Man of Love and Laughter : Surrounded by Ceremony, the Dalai Lama Had a Delightful Way of Dropping It

Within a gleaming complex of temples and monasteries high on a hill in Hacienda Heights, His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet sat on an ornate rosewood chair and looked out on the reverent crowd.

He had spoken to the Taiwanese Buddhists of Hsi Lai Temple, whom he addressed as “brothers and sisters from China,” on compassion, tolerance, forgiveness and the ups and downs of relations between China and Tibet over the centuries. Now he was ready for questions.

“Your Holiness,” a young woman started, reading aloud from a stack of written questions collected from the audience, “Tibetan Buddhism is always very mysterious. We are curious to know about your daily religious life.”

The Daily Routine

“There is nothing special,” he began, looking amused and chuckling. “I get up early morning, 4 or 4:30,” he said, drawing his words out in mock solemnity, untroubled by his syntax. “I wash my face, and sometimes again more sleep!”

Then he told them how, as a practitioner of Buddhism and as an ordained monk, he renews his vows, recites certain prayers so that “through blessings, my whole day’s thought become something useful, also something positive . . . then meditate without words, sometimes with a feeling of hunger.”

Breakfast at 5 or 5:30, meditation again until 9, then on to the day’s program, meeting with people, treating such occasions as a time to practice Buddhist principles, controlling negative feelings of anger, reading or studying, if he is not too busy.

“Then after this, some evening prayer, some recitation and meditation--half-prayer, half-sleep. My eyelids become very thick. Before I sleep, if my mind is active, I calculate what I’ve done that is positive, what mistake, make confession, sometimes prostrations. Around 9 I go to sleep. Without a sleeping pill. I can go to sleep very easily, very peacefully.”

And thus it has been throughout his 17-day visit to California, which ends today--that seemingly inseparable blend of seriousness and playfulness as Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, keeps the sublime and mundane, ceremony and informality always in balance. It is a manner consistent with Buddhism and typical of many Buddhist leaders. At the same time, it seems uniquely his.

It is not by accident that he is often called “the presence.” He seems to experience the moment in its entirety--whether the moment involves listening to the concerns of the Buddhist leadership of Southern California; addressing an audience of 5,000 on inner and world peace at the Shrine Auditorium; enjoying an outdoor birthday party given him by followers and friends, including his Los Angeles host, jeans magnate and peace activist Fred Segal; conducting the complex Kalachakra initiation for about 3,000 followers at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium; greeting an old friend; encountering the press.

He has been here at the invitation of Geshe Tsultsim Gyeltsen, a Tibetan monk who is spiritual director of the Los Angeles Tibetan Buddhist center, Thubten Dhargye Ling. Gyeltsen asked him to come in order to confer the rarely performed Kalachakra (literally: “wheel of time”) initiation ritual. The center organizing committee describes it as an advanced level of Buddhist meditation and a “vehicle for global peace because of its power to unite the inner and outer worlds into a harmonious relationship.”

Although he has lived in exile in Dharamsala, India, since 1959, the Dalai Lama is still regarded by many as the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, and he travels with the entourage of a government and culture in exile:

With him to assist in the rituals are monks from Dharamsala’s Namgyal monastery, lama dancers about to go on a 22-city U.S. tour, his cabinet ministers, diplomats and aides, bodyguards, a personal secretary, an interpreter and a legal adviser. He is making this visit accompanied by representatives of the Office of Tibet, an unofficial embassy in New York; members of the U.S. Tibet Committee, a voluntary organization to help preserve Tibetan culture; Tibet House, a New York-based cultural institution chaired by actor Richard Gere, and staff from the International Campaign for Tibet, the Washington-based advocacy group that promotes Tibetan self-determination and human rights.

Increasingly, he is a visible spokesman for world peace and human rights, and members of his entourage mention often that he has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Thus before coming here, he attended a peace conference in Costa Rica, where he and President Oscar Arias were keynote speakers, and stopped in Mexico City, where he met with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and joined in that country’s first interfaith service. Now on his way back to India, he goes today to New York to receive the Raoul Wallenberg Human Rights Award, named after the Swedish diplomat and World War II underground activist, from the Congressional Human Rights Foundation.

