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The Open Road
The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
by Pico Iyer
Reading this book is fascinating. The author shares elements of his personal relationship with the Dalai Lama over three decades. Almost as soon as the religious leader of the Tibetans went into exile in 1959, the Dalai Lama began making changes that began the foundation of his global leadership. He set up a nursery school in his first year in exile. This reflected his commitment that while the past can not be changed, the future can be affected by preparing children to be both deeply connected to their original source and also to the wider world. Part of how this happens is by teaching them both Tibetan and English.
While in exile in Dharmasala, the Dalai Lama began looking closely at what contributed to the downfall of Tibet. He wanted to learn from its history and make changes such as providing women opportunities not available before and to giving some of his power over to his people so that they might rule themselves.
Iyer writes; “Dharmasala, the Dalai Lama seemed to be saying, would be the center of a new kind of experiment. So long as Tibetans could not enjoy freedom of worship or speech or movement in Tibet itself, they would create a new Tibet around the world, upgraded in certain ways and to some extent linked not by common soil but common purposes, a community of vision. Creating new forms as he went along, he was building up, out of necessity, a kind of virtual Tibet, a new global settlement ... If it achieved anything at all, this experiment could offer a new, more positive way of thinking about their destinies for the Palestinians, the Kurds, the Uighurs, and the ever increasing number of exile groups around the world...."
Over and over in this book Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama’s position. While he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province. Though he was born in one of the most remote and least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a religious leader who warns against being distracted by the forms of religion, a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity and an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses his everyday humanity.
For myself, as a non-Buddhist, I find courage in the Dalai Lama’s ability to find ways in his own religion to transmute destructive emotions while encouraging each one of us to find that same source in our own spiritual tradition. I was moved by the author’s story of having tea with this esteemed world leader. Right in the middle of an intense discussion of great importance, the esteemed leader noticed that Iyer’s tea cup was empty! This caring attitude is a significant quality for all of us to cultivate.
It appears to me that Iyer has successfully accomplished his goal to “bring the Dalai Lama out of Tibet and Buddhism and into the larger community of ideas and thinkers, to show how much and how often his interests chime with those of other traditions and explorers.”
The Open Road
The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
Pico Iyer,
Alfred A. Knopt, Inc, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26760-3.
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