Word: lamas
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Pattie, a wealthy widow from California, can easily afford the best hotels. But she prefers to slum it in a small cottage in Dharamsala because it overlooks the monastery of the Dalai Lama, the exiled political and religious leader of Tibet. "I can just stand there with my arms stretched out," she says, "and feel the aura wafting up." A bright-eyed, diminutive 60-year-old, Pattie is planning to visit Tibet soon. She wants to get there "before all the good energy disappears because of those Chinese people...
...most of those who French describes are resigned to life under Chinese occupation, although their eager questions about the Dalai Lama prove that nationalism isn't totally dead. In Chengdu, watching elaborate rallies celebrating 50 years of communist rule in China, French asks a Tibetan how he felt. "I suppose I was expecting ... a neat speech about the theft of his birthright and the pain of being a Tibetan caught in a false, imposed culture," French admits. But he got a simple, tragic response: "I feel nothing...
...While many Tibetans in Tibet gradually stop dreaming of freedom, the exile community is drifting toward irrelevance. The world would have forgotten Tibet if it weren't for the Dalai Lama. Despite several political misjudgments when he rejected Beijing's overtures, says French, the Dalai Lama has come to represent peaceful resistance and nonviolence in a world at war with terrorism, which is political dissidence in its worst form. But his popularity has only led to furious commercial exploitation?his images sell computers, movies and books?turning the Dalai Lama, at best, into the world's spiritual teddy bear. French...
...monastery is at the center of a divisive and sometimes violent battle within Tibetan Buddhism's Kagyupa (Black Hat) sect: Who is the rightful 17th Karmapa? Is it the New Delhi Karmapa, Trinley Thaye Dorje? Or is it the Tibetan Karmapa-Ugyen Trinley Dorje-endorsed by the Dalai Lama...
...peaked roof and intricate carvings are a huge contrast to the concrete blocks of modern Gangtok. Whiling away an afternoon on the terrace is a pleasant diversion from shopping for handicrafts. It also offers a chance to bump into celeb guests like Bollywood star Danny Dengzopa or the Dalai Lama. The Dragon Bar, replete with a barman in a black hat and a red silk tunic, also serves a mean gin and tonic-as long as it isn't one of the state's dry days...