Orbit of the Lama

Even so, it is still a startling array of people who are somehow in his orbit. They include Yeshi Darje Rimpoche, a Tibetan in silk brocade robes, spectacles and with a metal cylinder attached like a topknot to his long gray hair. He lives in Dharamsala and is, explained a companion at the Civic Auditorium, “His Holiness’ weather controller. The rain is his responsibility.”

Just a few aisles away at the Civic that day, Dr. Robert B. Livingston, a professor of neurosciences from UC San Diego, sat through the teachings listening attentively. He is, he explained, one of a small group of medical doctors, scientists and philosophers who, at the Dalai Lama’s request, conducted a tutorial session with him on mind/brain relationships and consciousness.

At one point during the teachings, the Dalai Lama interrupted his remarks on meditation and reincarnation with an aside, “As a Buddhist monk I always find it very interesting to discuss with scientists the relation between brain and mind, to find some new way of thinking.”

“Put His Holiness with a scientist and he’s a happy lama,” Michelle Bohana, of the International Campaign for Tibet, remarked fondly.

Bows and Giggles

It is with such reverent familiarity that many seem to respond to him. The same people who prostrate themselves before him out of respect and back out of a room he is in will just as readily giggle at his comments and momentarily drop all sense of ceremony.

During two weeks of proceedings at the Civic Center, a hush of absolute silence would follow his every entry. But when, from the depths of the exotic and obscure he would announce, “We’ll take a 15-minute break,” those same followers and admirers would find their way down to the guard railing by the stage. They would take photos, crane their necks, wait, hoping to catch his eye. When they would, and were met with a dimpled grin or chuckle, they were, almost without exception, euphoric.

If ever anyone had greatness thrust upon him, it was a precocious 2-year-old peasant boy known as Lhamo Dhondrub in the village of Takster. Born July 6, 1935, 18 months after the death of the 13th Dalai Lama, he was “discovered” by a search party of lamas seeking the next and 14th reincarnation of Avalokita, the Buddhist deity of compassion. Omens, portents and oracles led them to Takster and Lhamo passed the test.

Brought with his parents, brothers and sisters to Lhasa, he was enthroned as Dalai Lama in 1940, and began his training as a Buddhist monk and temporal ruler, reared by monks, seeing his family only occasionally, virtually caged in the confines of the 1,000-chamber Potala Palace. He saw his subjects at a distance, peeking out from the window of his yellow silk-lined palanquin as he was carried through the streets, smiling at those who braved looking up; spying on them with field glasses from the roof of the palace, giving in to a boundless curiosity and enthusiasm for life that has not diminished over the years.

Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian and rare Western visitor who eventually became tutor to the Dalai Lama, described in “Seven Years in Tibet” what it was like, recalling New Year’s festivities in 1946 when the Dalai Lama was 10:

“The great moment had come. The Cathedral doors opened and the young God-King stepped slowly out, supported to the left and right by two abbots. The people bowed in awe. . . . Now the Living Buddha was approaching. He passed close to our window. The women stiffened in a deep obeisance and hardly dared to breathe. The crowd was frozen. Deeply moved we hid ourselves from being drawn into the magic circle of this Power.”

Communist Invasion

But the young Dalai Lama was not to continue his preparatory studies in peace. In 1950, the Chinese Communists invaded and occupied Tibet and, at age 15, the Dalai Lama was hastily and prematurely granted full political powers. As a teen-ager, he was negotiating for Tibet’s autonomy, independence and survival with Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai and others in the Peking regime. About two-thirds of Tibet was absorbed into China; a truncated Tibet Autonomous Region was declared and occupied by the Chinese.

The situation deteriorated, and on the eve of a bloody uprising against the Chinese in March, 1959, the “Protector of the Land of the Snows” disguised himself as a soldier, came down from the roof of the world and, accompanied by family, a few palace nobles and guards, rode into exile on the back of a yak.

Arriving in India, sad beyond description and sick with dysentery, he told his brother, “We are refugees now.”

