The Andes llama, he's a beast/The Tibet lama, he's a priest." And the Dalai
Lama, he's the ocean priest (for such is the literal meaning of the title
in Mongol) -- oceanic in the breadth of his learning, the depth of his
wisdom. If you do not believe it, just ask Richard Gere.

Gere is the Dalai Lama's most visible disciple in this country and acted as
celebrity liaison during His Holiness's recent two-week visit to New York
as part of the worldwide "Year of Tibet." At times the actor, whose
fundament is almost as familiar to moviegoers as his face, overshadowed the
Protector of the Land of Snows. A brief appearance that the two made in the
financial district caused a terrific stir, but I fear for the wrong
reasons. "Who's Billy Lama?" I overheard one secretary ask another.

At the time I was only marginally better informed. I knew that the Dalai
Lama was the spiritual and -- until he was chased over the Himalayas into
Indian exile by Communist Chinese troops in 1959 -- the temporal leader of
Tibet. I knew that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for
his doughty opposition to the Beijing regime, which is responsible for the
deaths of up to 1.2 million of his people (who now number 6 million) and
the destruction of over 6,000 Buddhist monasteries.

Beyond that, I was a little foggy. Although I vaguely recall taking a
course on Buddhism in college, I do not believe I was ever acquainted with
the theological identity of the Dalai Lama. During his visit here I filled
that lacuna by attending several of his addresses, reading diligently, and
engaging in disputations with various adepts. One of the most striking
things I learned was that the Dalai Lama has existed more or less
continuously for six centuries, occupying a series of different bodies. The
trick is reincarnation, a central tenet of Tibetan Buddhism. All the
historical Dalai Lamas are held to be manifestations of a single
bodhisattva ("Buddha-to-be") called Avalokitesvara, the Lord of Compassion.
Admittedly, his personality is subject to some variation from rebirth to
rebirth; although many in the line have evinced great piety, the sixth
Dalai Lama, who lived from 1683 to 1706, was a notorious libertine and
writer of romantic verse.

Tenzin Gyatso, the incumbent and fourteenth Dalai Lama, was born in 1935.
How, one is keen to know, was he singled out as the latest manifestation of
the Lord of Compassion? That is a curious story. Four years after the
thirteenth Dalai Lama died in 1933, the quest to find the new incarnation
commenced, the candidates all being Tibetan boys born from forty-nine days
to two years after his demise. A dozen omens -- including a rotating
corpse, a vision in the waters of a sacred lake, a portentous configuration
of clouds, and possibly a moving star -- led the search party to the home
of a provincial peasant couple. Their 2-year-old son was shown a collection
of objects, some of which had belonged to the previous incarnation. He
immediately grabbed a little case, exclaiming, "My teeth are in there."
Inside, the amazed monks discovered a set of the former Dalai Lama's
dentures. So the lore goes; although there were not any skeptical witnesses
present, I have no cause to doubt it. At the age of 4 the child was
installed on the Lion Throne in the holy capital city of Llasa, there
residing alone except for his eldest brother in the magnificent
1,000-chambered Potala palace.

This seems a somewhat loopy method of choosing the God-King of Tibet,
although it does compare favorably with our own process for, say, coming up
with new Supreme Court justices. But did they get the right guy? This was a
question that occurred to me when I went to hear the Dalai Lama discourse
on the subject of "Global Responsibility through Compassion" at Madison
Square Garden one Sunday evening during his visit here. En route I stopped
off at one of my favorite Hell's Kitchen spots, the Wee Molly Pub, in order
to purge myself of any cynical impulses and become an empty vessel into
which the Holder of the White Lotus could pour the distillate of his
vision.

The event attracted a sellout crowd consisting of the sorts of people one
would be likely to see at a Truffaut film. Presently a blow-dried fellow in
a suit took the stage, which was adorned with Tibetan tapestries and a
pagodalike structure called a mandala house, and described the rigorous
scholarly training the Dalai Lama had undergone. At length the Dalai Lama
himself appeared. An impish, endlessly grinning man in tinted spectacles,
he was attired in scarlet and saffron monastic robes beneath which could be
discerned a pair of brown oxfords. "He's so cute!" exclaimed the woman
behind me. And indeed he was. On hand to greet His Holiness was David
Dinkins, who was presented with a flowing white scarf. After much
exchanging of prayerlike gestures with the mayor to great applause, the
Living Buddha seated himself in a Chippendale chair next to a large vase of
flowers and started to address the rapt audience in fairly wonky English,
punctuated by much giggling and occasional admissions that he had
"forgotten the point." He spoke so slowly that I was able to write down
every word he said.

