In the lobby of the Hotel de Crillon, in Paris’s Place de la Concorde, a small, nervous huddle is beginning to form, their pallor and general dinginess thrown into sharp relief by the Baccarat crystal chandeliers and the manicured elegance of the paying guests. Their fringed Indian cotton skirts and loosely draped headscarves are the first indication that we are in the right place.
It is 8.20am and Victor Spence, development officer for the Edinburgh Interfaith Association, and I have an appointment with the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, whom Spence has cajoled into visiting Scotland next June. His Holiness, as everybody from the maître d’ to the groupies in the lobby calls him, is in Paris for six days as part of a four-nation European tour. The de Crillon, with its romantic reputation and Michelin-starred restaurant, seems an unlikely place to find a 68-year-old monk.
We are greeted by Wangpo Bashi, secretary of the Paris branch of the Office of Tibet. Unlike the dippy, hippy groupies, Bashi fits right in at the de Crillon, with his smart jacket, silk tie and his brisk efficiency. He escorts us to the fifth floor, where an air of decidedly unBuddhistic nervous tension is palpable. In the corridor we meet Tashi Phuntsok, the Dalai Lama’s representative in northern Europe (the Tibetan government-in-exile, based in Dharamsala in northern India, has offices in 13 countries and they are all jealously territorial). He, too, is dressed like a banker and has the same business-like air.
We have, he informs us, 15 minutes with His Holiness. This is a 25 per cent reduction in the promised allocation, and Spence starts to protest gently. “The time for negotiation is over,” bellows Phuntsok, with such gusto that the ladies from the press office jump and the two bodyguards guarding the entrance to HH’s quarters flinch. Then he throws back his head and laughs. It’s a joke – a reference to the relationship between China and Tibet. The message, however, is clear.
I don’t know what I had expected when the invitation to interview the Dalai Lama came through. Incense, I guess, lots of beatific, smiley people, a dash of spiritual enlightenment and an update on the position of one of the most oppressed peoples on earth.
What I hadn’t anticipated was walking into what could easily pass as the set of a James Bond movie. His Holiness, it transpires, is not only in the caviar and foie gras capital of Paris, but he is holed up in the Louis XV suite, complete with Calacatta marble bathroom and as much rococo furniture as can be tastefully squeezed into a 450sq-foot lounge. Prices start at Û6,600 a night, so – assuming there is no divine discount – his six-night stay will leave no change from £27,000. Breakfast is not included. It is a bizarre setting for “a humble monk”, as he is wont to describe himself. But it is exactly the sort of place in which a living god, as many of his followers view him, would feel at home.
Eventually we are allowed to venture past the bodyguards, and it becomes clear that the interview will not be an intimate affair. Spence and I are ushered to a pale-blue and gold brocade sofa. A monk with hi-tech recording equipment, dressed in robes the exact turmeric and crimson colours of the Motherwell Football Club strip, takes up a position opposite us. Next to him sits a besuited interpreter. Then comes HH’s personal bodyguard – another Tibetan in a suit – sporting an ear-piece and a gold front tooth. Wangpo Bashi, Tashi Phuntsok and the ladies from the press office sit at the back. The photographer from the Tibet office snaps away, paparazzi-style.
There is no protocol for meeting the Dalai Lama. No fuss about covered heads or bare feet, no ritual greeting or method of address. Yet the whole scene is choreographed like a ballet. Nothing is left to chance. Only when the tableau is complete does the star shuffle in.
The Dalai Lama is clutching a glass of water in one hand and a tissue in the other – “Flu,” he remarks when I inquire about his health. Spence gives him a “21st-century tartan” scarf whose colours represent everything from the United Nations to world suffering. “Very good,” says HH, trying it on. He kicks off his flip-flops and perches crossed-legged on a red velvet and gilt baroque armchair; he’s a small man with crinkly eyes and large glasses, wearing monks’ robes, a flashy watch, a rosary and a tartan scarf. If anybody else finds the scene comically incongruous, it doesn’t show.
