The Dalai Lama

Three days with the Dalai Lama

The first time I recall hearing the name Dalai Lama was while watching the 1980 comedy film classic Caddie Shack that made the Tibetan-guru a house-hold name for millions of Americans. The Vietnam veteran assistant greens-keeper at Bushwood Country Club, played by Bill Murray, told a fellow young greens-keep how he had jumped ship during the war, made his way over to Tibet and got on as a “looper” at a course in the Himalayas, “So I tell them I’m a pro-jock (pro-caddie) and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama himself, the twelfth son [sic] of the Lama, the flowing robes, the grace – striking. So I’m on the first tee with him, I give him a driver and he hauls off and whacks one, big hitter the Lama, long, into a 10,000 foot creváce right at the base of this glacier. You know what the Dalai Lama says? Gunga Galunga. So we finished eighteen and he’s going to stiff me, and I say hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, and he says, oh there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your death bed you will receive total consciousness – so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.”
Since that time the Dalai Lama, or literally the Ocean Guru - the teacher who is spiritually deep and vast as the ocean, respectfully referred to as His Holiness, has remained for me a relatively undefined religious celebrity; over the years I knew he could fill auditoriums in the U.S. and was generally considered a highly respected figure and a wise voice for peace and mutual tolerance. Not until I traveled to India would I have the opportunity for a first-hand encounter, not on the golf course, but at the Namgyal Monastery in the hill station village of Dharamsala, home to the Tibetan Government-in-exile since 1960, known as the little Lhasa in India.
During my one month stay in India, I learned through travelers’ word of mouth that a three day teaching by the Dalai Lama was scheduled at the Namgyal Monastery by request of Singapore Buddhists. The teaching was open to the public and only required registration and being present in the remote hill station in Northern India. My girlfriend Lydia and I happened to be within an overnight train and bus ride to the village of Dharamsala, a Hindi word that translates as rest house, a name I came to learn was quite fitting.
Determined to attend the lectures of the Ocean Guru, Lydia and I caught an afternoon train in the holy city of Haridwar situated along the banks of the Ganges River. At three in the morning we stumbled out of the train at the Panthankot station and found a large number of Westerners waiting on the steps of the station for connecting transport to Dharamsala, a three hour bus ride into the Himalayan foothills. The closest bus station was in the neighboring village of Chakki Bank, only two kilometers away, but a vast darkness confused the direction and rather than walk the dark dirt streets we hired one of the many squabbling cabbies who sought our business. He dropped us at the bus station where a chaotic jumble of white and green Himachal Pradesh Transportation Company buses jockeyed to get out of the tight confines of the parking lot. Despite an unattended bus office we managed to determine which bus was headed to Dharamsala by watching for the Japanese, Israeli, German, Australian and other Westerners to fan out to each bus for direction. Predictably, one came back with a match. We marched like ants in a line towards the bus that was a moving target as it negotiated out of a pinned in position at the back of the parking lot, the driver hollered in agitation for us eager back-packers to clear the way. When he stopped, we hefted our packs up the ladder to the metal roof and affixed our bags to the metal rails. I had brought a long cable lock for train rides and occasions such as this, assuring our bags remained attached over what was certain to be a bumpy ride into the Himalayan foothills.
We had a few hours to wait for departure; people slept, read, stretched, or just plain waited. I went to find a bathroom that was in the adjoining train station. I came back in time to see the diesel engine of our bus choke to life and rock on its wheels in preparation to leave. I quickened my step into something short of a run and managed to climb aboard and find my seat moments before we chugged off into the night, thirty minutes prior to scheduled departure. Travel in India is always filled with surprise, such as the bus door that remained open for the entire three hour trip to Dharamsala, despite the protests of an Israeli woman sitting in front of me, who had four children, bags and a husband on the bus, and was leery that any of the above would be bounced out unawares. We discovered that the door stayed open because Indians like to jump on and off the bus at a moments notice anywhere along the route. I had a front row seat to the open door, and at one point caught the glimpse of a black haired man in the doorway, only to disappear from view save his right hand that was gripped to the interior handle. He slowly pulled himself back into view and onto the bus with a slight wobble of the head as if to say all is well, despite the bus going somewhere between ten and twenty miles per hour and gaining speed.
