By MARGARET WENTE
According to Goldie Hawn, the Dalai Lama is a very important dude. Now in Canada on an extended tour, the cheery little reincarnated fellow is the one everybody’s dying for a photo-op with. Politicians are lining up to shake his hand. Universities are showering him with honorary degrees; journalists are fawning at his feet. His schedule is so crammed that his handlers said they weren’t sure how they’d squeeze in Paul Martin. The 25,000 tickets for his appearances in Vancouver sold out in minutes.
But if you can’t get a seat, all is not lost. You can book him for a speaking engagement. His suggested topics are World Peace, Religious Toleration, and Incorporating Compassion Into Your Life. It will cost you something north of $40,000 (U.S.), plus expenses — but after all, he’s got a country to save. You can also buy prayer flags, carpets, singing bowls, incense, prayer boxes, T-shirts, cookbooks, and decals with his picture on it.
The Dalai Lama’s popularity says a lot more about us than him. In person, he dispenses timeless nostrums such as, “If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion.” And, “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
This is a brand of faith anyone can like. It does not, thankfully, bear very much resemblance to the Tibetan form of Buddhism, which is extremely demanding. “You have to do about a thousand prostrations before you can even start,” says a Buddhist friend of mine.
But Spirituality Lite is what sells, and the Dalai Lama is more than happy to adjust his Buddhism to local conditions. Take the prohibitions on oral sex, masturbation, and homosexuality. He says they don’t really apply over here. Nor do Western Buddhists have to put up with hellfire, damnation, guilt, atoning for their sins or going to church. Meditation is more fun, and you can do it on your own. In the West, Buddhism has morphed into another form of self-improvement.
The Dalai Lama has lots of other things going for him. He’s the leader of a genuinely worthy, tragic (and lost) cause, the brutal Chinese oppression of the people of Tibet. It doesn’t hurt your head, like Bosnia. Everyone knows who the good guys are. He also shares the magic of a hundred years of Western mythmaking about Shangri-la — the pure, lost world where people live an Edenic, spiritual existence. This myth has inspired a generation of trekkers who think altitude sickness, lousy food and dysentery are romantic.
In reality, even my Buddhist friends wouldn’t care to linger long in plumbing-free monasteries perfumed by rancid yak butter. And before the Chinese came, Tibet was a feudal theocracy ruled by often-nasty monks. Life was brutish and short. But it’s not the real Tibet that enchants us. It’s the imaginary one.
This combination of suffering people and spiritual uplift has made the Dalai Lama the biggest religious hit in Hollywood, where, as observers often note, spiritual searching is second only in importance to making money. Even Sharon Stone has stood in line to meet him. Richard Gere is practically his best friend. Helpfully, these people also write big cheques. It may be no coincidence that Steven Seagal, the aging action star who gave the world a string of moronic movies, has even been proclaimed a reincarnated lama, or tulku, a rare honour, indeed.
The Dalai Lama also feeds our wishful hope that if only more people believed in peace, we could get rid of war and violence. This is a sentiment worthy of the most idealistic school child, so who am I to knock it? In Vancouver, he mused that if only a group of Nobel peace laureates had visited Baghdad, they might have stopped the war. Let’s hope he wasn’t thinking of including Yasser Arafat.
But the other thing he’s got going for him is that he appears to be, as my Buddhist friend puts it, “the real thing.” His celebrity has not gone to his head. He is modest and friendly — and he giggles. You can’t say that for the Pope.
“Let’s face it, the Dalai Lama is a great guy to hang out with,” wrote Bill Higgins, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times who’s also a Buddhist. “Since the age of two, he’s studied being a great guy, and he’s had the best teachers. He’s trained to see everyone as the Buddha.” And who could possibly resist that?
mwente@globeandmail.ca
