The Buddhist holy man visits Madison to pursue not politics, but transcendence, teaching about Buddhist ritual and practice.

Like most religious traditions, Buddhism makes use of ritual to draw practitioners into the circle of the initiated. However, the emphasis is not on saving the soul of the practitioner but on altering her consciousness. The foundation of Buddhism is not belief in God, but the experience of emptiness, the absolute state of mind beyond relativism and duality. As a Buddhist master once put it, "Liking and disliking are the disease of the mind."

For a Buddhist, to receive teachings is to come into direct contact with this realization. This explains both why Buddhists revere their teachers and why there are so few Buddhists.

In mid-May, two friends and I joined 3,000 people in attendance at the Dane County Expo Center on the outskirts of Madison, Wisconsin, where Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, held three days of teachings. The Dalai Lama did not give a speech about world peace or why the Chinese should free Tibet. Rather, his visit — to a city where his lineage monks have established a teaching center, the area with the highest concentration of his followers in the United States — served a spiritual purpose.

The world knows the Dalai Lama as both a political leader — albeit one who represents a distinct set of values — and as a media figure whose life has been portrayed in such popular films as Seven Years in Tibet and Martin Scorsese's Kundun. He is the regular subject of news reports about his exile by the Chinese dictators who now rule Tibet and have outlawed religious practice there, jailing and torturing monks and nuns. Recent reports have highlighted conflicts within the Tibetan exile community and the broader Tibetan Buddhist community.

Our purpose was to experience the Dalai Lama as a teacher and to participate with him in some of the rituals that are common to all lineages of the practice. The gestures themselves are simple, but to perform them in the presence of a great teacher is to be moved to a new level of awareness.

Like a layer of fresh asphalt on the highway of consciousness, the Dalai Lama's teaching in Madison defined the principles basic to the Tibetan tradition and distinguished it from the Zen Buddhist path, which has long been more widely known in the West. Zen emphasizes the cessation of all thought to induce instantaneous awakening. In Tibetan Buddhism, thought is an essential instrument for developing compassion, the mind of awakening, and wisdom. The Dalai Lama defined the Buddhist concept of "mindfulness" as "maintenance of an ethically disciplined way of life (which) guards one from falling into negative or destructive actions."

Compassion, as both a practice and an emotion, is fundamental to Tibetan Buddhism. The focus is not simply on altering one's internal feeling states but on living the philosophy that regards all people as equals by freeing oneself from both clinging to close ones and rejection of enemies.

The Dalai Lama defined compassion as that which "inspires others to be free of suffering." One of the friends accompanying me to Madison suffers from a deteriorating form of MS. While Western medicine has failed to find a cure, or even a profile for his disease, he doesn't turn to Buddhism for a solution so much as for an experience of wholeness that is not centered in the body and an experience of consciousness that is not defined by the neurons. "I accept my condition and the fact that it will eventually lead to total disability," he says, almost matter-of-factly. "But I'd like to change that thought."

Perhaps Western medicine will never be able to incorporate Buddhist notions of compassion, and perhaps it shouldn't. In the Buddhist way of looking at the world, suffering is never "cured" and can only be eliminated, in all its many forms, by realization.

Behind the Dalai Lama on the dais hung three tangkhas representing Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of Compassion. Tangkhas, intricate paintings on canvases of silk, are a Tibetan form of sacred art. But these paintings are not meant to be mere representations of enlightened beings. Tangkhas are intended to alter consciousness. One of the unique features of Tibetan Buddhism is its emphasis on visualization, or guided imagery. The Dalai Lama taught that when we visualize an enlightened being, our mind becomes that being. This is not meant to suggest that we assume another identity, but that Buddhas are representative of states of consciousness that exist within all of us, regardless of our physical or mental health. Visualization requires an act of devotion, an outpouring of energy. Compassion is an emotion, the Dalai Lama taught, that can be activated and practiced. "We are not paying enough attention to the development of the heart, compared to the amount of attention we pay to the development of the brain," he said.

On the third day of the teachings, the formal rituals were performed. The members of the audience took boddhisattva vows, dedicating ourselves to continuing to practice the dharma until the enlightenment of all sentient beings. The monks who surrounded the Dalai Lama on the dais brought out the yellow hat that is the sign of their order, the gelugpas. Bells rang. Visualizations were called forth and prayers recited. Mantras were said. We were given white envelopes containing ritual objects — a dried lotus petal, an orange string to be tied around the neck or wrist as a symbol of having received empowerment.

The practice of ritual does not, in itself, imply good or useful behavior toward oneself or society. Ritual is a pervasive form of human conditioning, whether demonstrated by the deep bonding of military hazing or the primitive assertions of racial identity paraded by Northern Ireland's Orange Men, the Aryan Nation, or the Ku Klux Klan. The mere absence of ritual can convey unbearable scorn, like the burning of Pol Pot's body on a pile of garbage.

In Madison, the rituals we participated in with the Dalai Lama reinforced our experience of ourselves as Tibetan Buddhists. The subtle transformations of the gradual path demand patience and a long-term commitment to practice. As we struggle to maintain our commitment, it is helpful to have the example of a dedicated teacher. In Madison, the Dalai Lama demonstrated his wisdom in his joyful embrace of humility. Despite holding the office of supreme living practitioner, manifestation of Buddhahood, he refused to lay claim to the realization of emptiness, the ultimate reality that is at the core of all Buddhist teaching. "I am not even on the path," he said through his translator. "Maybe I'm at a point where I can just about see where the beginning of the path lies."

The Dalai Lama's acceptance of himself and all of us was a demonstration of the dignity that Buddhism confers on all who suffer. It implies freedom from the pride and arrogance that arise out of the need to make distinctions: between well and sick, rich and poor, ugly and beautiful. Within the powerful embrace of Buddhist compassion is the experience of being made whole.