As dawn broke the Himalayan foothills slowly became visible and stood as a wall before us. In short time the bus began to snake upwards along a hilly road and arrived in the small village of Dharamsala pinned between the plains and the rising Himalaya. Seven kilometers up the road from Dharamsala sits McLeod Ganj, also known as Upper Dharamsala, home to several thousand Tibetan refugees, scores of maroon-robed Tibetan monks, one nunnery and seven monasteries, including the Namgyal Monastery – the personal monastery of His Holiness. For these last seven kilometers we hired a minute sized taxi, the size of a V.W. Golf. Our back-packs squeezed into the hatch-back leaving not a square inch of light coming through the rear window. The driver used his horn all the way up the winding road wide enough for one vehicle to travel sanely, but in fact made to accommodate two-way traffic, along with pedestrians, cows (both walking and lying), dogs, bicycles, and many others things you may or may not imagine could be traveling a road. Our driver gave credence to the oft-quoted saying of three things needed for driving in India: good brakes, good horn and good luck.
Upper Dharamsala, besides being a refuge for Tibetans is also a Western enclave, attracting seekers of the Free Tibet movement, Yoga, meditation, alternative medicine, and Buddhist studies. It also offers opportunity for trekking, along with restaurants and coffee shops that make special effort to cater to Western standards and tastes. McLeod Ganj has indeed become a place of rest for exiled Tibetans and weary Western travelers seeking relief from the grind of India. Although there are cows eating from trash piles, polio victims and lepers who line the street begging, McLeod Ganj has a mellifluous quality about it that draws and makes you want to stay, as if finding a safe corner of the world in order to slow down and consider what it means to be human. We intended to do just that by listening to three days of the Dalai Lama, which would require registration with our Passports at a small outpost in the center of town. In so doing, we came into contact with what seemed to be every Westerner in northern India. The registration was done in typical Indian fashion, everything hand written, money scattered on the table, similar to what I had seen in every Post Office wherein the agents stored money in an open suitcase or box. We completed the registration process and anticipated the lecture that would begin the next morning at nine.
With ambition to find a seat within view of His Holiness, we arrived early at the gates of the monastery only to find that many others shared our ambition. The line was long as we shuffled slowly towards the security check point. Because there were far fewer men, I was jumped ahead to be patted down by male security before passing through to the temple grounds. Inside I found two stairways that led to the second story where the Dalai Lama would teach seated before a golden statue of Sakyamuni. The inner-court was reserved for the Singapore delegation, and other prime seating was reserved for monks and nuns. The outlying area was available to foreigners. Much of the floor space had already been claimed several hours before the lecture was to begin. I claimed a modest space for two towards the outer reaches of the Temple amongst mostly Westerners who looked stereotypical of new age hot spots such as Boulder, Santa Fe, Eugene, and Berkeley. I began to refer to the look of such Westerners as “going fully native”, which entailed carrying a simple woven bag with a long strap and flap, similar to the type carried by monks. The clothing invariably had a home-spun hemp look, with simple footwear – usually sandals of some kind, and more times than not a name brand fleece accentuated. One such man who had “gone fully native”, German I surmised by his accent, plunked himself down directly in front of me and Lydia, and made a great display of sitting himself up on two rather thick cushions and crossing his legs as if preparing for a bout of meditation. Ironically, having taken the trouble to gather into his enlightenment pose, the large German began squabbling with a Tibetan monk over seating space. The German had effectively requisitioned the space of four for he and one other, and in so doing had spilled over into the space reserved by a slightly built monk who needed but a sliver of space. Liebensraum sprang to mind sardonically. I scolded my prejudiced thoughts but watched incredulous as this man, so intent on soaking up the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, acted in utter insensitivity to his neighbor.
That first morning I saw very little other than the broad backside of the German man sitting cross-legged and straight backed, seemingly attentive to every word of His Holiness and yet obtuse to putting the wisdom to work in the moment. Coincidentally, from my hotel balcony I could see this German man on his hotel balcony each morning as he ran through a series of slow-motion Tai Chi exercises. It caused me to reflect on the efficacy of “spiritual” exercise if not seated in authentic recognition and compassion for others. The Dalai Lama had taught that compassion to neighbors has results. But I wondered how this was true or if it was simply the right thing to do despite lack of visible results. Had China responded to compassion? Would the German man sitting in front of me respond to compassion or would he continue on his selfish way, gobbling up compassion in pursuit of his own ends? Then I stopped to consider the Dalai Lama’s teaching and that perhaps the results of compassion, in a twist of logic, are as much for oneself as for others.