To his suffering countrymen, already numbering almost 20,000 refugees who had managed to survive the horrible journey, he promised they would return someday, but realistically he warned them it would not be soon: “We will have to remain in India for a longer period than expected. We will have to settle mentally as well as physically.”

Stream of Visitors

Thirty years later and here he is in Santa Monica, sitting in Fred Segal’s living room ready to begin an interview, an ocean breeze and traffic noise coming through an open window at his back.

Segal turned his house over to the Dalai Lama and his retinue during their visit, and there has been a steady stream of visitors up and down the stairs to the second-floor room ever since. The Dalai Lama’s low, soft baritone laugh drifts out to the stairway often. He shakes hands with his visitors, leads them by the hand to the sofa, and approaches each with warmth and interest, consulting his interpreter from time to time.

The question that presses most is simply, “Who are you?”

He smiles and shakes his head sympathetically. Clearly he has considered the question many times.

“In my mind, some kind of spontaneous feeling, is (I am) a monk, a Buddhist monk. You see one indication is in my dream, sometimes some certain dreams happen, then immediately is the feeling, always, I am monk. In dreamtime, I never feel I am Dalai Lama. . . . Also, you see, so long (as) I keep monk’s precepts nobody can change that, so that means monkhood really belong to me. Then you see the others say, ‘the leader’ or even ‘Dalai Lama,’ or ‘reactionary’ or ‘spiritual leader,’ or, you see, sometimes I got also another name, ‘the wolf with monk robe,’ but all these sort of names just designated ones, designated by someone. So when people call me as a god-king, still I am monk. When people call me most reactionary, still I am monk. No more, no less.”

Title of God-King

To call him a god-king, as the Western press often does, is “certainly incorrect,” he exclaimed, saying that Buddhists have no theory of a Creator, and that to the Christian ear the title is even less suitable. Even Buddhists, however, often refer to him as a living Buddha, or enlightened one, a reincarnation of the deity of compassion. Some modify that and describe him as a manifestation or realization of compassion.

He himself makes few claims. A lama, or guru, in Tibetan simply means a respected teacher or superior, he says. Although he believes in reincarnation, he claims no previous memories of his existence, and said, “If you ask me about my previous life, where, I don’t know. Either this planet or other planet, I don’t know.”

When he met here with the Buddhist Sangha Council of Southern California, which makes up the leadership of the different Buddhist sects, he told them, “Actually, it’s not easy to become a lama. It is very easy to get named, but it is very different to become, really, a lama.”

He speaks always out of personal experience, saying he is not promoting Buddhism, but hoping to be able to contribute something out of his Buddhist experience. And out of that experience, he has learned, he says repeatedly, “to be a good human being--that is the most important thing. I myself am also trying to be a good person. Sometimes I fail, but I try. That is a source of one’s own happiness.”

It sounds very much as if the man said to have been born the manifestation of compassion has, in fact, been working hard all his life to become that.

“That’s right; that’s right,” he said, nodding vigorously, having checked his understanding of the question with his interpreter, to whom he occasionally refers. “From Buddhist viewpoint every sentient being eventually, or there is potential, to become Buddha, living Buddha.”

Advocate of Compassion

The compassion he advocates is not helpless pity, he said, but an awareness and determination that demands action. Working to ease the suffering of sentient beings, to improve the situation on the planet, is the only way to happiness, contentment and peace.

His message may be simple to the point of sounding simplistic, and he will and does say it simply, upon occasion going into the complicated Buddhist thinking behind it. Just as often, he will offer the society of bees and ants as an object lesson, saying they have no religion, yet they can live together harmoniously. Often, he goes for an illustration from his experience, as he did last week to the amused delight of his audience at the Shrine Auditorium.

Warning about the harmful effects of anger, he said sometimes it is mistaken as a friend because it brings extra energy, but the consequences are almost always negative.

He related that repairing watches is his hobby, and told of liking to fix his watch with “small screwdrivers.” Using his hands, he pantomimes trying to fix an intricate mechanism, failing, failing again, and again, until finally, in exasperation, he slams it down with an outburst aimed at the watch: “Sonofabitch!”

