Sun Valley, USA - More than 15-thousand people gathered in the Sun Valley region this week to hear the Dalai Lama during a series of speaking engagments.
It was a Sun Valley-style Buddhist Woodstock of sorts, with business leaders, congressmen and former ambassadors included in the crowd. Tibetan and Nepalese immigrants prostrated themselves when the Tibetan spiritual leader spoke, next to Idaho residents who were more curious than worshipful.
Buddhism was formally introduced to the U-S at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. Ever since, the 25-hundred-year-old religion from the Indian subcontinent has been on the march in America.
Religious scholars say the Dalai Lama has transformed Buddhism's perception from an austere Eastern religion into what many see as an antidote to 21st-century angst.
Hiroshi Obayashi, chair of the religious studies department at Rutgers University in New Jersey, says the Dalai Lama has shifted the focus, from Tibet, to worldwide secular issues such as peace and harmony.
The Sun Valley visit ends Wednesday, with a meeting of 100 religious leaders.