His Holiness, citing scientific studies, made a correlation between selfish “I” acts and heart attacks. He pointed out that love and compassion are indeed the message of God. Therefore, living as a person of compassion cultivates peace and health in ones body, mind and soul, and is the expression of God. He advised that proper teaching is vital to growth and that an audit must continually be taken of the teaching being received: If your teacher is not reasonable with reality then do not follow the teaching, while continuing to respect the teacher. He gave the example that an obscure Buddhist Scripture asserts the world is flat, but he rejects this teaching in favor of science that tells otherwise. He advised that discerning the right view on a subject comes through meditation and experience wherein the wrong view gets successively weaker. In sum, we must experiment, investigate and experience in order to find the right path.
In a warm disclosure of transparency the Dalai Lama shared memories of how he learned compassion from his mother, attributing great value and weight to the action of his parents. He told how as a young boy, already identified as the Avalokiteshvara, he would sit at the family dinner table and watch his father eat his beloved pork, and he being the holy boy, was not allowed to eat pork, but he waited like a dog for a scrap anyway. Routinely his father would get food caught in his moustache and one day the holy boy reached up and touched the moustache to get at the pork. His father got very angry initially, and then he laughed uproariously at the antics of his young son, who while holy, was still only a boy.
The next morning I elected to sit away from the Western crowds who congregated at the open end of the inner temple, opting instead to sit directly behind the inner temple court that would afford no chance of seeing the Dalai Lama – or so I thought. The Temple is bordered on the second story by balconies that look out to the stunning scenery of the valley and mountains that surround. The back side of the Temple looks up to jagged grey cliffs, and on this morning several hawks effortlessly rode the thermals in circles. I seated myself amidst the rows of the maroon-robed monks who happily included me in their tight rows beneath the bronze cylindrical prayer wheels that lined the outer wall of the inner Temple court. Roaming monks with large metal tea kettles poured rich butter tea for each of us accompanied by dense flat bread. Our breakfast would bridge us through the morning lecture to a lunch of rice and lentils, also passed out by monks with pales and ladles.
Out of the shuffling noise of people situating themselves, a voice reverberated through the hall at a voice tone lower than I have ever heard. The monks around me joined in creating a musical halo that enveloped us all. The chanting transformed the atmosphere with a sacredness intended as an offering to the Tibetan Buddhist deities and enlightened beings, at once an invocation for the entrance of the Dalai Lama and intercession for the enlightenment and salvation of every sentient being. I would later find out that what I was hearing was a throat singing tradition based on one of the lowest fundamental pitches of any of the world’s throat singing traditions, a replication of the voice of the Yaks, the source of labor, fine wool, and all around sustenance for the Tibetan people throughout the centuries living in the Land of the Snow on the Roof of the World.
As the vocals slowed to stillness, a palpable energy remained in the room and suddenly a man appeared from a doorway carrying a large automatic weapon followed by a consort of men who could not be mistaken for anything other than the body guard attachment for His Holiness. At the center of the v-shaped entourage walked the Dalai Lama, taking time to stop and acknowledge his fellow monks with a warm smile, palms together in greeting of each soul. I felt conspicuous in my yellow t-shirt that stood out against the sea of red. His Holiness paused and looked down my short row and smiled widely, before moving rather quickly down the narrow aisle and around the corner towards his place of teaching at the feet of the golden Sakyamuni.
After eliciting a prayer-song of devotion from the Singaporeans, His Holiness began by reminding us that whatever we are, whatever we believe, we are all human beings, and we all have our own unique and important experience – he just happens to be a descendant from a most holy people. He told of how in the eighth century an Indian yogi guru called Rinpoche came by donkey over the Himalaya to give the Buddha Dharma that developed into the reign of the Dalai Lama by the Fourteenth Century. His Holiness alluded to the notion that our ability to reach our final destination – buddhahood – is not achieved by effort but is given by nature. This surprised me, for my perception has been that Buddhism is a tradition of karma wherein earning release from suffering is solely dependant on the effort exerted through many lives of upward mobility. I found this sentiment provocative because it suggested, albeit in different words, the Christian concept of grace: salvation is not earned but actively received through the mercy of God. His Holiness further explained that buddhahood means all the potential of our subtle mind, fully present, and that this comes step by step, each step a transformation that is vitally dependant on proper teaching for anyone desirous of pursuing the life of faith.