I had been wondering what line of questioning was appropriate for a god-king. HH gives frequent interviews, and his pronouncements tend to fall into two camps; those that are so bleeding obvious that they are in danger of haemorrhaging to death – “be a good human being”, “take care of the planet”, “violence is unpredictable” – and those which are utterly inscrutable –
“By meditating on the chakras and the nadis, the practitioner is able to control and prevent temporarily the activity of the grosser levels of consciousness, permitting him or her to experience subtler levels.”
But I need not have worried. This is not so much an interview with the Dalai Lama as an audience, and he has a message to get across. “China is changing. The world is changing. The role of totalitarian regimes is changing,” he says. “I am optimistic.”
You have to admire this optimism, which has been a constant feature of everything he has said for the past 53 years and flies in the face of all the known facts. Since China invaded Tibet in 1950, when the Dalai Lama was only 15, an estimated 1.2 million Tibetans – more than one in five of the population – have perished, many of them murdered in the most appalling circumstances.
In his autobiography Freedom In Exile, the Dalai Lama details some of the atrocities: monks and nuns forced to copulate in the street; Buddhists forced to kill their relatives; people sent to crucifixions with their tongues ripped out to prevent them calling out, “Long live the Dalai Lama”. Every so often, a Tibetan monk or nun escapes over the border and brings back tales of every imaginable kind of torture – and plenty of unimaginable ones as well. China has flooded Tibet with eight million Chinese in a blatant attempt at ethnic dilution. It is against this background that HH preaches his doctrine of total non-violence.
In the past few years, a dialogue of sorts has opened up between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. A delegation of Tibetans visited Beijing in May to start negotiations for him to return to his homeland. “Contact is very useful, very good,” says HH, warming to his theme.
“The delegation is very positive. Good start. Main purpose of direct contact with Chinese government is improvement in Tibetan position.”
Ask what tangible benefits this development has wrought, however, and he concedes, “Now one year passed and no indication of improvement inside Tibet.”
To a western mind, this idealism in the face of such pessimistic evidence is truly baffling. If there was ever a proof that absolute pacifism doesn’t work, it is to be found in Tibet. Yet far from being discredited by a policy that has abjectly failed, HH’s stature has grown over the years. His Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 catapulted the Dalai Lama to the status of a global celebrity, feted by Hollywood stars such as Richard Gere, Goldie Hawn and Harrison Ford. Martin Scorsese made a film about his life: Kundun, and he has guest-edited French Vogue, been interviewed by Playboy magazine, topped the New York Times best-seller list and met everybody from Chairman Mao and Nikita Khrushchev to Pandit Nehru and Nelson Mandela. He is one of the few Third World leaders who can command an audience with the Pope, George Bush and Tony Blair.
These days, the Dalai Lama spends a great deal of time circumnavigating the globe, drumming up support for his cause. The Chinese may occupy the kingdom at the top of the world, but they have made no inroads on the moral high ground; that is the Dalai Lama’s territory. For one who values tranquillity, his schedule is pretty hectic. Before the Paris trip he had visited Spain and the United States, where 65,000 people turned out to listen to him in New York’s Central Park. Tickets for his teachings were auctioned for triple their face value on the e-bay website, and sold out faster than a Rolling Stones gig. He is everybody’s number one feel-good guru.
“As far as the Tibet issue is concerned, that is helpful,” he says when I ask him how he feels about his celebrity. “My practice and promotion of non-violence is not done to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. If other people recognise that small service, so be it.”
There are, however, some who believe that the Dalai Lama’s celebrity is in danger of distorting what he really represents. During the US trip, Larry King of CNN briefly mistook him for a Muslim, and Sharon Stone rather missed the point about half a century of Chinese occupation when she introduced him as “Mr Please, Please, Please Let Me Back Into China”.