As the audience tittered, he said, “So my own thing (possession) is more damaged. Anger brings us not only energy but blindness.”

Base of Altruism

He may talk of bees, ants and watch repairs, but he means this philosophy to carry over into all of life. Certainly, he believes one must act out of altruism, with compassion and without anger, in diplomacy and global relations.

He criticizes the Chinese government and is relentless in promoting the cause of Tibet, but he repeatedly says he bears the Chinese no hatred or ill feelings, attributing most of recent history to “ignorance,” and sympathizing with the Chinese for the bad karma they are creating.

Thanks to the Chinese, he will say ironically, his own life has changed immensely, making him more popular than ever. Forced out of medieval feudalism, he is now an avid democrat. He has been adapting to change all his life, and he has come to welcome it as something new and “fresh,” a favorite word of his.

By contrast, he said, Chinese leaders who fought the revolution for socialism are stuck.

“Socialism is their cherished goal,” he said. “But in reality, many people have lost interest in socialism. . . . But that ideology is fixed in their mind. So you see, new ideas and new information cannot enter in their mind. Iron Curtain or Bamboo Curtain on the border is bad enough, but even worse is some kind of curtain in their mind. Fresh ideas cannot enter.”

Death in Tibet

Reports are that the recent uprisings in Tibet that led to the imposition of martial law in March have resulted in as many as 800 deaths through shooting, execution, torture. Several refugees who have made it over the border to India claim that while they were in prison they were given human flesh to eat.

Tashi Wangdi, the Dalai Lama’s minister in charge of negotiating with the Chinese in New Delhi, where the bulk of the contact between the Chinese and exiled Tibetans takes place, was familiar with those charges. In Los Angeles with the Dalai Lama, he nodded his head when they were brought up to him.

Such claims are not rare or isolated, he said, but have been fairly constant. Along with general accounts of starvation, famine and deliberate food deprivation over the years, have been accounts of prisoners being fed human flesh and human excrement.

Looking every inch the diplomat in his Western dress and manner, Wangdi talked almost without affect, sounding weary, saying, “There have been so many personal eyewitness accounts . . . It’s not new. But yes, human flesh. There is some nutrition in the excrement. The Chinese officials eat good food.”

The Tibetans have no choice by now, he said, but to regard such acts as government policy rather than random sadism. They have brought reports of atrocities to the attention of government too many times, he said, going back to the time of personal meetings between the Dalai Lama and Chairman Mao and Chou En Lai. Ultimately nothing came of it, and such charges are uniformly denied publicly.

Chinese Immigrants

Since 1950, the Tibetans say, 1.2 million Tibetans--one-sixth of the population--have died as a result of the Chinese occupation. Chinese colonists have immigrated to Tibet, and outnumber the Tibetans. Tibetans say they are second-class citizens in their own country, discriminated against in education and employment, restricted in their movements. Monasteries, repositories of the country’s spiritual and cultural heritage, have been desecrated, the art destroyed or confiscated.

If there is truth to those reports and allegations, and independent international organizations have tended to substantiate them, it would seem that Tibet is systematically being disappeared.

The Dalai Lama follows this news intensely, repeats the charges, takes them up through his ministers with the Chinese, and with other governments and international organizations. He supported the demands by Chinese students and intellectuals in Tien An Men Square for freedom and democracy, expresses “solidarity” with them and deplores the violence with which they were put down.

With all the training and discipline in the world, how can he not worry about Tibet? And how can he not be angry at China? He preaches compassion, not indifference.

“The problem is so immense,” he said, 6 million Tibetans up against such a big power.

“And the Tibetan people have too much expectation, they trust, respect me. This also is a special responsibility, heavy responsibility. One thing, you see, (is) my own ability. I have no modern education, no proper training for dealing with modern politics. So under these circumstances (it) means heavy burden, almost unbearable responsibility sometimes. But . . . then as a Buddhist, as my own motivation is concerned, I (try to be) open and sincere and try my best. If something is achieved, very good. If not achieved, no regret.”

