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| Toward the end of May in 2008, the Karmapa was giving teachings in Seattle. My brother had times his visit to Seattle so he could attend the teachings and I did as well. On the drive up on Friday I picked but Ben (shown here) at SeaTac airport as he was flying up from Dallas. We went for a walk on the bridal paths which are very close to Robert and Donna's house along with David who was visiting from Dallas as well (shown above, Dave and Ben are further along on the path). The teachings were open to the public and on Saturday and Sunday in the morning and afternoon. They were at the Paramount Theater which is an old style movie theater (shown below), probably dating from around WWI. |
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| On Saturday evening, Robert's brother, Patrick (shown here), drove up from Portland, OR with his daugher, Jen (shown below). The Karmapa escaped from Chinese occupied Tibet almost a decade ago and stayed in India until he turned 21 and is now travelling around the world giving teachings. He is expected to be an important leader of Tibetan Budhism over the next several decades. However, due to the controversy over the Chinese occupation of Tibet (and the Karmapa's opposition to it), there was pretty high security around the Karmapa. Before the first teaching on Saturday morning there were long lines of people waiting to get into the theater (about 2,500 attended each teaching). The line extended for two or three blocks over the bridge across I-5 (shown below). |
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| Cameras were not permitted past security (probably for copy right reasons as well as security), but I used my cell phone to take some of these pcitures. Of course in the poor lighting of the theater my pictures were pretty awful, so I don't expect there was any threat to copy rights or security. Here you might be able to pick out my brother Michael as he was chatting with friends before the teachings started. I sat with Michael for all the teachings. On Saturday we were in the main section (here) and on Sunday we were in the balcony (below). The stage had two screens with a good view of the Karmapa or whoever was speaking. They started with a nice slide show while we waited after getting through the security checks. The seats were pretty comfortable and I was nodding off at times, but managaed to hear many of the teachings and have written up what struck me on a separate page (another rambling tale). | |
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| On Sunday afternoon after the last teaching I headed back to Portland, OR and work the next day. I had brought a couple of old salvage computers for Michael and we needed to transfer one so it could be flown back to Dallas, We went by the KTC (a variety of Tibetan Budhism) center in Seattle, WA shown above. The Karmapa stayed there during his visit so it also had high security; they had remodeled to make a nice apartment for him. I also was able to get a nicer of Isabel who I had met at the 2007 Blue Bunny Retreat. She is more relaxed here though the picture is too much to the side to my liking, but for spontaneous pictures you can't always get the composition you want. |
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This page was last updated on August 24, 2008.
