“We make the world with our thoughts,” the Dalai Lama said, and I tried to focus on his words. But my eyes were on his hand, which was fishing around inside his robe. The leader of Tibetan Buddhism pulled out a visor, one that matched his maroon robes perfectly. He looked up at the thousands assembled before him and squinted up at the stage lights.
“It is all in your thoughts,” he continued, “but sometimes you need a visor.”
The most refreshing part of seeing the Dalai Lama on Sunday at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium was the offhanded way he bears the mantle of religious superstardom. He shuffles out on stage making gentle namastes toward the crowd, clad in robes and a pair of sensible leather shoes. He sits in the airmchair prepared for him and deliberately unlaces the shoes so he can comfortably sit cross-legged, as monks do. The empty shoes sit there his whole talk. He shares a little laugh with the tech who pins a mike to his robe.
The concepts in his speech – service to others and tolerance of all religions – drew big applause from the San Francisco crowd. It was his unstatemanlike gestures caught us by surprise. At one point the Dalai Lama, winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, scrubbed a finger inside his ear canal, pulled it out to inspect the wax and rubbed it away. We all tittered.
The one time he seemed troubled was when the subject turned to the people of Tibet, the land from which he was exiled in 1959. He listed the woes of Tibet under the Chinese government: Dilution of the native population with the mass emigration of ethnic Chinese, environmental degradation and the muffling of Tibet’s political voice. I could read the sadness in his face.
Though the Dalai Lama is a monk who has renounced most of life’s pleasures, he seems like someone you’d want to have a beer with. If you made a joke about vegetarians, he’d probably laugh, if it was a good one.
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