaders in Washington, and a final stop in New York City.

Some flags are already flying in prominent sites on the Seton Hill campus. Brode hopes to decorate the Dalai Lama's route through downtown Greensburg to the Palace Theater, where he will speak. Brode paid for some fabric herself and has received a limited amount of donated cloth from fabric stores. More is needed, however.

"We had hoped to have thousands of flags, but it will probably be in the hundreds," unless more help arrives, she said.

For more information, contact Brode at 724-830-1071.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)