Patrick French, the former director of the London-based Free Tibet campaign, says the Dalai Lama has become “whoever we want him to be, a cuddly projection of our hopes and dreams”. Tibetan Buddhism is not a value-free system oriented around smiles and a warm heart, he points out. It is a religion whose tough ethical underpinnings sometimes get lost in translation. Support for the Dalai Lama has so far not translated into tangible help for oppressed Tibetans.
The Dalai Lama’s impeccable manners are in part to blame for some of the misunderstandings that have arisen. He is so diplomatic, so keen never to cause offence, that he has a tendency to bury views that are unpalatable in the west. He is, for example, implacably opposed to homosexuality. Although, he’s not particularly ‘for’ sex of any description – “When you have an itch, you scratch, but not to itch at all is better than any amount of scratching.” Yet he removed the passage on homosexuality in his recent book on ethics at the request of his publisher, for fear of offending Americans. He is a strong believer in Tibetan medicine, which holds that the root causes of disease are ignorance, desire and hatred.
Bizarrely, when he visited China in 1954, he expressed a wish to join the Communist party, despite its utter repudiation of religion. In his autobiography, he writes, “I felt sure, as I still do, that it would be possible to work out a synthesis of Buddhist and pure Marxist doctrines that really would prove to be an effective way of conducting politics.”
Despite this, he has had several cordial meetings with George W Bush – the ultimate dove meeting the ultimate hawk. He also got on well with Chairman Mao – “I found him a most impressive man” – during the ten weeks he spent in Peking five years before he fled Mao’s murderous Red Guard. At their last meeting, Mao blurted out, “Religion is poison”. In his book, HH says, “How could he have misjudged me so? How could he have thought that I was not religious to the core of my being?”
But the explanation is obvious. Even when Mao directly attacked everything he stood for, the young Dalai Lama did not speak out, hiding his true feelings in order not to break Mao’s trust in him. There are endless examples of the Dalai Lama’s bravery, benevolence and selflessness, but there are also times when you can’t help feeling that a little more candour might clarify things.
Despite the adulation in the west, HH does not seek western followers. He believes that, in general, individuals should remain with their own traditions. “I have always felt that the aims of all religions are essentially the same; namely to make us better, less selfish, and ultimately happier human beings,” he writes.
But it takes more than religion to make happier human beings, and as long as the Chinese occupation of Tibet endures then the misery continues. Does he not feel it would be better to share the physical suffering of his people as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader, has done? “That is one opinion,” he says.
“Mentally, I always share their suffering. Some leader in a western country – I cannot tell you who – has told me it is very dangerous to return now. As soon as Chinese government begins to think about a new way of approach regarding Tibet issue then I think it’s right time. Then I can make some contribution. Now, this is the best way to serve the Tibetan people. I can do more outside Tibet than inside Tibet.” The older Tibetans long to see him return, he says, but the more politically-minded Tibetans believe that he is better able to serve their cause in the west.
Next year, that cause will be served in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dunfermline. The tale of how Victor Spence brought the Dalai Lama to Scotland is a whole other story – it started with a dream in 1997, in which Spence saw the Dalai Lama’s face. Two years later, he heard a voice that said simply, “Now is the time”.
He knew immediately that he was destined to bring His Holiness to Scotland, and within weeks had galvanised everybody from Lord David Steel, then presiding officer of the Parliament, to all the main Scottish religious leaders.
The Dalai Lama will address the Scottish Parliament during his visit next year. Spence believes devolution here is an ideal model for Tibet, and harbours a dream of getting His Holiness together with the Chinese leadership on the neutral territory of Scotland.
Could devolution be the solution for Tibet? “One nation, two systems,” says the Dalai Lama, who is polite enough not to point out just how badly Britain let down Tibet in the 1950s. “We have already done some research work on these models. Certainly, it is good. You have very high autonomy but still within Great Britain.” He would happily meet the Chinese on neutral territory, he says, but they must be willing – and so far they have not been.
