Finally, it is time to meet the Dalai Lama. You are escorted, by a monk-attendant, along an outdoor walkway leading to an inner meeting area. Surprisingly, His Holiness the Dalai Lama waits to greet you on the sidewalk. Bowing slightly and beaming broadly, he is thoroughly happy to see you, as though finally reuniting with a dear and long-lost special friend. As you offer him a white silk greeting scarf, or khata, he laughingly places it around your neck in return greeting.

In the simply furnished meeting room adorned with a few Tibetan Buddhist paintings, you wonder how this session should begin. The Dalai Lama waits. Gradually it dawns on you that it is up to you alone to set the tone. In fact, His Holiness seems to absorb the mood, responding at each moment to your own state of mind. If you have philosophic or mystical questions, His Holiness aligns himself as closely as possible with the tradition or experience from which you speak. If your focus highlights political or social concerns, his responses mirror your framework.

As usual when the Dalai Lama meets Westerners, an English-speaking Tibetan interpreter is present to help clarify words or meanings. The Dalai Lama's English, like his Tibetan, rises and falls in a wide range of expressive tones, highlighted by an infectious sense of humor. His voice is calm and penetrating. Scholars say he speaks with incomparable eloquence in the Tibetan language. He delivers Buddhist teachings in his native tongue but speaks English when conversing generally.

Prominent cheekbones meet the fine network of creases at his shining, penetrating eyes, as he listens and nods and smiles encouragingly. His unusually glowing skin accentuates a single, inquisitive, v-shaped line that runs the length of his high forehead. Regardless of the topic, brief words of practical advice and grounded viewpoint are woven into a conversation that begins and ends with your own initiative. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, believed to be an incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion, is not interested in gaining converts or becoming embroiled in passionate debate. He is simply there for you, to become engaged in a warm, personal exchange.

You notice, fleetingly, that the Dalai Lama's hands are exquisite. His long, slender fingers close gently around each other as he earnestly listens to you. Suddenly his hands open wide, then pull together in a hollow clap as he breaks forth into laughter. It is true that His Holiness does love to laugh. Whether in rippling giggles or a clear open gale, his sense of joy pervades his entire being. While he may roar briefly in response to something you have said, never do you feel ridiculed, for this great monk is laughing beyond irony or personal psychology. And his outburst is generally accompanied by a reassuring comment which clarifies the profound depth of his humor. His is an unaffected, unselfconscious mirth.

Reprinted with kind permission by the author from
Living Tibet: The Dalai Lama In Dharamsala
Text by Nanci Rose
Photographs by Bill Warren
Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
1997; Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, NY

Read Nanci Rose's biographical essay on the Dalai Lama.

Nanci Rose works with emotionally distressed children and their families, and is co-author of Living Tibet: The Dalai Lama In Dharamsala available from Amazon.com via this site.