Word: lamas
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...paper, then, the Dalai Lama is a living incarnation of a Buddha, the hierarch of a government-in-exile and a doctor of metaphysics. Yet the single most extraordinary thing about him may simply be his sturdy, unassuming humanity. The Living God is, in his way, as down to earth as the hardy brown oxfords he wears under his monastic robes, and in his eyes is still the mischief of the little boy who used to give his lamas fits with his invincible skills at hide-and-seek. He delights in tending his flower gardens, looking after wild birds, repairing...
...normal little boy who loved to whiz around the holy compound in a pedal car and instigate fights with his siblings. "I recall one summer day -- I must have been about seven -- when my mother took me to the Norbulingka Summer Palace to see His Holiness," recalls the Dalai Lama's youngest brother Tenzin Choegyal. "When we got there, His Holiness was watering his plants. The next thing I knew, he was turning the hose...
...eight different directions. Suddenly the teenage ruler was obliged to take a crash course in statesmanship, traveling to Beijing to negotiate with Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong. Finally, in March 1959, when a bloody confrontation seemed imminent as 30,000 steadfast Tibetans rose up against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama slipped out of his summer palace dressed as a humble soldier and set off across the highest mountains on earth. Two weeks later, suffering from dysentery and on the back of a dzo, a hybrid yak, the "Holder of the White Lotus" rode into exile in India...
Since then, his has been a singularly delicate balancing act, the guest of a nation that would prefer him to remain silent and the enemy of a nation that much of the world is trying to court. Undeterred, the Dalai Lama has organized 53 Tibetan settlements in India and Nepal and set up institutes to preserve his country's arts, its scriptures and its medical traditions. In recent years he has begun to race around the world like a Buddhist John Paul II -- lecturing at Harvard, meeting the Pope and attending to his flock, be they unlettered peasants...
Many young Tibetans would like their leader to be more militant. Angrily noting that there are more than 3,000 political prisoners in central Tibet alone and that Beijing has at least 300,000 troops on the "Rooftop of the World," they advocate violence. But the Dalai Lama refuses to be intemperate. "Once your mind is dominated by anger," he notes thoughtfully, "it becomes almost mad. You cannot take right decisions, and you cannot see reality. But if your mind is calm and stable, you will see everything exactly as it is. I think all politicians need this kind...