“I hope people can see compassion and humility are values we need,” Katz said, reflecting on the Dalai Lama’s return visit. “They are not usually emphasized in our culture. The Dalai Lama shows us these are not just abstract concepts. They can be manifest in us.”

The Dalai Lama’s presentation was led by an extraordinary live musical performance by renowned flutist and composer Nestor Torres. A practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism, Torres wrote an original score for the Dalai Lama based on the rhythmic intonation of the recitation of the Lotus Sutra, the sacred Buddhist scripture.

“Torres, who has become one of the center’s most enthusiastic community supporters, says the music was intended as an offering of gratitude for the Dalai Lama and a means of touching the audience. “I felt my message was to open the hearts of the people.”

A Center for the Community

An impressive group of community leaders and faculty members is giving its time and energy to the new center. Community Advisory Board members include doctors, artists, religious leaders, a lawyer and a local television personality, a restaurateur and a well-known philanthropist, as well as spiritual guides. Among the Fellows of the Center are FIU professors from religious studies, gerontology, dance, social work, English and biology.

“Photos from left: President Modesto A. Maidique described Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, shown at the podium, as "one of the great religious figures in the world today" at the January ceremony. Middle: Renowned musician and composer Nestor Torres plays an original composition he created for the Dalai Lama during the spiritual leader's September visit. Right: FIU Religious Studies Professor Nathan Katz has founded the FIU Center for the Study of Spirituality.

“Like everything else at FIU, this center is at the forefront of what is needed,” said Dr. Fernando Valverde, the physician who serves as chairman of the Community Advisory Board. “His Holiness told me there is something about the energy of the school that people pick up, a good, positive energy. I don’t think it is a coincidence the center has started there.”

Study of spirituality — in all its secular and religious expressions — Morgan took over the helm in 1980 with an eye to turning the little gallery — has not been the traditional domain of large, public research universities like FIU. “Out of the box” is how one supporter described the Center for the Study of Spirituality. With issues of spirituality and religion more and more filling headlines and topping bestseller lists — think Kabbalah, The Purpose Driven Life or explorations of the prayer-healing link — the center is emblematic of the forward thinking that has propelled the University from its inception. A conference on spirituality and healing is being planned for the fall. It will explore, among others, the Vodou, Santeria and Lukumi healing practices found in South Florida Hispanic and Caribbean communities.

Every human being possesses spirituality in some measure, be it derived from an ancient religion or a New Age movement. It is fair then to ask, Just what are we talking about when we use the word “spirituality”? The answers, like spirituality itself, defy absolute precision.

Says Katz: “Openness to something beyond the self, true loving, compassionate openness.” Renowned Jewish scholar and mystic Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who visited FIU in January, describes spirituality as a gateway. Religious Studies Professor Terry Rey, a Fellow of the center, says spirituality is personal and communal, internal and external, meditative and musical, silent and babbling. “It is that aspect of one’s life that most imbibes her with the sacred or that most harmonizes him with the Absolute, however conceived.”

What is critical, says Rey, is awareness that for many, spirituality, religion or faith influences every dimension of life, from who they are, to what they aspire to be. “This alone testifies to the broad utility of the study of spirituality,” said Rey. “For how can we understand anything about our world without careful consideration of people’s deepest values and needs, which are usually spiritual?”

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