The Dalai Lama's visit to Sun Valley on the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks is taking shape.
Organizers of the trip by the Nobel Prize-winning spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists said he will address a general audience on Sunday, Sept. 11, from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Carol's Dollar Mountain Lodge in Sun Valley. This appearance is expressly to send a message of peace to those who lost loved ones in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
The Dalai Lama will preside at a Prayer Wheel Consecration Ceremony in Sun Valley on Monday, Sept 12, from 4 to 4:30 p.m. Tibetan prayer wheels, also called Mani wheels, are devices believed by Buddhists to spread spiritual blessings and well-being.
A special session with the young children of Idaho at the request of Gov. Dirk Kempthorne will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 13, from 2 to 2:30 p.m.
Kiril Sokoloff, a financial researcher from Ketchum who is a personal friend of the Dalai Lama, said the formal invitation to His Holiness to visit Idaho was offered by Kempthorne.
This isn't the first time Sokoloff, president of 13D Research, which is based in Ketchum and Boca Raton, Fla., has hosted a member of the Dalai Lama's family.
Two years ago, the Dalai Lama's sister, Jetsun Pama, visited the Wood River Valley.
Pama is the director of the Tibetan Children's Villages, a charity for Tibetan orphans that's based in Dharamsala, India, the hill station where the Dalai Lama now lives after fleeing his home country a decade after the 1949 invasion of Tibet by the Chinese army.
Following his visit to Sun Valley, His Holiness will continue a short U.S. tour. He travels Sept. 16 to 18 to Tucson, Ariz., Sept. 20 at University of Texas in Austin and Sept. 22 at Rice University in Houston. His appearances on the east coast are Sept. 24 and 25 at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Madison Square Garden on Sept. 25 where he addresses an audience of Tibetans and other Buddhists from the Himalayan region and Mongolia and a talk at Columbia University Sept. 26.
The Dalai Lama will visit Stanford University, in Palo Alto, Calif., on Nov. 4 and 5, before heading to Washington, D.C., for a final public appearance Nov. 8 through 9.