Beyond that, he said, is the whole notion of collective karma. Looking at Tibet’s tragedy up close, he said, it seems very big. But, from a distance, it is one in the cycle of existence, a negative one.

“These concepts help to reduce the mental sort of unhappiness or worry. So I always try my best. If something is good, something not, all right, all right.”

It may sound like a callous attitude, his interpreter added, “but that is the way His Holiness approaches it.”

He does think of himself as a happy man, he agreed. “I think so, I think compared to other people I have not much worry.”

That is how he appeared at his 54th birthday celebration, a lighthearted informal event held in the semi-wilderness, off Kanan Dume Road in Malibu, where Fred Segal is planning a peace park.

Several hundred friends and admirers, a multi-ethnic group, mingled on the freshly cleared and planted hillside and gathered under an open tent. Those few of the famous who came were there for a reason--Richard Gere chairs the board of Tibet House and is a longtime admirer and supporter of the Dalai Lama; Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) is one of the primary voices for Tibetan human rights in the U.S. Congress.

It was a “twain shall meet” occasion if ever there was one, with saffron-robed monks circulating with name tags bearing greetings like “Hello My Name is Ven. (Venerable) Chi Hsing Yun.”

When the Dalai Lama arrived, he walked up the hillside shaded by a turquoise paper parasol while people lined the short route bearing helium-filled balloons, flowers and white silk scarves.

There was a birthday cake, singing, a prayer for long life, a dance performance and a speech by Geshe Gyeltsen. Gyeltsen has a hard time with formal English, and he struggled stubbornly but next to helplessly through his prepared remarks, turning a solemn moment into an increasingly hilarious one. The honored guest sat listening and chuckling, playing with a spoon. By the time Gyeltsen blurted out, “And in closing,” the Dalai Lama was laughing outright, slapping the table with his hand.

Living in the World

He who has been surrounded with ceremony, ritual and the mysterious all of his life has learned how to move and breathe easily in that world, respecting it, tolerating it but not taking it too seriously. He will participate in solemnities and fidget at the same time, scratch an itch, adjust his robe, examine his eyeglasses, his attention never seeming to wander.

Time for a ceremonial tree planting before getting in the limousine.

He walked with purposeful strides down the driveway straight for the young potted sapling, and without pausing bent down, lifted it from the container, set it in the freshly dug hole and waited.

“Water?” he demanded, expectantly.

Genuine Dismay

Not a drop. No one had thought of it. Someone came forward with a pathetic few ounces in a plastic cup. The Dalai Lama winced and yelped in amused but genuine dismay, giving every indication that for a moment he himself was that poor sapling being asked to take root in dry ground.

Eventually a bottle of Evian was rushed to the rescue. He poured it on the tree, on his head, flicked his fingers at the people. Then, on impulse, he took a white scarf, the Tibetan token gift of homage and respect, and started tying it around a branch of the sapling. People looked mystified.

He just grinned, cocked his head a moment and pulled an answer out of the air. “This is just an expression of satisfaction.”

The birthday party was a rare respite in a schedule packed with public commitments and private audiences. Between that and his regimen of prayer and meditation there has been little free time. If he had time, he was asked last week, what would he like to do on this, his third visit to California?

“Shopping!” he said forcefully without a moment’s hesitation.

Shopping! To look or to buy?

“Both!” by now he was laughing, but not joking. He meant it. Suddenly he held his leg out, pulled up his monk’s robes and waggled his new brown shoes.

“Yesterday I bought this. Very good, very good. I sent someone for them. But, if I myself can go, I can choose.”

A Shopping Trip

Before the week had ended, the Dalai Lama got his wish. His local hosts took him on a spur-of-the-moment trip to South Bay Galleria and Santa Monica Mall, where, they said later, he shopped with his recommended “middle-style behavior” between self-indulgence and excessive asceticism: He allowed himself one purchase. Just as his style can accommodate a medieval weather controller in his entourage, it can now accommodate a weather station on his desk. He bought himself a state-of-the-art apparatus, a clock that comes with a barometer, hygrometer and thermometer.