The Dalai Lama now has the key to the city and – he joked Sunday – to New Yorkers’ hearts, as well.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented the key to the city to the spiritual and political leader of Tibetan Buddhists on the midtown site of what will eventually be the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Station.
The Dalai Lama also blessed the site, which will soon be converted from the U.S. Post Office Building into a new transportation hub named after his good friend Moynihan, the late U.S. senator who was had once been an ambassador to India.
The mayor joined with Moynihan’s daughter in praising the Dalai Lama as one of the world’s great citizens.
“There is perhaps no stronger symbol peace and compassion than you,” Bloomberg told him.
Earlier, the Nobel peace prize winner spread his message of peace to a crowd of 36,000 at Rutgers University.
He told them that peace is not only found in the absence of violence.
“Every movement or action motivated by compassion, that is essentially peace,” he said.
The university presented the Dalai Lama with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
