The University of Massachusetts, Smith College and Amherst College are teaming up with the Mind and Life Institute in Hadley to host the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Pioneer Valley Oct. 23 to 25.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th and current Dalai Lama, is scheduled to speak at both Smith College and Amherst College before giving a culminating public lecture in the Mullins Center on Oct. 25, according to UMass spokesperson Daniel Fitzgibbons.

According to a University news release, “The purpose of his visit is to focus on ethics and education and specifically an approach to incorporating care and compassion into the framework of education from K-12 through postgraduate education worldwide.”

This topic has manifested itself as the Call to Care program, which “aims to address the limited attention in our educational systems for cultivating care,” according to the Mind and Life Institute’s website.

The Institute was founded in 1987 in an effort to reduce suffering and promote human flourishing by “fostering interdisciplinary, cross-cultural dialogue between science philosophy, the humanities and traditions that foster rigorous first-person contemplative inquiry,” according to a Mind and Life Institute news release.

The events at Smith College and Amherst College will be reserved for their respective communities, according to the release.

Details of the lecture at UMass – which Mind and Life Institute President Arthur Zajonc told the Daily Hampshire Gazette is expected to draw 8,000 attendees – are being finalized.

The Dalai Lama’s last visit to the Pioneer Valley came in 2007 when he spoke at Smith College.

Anthony Rentsch can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @Anthony_Rentsch.