By Huw Williams
The exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, addressed the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday afternoon as part of his visit to Scotland.
A few days earlier he addressed thousands of followers and seekers after truth in Glasgow. During the trip he took time to talk to me about his experiences.
Someone once said that when he laughs, the Dalai Lama sounds like Sid James.
And he seems to enjoy chuckling at the most unexpected moments.
Like when someone asked him: “Why are we here, on earth?”
He guffawed and said that was not a question that interested him very much.
What was more important, he said, was that we were here, and we must work out what we need to have a happy and fulfilled life.
There are some faintly ludicrous aspects to the Dalai Roadshow when it rolls into town.
There was a stall at the SECC in Glasgow offering “Yaks for Life”.
It was not a mobile phone company offering unlimited talk-time, but a scheme to supply large shaggy animals to Tibetan farmers.
There are the CDs published on the Electric Buddha label.
And the Buddhist centre offering “wisdom and compassion in the heart of London” – which must be a first.
You can’t help wondering what the man at the centre of it all makes of all the fuss.
When my BBC colleague presented him with a “Steve Wright in the Afternoon” wrist-watch, the Dalai Lama smiled graciously and accepted it gratefully.
But I wonder if the Radio Two disc jockey really has made much impact among the Tibetan Government in exile.
‘Patience, hope and determination’.
It is 45 years since the Dalai Lama felt forced to flee from Tibet.
He had decided it was not going to be possible to work with the Chinese authorities who had invaded (or, as they’d put it, liberated) his country.
So how, I asked him, did he maintain patience?
“There is no other way”, he laughed.
“If you use common sense, it’s much better to keep patience, hope and determination.”
But he did admit that sometimes he feels a little home-sick.
“The monsoon season in India is horrible”, he told me.
“But the climate in Lhasa is very pleasant.”
This Dalai Lama is the 14th – each one believed to be a reincarnation of the last.
The story goes that he was identified as a two-year-old boy, after successfully recognising objects that had belonged to him in his previous life.
But that raises the question of the succession, and the vacuum that could exist when he dies, until the next Dalai Lama is recognised and trained up.
Cultural heritage
Can’t China just wait, I asked, and ensure that the next reincarnation is identified as someone who will be amenable to their rule?
He was quite definite on that point. The Tibetan claim for freedom didn not rely on his leadership.
It was a question of a community, a nation, with a long history and a deep cultural heritage.
“The struggle will continue, so long as Tibetans remain” he said.
But violence would never be justified in that struggle, he told me.
“Once you’ve committed violence, it easily becomes out of control. It’s very unpredictable, so therefore no matter how desperate the situation, it is better to avoid using violence,” he added.
Non-violence may take longer, he conceded, but “it’s much safer, much stronger, and more effective in the long run”.
No late night drinking
There’s a bit of a row brewing over some newspaper reports that the Dalai Lama had been seen in a bar named after the Buddha, in Glasgow city centre on Monday night.
His press spokesman told me it was “a baseless story”.
“He’s a monk”, Tsering Tashi said. “Once he finished his teachings he stayed in his hotel room, meditating and praying.”
And there is another dispute about a portrait of the Dalai Lama, on show at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh.
His representatives have ordered it must be taken down when they visit the exhibition, apparently because it makes the spiritual leader “look sad”.
But the Dalai Lama claims he’s never been depressed.
When someone asked him about this issue at the SECC public meeting he said he was a bit worried that, at the age of 69, time was running out for him to ever experience what that emotion felt like.