He observed how Westerners are typically fully alert to his teaching, but that Easterners find the teaching a little boring. This is so, he speculated, because it is not fresh and novel for the Easterners, having gone stale through familiarity. He admonished this kind of attitude, characterizing it as a poor excuse for not engaging in faith meaningfully. He recognized that the way of faith has many traditions and that Westerners are not Buddhist by tradition and should not aspire to be so, specifying the importance that Westerners not run from their own tradition, which he cited as primarily Judeo-Christian. With this remark I wondered how my fellow Westerners would respond; individuals who had in effect made pilgrimage to learn from the Dalai Lama and ostensibly grow in their budding Buddhism. I had several Western acquaintances in the crowd who I knew were intentional about integrating Eastern faith into their life after presumably finding Western faith void of meaning. I wondered how this gentle rebuke was sitting or if it was shrugged off as inapplicable because they didn’t self-identify as Western so much as spiritual ex-patriots of the West. Indeed, the West has largely moved away from Christianity and Judaism which is perceived as boring and irrelevant. Many of the faith communities that have survived and thrive in the West have blurred the line between faith, entertainment and bold consumerism.
Just as I was getting worked up in my antagonism towards religion gone array in the West, His Holiness reminded that interdependency is a key factor in right spiritual living. He explained, “When we develop anger we get the impression that the object we feel anger towards is 100 percent negative. 90 percent of this negativity is mental perception by me. 100 percent negative perception of my enemy means no consideration that this entity could ever be a friend. Negativity hinges on many factors, including oneself, which chips away on the 100 percent negativity of an enemy.” Interdependence, he noted, is the hinge for infinite compassion and non-violence. This, he noted, is the essence of Buddhism.
He then addressed his primary audience, the Asian delegation, specifically the Singapore contingent. He observed that Asia is traditionally a land of many different faiths, yet all of the major philosophy in Asia, including the Buddha Dharma, comes from India. He stressed that just as it is important for Westerners to keep their own religious tradition, it is also important for Asians and Buddhists to keep their tradition. I got the sense that the Singapore group had requested the teaching from the Dalai Lama because they were under the influence of not only the West, but more so materialism that tends to lead away from the life of faith. He emphasized that those seeking the way of faith must know the structure and system of their faith and that one drawn to faith should first thoroughly study a particular religion before taking the step of faith that is ever supported by a life of study. For, without diligent study one will surely lose the way in a world offering so many easy alternatives.
The end of the three day teaching was not dissimilar to the end of a three day revival meeting in the evangelistic Christian tradition where those in attendance are exhorted to recommit their lives to Jesus and the way of faith, coming to the altar for confession and prayer in order to get back on the straight and narrow way of salvation. The Dalai Lama led the room in prayers and prostrations to himself and the Buddha statue in reaffirmation of the five refuge vows: refrain from harming living creatures (murder); refrain from taking that which is not given (stealing); refrain from sexual misconduct; refrain from false speech, and refrain from intoxication which leads to loss of mindfulness. This was a moment of spiritual decision, one that I watched as if from the bleachers at a baseball game, thankful that I had the opportunity to feel what it was to be the spectator and outsider at a religious venue, as so many have been at the Churches that I have led worship in.
My visit to Dharamsala and the Namgyal Monastery was invaluable in appreciating first-hand the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, what Tibetan Buddhism espouses and how the community functions on a day-to-day basis. Before I left the monastery I was serendipitously given a Zen-like koan that would utterly confound everything I had perceived over the previous three days. I stepped into the monastery bookstore to browse for or an item as a token of remembrance. Not surprisingly books by the Dalai Lama and other leading Buddhist leaders lined the shelves. I looked them over with cursory interest as I wasn’t particularly interested in lugging books through the remainder of my travels. I turned for the exit when I spotted a long shelf of books in the back corner of the shop filled with romance novels by the queen of the romance genre, Danielle Steele. Why were these here? Was it in fact an unspoken koan or simply sign that we are all humans, even Buddhist monks. The more the mystery of life is searched the more it unfolds with clues and perplexes with facts.