After the Dalai Lama wrapped up his brief address, he stepped down from the short platform where he’d been sitting and touched foreheads with Kamehameha Schools Trustee Corbett Kalama. Kalama had chanted the Buddhist leader’s entrance. The Dalai Lama did the same with student Kealohi Foster, who had danced hula for him.

“I was shocked,” a visibly moved Foster told Civil Beat after the Dalai Lama had left the room. “It was an amazing feeling to be in his presence.”

Student Jonah Hookano, who shook hands with the Dalai Lama and allowed the leader to smell his lei (above), described him to reporters as a “jolly person.”

Kalama explained the connection between Native Hawaiian culture and the Dalai Lama:

“We look at the universal values that exist. Every culture has that. Every religion has it. And aloha is at the core of that. We call it that,” he told me. “But if we look at religions, it’s that of kindness, that of the importance of family, of teamwork, of cooperation. That of seeing the good in people. That of being humble. That of showing patience and perseverance, which His Holiness has exhibited throughout his life.”

— Michael Levine

(Photo by John Hook/Civil Beat)