Stars Lend Support to Dalai Lama

Usually they get all the attention, but at the Dalai Lama’s teachings this week in Pasadena, celebrities congregated with the masses and gushed just liked the rest of the spiritual leader’s followers.

As action star Steven Seagal helped usher the Dalai Lama out of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Thursday and Richard Gere put the final touches on a dinner party he sponsored that night, the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch (MCA, to his fans) extolled the Dalai Lama as a true star, a person who lives up to his message.

“The Dalai Lama exemplifies all of what Buddhism claims,” Yauch said. “You can see he really is one of the happiest people . . . in the world. You know, he laughs and everyone in the room laughs, too.”

Living in self-imposed exile since the Chinese government tightened its hold over Tibet’s Buddhists, the Dalai Lama mentioned his people’s political strife only briefly, choosing instead to concentrate on religious lessons during his three days of teaching. But even those lessons offered a tinge of secular advice.

“Whenever you find discomfort, calamities, you should know how to transport it to positive practices,” the Dalai Lama said. “It would be senseless to not see your own ill deeds as the factors that harm you.”

Yauch, who helped organize the “Tibetan Freedom Concert” in San Francisco two months ago, expanded upon that message, saying that seemingly simple deeds often harm large groups.

“U.S. corporations and multinational corporations in China are there doing business, but they are ignoring human rights,” said Yauch, who encourages boycotting such companies’ products. “When we put money down on the counter, we’re making a vote for or against human rights.”

The celebrities’ messages of solidarity with the Dalai Lama and his people is powerful PR for the 6 million Tibetans worldwide, said Tseten Phanucharas, a board member of Los Angeles Friends of Tibet.

“I think that in this country, people look up to celebrities. They think [stars] know more, and sometimes they do,” she said. “That has helped our cause tremendously. We do not have anything that we can offer, especially in economic terms. We have nothing to offer but a unique and beautiful religion.”

Yauch said he was first attracted to the religion in 1992 while trekking through Nepal in search of spirituality. The two other Beastie Boys do not consider themselves Buddhists, but they eagerly helped Yauch organize the San Francisco event to give the Tibetan human rights movement air time on MTV and a three-page spread in a recent edition of Rolling Stone magazine.

Yauch, who in the ‘80s rapped about slipping Spanish fly into women’s drinks knows that a cynical press could easily dismiss his--and other celebrities’--efforts as the neo-hippie activity of the month.

“We spent a long time working with MTV on this,” Yauch said, referring to preparations to show the concert. “How this is presented is its strength. [The movement] is based on public perception, because it is not about war, not about how many missiles they have stockpiled. It’s about public perception.”

Perhaps there are no better people to spin the public perception than celebrities who have been doing it for themselves for years.

“I’ll try and use [fame] in any positive way I can,” Yauch said.