The Mischievous Dalai Lama

The 14^th Dalai Lama, the Nobel peace prize laureate was at St.Joseph’s college, Bangalore on January 30^th. It was then that I got to meet him. Me, seated on the floor, right in front on the reserved VIP seats, with my camera in hand. All thanks to the power of the press card.

He is a good example of someone who uses something that comes naturally to him to make everyone love him—his sense of humor. Yes, at times he is sarcastic, he does score his goals at the right time, he does poke you were it hurts most with his jokes. But when you look at the larger picture you do realize that he makes statements using his sense of humor. Statements that could hurt feelings if said in any other way, his jokes are on reality.

He eulogized the college and the Church for doing so much in the field of education all over the world. “Whether it is in the West or in the East, you Christians have built lots of academic institutions, especially for the poor and needy. That’s really good,” the Dalai Lama said. But after praising them he did convey a few things about the church that he dint think was in the interest of the public, like forced conversions in Mongolia.

“If you have a highly priced(expensive) ring, and if you kiss it; will you get any response from the ring? Never, never. But if you show your genuine love to a small cat or dog, then they will respond accordingly, wagging their tail and then licking,” this was what his holiness said to convey his views on the catholic tradition of kissing the bishops ring. Even the principal of the college, a priest couldn’t control his laughter watching the animated actions that Dalai Lama used to speak. He actually checked the fingers of both the priests sitting next to him on the podium to see if they had fingers and kissed their fingers, and imitated the wagging tail with his hands. When the priest explained that it was only bishops who had the rings the Dalai Lama fondly remembered that South African Archbishop Tutu, his close friend often refers to him as the “mischievous Dalai Lama”.

I cannot think of a better adjective to describe him from what he spoke. With his cute little eyes almost shutting whenever he gives us his mischievous smile. The animated actions he uses whenever he doesn’t know the English term for a word is amusing to say the least. If some people use their hands to talk, and some their eyes the present Dalai Lama uses actions to talk. This must work better for him, cause that is another way he can cross the language barrier in his cross cultured audience.

He did not attempt to remind his Tibetan friends about his long exile India with any sad stories filled with despair. Instead he told us a story, a story on why he calls himself “a son of India”. He said that his thoughts were a product of the Nalanda university(Bihar) ideas and his body was a product of Indian chapattis, daal, rice which he has been eating for the past 50years.

Reminding everyone present that that India had a history of thousands of years of religious harmony he said that it was time “we” focused on reducing inter-religious conflicts and conflicts within sections of the same religion like the Catholics & Protestants and the Shia and Sunni groups within the Muslim community.

I wish we had more such leaders in the world and I don’t necessarily imply the religious type. I mean of any kind—politicians, teachers, who spoke in such simple language with innocent jokes and not full of themselves. We would be so much more inspired and so much more involved then.