Thupten Tendhar, above, is attending the Summer Institute run by the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies at the University of Rhode Island. Stephen Yang, of the institute, talks to a class about levels of conflict.

The Providence Journal Steve Szydlowski

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — A Tibetan monk steeped in Buddhism came to the University of Rhode Island to learn more about peace.

What drew Thupten Tendhar, who at the age of 11 walked for two months across the Himalayas to reach India and enter the Drepung Loseling Monastery, was Bernard LaFayette, director of URI’s Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies, which offers a two-week Summer Institute.

In the 1960s, LaFayette challenged Southern whites by riding a Greyhound bus and risked his life in Selma, Ala. He took his marching orders — to establish centers for teaching nonviolence — directly from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the day King died in Memphis 40 years ago.

Thupten Tendhar escaped from Tibet as a child. Now 32, he said he has spent his life seeking peace and harmony. He’s a teacher, he said, not only in classrooms but by how he conducts himself when meeting people, performing and writing articles and poems.

He came to the United States in 2005 to tour with the Mystical Arts of Tibet, an arts group, and heard about the nonviolence institute from a friend in Atlanta who participated last year.

“Hearing the experiences of actual persons who took part in the civil-rights movement is very inspirational to me,” Tendhar said during a break on the last day of classes Thursday.

In his crimson robe and monk-buzz haircut, he might seem out of place on the URI campus — except for his cell phone and Western sandals, with a soul-filling smile with dimples thrown in for good measure.

He hopes to apply “Kingian nonviolence” in Tibet, which has been part of China since 1950. He said the country’s religious leader, the Dalai Lama, advocates the “middle way” for Tibet, seeking neither total autonomy from nor total domination by China, but a “genuine autonomous status” for Tibet under Chinese control.

With the Aug. 8 opening of the Beijing Olympics less than three weeks away and the world observing China’s treatment of 6 million Tibetans, Tibet has a global stage.

King taught that violence breeds more violence. LaFayette disseminates King’s methods for using nonviolence to break the cycle.

Each student leaves the institute equipped to teach King’s methods of nonviolence in their communities, whether it is Martina M. Kabisam of Tanzania, who works with women fighting gender violence; or Nathan Gauerke, who works with a Lutheran congregation in Wisconsin; or Harold Vines of Maryland, who negotiates peace with gangs in Washington, D.C.; or Capt. Bruce Tancrell, who works with guards at the Adult Correctional Institutions; or eighth graders in Central Falls and South Kingstown. LaFayette said 2,000 trainers have been certified to teach the two-week course around the globe.

LaFayette, who lives in Warwick and Alabama and is called into global trouble spots, recently visited China, which has agreed to permit the teaching of a Kingian nonviolence course. He will return tomorrow to Nigeria, where oil fields and sabotage are causing conflict.

Yesterday, some 34 institute students, and 10 youths from Central Falls and South Kingstown who attended for four days, ended their session with an address by former U.S. Rep. Robert Weygand.

Before heading back home to conflicts across the globe or in towns across America, the new peace ambassadors got a taste of King’s second principle, the beloved community.

LaFayette ended the graduation ceremony by having all the participants sing “We Shall Overcome,” and dedicated it to all the fallen heroes of the movement, all the blood that’s been shed for nonviolence.

dnaylor@projo.com