Dalai Lama tells business leaders to have a heart

from
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=ID%20Dalai%20Lama%20Business

aka http://tinyurl.com/c4cbv

Dalai Lama tells business leaders to have a heart

By JOHN MILLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

KETCHUM, Idaho -- The symbolism of the Dalai Lama's Idaho trip was on
display during a Monday address to 350 American business and political
leaders: The spiritual guide for 20 million Tibetan Buddhists, perched
on a stage 5,800 feet up in the Sawtooth Range, giving advice to a
flock who'd traveled long distances looking for answers.

In a distinctly Sun Valley twist on this "Going to the mountain to see
the holy man" tale, some of them had parked their private jets - the
pilgrimage vehicle of choice - at the airport in Hailey just south on
State Highway 75.

Monday's event was meant to encourage the powerful to incorporate
compassion into how they conduct their business and public lives.
Coming in the months after fraud convictions of U.S. executives such as
Worldcom Inc.'s Bernie Ebbers and Scott Sullivan and cable-TV magnate
John Rigas, the Dalai Lama's address underscored the importance of
respecting employees, shareholders and customers, said Kiril Sokoloff,
a financial industry consultant and Buddhist who spent $1 million to
bring the exiled Tibetan leader to the Idaho resort area.

"We human beings have the seed of human compassion," said the Dalai
Lama, sitting next to a translator inside an event tent on Sokoloff's
Ketchum estate, where trees along the main road toward Galena Summit
hide a house with ponds, fountains and the jagged Sawtooth peaks
beyond.

A day earlier, the 70-year-old monk had addressed 10,000 people on a
high school football field - and millions of others via a live CNN
broadcast - to mark the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks and to extend sympathy for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

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Sun Valley is accustomed to hosting the business elite: In early July,
an annual retreat for media honchos included incoming Walt Disney Co.
CEO Bob Iger, Time Warner Inc. CEO *** Parsons and Viacom Inc.
Co-President Les Moonves, as well as Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill
Gates.

At Monday's event, guests included business people and fund managers
who oversee a combined $3.5 trillion in capital, according to
organizers of the event, as well as politicians, including Idaho Gov.
Dirk Kempthorne and U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash.; Alan Blinken,
former U.S. ambassador to Belgium under President Clinton; and the
motivational speaker Tony Robbins.

The Dalai Lama, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, arrived flanked by a
U.S. State Department detail that provides visiting dignitaries with
security while they're in America.

Interviewed by a reporter just before he entered the tent where the
Dalai Lama spoke, McDermott, a nine-term Democrat from Seattle, said
business people were "very interested" in the oft-dismissed notion of
combining caring with hard-nosed corporate instinct.

For instance, in the days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast,
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. company, used its distribution
network to rush in aide - in many cases faster than local, state and
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials could respond.

"There's nothing wrong with the free-enterprise system," said
McDermott, a doctor by profession. "But it has to have some
compassion."

"It's not mutually exclusive: Being compassionate and running a
successful business," Thomas McKissick, a Los Angeles fund manager who
oversees $5.5 billion in one of the TCW Galileo funds, said in an
earlier interview. "It has to do with corporate responsibility."

During his first visit to Idaho, the Dalai Lama told reporters Sunday
that the value of the U.S. invasion of Iraq remains something for
history to decide.

He reiterated concerns about his native Tibet, where he's been exiled
from since fleeing in 1959 following a failed uprising, as the Chinese
government pursues a program of economic expansion in the Himalayan
region that human rights groups believe is pushing native Tibetans to
the margins.

Later Monday, the Dalai Lama was to speak to thousands of Idaho school
children in Hailey, an event promoted by Kempthorne. After leaving
Idaho on Wednesday, his extended U.S. visit includes stops in Arizona,
Texas, New York, New Jersey and California before concluding in
Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13, according to the Web site of the Tibetan
Government in Exile.

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On the Net:

The government of Tibet in exile: http://www.tibet.com/

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