WITH DISARMING HUMOR, THE DALAI LAMA TACKLES WEAPONS AND WAR

PISCATAWAY, N.J. - The two bald monks, a combined 181 years in age,
seemed oddly out of place as they sat in the bleachers of Rutgers
Stadium awaiting the Dalai Lama on Sunday.

The Dalai Lama listening as the president of Rutgers University,
Richard L. McCormick, presents him with an honorary degree.

Draped in saffron robes, the Tibetan men quietly absorbed the vast
milieu of ponytails and funnel cakes, blue jeans and baseball caps as
some 36,000 people filled the space around them. They still recall
the thin crowd of hundreds who greeted their leader on a visit to New
Jersey in 1978, four years after they moved here in exile. But since
then, they have watched the Buddhist religion bloom.

"Every year more and more people are coming to temple," said one of
the monks, Yonten Gyantso, 84, who lives in a monastery in Howell,
N.J. "The reason people come to hear his teachings is they trust him.
There's a lot of suffering on the earth, especially this year. The
teaching is medication they need to heal themselves."

Under a cool, gray sky, the Tibetan leader and 14th Dalai Lama,
Tenzin Gyatso, rose to the stage and addressed the audience with the
disarming humor and message of compassion that has won him a loyal
following across religions, cultures and languages. As he has in the
past, the Dalai Lama began his speech with a strong dose of humility.
"I have nothing to offer, no new ideas or new views," he said,
laughing softly and offering his apologies in advance for being too "informal."

"We are living things, like trees and grass," he said looking out at
the bright-green football field, and adding, "I don't know if this
grass is true grass."

Again and again, laughter competed with applause. Still, he quickly
arrived at a serious discussion of political and social conflict,
calling war "out of date" and urging listeners to dream of a
demilitarized world. "Eventually the whole world should be free of
nuclear weapons," he said, but to arrive at external disarmament,
people must first learn "internal disarmament," he said.

The president of Rutgers, Richard L. McCormick, presented the Dalai
Lama with an honorary degree at the sold-out event, one of several
stops on a speaking tour of New York and New Jersey this month. The
Dalai Lama, 70, a Nobel Prize winner, has lived since 1960 in
Dharamsala, in northern India, where he fled after he was exiled from Tibet.

Emily Vo and Alexandra Caluseriu, both students at Rutgers, admitted
they had not known much about Buddhism when they decided, at the last
minute, to attend the speech. But hardships around the world this
year, from the conflict in Iraq to Hurricane Katrina, had pulled them
there, said Ms. Vo, 20, a genetics major.

"It gives a little bit of hope, I guess," she said.

It was also a novel experience for Marianne Speakman, an insurance
agent from Iselin, N.J., who was raised a Roman Catholic.

"I'm in this search," she said, a gold cross hanging from a chain
around her neck. "It's spirituality that I seek more than religion."

Seventy-five students and teachers from Princeton Day School filed
into front-row bleachers well before the event began, led there by a
teacher at the school who is a Buddhist.

"His message is so simple, and we've made it way too complicated,"
said Sybil Holland, 59, another teacher at the school. "We're
forgetting how connected we are to each other."

As the Dalai Lama neared the end of his speech, he explored the
difference between attachment and compassion - attachment being a
selective connection shared by friends, he said, while compassion is
an "unbiased" act. The two Tibetan monks, Mr. Gyantso and Japal
Dorjee, 97, sat hunched and listening, their eyes closed. Nearby, a
former flight attendant, Kathleen Davis, squealed. She had been
taking notes on a pink piece of paper and pointed to the words
"attachment" and "compassion."

"That's it!" she said. "It's one or the other. I've got the goose bumps."

Later yesterday, the Dalai Lama paid a visit to the future site of
Moynihan Station in New York, a transit hub on Eighth Avenue named
after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. During his tenure as
ambassador to India and in the Senate, Mr. Moynihan, who died in
2003, became an advocate of Tibetan independence and a friend of the
Dalai Lama's.

The Dalai Lama accepted a ceremonial key to the city from Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg, who called him "one of the great spiritual
leaders of our time."

Afterward, the Dalai Lama, surrounded by Secret Service agents,
ventured briefly onto a crowded Eighth Avenue, where he waved to a
cheering throng and sampled a roasted ear of corn from an ecstatic
sidewalk vendor, who shouted, "I'm a lucky man!"

Mike McIntire contributed reporting for this article.