chartandwaters

It's been hard to think about how to talk about His Holiness the Dalai Lama's birthday proceedings, which were a disorienting mix of being basely upset at not getting a good seat, and being in the presence of the closest thing I can imagine to divinity on earth. The temple (the Namgyal Temple) in which the celebrations were held is open-air; though tarps were hung for cover many people did not fit under the tarps. It poured intensely all day both days, making everyone sick.

These were the first days this summer, I think, and definitely since I had been here, that it poured so intensely and for so long, which made it odd since everyone had been looking forward to these days for so long. Supposedly rain on a special day is auspicious (so, yes, good to have a special day during the monsoon). A huge water pipe broke and the town had no water. Roads closed to the next two major destinations tourists go--Manali and Leh.

The first day of the celebrations, June 6, a Finnish friend Kyrsie and I saw the Dalai Lama over one of the temple's many scattered video screens for a while and watched him accept the gift of two books, which he flipped through with studious interest as his devotees watched in awe. We then were able to get into a slightly better position to watch a series of celebratory traditional dances (described more in a future blog).

That night I met for the first time a Buddhist layman, Matt, who is devoting himself for the next four years to a course on Buddhism for the lay practicioner in Nepal. In the meanwhile he and his teachers are designing a practice for him which currently involves reciting the names of 42 Buddhist deities while prostrating between 300 and 800 times a day. If I recall he was a money manager before and through 9/11, but 9/11 made him evaluate what mattered, and he decided, after some searching, that practicing Buddhism and learning Tibetan (in part to translate Buddhist texts) would be good. He told me the next day at the temple the DL would lead a puja, or prayer service, and receive a series of offerings from the community. He recommended I get to the temple by 7am the next day for a good seat.

I did, and was very proud until I realized I was in the wrong place; the Dalai Lama was inside and I was out. Meanwhile I had been saving two seats for my friends who didn't show--luckily, since the seats seemed so poor. What I could see were the lines of hundreds waiting with their offerings: long, orange-cloth-wrapped rectangular bricks containing copies of scriptures; sacks of grain; potted plants; little gold statues of Buddha and Buddhist deities; and many other items. I think I would have gotten him a toothbrush and toiletries, since these always run out. I left sick and frustrated (it's particularly disgruntling to be frustrated when you're in the presence of the Dalai Lama AND on the vacation of your life), got breakfast and coffee, came back and, after hanging out, began to feel a rush of joy and wonder at the amount of reverence there, and at the faces of the many ancient and sturdy Tibetans who had made the journey from "neighboring" (2-day busride) towns. There was a particularly fascinating man with stylish modern glasses, a fedora, long hair, a twirled moustache and a troubadour jacket; someone explained to me that he was a freedom fighter from Nepal.

Then the Dalai Lama came to sit outside to watch some more traditional dancing, and I was able to see him with the help of two generous Tibetans nearby me, one a young man who patiently pointed the DL out to me through a peephole formed by people's shoulders and umbrellas, and, when I still couldn't see him, wasn't satisfied till I could; the other a very old man who was delighted when he saw that I was standing on tiptoes to look through an opening the size of a penny. Finally the rain lightened and the crowd reluctantly folded their umbrellas, then with further reluctance agreed to sit, and the dance floor was revealed to us. A white lion creature as I think one sees at Chinese New Years, made of a costume shared by two people, came out along with a wild white-dressed crazy deity who danced around in the weirdest and silliest way he could. Then a black lion creature came out. Then there was traditional Tibetan dancing.

The next day I ran into Matt at breakfast. I told him I'd been disgruntled at the poor seat I'd gotten in the morning. He had been sitting in the same place and watching the offerings, but he had been very happy about it. He said that there was a great deal you could do with the offerings; for example, you could meditate on imagining the offerings increasing infinitely to fill the world with goodness and plenty. And etc.

The birthday celebrations were largely untranslated and informationless, making the real, surprising joy of looking at His Holiness perhaps that much more appreciated. There's a Krishnamurti quote that when people lose contact with nature, then mosques and temples become important. It is easy to imagine that the Dalai Lama sits above both nature and temple, watching. The peak of the proceedings, I think even for those who are or speak Tibetan, is really just looking at His Holiness, who really does seem to emanate goodness. If you're lucky, you have enough time to look at him to wonder if you're just imagining how much goodness he is, or if you're projecting it, or the like, and enough time to come around to determining that he really is this good.

A part of voicing this gets stuck in my throat because it is the way people talk about some gurus that others mock--Sai Baba, for example...but there's a photo exhibit up for the Dalai Lama's birthday about both him and Gandhi, comparing the two icons of nonviolence. The exhibit includes a series of photos of His Holiness the Dalai Lama with an assortment of world leaders. We see him smiling with Prince Charles, smiling with Mandela, smiling with the elder George Bush. Frequently his hands are together in the position of prayer before them. Needless to say he is, in the words of Yeats, "a smiling public man"; but so is John Travolta, and I can't imagine John Travolta, who always seems so nice, manifesting so much goodness in a single bow.

Anyway, we see him smiling with his hands together before Clinton, and his bow has the energy of the Hindu greeting "namaste"--which means something like, "the divine in me bows to the divine in you." The Dalai Lama looks as if he is paying true homage to the divine in Clinton, not to his power or of course any of the sketchy stuff but truly his divinity. And then there's a picture of the Dalai Lama sitting in a chair next to the younger George Bush. Whose legs are sprawled, his torso pushed back and away from the D.L. as if taking in this peculiarly good monkey from a safe distance. And there's the Dalai Lama, his own body pulled slightly back as if in fear, his hands pressed hard together in prayer, but not to Bush, no, rather as if praying urgently that the world might be saved despite him. The photo's a rare instance in which His Holiness is not smiling.

Matt (Just a Friend) was with me and I asked him to react to the photo. He had nothing to say, maybe because compassion is his only option. But it was astonishing, I know it was.