His Holiness The Dalai Lama - In search of... - The first attempt
His Holiness The Dalai Lama - In search of... - The first attempt
The Dalai Lama. Seems everyone in the world knows him. You'd have to be living in a cave in the mountains of India to have never heard of the Dalai Lama. That's a bit of a joke as Tibetan monks often live in caves in the mountains of India. Tibet used to extend well into what is now known as India. The connection between the two cultures extends back thousands of years. In fact, the teachings of the Buddha went from India first to Tibet and then the rest of the world from there. Therefore, when the Dalai Lama fled the Chinese army in 1959 after being recognized as the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama at age 2 and later forced into politics due to the Chinese invasion of Tibet, India was his destination for exile. Now he is a worldwide known figure and quite an excellent speaker.
In 2000, I found myself in the midst of my first trip in India and in Dharamsala.
I registered to attend his daily talk. Having been exposed to Buddhism in Thailand just a few months before, I was quite interested in learning more and listening to him. Upon reaching his residence the next morning, we found that the talks were cancelled due to his illness. Wishing him a quick recovery, we moved on and continued our travels just chalking it up to a missed opportunity. Life goes like that sometimes. We did however end up going to a speech by another young Lama that wore basketball shoes under his robes.
He spoke in Tibetan which was then translated to English. I saw many foreigners taking notes but I preferred to focus on him, his words, the meaning of his speech, and feeling of the moment. What I remember to this day is him saying, "Life is like growing rice. First, you must prepare the field. When the time is right, you plant the rice. Then you wait for rain. When the rice is ready then you harvest the rice." Of course I am paraphrasing but the meaning is there all the same. No need to make life more complicated then it is.
That talk resonated with me and I started to really believe in life that way. I also realized that there is much more to people than you think. Monks are people too with personalities, opinions and can love basketball just as much as you and I. I grew up playing basketball as a kid on club and school teams. Beyond that we (my older brother and I and neighbor kids) played some sort of basketball every day after school before dinner. Seeing the monk with basketball shoes helped me understand that we aren't so different after all... We can all look for our similarities rather than our differences in life and get along much better!
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