Sporting a UNI visor, and telling jokes with the audience, one might almost believe the Dalai Lama is what he says he is — a simple human being — instead of one of the world’s most renowned spiritual leaders.

Following the panel discussion “Educating for a Nonviolent World.” The Dalai Lama held a lecture on “the power of education.” The event focused on how education can help a person live a happy life and through this mankind as a whole can achieve peace.

Jokingly, the Dalai Lama first said, “people come here with great expectations. Big mistake. I don’t have much to offer.”

Despite his protests that he is anything but a simple monk, the McLeod Center in Cedar Falls was filled, and ticket sales for the May 18 lecture were sold out.

While the Dalai Lama agreed on education of the mind, he believes education of the brain is different than education of the heart.

“Nobody can steal knowledge. It will never change. Knowledge is most precious value, but knowledge will not give inner peace,” he said.

The education of the heart, as the Dalai Lama described it, allows for a human to have a happy life. This education is by living simply and focusing more on inner values rather than outer ones, such as outer beauty and money, which leads to the vices such as anger and jealousy.

Instead of disregarding the education of the brain, the Dalai Lama believes modern education should be combined with the ethics of the heart, on a basic level to create harmony both within oneself and globally.

The concept of educating the heart focuses on what the Dalai Lama considers a “fundamental level.” This level is built of core values of trust, compassion and inner beauty.

One of the major components of the values is trust.

“Friendship based on trust. Treat them with respect and speak truthfully, honestly and transparently,” the Dalai Lama said.

While the idea of friendship based on trust is considered common knowledge, the Dalai Lama believes these same idea can apply on a global scale, by trusting with an open heart.

This is change from what some consider important elements of today, which is the cause of some of the violence in the world.

“Money, power, guns, are not based in truth. Those bring fear,” the Dalai Lama said.

On a global scale, these fundamental values, allow mankind to look past “secondary level” opinions such as the differences in race, religion or place to focus on how we are alike rather than different.

It allows for humanity to work together solving global issues in what his holiness describes as “we,” which each country depends on each other to make changes.

This dependency on each other makes way for a non-violent future, as the Dalai Lama said, “the way to solve problems is use common sense and compassion.”

To help try and achieve world peace, the Dalai Lama restated what he said in the panel discussion, with his commitment to establishing ethics. A set of ethics would allow for mankind to feel obligated to look past differences and work together to solve issues.

“Status of responsibility based on ability to be concerned,” he said.

The Dalai Lama does not agree that ethics should be based solely on religious philosophy, believing that a moral code based on religion would lead to more turmoil as people wonder what religion has the right ethics.

Instead, the Dalai Lama proposed “ethics not based on religion, but on experience and our conscious” should shape our responsibility.

While some complications occur because of the different religions, he said philosophy of each religion adds a special addition to create variety. This variety compensates for human beings’ different needs.  Therefore, the Dalai Lama believes that instead of one religion, humanity should respect all religion.

Though he admits that some of our global issues, such as nuclear disbarment may not take place in our lifetime, the Dalai Lama believes that education of both mind and heart of humanity will earn peace.

“Some think we are doomed, this is wrong … we are becoming more mature, so be more optimistic,” the Dalai Lama said.