There are many paradoxes concerning the Dalai Lama, or ‘the Dilemma’, as he is sometimes dubbed. He is a progressive moderniser with a strong respect for science, yet he regularly consults ancient spirits. He will go out of his way to avoid killing an insect, but will happily tuck into bacon, liver and sausage for breakfast – his one brief flirtation with vegetarianism made him ill. As a child in the palace at Lhasa, he spent hours playing war games with a set of lead soldiers while absorbing the pacifist teachings of the Buddha. He represents timelessness, yet he has a fascination for watches and clocks. He is the world’s most prominent political refugee, yet he is completely at home in luxury hotels.
But it is his willingness to negotiate with Tibet’s oppressors that is the most perplexing conundrum. There are some Tibetans who have lost patience with his message of non-violence and others who believe only independence can save Tibet, a position that the Dalai Lama renounced years ago. “I am not seeking independence,” he says. “I am willing and ready to persuade those Tibetans who are thinking, ‘Independence for Tibet’. The reason we are ready to accept Tibet as part of People’s Republic of China is because it is in our own interest. Economic development is very much needed, so, for that, if we remain in People’s Republic of China then we might get greater benefit – provided Chinese government respect our culture and our environment. That’s my view.”
He has always been a progressive. Born Lhamo Thondup, he was identified as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, after various signs and wonders, and taken from his parent’s small farm to Lhasa at the age of three. He was born in 1935, but as far as Tibet was concerned it might just as well have been the 16th century. Of his 15 siblings, only six survived infancy. By the time the Chinese invaded in 1950, there were only three cars in Tibet – all of them possessions of the 13th Dalai Lama – and no roads. Had he stayed in Tibet, he would have introduced much-needed reform and abandoned the isolationist position of his predecessor for which Tibet has paid such a heavy price.
Hope now seems to be pinned on the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as a catalyst for change, but previous catalysts have come and gone with no improvement. “The present situation cannot last forever, even if it lasts many lifetimes,” he says with the patience of one who has been reincarnated 13 times. Others do not have the luxury of such a timescale.
My 15 minutes has stretched to 22 minutes, and the officials are hopping around tapping their watches. The interpreter is biting his nails, and all semblance of Buddhist serenity is fast disappearing. Before I go, I ask His Holiness if he ever succumbs to anger, that most destructive of emotions and the one Buddhists work hard to overcome. It is hard to fault the sheer niceness of the Dalai Lama. The only snide thing anybody has ever said about him came from Rupert Murdoch, who told Vanity Fair, “I have heard cynics who say he is a very political monk, shuffling around in Gucci shoes.”
Yet the Dalai Lama refers frequently to the family trait of short-temperedness. “Anger? Yes, of course,” he says. “Little things make me angry. One example: when I come to Spain, my flight from Delhi to Frankfurt has one and a half hours’ delay. We rush for plane to Madrid, but luggage is left behind. After lunch, something go wrong and my stomach get some trouble. I use Tibetan medicine for that, but that medicine is in the luggage. Then I lose some temper,” he says laughing. “But just a little bit. Then we hear luggage is at airport, but taxi from airport to my hotel takes a very long time. Then I really lose temper.”
As his faces dissolves for the umpteenth time into a mass of mirthful crinkles, his next audience is arriving – a procession of men and women bearing katas, the white scarves which are traditionally given in greeting. “Who are they?” I ask one of the entourage as I leave. “Belgium 2005,” comes the reply. The Dalai Lama is smiling benignly and accepting the gifts. He may be ‘Holy Lord’, ‘Gentle Glory’, ‘Compassionate Defender of the Faith’, ‘Ocean of Wisdom’ and ‘Holder of the White Lotus’, but first and foremost he is an innocent abroad.
For tickets to hear the Dalai Lama on 3 June 2004, call the Usher Hall box office on 0131 228 1155
