I have met the Dalai Lama once. It was during his last visit to Taipei and I was particularly lucky to have what was in effect a private chat with him -- maybe I should say an "audience." After some affable introductory exchanges, I asked him my big question. "Do you really think," I asked, "that you can prevent earthquakes?"
It had been reported in advance that rituals would be performed in Nantou County to protect the population from another disaster like the one of September 1999. His initial reaction was to burst out laughing. The Dalai Lama often laughs and makes jokes and some people think it's a characteristically Tibetan way of looking at things. At that Taipei press conference, he kept bringing a cup of tea up to his lips, smiling at the banks of cameramen who got ready to photograph him drinking it, then laughing as he put the cup down, without drinking. It was a ritual he went through while something he'd said was being translated and he clearly thought it added to the general gaiety of occasion.
After pointing out that he himself wouldn't be conducting the rite in question, but that its main aims were to "clear the air" and to assist the souls of those who'd died in 1999, he countered my skeptical rationalism by saying that, even if the ritual did no good, at least it couldn't do any harm. It struck me at the time that this was a modest assertion from someone who many of his followers believe to be a mage with the power to bring off near-miracles when the need arises.
This book is made up of four addresses delivered in India between 1999 and last year, plus one other of uncertain date. They're quite short, and are followed by questions. (Even the Buddha, he points out, gave his followers permission to question his words). The Dalai Lama's answers are often interesting. Someone asks about terrorism and he answers that, in the long term, the only answer is dialogue, compassion and understanding. Someone else asks about the possessiveness some people have toward him and he replies that it doesn't affect him, and he's simply a being made up of earth, wind, water and fire. "I am just sitting here," he says.
But as this book demonstrates, the Dalai Lama is a powerful and benign personality, independent in many matters, and much more than a mere pawn in the game of international politics. For someone who was chosen shortly after birth by means of a variety of signs and portents few of us would set any store by in ordinary circumstances, he's an extraordinarily wise human being and a powerful force for good.
This book was first published by Penguin Books India, and the audience the Dalai Lama has in mind is essentially an Indian one. As he remarks at one point, he has lived in India for 41 years (he was speaking in 2001) and he defends his friendly attitude to Hinduism -- not always shared by fellow Buddhists, he says. He does make some critical comments about caste, but goes on to point out that at the Hindu festival at Kumbha Mela, 25 million people gathered without a single animal being killed for food. "If 10,000 Tibetans gathered, I think the butchers would be very busy. A bit unfortunate." He's trying to promote vegetarianism, he says. Earthquakes feature here too -- his 2001 address followed a major one in Gujarat.
Spiritual books are frequently hard-going for the ordinary reader. In common with Christian handbooks, this one talks about perfection, concentration and so on, but also deals extensively with the characteristic Buddhist practices of meditation and the pursuit of "emptiness." Elsewhere he remarks that Buddhists can't accept a creator because they don't see how a creator could occur in the first place.
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