Communication residue Hamburg Teachings

The teachings of the Dalai Lama in Hamburg left the following communication residue behind.
Sustainability: the best experience I ever had in a conference. The stadium had no parking facilities, the tickets included free public transport. A simple linen hand bag contained the program, a map and the text by Aryadeva. Food for 10.000 participants was provided in large tents around the stadium. Tables and benches brought people closer together. Local restaurants offered a variety of vegetarian cuisines from different origins against very moderate prices. Meals were served on normal plates with disposable thin wooden forks, spoons and knives. All drinks were served in a specially designed plastic cup for which you had to pay a deposit. We kept two!

Learning: I experienced the conditions for effective lecturing: a strong desire of the students to learn; a teacher coming down to the level of the students, illustrating difficult concepts with examples from everyday life, providing simple methods to apply lessons learnt and last but not least showing through his behavior he is totally sincere, humble and humorous.

Buddhism: the two main concepts - for our individual life and society - are infinite altruism and interdependence of phenomena.

Germany: concepts of reliability, logistics and organization must have been invented here. Germans - our neighbours - are much closer to us than we normally want to admit.