"From the moment of birth, all human being want happiness," he began
(apparently ignorant of Nietzsche's observation that, strictly speaking,
this is only true of the English). But because of the Industrial
Revolution, all nations are interdependent. "In order to develop your own
country, you need something from other side, other side," but to obtain it
by force is "not nice." Fortunately, the desire for peace today is "very
strong, very strong." If all the nations of the world relinquish their
weapons, we will have "enormous extra money that can be used in positive
fields like solving starvation and the aids problems." When the brilliant
scientists now busy perfecting engines of destruction turn their attention
to such constructive work "they should be given double pay." The key to it
all is building up a critical mass of compassion. Fortunately this should
not be too difficult, as "the dominant force in our mind is affection." We
humans are "much closer to deer than to tiger." Once we realize this and
become more affectionate, "we will sleep better and not need alcohol." I
thought wistfully of the Wee Molly.

Judging from the applause, the audience found it all thumping good stuff.
They particularly warmed to his theme that "one religion cannot satisfy all
humanity, so a variety of religions better -- a supermarket of religions."
But I found this apparent tolerance toward Western religion a trifle
condescending, especially when he added that he "was not talking about
nirvana -- at that level there are differences." Politically, the Dalai
Lama's message was oddly quietistic. "If you cultivate inner serenity," we
were told, "the external environment cannot harm you." What about the
long-suffering people of Tibet, someone in the audience wanted to know. How
can we help them? "We'll talk about that some other time," was the
response. I came away from this event thinking that the Dalai Lama was a
bit of a holy bore, if not a fraud. "Saints should always be judged guilty
until they are proven innocent," wrote George Orwell apropos of Gandhi, and
the Living Buddha is no exception. In his defense, votaries I spoke to
hymned his "reality," his "rapport with existence," his "self-effacing
humanity." Traveling around the world from conference to conference, he
never flies first class. ("The only advantage of first class is you get
free drinks," he said, "and I don't drink.") When asked once what he missed
most about Tibet, he replied, "Yaks." He is reputedly happiest puttering
around his garden and tinkering with mechanical gadgets. "I am a simple
Buddhist monk," he declared on receiving his Nobel Prize. "No more, no
less." Can one not help detecting a trace of vanity behind such
professions?

I could not -- at least until an epiphany I experienced a week later. It
took place in a glade just north of Sheep Meadow in Central Park. I had
gone there to attend a sunrise meditation conducted by the Dalai Lama
toward the end of his visit. Having earlier left a cacophonous club called
the Sound Factory in the not-so-small hours, I felt a quiet meditative
moment was just the thing to launch the new day. It was a morning of
unexampled beauty, chill and clear; the sky was just beginning to lighten
into bluish-orange hues as I entered the park. Perched on boulders
surrounding the designated spot were little clutches of Buddhist monks
droning away on Tibetan wind instruments (one of which had the sonic heft
of the horn of the qe ii); they were illumined in a strobelike way by the
flash of cameras. A thousand or so people, many wrapped in blankets, were
gathered there in the predawn darkness silently awaiting the Dalai Lama.
The scene was -- and I use the word guardedly -- surreal. I felt very
spiritual just being up at that hour.

Before long His Holiness arrived. Without a word he assumed what I took to
be a lotus position on an ornate cushioned platform surrounded by candles,
and everyone in the crowd adopted a like posture. Having neglected to bring
my own blanket, I was annoyed to discover that the ground was damp. What
was going to happen next? I wondered. Well, we sat there. And sat there.
The near-perfect hush was spoiled only by the occasional rasp of a police
walkie-talkie. (This sort of quiet makes one nervous in New York, as it
seems to beg for a screaming maniac to shatter it.) Forty minutes or so
into the meditation, time went logarithmic on me. I was freezing, and had
to go to the bathroom. I tried to meditate on the essential nature of cold
as merely slow-moving molecules. I endeavored to focus on the precise
phenomenological qualities of the sensations emanating from my cramped
legs, hoping thereby to strip those sensations of their painfulness. But
I'm afraid it was futile.

After what seemed an eternity -- actually only an hour -- His Holiness
stirred at last. Extracting a handkerchief from his robes, he blew his nose
and smiled. I do not know whether I can convey this, but it was an utterly
numinous gesture. Momentarily I seemed to see the shining face of a
bodhisattva in this childlike little man. My intense discomfort was at an
end. So, happily, was the meditation. The Dalai Lama departed as silently
as he had come, and we happy enlightened few made our way out of the park
in the dawn light.

I hailed a cab on Central Park West. As I got in, the cabbie asked me what
so many people were doing in the park so early on a cold Sunday morning. I
told him they had come to meditate with the Dalai Lama.

"No kidding," he said. "Was Richard Gere there?"