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Nirshan Perera
To honour the Dalai Lama and commemorate his tour of the Bay Area, a wealthy supporter who just happens to be the husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein is giving the City of Oakland a 28 foot tall Tibetan Buddhist stupa.
Though Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown thanked philanthropist Richard Blum on Thursday for his largesse, privately he may have been scratching his head about just what to do with it.
The stucco shrine, created by artiste Paul Kloppenburg, has been in storage for some time now, while Blum, founder and chairman of the American Himalayan Foundation, has been debating his options as well.
Nevertheless, Mayor Brown accepted the landmark gift with aplomb.
"It is a generous gift to the people of Oakland," he said in a press release. "Its artistic and cultural significance will only enhance our beautiful estuary."
In presenting the stupa, Blum observed that he wanted it to "serve as a memorial to the one million Tibetans who have died during the Chinese takeover of Tibet and during the Cultural Revolution. The reason Oakland was selected is that Brown wanted Oakland to honor the people of Tibet, their courage and their remarkable history."
One possible home for the dome-shaped monument is a waterfront park being developed by the Port of Oakland.
The United States is home to about 1,500 people from Tibet, 500 of whom live in the Bay Area. Not surprisingly, it is a thriving hub of the free-Tibet movement.
The Dalai Lama has visited the Bay Area more than 10 times in the past decade. This time around, he has been away from his home in exile in Dharamsala, India, since May 7 and is leaving on Saturday.
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