Dalai Lama’s Visit Is Dream Fulfilled : O.C. Buddhist’s Tireless Efforts Rewarded

Many Buddhists only dream of seeing the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, in person.

Having had this opportunity three times already, Catherine Phuong Dung Lam of Huntington Beach nurtured a much grander ambition: to bring the 1989 Nobel laureate to the Vietnamese Buddhist community and share with her fellow emigres the inspiration and happiness she felt from those experiences.

This Saturday, her wish comes true. As part of his 1997 visit to the United States, the Dalai Lama will give a teaching on compassion and humanity to Vietnamese Buddhists at Cal State Long Beach, a historic moment for the expatriate community.

The Dalai Lama is known and loved in the Buddhist community in the world over. But he holds a special place in the hearts of the Vietnamese because they see in him a reflection of themselves: political exiles whose country was taken over by a Communist regime.

Saturday’s event is sponsored by two Buddhist groups, the Vietnamese Federation of Buddhist Churches in America and the Vietnamese Unified Buddhist Congress in the United States of America. However, leaders of the groups said it would not have been possible without Lam, because she was the one who approached them with the idea.

Further, Lam and her husband, Ngoc Hoai Phuong Nguyen, are doing most of the preparation to get ready for the Dalai Lama’s sermon.

“When she first came to us with the idea of having his Holiness speak to the community, I thought it was too difficult and almost impossible an undertaking,” said the Venerable Thich Chon Thanh, vice president of the federation group. “But she was so excited and so focused and so positive that it could be done.

“She has done all the important work; we just helped out by backing up her efforts,” he added. “In truth, without her, this would not have happened,”

The seed for bringing the Dalai Lama to the Vietnamese community was planted in Lam’s mind in 1991 when she and Nguyen first heard him speak at a four-day conference on Tibetan Buddhism in New York City.

“He’s such a humble person, modest and kind, and I just felt so at peace, so loved, in his presence,” Lam, 45, said in an interview this week from her beauty supply boutique in Westminster’s Little Saigon. “I was so moved, so thankful, and felt so blessed, I just thought, if only others could feel what I was feeling. If only other Vietnamese Buddhists could have the same opportunity.

“It would mean so much to them, I knew, especially because of the affinity we have for him and the fact that he advocates for human rights and democracy for the politically oppressed.”

Tibet was an independent nation until 1950, when Chinese Communist troops marched through the country’s unprotected borders and put it under Chinese rule. In 1959, the Tibetans revolted and the Dalai Lama, whom Tibetans believe to be the reincarnation of the Lord of Love and Compassion, and 80,000 of his followers fled their homeland to India and elsewhere.

In exile, the Dalai Lama has advocated Tibet’s independence through nonviolent means. Vietnamese Buddhists see in his efforts their own dreams for democracy in Vietnam, which fell to communism in 1975.

Lam, who was among the wave of Vietnamese refugees who escaped by boat in 1980, knew his presence would have special meaning to the Buddhist emigres.

“Realistically, though, I knew I was just an ordinary person and there was no way I could bring his Holiness here on my own,” she said.

So she approached the two largest coalitions of Vietnamese Buddhist monks in Southern California, assuring them that she and her husband would do all the organizing if they would lend their names and reputation to the effort. They wrote the Dalai Lama in 1994, asking that he grant their community a spiritual meeting.

“His secretary wrote back, saying his Holiness was very interested in the Vietnamese community but unfortunately his itinerary to America was booked that year,” Lam recalled. “But it gave me a small hope because it said we could do something like that one day in the future.”

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Lam and the Buddhist groups continued to correspond with the Dalai Lama’s exile government in India. “I wrote and wrote and wrote, and when I wasn’t writing, I prayed,” she said.

In 1995, the letters and the prayers paid off. The Dalai Lama’s secretary notified Lam and the Buddhist monks that he agreed to speak to the Vietnamese community on his next tour to the U.S. in 1997.

“Can you imagine my happiness that day?” Lam asked, broadly grinning at the memory. “Words are too inadequate to describe.”

Lam and her husband have been working nonstop to prepare for the Dalai Lama’s arrival. They placed advertisements in local Vietnamese publications. They printed thousands of fliers and brochures and secured enough advertisers for the $30,000 needed to host the event. And for the past several months, Lam has been going on Vietnamese airwaves to plug the occasion.

On Thursday, the Dalai Lama spoke at UCLA in a program entitled, “A Conversation With His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Huston Smith: The Spiritual Quest.” Today, he is scheduled to give a speech, “A Vision for the New Millennium.”

Lam is thrilled. And exhausted.

“Sometimes I get so tired I just want to sit and not do anything any more,” Lam said while eating lunch late one afternoon, between dozens of phone calls coming in. “But knowing what this opportunity would mean to all us who love his Holiness is what keeps me going.”

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Monk Thich Chon Thanh marveled at Lam’s tireless efforts.

“Only someone who was fated to do this could achieve what she has achieved,” he said. “How many individuals can say they brought the Dalai Lama to a community?”

Her biggest supporter, her husband, had misgivings initially when she asked for his help.

“I told her, ‘the Dalai Lama is a busy man,’ but she kept telling me it could be done,” said Nguyen, 56, editor of the Vietnamese monthly magazine Hon Viet. “I had to give in. And good thing, too. The Dalai Lama is coming to the Vietnamese community.”

Lam doesn’t view the historical event as being the result of her efforts. She merely nurtured a dream, she said.

“What came out of it,” she emphasized, “has been predestined.”

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The Dalai Lama is scheduled to speak to the Vietnamese Buddhist community at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Pyramid at Cal State Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd. The event is open to the public, and people are asked to arrive before 1 p.m. Children under 10 will not be admitted. The event is free, but organizers are asking for donations to help the Dalai Lama’s struggle for a free Tibet.