Meeting the Dalai Lama

Meeting the His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in the words of Julia, was “definitely the coolest thing I’ve done in my entire life.”

I don’t want to rule out the rest of my life yet, but it was absolutely amazing. Words may not do it justice. Also, if you are reading this at a computer with legitimate internet (aka, you are not in India), youtube the song “Oxford Comma” by Vampire Weekend and listen carefully. It is the perfect soundtrack for this post.

Our meeting was scheduled for 1:30, so Liz and I spent the morning making breakfast in our new apartment and running various errands. These errands included picking up our thankas from the shop, where they had been brocaded overnight. For full disclosure, I bought four thankas from this shop, which can best be described as a hut on the side of the road with a lot of paintings in it. I feel all right about this because some are presents and also because I saw him making them, sitting on the ground in his shop with a half-finished canvas in front of him. I came back so much that Liz and I got pretty good deals on our thankas. Then we picked up our chupas from the cleaners and got lunch before we went home to change.

Coming to India means doing away with things like hair dryers, straighteners, and pretty much anything that makes one’s hair manageable, and so we struggled to look presentable for the audience. Then we grabbed our bags of religious objects to be blessed (plus a baseball hat for my brother: Derek, I love you enough to sneak an unapproved item into the bag!) and headed out the door. A monk commented that we looked beautiful in our chupas on the way to the temple.

The area outside the temple entrance was more deserted than usual, and there were more barriers than normal, presumably so no one could drive a car up to His Holiness’s residence (he lives inside the temple complex). We ducked under some major scaffolding to get to security, where we went through a full pat down and submitted our objects to a tray for blessing later. We were left with only our passports and khatas (ceremonial scarves).

Our group, which consisted of 11 students, 2 TAs, 3 teachers, and Ani-la’s mom and her mother’s friend, sat in the waiting room for a while folding our khatas. Eventually, we got called in for the audience. We walked into a long hallway, holding our khatas and bending forward at the waist so as to keep our heads below HHDL’s head. The helper monks placed the scarves over our necks, which left our hands free to shake! The Dalai Lama has a strong grip. He spent a few seconds holding onto my hand and looked right into my eyes.

Once everyone had progressed through the line, we moved into a room with couches and armchairs and listened to HHDL talk. Two translators assisted him, and the group got the chance to ask three questions. He spoke for a long while about all the topics: we asked two questions on Buddhist philosophy and one on compassion in everyday life. Stephen asked about the relationship between karma and the laws of nature, Ed and Kylie asked how to apply compassion to people we meet in India and at home, and Nellie asked a question about a specific quote that is supposed to contain the entire Dharma in four lines. HHDL asked if she spoke Tibetan so he could answer in Tibetan instead of English. Thank goodness for the translators.

The Dalai Lama laughs a lot, and smiles a ton, and does not fail to make eye contact with each person in the room. Being in his presence really did make me tear up, although I’m not sure why. You can just tell that you’re in the room with someone special when he sits and thinks. He spoke well in English and listened intently to all the questions and answered carefully and thoughtfully. His answers showed his intelligence, but also his warmth and his humanness, which is something weird to say about a person that Tibetans consider a god. He makes you feel like he really cares about people, and animals, and worries about their well-being, which is a lot more than other people who supposedly care about people’s well-being, i.e. politicians or humanitarians or decision-makers or whomever. The world would probably be a better place if more people cared about people rather than other things.

The time flew by, except for the part where the room was really hot. HHDL got up from his chair in the middle of speaking and tried to turn on the air conditioning unit (it took him a while). He looked absolutely hilarious holding the remote with his lips pursed, and you could tell that the translators (both men in their 30s or 40s) just wanted to rip it out of his hands and turn it on for him, but couldn’t because that would mess up protocol.

Afterwards we took photos on some stairs outside, which I will post once I get them from Hong Kong, and then HHDL blessed all the things we brought by touching his forehead to the tray.

Overall, I would concur with Julia’s statement that meeting HHDL is definitely a life highlight.